Friday Open Thread [2.26.16]

MASSACHUSETTS—WBUR/MassINC–Trump 40, Rubio 19, Kasich 19, Cruz 10, Carson 5
MASSACHUSETTS—WBUR/MassINC–Clinton 49, Sanders 44
FLORIDA—PPP–Trump 45, Rubio 25, Cruz 10, Kasich 8, Carson 5
FLORIDA—PPP–Clinton 57, Sanders 32
VIRGINIA—Monmouth–Clinton 60, Sanders 33
VIRGINIA—Monmouth–Trump 41, Rubio 27, Cruz 14, Kasich 7, Carson 7
GEORGIA—TEGNA/SurveyUSA–Trump 45, Rubio 19, Cruz 16, Carson 8, Kasich 6
GEORGIA—WABE–Trump 41, Rubio 18, Cruz 15, Carson 7, Kasich 7.
GEORGIA—TEGNA/SurveyUSA–Clinton 66, Sanders 27
FLORIDA—Quinnipiac–Trump 44, Rubio 28, Cruz 12, Bush, Kasich 7, Carson 4
TEXAS—Monmouth–Cruz 38, Trump 23, Rubio 21, Carson 6, Kasich 5
TEXAS—Monmouth–Clinton 64, Sanders 30
TEXAS—Austin American-Statesman–Clinton 66, Sanders 26
MICHIGAN—FOX 2 Detroit/Mitchell–Trump 41, Rubio 19, Cruz 16, Kasich 11, Carson 7
WISCONSIN—Marquette–Trump 30, Rubio 20, Cruz 19, Kasich 8, Carson 8
WISCONSIN—Marquette–Sanders 44, Clinton 43
PENNSYLVANIA—Franklin & Marshall–Trump 21, Rubio 18, Cruz 16, Kasich 16, Carson 5
PENNSYLVANIA—Franklin & Marshall–Clinton 51, Sanders 29

Coming up on Super Tuesday, Nate Silver has helpfully categorized which states are Clinton states, where is expected to win, and Sanders States, which are states that Bernie MUST win in order to keep any sort of competitive delegate pace. If he only wins Vermont on Super Tuesday, he needs to drop out. But if some multiple combination of these Sanders states, then the race stays a race.

So the Sanders States are Vermont, Minnesota, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Honestly, I am not sure why Oklahoma and Tennessee are, but Nate Silver is the political statistician, not me, so let’s go with it. His projection is based on the notion that Hillary and Bernie are tied nationally. But they aren’t. Here are the latest three national polls, all conducted this week:

NATIONAL–Morning Consult–Clinton 50, Sanders 35
NATIONAL–Ipsos/Reuters–Clinton 49, Sanders 44
NATIONAL–IBD/TIPP–Clinton 45, Sanders 43.

The average of all three gives us Clinton 48, Sanders 41. A small but significant 7 point lead. So Nate is being generous to Sanders in his projections. And assuming a tied national race, Sanders should win all 6 Sanders states. Let’s do some of our own math here and assume a 7 point Clinton lead, as it is. I think that takes Tennessee and Oklahoma away from Sanders, so I will not prejudice Sanders by telling him he has to win those two. But he still should win Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota and Vermont. And that is why that Massachusetts poll above from WBUR showing a 5 point Clinton lead in Massachusetts is concerning for Sanders.

Huffington Post says the GOP candidates never did oppo research on Trump: “Multiple Republican campaign sources and operatives have confided that none of the remaining candidates for president have completed a major anti-Trump opposition research effort. There are several such efforts being run by outside conservative organizations. But those efforts are still gathering intel on the businessman after having started late in the primary season, these sources told The Huffington Post. And they worry that it may come too late. … For those hoping to blunt Trump’s momentum, the late start on opposition research is no small problem. One operative compared it to not having ammunition at the precise moment when there is a collective realization that a Trump candidacy needs to be shot down.”

“It is treated as a truism among Republicans that a vast reservoir of damaging opposition research remains untouched. It’s a suspicion that Democrats aren’t challenging. Indeed, one Democratic opposition research said that they’ve spent the past eight months compiling material on Trump as he’s risen up the ranks. That’s actually not a lot of time. Democrats had started focusing on Mitt Romney in 2009 — a full two years before he ran again for the presidency. But those eight months have produced some good. That researcher estimated that of all the material they’ve compiled — court and property records, newspaper clips and videos — approximately 80 percent of it has yet to surface in this election cycle.”

But Hillary did:

If Trump is the nominee, [Clinton’s argument will be] disaffected voters supporting Trump in the presidential campaign will be the ruthless billionaire’s next victims. […] It won’t be hard — they will just set up a camera, sit down with Trump victims and let these ordinary Americans tell the tale of how Donald Trump is a charlatan who enriched himself at the expense of ordinary people.

Democratic super PACs are already lining up Trump’s victims for such a purpose, you can be totally sure. That’s why any poll numbers suggesting Trump can beat Hillary should be doubted — they don’t take into account the brutal campaign Hillary will wage on Trump.

“There’s a mountain of s**t the Democrats are going to dump on him if he is the nominee,” says Liz Mair, a Republican operative running an anti-Trump super PAC called “Make America Awesome.”

Democrats could begin with the Americans who believed Trump could fix their financial woes by teaching them the ins and outs of real estate, at “Trump University.”

Trump University wasn’t a university, and Donald Trump wasn’t as involved as he claimed he would be, according to one federal lawsuit. Some of the students are suing Trump, calling the “university” a “fraudulent scheme” in a federal court filing.

