Tuesday Open Thread [1.12.2016]

NATIONAL—IBD/TIPP: Clinton 43, Sanders 39, O’Malley 2
NATIONAL—NBC News/Survey Monkey: Clinton 52, Sanders 37, O’Malley 2
NEW HAMPSHIRE—ARG: Sanders 47, Clinton 44, O’Malley 3

NATIONAL—IBD/TIPP: Trump 34, Cruz 18, Rubio 9, Carson 8, Christie 4, Bush 4, Paul 3, Fiorina 2, Kasich 2, Huckabee 1
NATIONAL—NBC News/Survey Monkey: Trump 38, Cruz 20, Rubio 11, Carson 9, Bush 3, Christie 3, Paul 3, Kasich 2, Fiorina 2, Huckabee 2
NEW HAMPSHIRE—ARG: Trump 25, Rubio 14, Kasich 14, Cruz 9, Christie 10, Bush 8, Paul 4, Fiorina 3, Carson 2, Santorum 1, Huckabee 1
IOWA—ARG: Trump 29, Cruz 25, Rubio 10, Carson 8, Christie 6, Paul 4, Kasich 3, Bush 3, Huckabee 2, Santorum 2, Fiorina 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Monmouth: Trump 32, Kasich 14, Cruz 14, Rubio 12, Christie 8, Fiorina 5, Bush 4, Paul 4, Carson 3, Huckabee 1
IOWA—Quinnipiac: Trump 31, Cruz 29, Rubio 15, Carson 7, Christie 4, Bush 3, Paul 2, Huckabee 3, Kasich 2, Fiorina 1, Santorum 1

IOWA–NBC/WSJ/Marist: Clinton 48, Trump 40 | Sanders 51, Trump 38 | Cruz 47, Clinton 43 | Sanders 47, Cruz 42 | Rubio 47, Clinton 42 | Rubio 44, Sanders 44 |
NEW HAMPSHIRE–NBC/WSJ/Marist: Clinton 45, Trump 44 | Sanders 56, Trump 37 | Clinton 44, Cruz 48 | Sanders 55, Cruz 37 | Rubio 52, Clinton 40 | Sanders 50, Rubio 41

New data obtained by Politico finds that “as Donald Trump the candidate has ascended, hitting the top of the polls and staying there thanks to a series of controversial statements and a groundswell of Republican populist support, the opposite has happened to Trump the brand: Among the people Trump’s business depends on—the consumer making over $100,000 a year—the value of the Trump name is collapsing.”

Good. I hope he is completely destroyed after this campaign. I want a sixth bankruptcy.

All five paid New Hampshire staffers at the pro-Ben Carson 2016 Committee super PAC quit their posts on Sunday to become volunteers for Sen. Ted Cruz, WMUR reports.

“Despite Sen. Cruz’s repeated statements that the legal/constitutional issues around whether he’s a natural-born citizen are clear and settled, the truth is that they’re murky and unsettled.”

— Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, quoted by The Guardian, on whether the Texas senator is a natural born citizen.

Indeed. I had hoped to avoid the whole Cruz-Birther mess, but that is looking more and more unlikely. The Constitution says that if you are born in this country, you are a citizen. Simple as that. Barack Obama, despite being black, despite having a funny sounding name, despite having a foreign citizen as a father, was born in this country, in the great state of Hawaii. Thus, he was and is an American citizen. No arguments, well, unless you are an evil racist deserving of hellfire and traffic in conspiracy theory.

Ted Cruz, undisputedly, was born in Canada. No conspiracy there. But, there are some who argue that even if you are boil on foreign soil to a parent who is an American citizen, that makes you an American citizen. That was and is Ted Cruz’s basis for being a citizen. I am willing to accept it, so long as it has a basis in caselaw. And there seems to be precedent, as John McCain, yes that John McCain, was considered an American citizen despite having been born in Panama. But now there is some dispute that Ted Cruz’s mother, the American citizen, renounced her citizenship and became a Canadian around the same time he was born.

We will see how this plays out.

