Thursday Open Thread [1.14.2016]

IOWA—DM Register/Bloomberg: Clinton 42, Sanders 40, O’Malley 4
IOWA—Gravis: Clinton 57, Sanders 36, O’Malley 7

Ok, one poll is wildly wrong here.

NATIONAL—Economist/YouGov: Trump 36, Cruz 20, Rubio 11, Carson 6, Bush 5, Christie 4, Paul 3, Kasich 3, Huckabee 3, Fiorina 3, Santorum 2
IOWA—Gravis: Trump 34, Cruz 28, Rubio 5, Carson 9, Christie 5, Bush 4, Kasich 4, Paul 3, Huckabee 2, Fiorina 1

Sam Wang: “Pundits have assured us that the support for Donald Trump is so limited that he can’t possibly get the GOP presidential nomination. Last week in The New York Times, Ross Douthat argued that Trump has a ceiling around 30 percent of Republican voters and consequently will be defeated. To put this numerical claim to the test, I have created a detailed state-by-state simulation of the nomination rules. My conclusion may surprise you: Trump’s current level of support may be enough to deliver him the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in July.”

“A leading Republican pollster privately told Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team Sen. Ted Cruz would be the biggest drag on House Republicans should he win his party’s nomination,” Politico reports.

“Republicans have their biggest House majority in 80 years and have a virtual lock on the chamber. But Democrats are expected to pick up some seats in November; they typically perform better in higher-turnout presidential elections. The GOP nominee could mean the difference between losing a handful of seats and perhaps many more.”

New York Times: “Some in the old guard have started signaling to their reluctant right-of-center brethren that it is time to face the possibility that the hard-line Mr. Cruz could be their standard-bearer.”

Rick Klein: “As surely as it’s President Obama’s Democratic Party until it won’t be, it’s Paul Ryan’s Republican party until it can’t be any longer. The new House speaker made that clear in Obama’s last State of the Union and Ryan’s first as speaker, new poker (and beardless) face and all.”

“Ryan’s choice of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to deliver the GOP response was borne out by a strong national-debut speech that, notably, took on Donald Trump-style rhetoric (‘angriest voices’) as strongly as it did Obama-style policy. And Ryan took a stand of his own by applauding the president’s call to reject ‘any politics that targets people because of race or religion’ – another clear Trump reference.”

“Coming from Ryan, this is more than the establishment trying to rid itself of Trump. It’s a vision of a future of the GOP, in a House chamber with a different vibe than it had just a few months ago.”

Laurence Tribe says Ted Cruz’s own constitutional theory of interpretation, “Orginalism,” makes him ineligible to be President: “There’s more than meets the eye in the ongoing dustup over whether Ted Cruz is eligible to serve as president, which under the Constitution comes down to whether he’s a ‘natural born citizen’ despite his 1970 Canadian birth. Senator Cruz contends his eligibility is ‘settled’ by naturalization laws Congress enacted long ago. But those laws didn’t address, much less resolve, the matter of presidential eligibility, and no Supreme Court decision in the past two centuries has ever done so. In truth, the constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen” is completely unsettled, as the most careful scholarship on the question has concluded. Needless to say, Cruz would never take Donald Trump’s advice to ask a court whether the Cruz definition is correct, because that would in effect confess doubt where Cruz claims there is certainty.”

“People are entitled to their own opinions about what the definition ought to be. But the kind of judge Cruz says he admires and would appoint to the Supreme Court is an ‘originalist,’ one who claims to be bound by the narrowly historical meaning of the Constitution’s terms at the time of their adoption. To his kind of judge, Cruz ironically wouldn’t be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and ’90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a “natural born” citizen. Even having two US parents wouldn’t suffice. And having just an American mother, as Cruz did, would have been insufficient at a time that made patrilineal descent decisive.”

New York Times says Trump’s ground game is disorganized: “Mr. Trump, who Iowa polls show is neck-and-neck with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, may well win the caucuses, now less than three weeks away. But if he does, it will probably be in spite of his organizing team, which after months of scattershot efforts led by a paid staff of more than a dozen people, still seems amateurish and halting, committing basic organizing errors.”

“Some volunteers in charge of turning out supporters to caucus on Feb. 1 are given lists of all registered Republicans in their precincts to contact, ignoring the large number of independents and Democrats who appear to be leaning toward Mr. Trump. Moreover, the volunteers urge people to caucus regardless of whom they support, which risks turning out voters for Mr. Trump’s rivals.”

Bloomberg: “With President Obama unlikely to weigh in, Warren is the most important Democratic elected official who has yet to endorse. Her iconic status among the party’s liberal grass roots, and the national fundraising base she commands, would deliver a substantial boost to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or Martin O’Malley.”

“Sanders would appear to be the most ideologically compatible choice for Warren, because his populist, anti-Wall Street rhetoric mirrors her own. And indeed, many of her supporters, including the founders of her draft movement, have embraced him. But Warren has been noticeably reluctant to lend her name to Sanders’s presidential campaign, because, her advisers say, she’s determined that Democrats should hold on to the White House after Obama leaves office and is not convinced Sanders could win.”

The Boston Globe reports that Hillary Clinton has been talking with Warren.