John Hudak, Senior Fellow for Governance Studies at Brookings, explains why “If Clinton wins in November, she’ll have Sanders to thank”:

…He has injected passion into the Democratic race–a passion Clinton would not inspire if she marched to the convention in Philadelphia devoid of competition, readying herself for a coronation…Sanders supporters have pushed Clinton in directions she never expected to go. They have made her change her language, her message, and her campaign style. It is not the path she wanted, but it is probably the path that best serves her. Bernie Sanders has pushed her to the left on many issues, but he has also made Clinton a better candidate. And my guess is she knows it.

…He brought to the surface a variety of issues that Clinton had to address–income inequality, corporate power, campaign finance, and others–that she may have only paid lip service to but for a legitimate primary challenge. Sanders may not have changed Clinton’s mind, but he surely changed her message, and that is a good thing for any Democrat.

She has been forced to take on a series of issues that matter to Americans of all stripes, and she will enter the general election campaign stronger for it. Combine all of that with the passing of Justice Scalia and the prospect that the Senate may hold up the confirmation of his replacement, the Clinton candidacy and its prospective Supreme Court pick becomes all the more important in the grander scheme of American politics. The desire to overturn Citizens United seems almost liturgical to the Sanders campaign and must now be a central part of the thinking of a future Clinton administration…He pushed Secretary Clinton to think and talk and address a series of issues that will make her a better candidate in November. That rhetoric will ultimately help bring many Sanders supporters into her corner.

New York Times: “Even by the standards of 2016, this was a nasty debate. Mr. Trump has set the standard for personal vitriol in the campaign, and he lived up to it in Houston, mocking Mr. Rubio as a clumsy ‘choke artist’ and once again calling Mr. Cruz a liar to his face.”

“But for once, Mr. Trump’s opponents reciprocated — especially Mr. Rubio. The Florida senator caricatured Mr. Trump as a dunce on policy who repeats five canned lines over and over, and said that Mr. Trump would have amounted to little without inheriting a fortune from his father.”

“Should the race ever narrow to just Mr. Trump and either Mr. Rubio or Mr. Cruz, it could showcase a level of raw political violence unlike any recent presidential primary campaign.”

Philip Elliott and Zeke Miller of TIME on last night’s Republican debate brawl:

Donald Trump’s history in business and politics is pocked with bankruptcies and fraud allegations, illegal immigrants on his payroll and donations to Democrats from his checkbooks. All were used against him during Thursday night’s debate, but it’s entirely possible none of it mattered.

Trump has comfortable leads in the polls heading toward Super Tuesday, just five days away, and his campaign so far has weathered all kinds of bad news. After months of leading the pack, Trump seems immune to those who would challenge him on positions and statements that, for anyone else, should have proved disqualifying. […]

It made for a remarkable night of television, but might once again prove that the typical rules of politics do no matter in a year when a former reality TV host who promises mass deportations emerge a favorite among Christian conservatives in South Carolina and among Hispanics in Nevada.

Peter Weber at The Week, meanwhile, believes that Trump will still lead the pack and that the debate was a lesson for Democrats in how to handle him:

Will Trump suffer in the polls or lose voters next Tuesday, on Super Tuesday, when 11 states vote in primaries and Alaska Republicans caucus? Maybe not — nothing seems to have hurt Trump so far. But you can bet that the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns will be watching the results and studying Thursday’s debate like a football team analyzing the footage of recent games of their upcoming opponent.

Trump is very probably going to be the Republican nominee, and for political scientists and pollsters and political strategists, his success is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, as Winston Churchill once said of Russia. If Rubio or Cruz is going to take Trump down, they need to experiment with what works when they face him in these increasingly gladiatorial debates. That’s a godsend for the Democrats.

Taegan Goddard on last night’s disaster of a GOP debate: “The runaway winner of this debate was the Democratic party. If there are many more nights like this one, the Democratic nominee will have a much easier time in November. It was a truly pathetic mess.”

Who won the Republican Debate last night? Democrats.

Matt Yglesias has his Winners and Losers at Vox.

Winners: Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Planned Parentood
Losers: Ted Cruz, Wolf Blitzer

Rubio’s attacks on Trump hardly seemed devastating, but they were well-delivered and at a couple of points genuinely funny and they certainly impressed the entire establishment Republican universe. In short, Rubio further cast the election as a two-man race between a paradoxically establishment-backed underdog and Trump as the outsider frontrunner.

That leaves no real role for Cruz to play, and voters who want to see Cruz in the White House increasingly need to think about whether casting a vote for Cruz amounts to wasting it. If you agree with Cruz that Trump is an inauthentic conservative who can’t be trusted to implement orthodox policies, you should probably vote for Rubio. And if you agree with Cruz that Rubio is a shady establishment pawn who’ll sell the base down the river for a bucket of amnesty, you should probably vote for Trump.

Jason and I are not looking forward to having our prediction of a Cruz nomination proved wrong.

Ted Cruz is the one Senator standing in the way of a congressional deal to help Flint, Michigan:

The Associated Press reported that senators reached a tentative deal on Wednesday, but Cruz has chosen to place a “soft hold” on the bill. The proposed $220 million package would fix and replace the city’s lead-contaminated pipes, make other infrastructure improvements and bolster lead-prevention programs nationwide, according to the report.

More debate reactions from Jeet Heer at the New Republic, Ed Kilgore at the New York Magazine, and Pema Levy at Mother Jones, who has the 7 biggest moments that you’ll wanna see. General consensus is that it was a shitshow that bloodied Trump, but it probably won’t matter since Trump is impervious to such attacks among his Republican supporters.

Matt Taibbi: “A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.”

“It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.”

“And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He’s way better than average.”