Hillary Clinton “proposed a 4 percent surtax on the highest-earning Americans, as she seeks to boost taxes for the wealthiest Americans,” Politico reports.

“The proposal, which she announced in Iowa, would raise an estimated $150 billion over a decade, a Clinton aide said, and comes after the Democratic front-runner said that she would build on the so-called Buffett Rule that seeks to ensure that the middle class doesn’t pay a higher tax rate than top earners.”

Hillary Clinton is responded to some new closer than she likes poll numbers, and is moving left. That is why, while I will not vote for Bernie, I like him in the race.

A new Fox News poll finds that more voters thinks Bill Clinton is respectful of women than Donald Trump, 50% to 37%.

“He was basically a Democrat before he was a Republican. He was, you know, somebody we all knew in New York, and he was supportive of Democrats and supportive of a lot of causes I care about and people I knew cared about… Now he seems to have taken another road.”

— Hillary Clinton, quoted by ABC News, explaining her relationship with Donald Trump.

Hillary trolling Trump.

“As his eldest son faced the prospect of resigning as Delaware’s attorney general amid health concerns, Vice President Joe Biden received an offer that floored him: financial support from his boss, President Obama,” CNN reports.

“Obama, Biden remembered, pushed back vehemently on the thought of Biden and his wife selling their home in Wilmington, Delaware.”

Recalled Biden: “He got up and he said, ‘Don’t sell that house. Promise me you won’t sell the house. He said, “I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money.’”

Matthew A. Winkler at Bloomberg who analyzes President Obama’s economy (click through for the charts):

When President Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, the U.S. economy was shrinking at a rate unmatched since World War II. In the seven years between then and his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, global investors have enjoyed stellar results from the rapidly expanding Obama economy. […] Obama’s critics are correct to point out that the expansion has been halting and uneven, accompanied by rising inequality, anemic wage growth and underemployment. Growth has been slower than after many previous recessions. It’s significant, though, that the three best-performing industries since March 2009 are consumer discretionary, financial and technology, showing that Americans are borrowing again and have enough spare cash to make Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Walt Disney and Wells Fargo winning investments. […]

American companies, helped in part by the strongest dollar and the weakest oil prices since the 1990s, were more active as acquirers and sellers of each other in 2015 than at any point during the past decade; $3.2 trillion changed hands, the most mergers and acquisitions since at least 2003, when Bloomberg began compiling such data. At the same time, there were only $33.8 billion of initial public offerings pending, priced or trading last year, the lowest amount since 2009. That may be a sign of untapped potential. If so, the Obama rebound isn’t over just yet.

Eugene Robinson warns Democrats not to underestimate the appeal of Donald Trump:

The important thing is that Trump, by being transgressive in the way he speaks, gives listeners the license to be transgressive in the way they think. When he rails against “political correctness,” he’s talking about the manners and courtesies that many of us would call being “civil.” But his in-your-face bullying strikes a chord with the large segment of the Republican electorate that is tired of being polite: lower-middle-class, non-college-educated white voters who have not prospered over the past two decades and see demographic change as a threat. […]

How disgusted is the country with traditional politics and politicians? Democrats had better explore that question — or be surprised by the answer.

Dana Milbank also looks at the Supreme Court case concerning an attack on public sector unions and says that all the First Amendment rhetoric is really just window dressing for a continued attack on the political power of unions and workers in this country:

The court’s conservative majority, setting aside a professed respect for precedent and states’ authority, is putting a thumb on the scale of justice in favor of the wealthy donors who have purchased the GOP and much of the government. […]

Lawyer Michael Carvin, leading the anti-union side Monday, gave further justification for that impression. In front of the justices, he dismissed the notion “that anything could happen adversely” to unions as a result of the case. But then he went out to the Supreme Court plaza and, in front of a cheering crowd, told the truth: “It may limit their revenue somewhat, but of course they can compensate for that by being less involved in things like politics.”

And that’s exactly the goal.

