Thursday Open Thread [1.21.2016]
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Gravis: Sanders 46, Clinton 43, O’Malley 2
FLORIDA—Florida Atlantic University: Clinton 62, Sanders 26, O’Malley 4
NORTH CAROLINA—PPP: Clinton 59, Sanders 26, O’Malley 5
NATIONAL—Monmouth: Trump 36, Cruz 17, Rubio 11, Carson 8, Bush 5, Christie 3, Kasich 3, Huckabee 3, Paul 2, Fiorina 1, Santorum 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CNN/WMUR: Trump 34, Cruz 14, Rubio 10, Bush 10, Christie 6, Paul 6, Kasich 6, Fiorina 4, Carson 3, Huckabee 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Gravis: Trump 35, Kasich 15, Cruz 10, Rubio 9, Christie 8, Bush 7, Fiorina 5, Paul 3, Carson 1
FLORIDA—Florida Atlantic University: Trump 48, Cruz 16, Rubio 11, Bush 10, Carson 3, Christie 3, Huckabee 3, Paul 3, Kasich 2, Fiorina 1
NORTH CAROLINA—PPP: Trump 38, Cruz 16, Rubio 11, Carson 8, Bush 6, Huckabee 6, Christie 4, Fiorina 3, Paul 3, Kasich 2, Santorum 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CNN/WMUR: Clinton 48, Trump 39 | Sanders 57, Trump 34 | Clinton 47, Cruz 41 | Sanders 56, Cruz 33 | Rubio 45, Clinton 44 | Sanders 55, Rubio 37 | Kasich 43, Clinton 43 | Sanders 54, Kasich 33 | Clinton 45, Christie 42 | Sanders 57, Christie 34
FLORIDA—Florida Atlantic University: Trump 47, Clinton 44 | Trump 47, Sanders 42 | Clinton 47, Cruz 42 | Cruz 43, Sanders 43 | Rubio 46, Clinton 46 | Rubio 47, Sanders 42 | Bush 45, Clinton 42
NORTH CAROLINA—PPP: Trump 45, Clinton 43 | Trump 44, Sanders 43 | Cruz 46, Clinton 43 | Cruz 43, Sanders 38 | Rubio 47, Clinton 42
“When it comes to Donald Trump, two strands of thought appear to be strengthening simultaneously in different camps of the Republican Party: He can’t possibly end up as the presidential nominee, and it looks increasingly likely that he may do just that,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“On the first front, a series of prominent GOP pundits and strategists in recent days have issued barbed denunciations of the real-estate mogul… At the same time, if you trust the polls, Mr. Trump is gaining strength in the early states, and lags behind only in Iowa, where voters are set to kick things off in all of 11 days.”
Huffington Post: “The reason that Republican leaders are moving toward Trump has nothing to do with him. They viscerally, unashamedly loathe Cruz.”
Nate Cohn: “The GOP establishment is at a disadvantage against outsiders across nearly every dimension of primary strength, even on the matters where the establishment usually has an edge, like fund-raising, media coverage and support from moderate voters in blue states.”
“What’s even more remarkable is that the party’s weakness comes when it would seem to have tremendous incentives to coalesce behind a single mainstream option. Rarely, if ever, has a party faced such a credible threat from true outsiders, and yet the Republican establishment is both split and on the sidelines.”
Good ad by Bernie.
Bad ad by Bernie.
[T]he purpose of the ad is primarily political, and the spot attempts to thread a difficult political needle by communicating a message I would summarize as something like this:
* A President Sanders will “end the quagmire of perpetual warfare in the Middle East.”
* This quagmire is the fault of the Washington status quo, which Sanders’s campaign is broadly about challenging.
* Sanders will challenge that status quo on foreign policy by doing exactly what Obama is already doing.Sanders doesn’t talk about foreign policy much, and when political observers try to explain that, they generally say the issue is that he just doesn’t get it or just doesn’t care about it, or that his actual views are more centrist than his base might like.
But this ad speaks to what I suspect is the actual cause: Sanders wants to position himself as challenging the status quo, but on foreign policy he is pretty in line with that status quo. At the same time, he doesn’t want to embrace Obama on foreign policy during the primary, because that policy is associated with one Hillary Clinton.
Sounds like Bob Dole is one of those establishment types that is embracing Trump in order to stop Cruz:
“I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”
“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” he said. “Nobody likes him.”
But Mr. Dole said he thought Mr. Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.” …
“If he’s the nominee, we’re going to have wholesale losses in Congress and state offices and governors and legislatures,” said Mr. Dole, who served in the House and Senate for 35 years and won the Iowa caucuses twice. He described Mr. Cruz as having falsely “convinced the Iowa voters that he’s kind of a mainstream conservative.”
The only person who could stop Mr. Cruz from capturing the nomination? “I think it’s Trump,” Mr. Dole said, adding that Mr. Trump was “gaining a little.”
First Read: “Turning to the Democratic race, it’s been striking that since the Dem establishment and wonkish liberals began their political attack on Bernie Sanders — ‘He’s a socialist!’ ‘He’s unelectable!’ ‘The GOP will destroy him!’ — the only Democrat who has pushed back on this critique has been Sanders adviser Tad Devine on MSNBC.”
“Bottom line: Sanders doesn’t have any well-known Democratic Party validators to back him up. In 2007-2008, Barack Obama had plenty of Dem validators going up when going up against the Clinton machine — Tom Daschle, Tim Kaine, Deval Patrick, and Claire McCaskill (who’s maybe been the most aggressive against Sanders right now). It’s something to watch over the next 11 days: If 80% of the Democratic Party continues to hit Sanders here, and there isn’t Democratic pushback, can Sanders win that fight?”
