Monday Open Thread [1.25.2016]

IOWA—CBS News/YouGov: Sanders 47, Clinton 46, O’Malley 5
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CBS News/YouGov: Sanders 57, Clinton 38, O’Malley 5
SOUTH CAROLINA—CBS News/YouGov: Clinton 60, Sanders 38, O’Malley 0
IOWA—FOX News: Trump 34, Cruz 23, Rubio 12, Carson 7, Paul 6, Christie 4, Bush 4, Huckabee 2, Kasich 2, Santorum 2, Fiorina 1
IOWA—CBS News/YouGov: Trump 39, Cruz 34, Rubio 13, Carson 5, Paul 3, Christie 2, Bush 1, Kasich 1, Fiorina 1, Santorum 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—FOX News: Trump 31, Cruz 14, Rubio 13, Kasich 9, Bush 7, Christie 7, Paul 5, Carson 5, Fiorina 3, Huckabee 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CBS News/YouGov: Trump 34, Cruz 16, Rubio 14, Kasich 10, Bush 7, Christie 7, Carson 5, Fiorina 4, Paul 3
SOUTH CAROLINA—CBS News/YouGov: Trump 40, Cruz 21, Rubio 13, Carson 9, Bush 8, Paul 3, Huckabee 2, Kasich 2, Christie 1, Fiorina 1
FLORIDA—CBS News/YouGov: Trump 41, Cruz 22, Rubio 18, Carson 5, Bush 4, Christie 2, Kasich 2, Fiorina 2, Paul 1
GEORGIA—CBS News/YouGov: Trump 39, Cruz 29, Rubio 13, Carson 6, Bush 2, Christie 2, Kasich 2, Fiorina 2, Huckabee 2
TEXAS—CBS News/YouGov: Cruz 45, Trump 30, Rubio 8, Carson 5, Bush 4, Paul 2, Christie 2, Fiorina 1, Huckabee 1, Kasich 1

Paul Krugman on how the two parties are definitely not the same.

There are still quite a few pundits determined to pretend that America’s two great parties are symmetric — equally unwilling to face reality, equally pushed into extreme positions by special interests and rabid partisans. It’s nonsense, of course. Planned Parenthood isn’t the same thing as the Koch brothers, nor is Bernie Sanders the moral equivalent of Ted Cruz. And there’s no Democratic counterpart whatsoever to Donald Trump.

Moreover, when self-proclaimed centrist pundits get concrete about the policies they want, they have to tie themselves in knots to avoid admitting that what they’re describing are basically the positions of a guy named Barack Obama.

…as Mr. Obama himself found out as soon as he took office, transformational rhetoric isn’t how change happens. That’s not to say that he’s a failure. On the contrary, he’s been an extremely consequential president, doing more to advance the progressive agenda than anyone since L.B.J.

Yet his achievements have depended at every stage on accepting half loaves as being better than none: health reform that leaves the system largely private, financial reform that seriously restricts Wall Street’s abuses without fully breaking its power, higher taxes on the rich but no full-scale assault on inequality.

Could Mr. Obama have been more transformational? Maybe he could have done more at the margins. But the truth is that he was elected under the most favorable circumstances possible, a financial crisis that utterly discredited his predecessor — and still faced scorched-earth opposition from Day 1.

Norm Ornstein: “For an independent candidate, at best, it would mean three candidates splitting the popular vote, probably roughly a third apiece, with the independent edging out the others with perhaps 35 percent. But that would mean little for the outcome. Presidential contests are decided by electoral votes. An independent might well secure some electoral votes, but in such a race, no candidate would come close to the majority of 270 required, under the Constitution, for victory.”

“What then? The Constitution says that if no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the election moves to the House of Representatives, among the top three electoral vote-getters. There is a twist: House members do not vote individually but by state, a majority of which are required to select the president. Currently, 33 states have House delegations that are majority-Republican; three are evenly split; and Democrats control 14. There are no independents — zero, nada — in the House. The numbers, of course, could change in the fall elections, but the chances of having any states controlled by independents, indeed of having any independents at all in the House, are close to nil.”

Leonard Pitts couldn’t resist addressing the queen of babble-on.

According to the police report, the girlfriend was found upstairs in the house, hiding under a bed, crying. She also had an eye injury from where she said her boyfriend had punched her with a closed fist. She also said he kicked her and threatened to kill himself with an AR-15 rifle. “Do you think I won’t do it?” he cried. The young man was arrested.

And it was all Barack Obama’s fault.

