Saturday Open Thread [2.6.2016]

NEW HAMPSHIRE—WBUR/MassINC: Sanders 54, Clinton 39
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Boston Globe/Suffolk: Sanders 50, Clinton 41
NATIONAL—Quinnipiac: Clinton 44, Sanders 42
NEW HAMPSHIRE—WBUR/MassINC: Trump 29, Rubio 12, Cruz 12, Kasich 9, Bush 9, Fiorina 8, Christie 6, Carson 4
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Boston Globe/Suffolk: Trump 29, Rubio 19, Kasich 13, Bush 10, Cruz 7, Christie 5, Fiorina 4, Carson 4
NEW HAMPSHIRE—UMass-Amherst/WBZ: Trump 35, Rubio 15, Kasich 11, Cruz 9, Bush 8, Christie 5
NEW HAMPSHIRE—MassInc: Trump 29, Rubio 12, Cruz 12, Kasich 9, Bush 9, Fiorina 8, Christie 6
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Gravis Marketing: Trump 29, Rubio 19, Cruz 15, Kasich 13, Bush 8, Christie 6
NATIONAL—Quinnipiac: Trump 31, Cruz 22, Rubio 19, Carson 6, Bush 3, Christie 3, Kasich 3, Fiorina 2

Independents are going to decide New Hampshire. Last month, a WBUR-MassINC poll founds that 44% would vote in this year’s Republican primary, 35% would vote in the Democratic primary and another 21% weren’t sure what they would do. But this poll was conducted before the Iowa caucuses and may no longer be predictive. If independent voters choose to participate in the somewhat closer Republican race, will that hurt Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race? Steve Kornacki suggested on MSNBC that it will:

“If you’re seeing consistently Bernie Sanders up by 20 points, I do wonder, does the independent voter who is sort of trying to decide between ‘do I take the Republican ballot, do I take the Democratic ballot?’ Well, that Democratic race is a landslide, maybe that Republican race is a little more volatile. That’s one thing I would wonder about there and Bernie Sanders doing so well with independents that would affect him.

The polls in New Hampshire have been getting closer, from 30 points to 15. Is Hillary gaining, or are more Independents deciding to vote in the GOP race? Maybe a little bit of both.

Nate Silver says Rubio stole Cruz’s bounce: “Rubio has gained about 6 percentage points in the New Hampshire polls, while Donald Trump has lost 2 points (although Trump remains the favorite here). There’s still a tiny bit of pre-Iowa data in the polling average, and the numbers will undoubtedly shift around a few points over the weekend. But if any candidate were emerging with massive momentum as a result of his Iowa performance, we probably would have seen it by now.”

“Cruz isn’t. In fact, his numbers haven’t really moved at all. He’s polling at 12.4 percent today, versus 12.0 percent before Iowa.”

Then again, Cruz is not really campaigning in New Hampshire, saving his fire for South Carolina and the SEC Super Tuesday states. But Rubio is.

K. Sabeel Rahman on what the economic fight in the Democratic party is about, and that Clinton actually has a more expansive, more progressive and therefore sound policy:

Clinton takes a managerialist view of how government works, embracing the idea that, with sufficient expertise, government can fine-tune the economy to prevent crises. Sanders, by contrast, is skeptical of expert oversight, and instead seeks to radically restructure the economy itself.

Take their positions on financial regulation and the problem of “too big to fail” financial firms. Sanders wants to restore the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which mandates a separation between commercial and investment banking, and proposes to break up financial firms that are too big to fail into smaller entities, to limit their economic and political influence. As Sanders has argued, “if a bank is too big to fail, it’s too big to exist.” Clinton, by contrast, seeks to extend and deepen oversight of by strengthening the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory overhaul passed in 2010. She argues that the financial crisis itself was caused not by big banks, but by so-called “shadow banks” like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. These financial firms play a critical role in an interconnected financial system, but exist outside conventional financial regulation, and would be relatively unaffected by either a re-instatement of Glass-Steagall, or by breaking up banks like Citi or Bank of America. Clinton’s critique is sound, and several economists and commentators have warned that Sanders’s approach will not address shadow banking. But it misses the broader implications of Sanders’s position, which is not just about financial regulation policy, also concerns the underlying approach to governance more broadly.

