Friday Open Thread [3.25.16]

California—PPIC–Trump 38, Cruz 27, Kasich 14
California—PPIC–Clinton 48, Sanders 41
National—Bloomberg–Sanders 49, Clinton 48
National—Ipsos/Reuters–Clinton 50, Sanders 45
Wisconsin—Basswood Research–Cruz 36, Trump 31, Kasish 21

Philip Bump on why Donald Trump is poised to win the nomination and lose the general election, in one poll:

One reason both the top-line poll numbers and the favorability numbers are iffy is that we’re still in the heart of a contested primary. People who reallywant Bernie Sanders to win really don’t like Hillary Clinton right now (and if you don’t believe me, just ask them) — just as people who really wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2008 really didn’t like Barack Obama at about this point of that year. But in November, the vast majority of Democrats voted for Obama.

The question is if Republicans will do that this time, with Trump. And Quinnipiac’s poll suggests: Maybe not. Almost three times as many Republicans say they’d never vote for Trump than Democrats say the same about Clinton.

Thomas Edsall:

It’s hard to see how Trump, if he wins the nomination, could emerge from the Republican wreckage he leaves in his wake to actually win the general election — an assessment supported by the findings of a March 9 ABC/Washington Post poll. Not only did Hillary Clinton beat Trump 50-41 in the survey’s match up among registered voters, but 67 percent of voters had a negative view of Trump, 15 points more than Clinton…

Nowhere on the right is the conflict as hostile as it is among conservative Christians.

Steve Berman, a self-described “100% conservative” writing for the Resurgent, argues that in effect Trump is the current anti-Christ. “If America is not on God’s side, then God will not bless America,” Berman wrote.

Stephen Marche:

The President’s landmark trip to Cuba showed, yet again, what a masterful performer Obama is on the world stage. The press conference with Raul Castro was a masterpiece in and of itself. He went to Cuba to end the embargo and to encourage a change of regime in Cuba. He understood that the embargo justifies the Communist regime. Because of the embargo, the Castros are able to explain away Cuba’s terrible poverty as a result of foreign oppression, and justify their repressive political tactics as a means of national self-determination. Obama brought Raul Castro onto a stage and stripped away those justifications in front of the whole country. Not only that, but he forced Raul Castro to answer questions about human rights abuses from the American press. And Castro stumbled. He was not used to having to answer questions. And the people of Cuba saw him stumble. They were not used to seeing that.

Through this series of tiny gestures, Obama achieved what 50 years of American resistance to Cuba was not able to. He defused any lingering military tension. He showed the Cuban people that America has good intentions. And he managed to humiliate the Castros, utterly, without appearing, even in the slightest, aggressive. He did all that in a couple of hours. There’s only one word for it: genius.

Obama’s domestic legacy has been established for a while now. Unemployment peaked at 10 percent and he brought it down to five. The number of Americans with health insurance has expanded enormously over the past eight years. Gay marriage became legal under his presidency. Obama’s more fundamental promise—to unite Americans of both parties in a single transcendent vision of a country beyond partisanship—has utterly failed. But at least, on the domestic front, the size of his achievements and his failures has been widely recognized. Recently, the much more complicated issue of Obama’s foreign policy legacy has come into focus—mainly through Jeffrey Goldberg’s deep dive into its intellectual basis in The Atlantic, but also through his recently concluded trip to Cuba, which is a case study of that policy in action.

The Obama Doctrine, as it appears in Goldberg’s account, is much less a coherent foreign policy ideology than a basic recognition of the world as it is: the moral dilemmas of American power in a post-Iraq world make anything as simplistic as an ideology at best silly and at worst destructive. Other commentators have found Obama’s reticence to attempt to solve all the world’s problems timid. But, if Obama has failed in Syria, it is at least unclear that the failure is America’s. Obama is willing to state the obvious: Despite what you hear during Republican primaries, the United States cannot create outcomes in the world at will. The law of unintended consequences is a powerful force. Whichever president follows Obama will almost certainly lack this kind of intellectual flexibility and humility.

Lotta truth in this, from Steve M.:

Members of the right-wing rank-and-file just want someone or something to hate, and they’re not picky: Show them a clip of George W. Bush standing on the 9/11 rubble with a bullhorn and they’ll cheer. Show them a clip of Trump denouncing W for lying about Iraq WMDs and they’ll cheer. They don’t know what they believe. They just want enemies. They want an angry champion who seems conservative and who appears to have the strength to kick the asses of those enemies, whoever the hell they are this week.

WaPo columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson says the The anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and Cruz only helps terrorists.

In Ted Cruz’s view, the United States is “voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are.” He would have us “carpet bomb” the Islamic State and “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized” here at home.

“Look,” says Donald Trump, “we’re having problems with the Muslims.” He would “knock the hell out of ISIS,” close the border to Muslim immigrants “until we figure out what’s going on,” “do a lot more than waterboarding” and target the families of terrorists (at least until he seemed to backpedal).

But here is the problem. Rhetoric that targets “the Muslims” and singles out Americans for suspicion based on nothing more than their faith seriously complicates the war against terrorism…

Here's what the map might look like in an election held today. Trump's Rust Belt strength would help him keep MO, IN pic.twitter.com/OYueYvWFpG

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 24, 2016

I’m just going to leave this here, with no comment.

“A majority of Republican insiders say Donald Trump should not get the GOP presidential nomination if he falls short of winning a majority of delegates – even if Trump amasses more than any of his opponents,” Politico reports. “Roughly six-in-10 Republicans said the party should nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a plurality, rather than the required 1,237-delegate majority necessary to claim the party nomination.” But how can Trump be denied if he has a majority of the delegates?

Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign — and to some extent Gov. John Kasich’s campaign as well — is working hard in every state still choosing delegates. If he’s successful, he will be able to place some of his own loyalists as Trump’s delegates. Cruz will also propose a rule to “unbind” the delegates — to allow them to vote their preference and possibly ignore the outcome of the primaries. Ted Kennedy tried that in 1980 to prevent Carter’s nomination, and I think Reagan tried it in 1976 to prevent Ford’s. Neither worked.
Jonathan Bernstein explains:

The process involves three steps. First, the Republican National Committee will establish a set of proposed rules for the convention. Rules maven Josh Putnam says it’s unlikely that those rules will free the delegates. Then, a week before the gathering, those rules will be handed off to the convention’s rules committee, which is free to change them any way it likes. Once that’s done, the rules go to the full convention, which can accept them as is or amend them in any way it deems appropriate.

If the delegates vote to free themselves, then that’s that: They will vote as they wish, regardless of how they were chosen to vote.

If that happens, Cruz or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney maybe a likely nominee. But this maneuver is like playing with a nuclear bomb that is in the process of detonating. Because, 1) Trump will do something, and it won’t be good 2) his supporters will do whatever Trump tells to do, either to write him in or stay home; and 3) the regular rank and file Republican electorate doesn’t care for that too much.

Greg Sargent writes about the Trump effect on Senate elections:

[I]f Trump wins the nomination, a nontrivial percentage of Republican voters could stay home, perhaps even in some of these swing states where control of the Senate will be decided: Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida.

Indeed, while Democrats believe all of this to be very possible, this isn’t even a partisan line of speculation: Republicans themselves are worried that Trump could have this down-ticket impact if he is the nominee. One top GOP fundraiser told the Post that this dynamic could put GOP control of the Senate at risk: “If Donald Trump is the nominee, we could see a lot of people staying home.”

Try out this tax calculator to figure out how much or less you will pay under Presidents Clinton, Sanders, Cruz and Trump.