That, at least, is what 26-year-old Track Palin’s mother, Sarah, suggested to the audience at a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa last week, the day after Track, a combat veteran, was taken into custody. …

Someone asked on Twitter whether this meant President Obama is also responsible for daughter Bristol’s two unwed pregnancies. Probably shouldn’t give Sarah any ideas.

This is either incredibly smart or incredibly dumb on Trump’s part:

New York Times: “Instead of lowering the stakes for himself in Iowa, Mr. Trump has raised them. He is pouring resources into the state’s television market, airing 60-second ads where other Republicans run 30-second ones. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, a fixture at his boss’s side for almost a year, has given up his seat on the jet and is living in Iowa for the duration, traveling the state to quarterback the get-out-the-vote operation. The campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, has done the same.”

“It would be easier, and perhaps cagier, for Mr. Trump to play down the importance of Iowa, play up Mr. Cruz’s strength with evangelicals and other conservatives here, and rush on to the Feb. 9 primary in New Hampshire, where he holds a wide lead in the polls. Raising expectations could make a loss in Iowa harder to bounce back from.”

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is endorsing Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential primary, Politico reports. “Perry, who also sought the GOP nomination before dropping out in September, said he now sees the race as one that is between Cruz, a fellow Texan, and Donald Trump.”

He really is a male Sarah Palin. It’s just word salad. Because how can tax returns be “very beautiful?”

Said Trump concerning releasing his tax returns: “We’re working on that now. I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time.”

Substantively, this is an obvious dodge and Donald has many things to hide. If only we had an investigative press willing to take on their ratings king.

A video posted to YouTube this week shows Ted Cruz in 1988, while attending Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas. Not unlike any other teenager, Cruz is casual, goofy and achingly arrogant. “Take over the world, world domination…rich, powerful, that sort of stuff,” said 18-year-old Ted Cruz, when asked what he wanted to do with his life.

The Des Moines Register endorsed Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.

FiveThirtyEight: “The average post-endorsement bump has been a statistically insignificant 3 percentage points… That’s not to say the paper’s endorsement is meaningless. For one, it may hold more sway for Democrats than for Republicans. All four of the Democrats who have gotten the endorsement have done better than projected, compared to three of the five Republicans.”

Donald Trump has floated a new campaign strategy: killing people.

If Donald Trump were any kind of a man he would prove his theory. Go ahead Donald, go out and shoot someone. (Donald Trump is such an insecure immature asshole that he might actually do it to prove it, and then he can serve life in prison).

This is the best ad ever against Trump.

Jacob Lederman at In These Times writes—Flint’s Water Crisis Is No Accident. It’s the Result of Years of Devastating Free-Market Reforms:

By most accounts, cities like Flint are victims of structural forces. The common-sense canard that globalization and technological change have made rust-belt cities unviable has been a convenient narrative for restructuring industrial cities through fiscal austerity programs. But while deindustrialization is an important part of Flint’s story, it obscures broader political forces that have decimated budgets and battered working class populations across the Midwest.

According to the Michigan Municipal League, between 2003-2013, Flint lost close to 60 million dollars in revenue sharing from the state, tied to the sales tax, which increased over the same decade. During this period, the city cut its police force in half while violent crime doubled, from 12.2 per 1000 people in 2003, to 23.4 in 2011. Such a loss of revenue is larger than the entire 2015 Flint general fund budget.

In fact, cuts to Michigan cities like Flint and Detroit have occurred as state authorities raided so-called statutory revenue sharing funds to balance their own budgets and pay for cuts in business taxes. Unlike “constitutional” revenue sharing in Michigan, state authorities could divert these resources at their discretion. It is estimated that between 2003-2013 the state withheld over $6 billion dollars from Michigan cities.

Bernie Sanders should and does welcome a potential Bloomberg independent candidacy, for it is really the only way I see him winning a general election. Jon Queally at Common Dreams:

If it ends up that former New York City mayor and Wall Street billionaire Michael Bloomberg enters the presidential race as an independent and that billionaire entertainer and real estate tycoon Donald trump wins the Republican nomination, count Sen. Bernie Sanders among those undaunted by such a scenario.

Asked by Meet The Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday morning what he thought about the possibility of running against either Trump, Bloomberg, or both, Sanders did not demure.

“My reaction is, if Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in, you’re going to have two multi-billionaires running for president of the United States against me,” Sanders said. “And I think the American people do not want to see our nation move toward an oligarchy, where billionaires control the political process. I think we’ll win that election.

If it is a two person race, Sanders will be soundly defeated by either Trump, Cruz or Rubio. I personally guarantee it. But a three person race, with two billionaires dividing the center and right vote, might give Bernie a shot.