“The most recent phone chat centered on a topic Warren holds dear: pressuring Wall Street bankers. Warren thanked Clinton for writing an op-ed arguing that Democrats needed to fight off Republican efforts to water down regulations on the financial services industry, Clinton recalled. And Clinton wished Warren a Happy 2016 — a subtle reminder that it’s an election year, and Warren’s endorsement would be a boon to Clinton’s 2016 presidential candidacy.”

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Warren endorsed Clinton? She will probably not endorse anyone, since she seems to like both.

Oh Ted.

New York Times: “As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple… But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports.”

“Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans.”

GOP Rivals are attacking Rubio on weakness: “Chris Christie depicts Marco Rubio as a truant schoolboy. Jeb Bush’s top ally portrays him as a weather vane. Ted Cruz and his supporters characterize him as a nervous sellout who bowed to Democratic demands for “amnesty.” In commercials, interviews and face-to-face meetings with voters, Rubio’s 2016 rivals and their backers are waging increasingly personal attacks, using different words to say much the same thing: that the freshman senator from Florida is weak and unreliable.”

Rubio just looks weak. I am not sure why the punditry or establishment Democrats are scared of him. He reminds me of Lazio, and Hillary destroyed him in 2000.

Greg Sargent:

However, Obama’s own words indicated that he has come to understand that a large chunk of the country fundamentally disagrees with his definition of progress and with his vision of government’s role in promoting it — and that his efforts at persuasion have not been enough to overcome these differences. A big chunk of the country does not envision as robust a governmental role in promoting economic security and maintaining a minimum standard of health care; in acting to combat climate change; and in creating a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants to get right with the law.

That’s the America that Trump and Cruz are speaking to most effectively right now — the chunk of the country that remains hostile, or at least deeply skeptical, towards Obama’s vision of cultural inclusion, of what counts as progress, and of government’s proper role in promoting it. In pleading for all of these things — and in admitting that he’s failed to unite the country behind a shared vision — Obama implicitly conceded that when it comes to our biggest arguments, there still may be two Americas, after all. The unspoken truth that Obama could not openly acknowledge last night is that Democrats are betting their hopes for preserving this vision on the demographic gamble that their America is inexorably evolving into the larger one.

Well, it is. That is a safe bet. Racists are dying off, and whites will no longer by the majority of this country in 10 years time. So the party that stands for inclusion and diversity and tolerance of all cultures and faiths will be the dominant party. The GOP has two choices: 1) change, or 2) somehow win one final election and engage in mass genocide and/or deportation. Right now, with Trump, they are going with option 2.

Brian Beutler says tonight’s Republican debate is make or break for the GOP Establishment:

Thursday night’s Republican primary debate—less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses—is one the candidates’ final opportunities to scramble the picture. But absent Manna swooping down from heaven to devastate Trump and deliver Rubio a career-making performance, it’s hard to see how anything anyone might do between now and the end of the month can turn the above picture on its head before February 1.

The central problem Republican elites face is that their favored candidates (Rubio and Bush, but also John Kasich and Chris Christie) both outnumber Cruz and Trump, and are fighting amongst themselves over a smaller and shrinking portion of the GOP electorate.

For a candidate like Rubio to get to anywhere near Trump-levels of support, every other candidate in the so-called “establishment lane” would need to concede, and their supporters would need to defect to him overwhelmingly. Instead, the candidates are actively tearing each other down in a Hunger Game to emerge as the sole tribune of the establishment, perhaps souring their own supporters on the alternatives along the way.

David Corn says Obama’s final State of the Union was a return to Hope and Change:

The message: Buck up, America. We’re doing better than many other nations, and we have the opportunity to make great strides. This was, in a way, a return to hope and change. Perhaps a more realistic (or world-weary) version of his 2008 pitch. He was aiming to spark the US spirit, not to draw clear lines. But at this stage in the game, it’s unclear what a good speech—and this was a good speech—can or will accomplish.

In 2008, Obama’s election seemed a turning point. The Republicans were routed. A new progressive era was at hand. But conservatives struck back. Hatred of Obama fueled the tea party revival and reshaped the GOP. And as Obama failed to keep the millions who voted for his brand of hope and change fully engaged in the political process, Republicans realized that were leading an army of resentment comprising foot soldiers who demanded Obama’s head on the pike. (For most of them, this was a metaphorical urge.) The president underestimated the opposition at first, but he combated Republican revanchism by trying to set up a political narrative focused on choice: The nation’s voters had to choose between his vision of government and that of the ever-more conservative Republican Party. Obama succeeded with this strategy in 2012. Yet the Obama years have not settled this fundamental clash for good.

With his final State of the Union, Obama, full of zeal and spirit, skillfully emphasized grand nonpolitical themes: optimism, unity, progress, and innovation. But whoever the Democratic nominee will be in 2016, he or she will have to continue the ideological ground war. In the past eight years, Obama won many battles, and the United States is in a better spot now than the day he moved into the White House. But this war of ideas is not done. It may never be. And if Obama wants to preserve his accomplishments and cement his legacy, he will have to stay engaged in that fight.

You want to know why I, as a progressive, am not a Bernie Sanders supporter? Because of this sentiment right here. We are in a long ideological war. The President has brought us far along and we have progressed as a nation, but now we must defend those advances. And repair our losses and injuries. That requires rebuilding our state and local party structure, and winning those state and local elections.

Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat and he is uninterested in doing that. Any of it, including Obama’s advances. Hillary Clinton is.