Al Giordano is an activist I met back in the Howard Dean days, and have seen at various Yearly Kos and Netroots Nations conventions. I encourage you to read this righteous Twitter rant he went on the other day regarding the “Who is a Progressive Purity War” Bernie Sanders’ supporters have decided to engage in.

There is a Republican debate tonight, which is unintentional comedy, and after it ends you can stay up for SNL, an intentional comedy, to see if we can tell Larry David and Bernie Sanders apart.

James Fallows:

To underscore a point on atmosphere. Hackles are rising in both the Sanders and the Clinton camps. But at least so far, this has been as respectful-toned a competitive primary campaign as you’re going to find.

Back in early 1980, it was none other than GOP candidate George H.W. Bush who blasted the pre-canonization Ronald Reagan for his “voodoo economics.” By the end of the year, they were running as partners and the closest of friends. Back in early 2008, the frostiness between the Clinton and Obama camps was so intense that it was hard to imagine a reconciliation. A year later, Hillary Clinton was a new President Obama’s Secretary of State; by 2012, Bill Clinton was Obama’s most effective re-election advocate; and this year Hillary Clinton is running as the extension of the Obama legacy, much as George H.W. Bush did with Reagan.

Things could worsen. But on the Democratic side they are notably amiable so far.

Elspeth Reeve:

Donald Trump seems to have realized he could actually lose.“Don’t think we are going to win,” Trump told a small (for him) crowd in New Hampshire last night. “No matter where you are, no matter how you feel, I don’t give a damn, you got to get out, you got to get out of bed and vote.” Trump has rarely shown any vulnerability during his pro-winners anti-losers presidential campaign. But since Iowa, he seems to be coming to terms with the reality that he could soon become a loser himself.

Trump didn’t even brag about his poll numbers last night. Iowa shocked him into the realization that a good ground game actually matters—one can’t win on red hats and Fox News Sunday phoners alone. Trump has not spent a lot of money on analyzing voters, resulting in a large number of enthusiastic volunteers wasting time calling people who support other candidates. Plus, the campaign is targeting people who don’t normally vote. The problem with depending on those people is they don’t normally vote.

Harry Enten of 538 says Bernie Sanders must win New Hampshire big:

Early primaries are often as much about expectations as they are about winning or losing. Just look at Marco Rubio, who has spun a third-place finish in Iowa on Monday into momentum in New Hampshire because he did better than most expected. That’s why I’m wondering how the press will react when (if?) Bernie Sanders defeats Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

That post-New Hampshire narrative will matter a lot to Sanders because he’s currently trailing in the next two Democratic contests: Nevada and South Carolina. Both states are much more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, and Sanders will need to show he can win among non-white voters. A wave of favorable press would help.

Bill Clinton was declared the Comeback Kid after losing by 8 points in 1992. So if Hillary gets a loss in the single digits, she likewise will steal momentum from Sanders because she will beat the polling expectations. SO for Sanders to keep the momentum, he will need to win by 20-30.

Booman says we are in for a long primary, even if Clinton becomes the inevitable nominee in March:

Even if Clinton rips off a bunch of big victories in a row and seems like the inevitable nominee, it’s pretty unlikely that Sanders will concede because he’ll have all the money he needs to keep campaigning. And I don’t think he really set out to win this thing at the beginning, so he’s not quitting just because he realizes that he won’t be nominated. He’ll want to keep hammering home his points and gathering delegates for the convention.

A long campaign will be painful, but 2008 showed there can be important upsides. The more states the two campaigns organize, the more work they’ll have done in advance of the general election. The more the country is focused on the differences between Clinton and Sanders, the more they’ll be focused on their messaging and values and the less they’ll be focused on the messaging and values of the Republicans.

It’s true that some feelings will get hurt and some bitterness will result. It’s not cost-free to have an extended contested nomination, and the eventual nominee will get wounded. But, even here, some of Obama’s worst vulnerabilities were old news by November precisely because they’d been hashed out in the winter and spring.

As long as the process doesn’t leave the nominee underfunded, it’s probably not a problem to have a long primary season.