Matt Yglesias at Vox on Obama’s good record is certainly worth bragging about:

In tonight’s State of the Union address, Barack Obama is likely to try to argue loudly and proudly that life is pretty good in the United States of America. He’ll have a lot of data on his side as he tries to make his case. The contemporary United States is not an ideal society or one without problems, but compared to where it was when Obama took office seven years ago a huge array of indicators have gotten better. […]

The most recent jobs report, showing the economy added over 290,000 new jobs in December is fuel for the White House’s optimistic fire, but they are looking to paint a broader bright picture. The president’s economic advisors have developed an increasing level of confidence in the state of the economy based in part on some indicators too wonky for a speech but in part on some big bold statistics that we can expect to hear about. The 70 consecutive months of private sector job creation is a record. 2015 and 2014 were the second-best and best years of 21st century job creation. Nominal wage growth remains anemic, but thanks to low energy prices inflation-adjusted wage growth was actually pretty solid last year. With Europe still floundering in a near-Depression state, and China’s once awe-inspiring growth model seemingly in a shambles, the American economy at the beginning of 2016 is genuinely once again the envy of the world.

It’s morning in America.

Beyond the raw economic data, there’s a range of social indicators the president can point to. The share of the American population that lacks health insurance has hit record lows. School kids in every state are doing better than they did a decade ago. Teen pregnancy is at an all-time low. People are hotly disputing whether crime will be higher in 2015 or in 2014 when all the data is in but there’s broad agreement that crime in the mid-aughts is at its lowest level in a couple of generations.

Dylan Matthews call Barack Obama one of the most consequential presidents in the history of the United States:

Whether America’s been “brought back” or otherwise improved is of course deeply debatable. But love him or hate him, Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history — and he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.

He signed into law a comprehensive national health insurance bill, a goal which had eluded progressive presidents for a century. He got surprisingly tough reforms to Wall Street passed as well, not to mention a stimulus package that both blunted the recession and transformed education and energy policy.

He’s put in place the toughest climate rules in American history, and signed a major international climate accord. He opened the US to Cuba for the first time in over half a century, and reached a peaceful settlement to the nuclear standoff with Iran. If Obama were to cover every major policy shift he’s effected during his time in office in his speech Tuesday, attendees are going to be there all night.

You can celebrate or bemoan these accomplishments. Liberals hail them as moves toward a social democratic welfare state and a foreign policy more skeptical of military intervention; conservatives critique Obama’s efforts to expand regulation and expand government’s reach, and accuse him of abdicating America’s role as world hegemon.

But no one can deny that the changes Obama has wrought are enormous in scale. When Obama gets up at the State of the Union and speaks of what he’s accomplished, he may be putting a positive gloss on things, but he won’t be lying about the gravity of what he’s done.

Brian Beutler:

Obama obviously wants to be succeeded by a Democratic president. Because of the country’s current political alignment, Democratic victory in November is the only way to guarantee continued progress expanding health coverage, holding medical costs down without gutting public insurance, limiting the growth of inequality through downward income distribution, and so on. To that end, the president has promised to “leave it all out on the field” in 2016, to secure and build upon as many of his domestic achievements as he can.

Clearly frustrated by the country’s epidemic of gun massacres, Obama has dedicated himself in recent weeks to building a liberal counterweight to the National Rifle Association, in the hope of slowing the spread of weapons of mass killing. Two years ago, in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, he launched the My Brother’s Keeper initiative as a bulwark against the risks of economic privation and violence that face black families, and black men in particular. He has singled out our governing institutions and campaign-finance system for special opprobrium, touting ideas like disclosure and even quasi-compulsory voting in order to shake the most perverse incentives out of politics.

These ambitious goals suggest Obama will seek to be less “above the fray” than most former presidents, converting the enduring good will of the Democratic Party base into grassroots movements for changing policy—not just at the margins, but at its most contentious core.

Both because his legacy goals are ambitious, and because they’re rooted in deep political and social contention and dysfunction, it makes sense that Obama aides have been previewing a final State of the Union address that breaks from recent tradition. Indeed, to render his speech as yet another litany of small-bore policy requests for Congress to ignore would be whistling loudly past the graveyard.