Rubio has a 3-2-1 Strategy. It’s a dumb strategy.
National Review: “According to multiple Rubio allies recently briefed on campaign strategy, the senator’s team has settled on an unconventional path to winning the GOP primary contest. The strategy, dubbed ‘3-2-1’ by some who have been briefed on it, forecasts a sequence in which Rubio takes third place in Iowa on February 1, finishes second in New Hampshire on February 9, and wins South Carolina on February 20.”
“From there, Rubio would be well-positioned in the long haul to win a plurality of voters, and ultimately a majority of delegates, in a three-way contest against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.”
Associated Press: “He’s betting big that Republican voters across the political spectrum will ultimately coalesce behind his candidacy in the state-by-state slog for delegates his team envisions for the months ahead.”
Rick Klein says the Palin endorsement of Trump matters: “The Palin-Trump alliance marks the ultimate triumph of personality over policy in the Republican Party – at least for this very big campaign moment. Sarah Palin was Donald Trump before Trump took to politics, and Tuesday night’s endorsement event (‘no more pussy-footing around’; ‘drill, baby, drill’) showed she still may have more catch-phrases than him. In backing Trump, Palin is putting her considerable pull among tea partiers and other grassroots conservatives to the test. She’s signaling to them that ideology matters less than attitude – a proposition she tested, intentionally or not, when she joined John McCain’s ticket in 2008. That was as intense a national roller-coaster as we’ve witnessed in politics, so it’s fair to expect dips and turns along the way.”
“It’s also fair to note that Palin is unlikely to motivate many possible Trump voters in Iowa who weren’t already on board. But in its timing and its implications, with Ted Cruz having just started to break through by questioning Trump’s conservative credentials, you betcha this matters for Iowa and beyond. Trump has a figure who can be described as Trump-like to campaign on his behalf – one famously boosted to national prominence by none other than John McCain. The revolving door of politics and reality TV has opened to a new pairing at the center of the presidential race.”
Welp, Trent Lott just told me he'd take Trump over Cruz if he had to choose.
— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) January 21, 2016
The party may actually be deciding that Trump is a man it can do business with… Republicans really, really loathe Cruz. And not entirely without reason…
Cruz would not be the Establishment’s first or second choice to run atop its ticket, but he’s far from the disaster Trump would pose. He’s substantively a garden-variety right-winger. Cruz is the candidate who can harness cultural alienation, populist distrust of elites, and anti-immigration sentiment into safe channels — safe meaning something that could result in something less than the meltdown that would be a Trump nomination. If Republicans despise Cruz so much that they allow Trump to prevail, they are making a historic mistake and choosing the devil they don’t know over the one they do.
The GOP problem, in a nutshell, is this: Among American voters overall, more (52 percent) see Trump as a “terrible” president than say that about any other candidate. (Forty four percent say that about Hillary Clinton.)
It’s possible Trump’s “greatness” numbers mainly reflect all the media attention that is lavished on Trump’s proclamations of his own greatness, and it’s hard to know whether these numbers will matter at all to the voting that is about to begin. But one thing that has been worth watching for is Republicans coming around to the idea of Trump as their nominee. If a solid majority of GOP voters and GOP-leaning independents sees Trump as a good or great president, that process may well be underway.
Meanwhile, what about the “GOP establishment”? Steve Benen has a good overview of much of the reporting and commentary along these lines, concluding that, while you might have thought that at this stage, “the GOP donor class and its allies would be scrambling, in hair-on-fire desperation” to block Trump, instead “there’s nothing to suggest anything close to this is actually happening.” Jonathan Chait also summarizes much of the resignation to Trump right here. As Rich Lowry recently tweeted, his conversations with GOP establishment figures indicate to him that the mood is now moving from “fear” and “loathing” to “resignation” and “rationalization.”
Is the Gov’s State of the State being live streamed anywhere? (is that a completely ridiculous question?)
Huffington Post: “The reason that Republican leaders are moving toward Trump has nothing to do with him. They viscerally, unashamedly loathe Cruz.” True… But I would add that, like Cruz, they hate HRC with such a deep hatred that they now think Trump is the guy who can do the most damage to her.
It is going to be nauseating to see people I regard as the last reasonable Republicans rallying around Trump, but I 100% guarantee it is going to happen.
Wdel is going top stream it:
http://www.wdel.com/story/73002-watch-delaware-state-of-the-state-2016
I don’t see any of them besides Sanders who actually articulates a vision.
Pikecreekgirl…. We have a post going live here at Delaware Liberal at 12 pm wherein we will livestream it. So forget WDEL. Come here. LOL.
The problem with Sanders’ vision is that he is not articulating any method of accomplishing or enacting his vision. He is relying on the Green Latern Theory of Politics wherein his mere presence will force others to enact his agenda without any work on his part. Boy are Sanders-supporting Progressives in for a massive let down. You’d think they would have learned the lesson by now.
delaware Dem- You were going to be my first go-to for sure! I’m holding the fort down at work while co-workers head to Leg Hall, but I still wanted to listen so when they come back I can join in the convo!
Thanks both of you!
It’s a nice ad and all, but as I’m watching it, with all of that B-roll from all over the place, I kept thinking “These people all look like me… White.” Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the campaign and/or the connected PAC has to have a shit-ton of b-roll and when I watch that minute long ad, I counted only 8-9 folks who appeared to be minority (Afr.-Am.; Asian; Latino). From a visual standpoint, the ad will work in the New England area, but I’d hope they’d do a different cut if they were to run it in a more ethnically-diverse area.
It’s indeed a problem for the Sanders campaign. I am not sure how the hell they win Nevada or any where in the South, which is what Super Tuesday covers. He will win primaries in NH and Vermont and in the Pacific Northwest. But not much else.