Thursday Open Thread [3.31.16]
WISCONSIN—Marquette–Cruz 40, Trump 30, Kasich 21
WISCONSIN—Marquette–Sanders 49, Clinton 45
NEW YORK—Quinnipiac–Trump 56, Cruz 20, Kasich 19
NEW YORK—Quinnipiac–Clinton 54, Sanders 42
NEW YORK—Quinnipiac–Clinton 53, Trump 33 | Clinton 53, Cruz 32
Gallup finds an enthusiasm gap in the Democratic Party. One candidate does 10 points worse than the other when their supporters are asked if they are enthusiastic to vote for him or her. But it is not who you think.
One of the things Bernie Sanders supporters say to boost their candidate’s chances is that Bernie has more enthusiasm and momentum on his side, while voters are just “meh” about Hillary. That talking point just died.
David Atkins talks about the possibility of some Republican voters staying home if their nominee is Trump or Cruz:
Even a modest drop in turnout by the GOP in blue states and districts could lead to a downballot debacle for the Republican Party, and could even cost them the majority in the House given a big enough wave. The Cook Political Report and other prognosticators have revised their house race projections to account for the Trump effect (and quite possibly for the Cruz effect as well.)
So far, the GOP has latched itself to the hope that even if it must throw away the presidency this cycle, it can count on control of the House, the Supreme Court and most legislatures. With Scalia’s passing the Supreme Court is lost given a Democratic win in 2016, the Senate will likely change hands, and their House majority seems set to shrink or even disappear. Many legislatures may also flip as well given a wave election.
Things can change, of course: an economic downturn or major terrorist attack could alter the landscape significantly. But as things stand, circumstances are ripe for a GOP debacle up and down the ballot.
Domenico Montanaro explains how much Sanders has accomplished:
What Sanders has done, coming from virtually nowhere, is remarkable and has had an effect on Clinton. She would have preferred to focus on Republicans and likely moderate her message and tone to appeal to the middle. Instead, she’s had to look left.
What Sanders has done not only likely guarantees him a prominent slot at the convention, but ensures his message, and the issues he cares about deeply, a place at the Democratic table.
Rick Klein: “Donald Trump said Tuesday night that a reporter’s pen might have been a ‘little bomb.’ That has nothing on what came out of Trump’s mouth in the CNN forum, where he renounced the famous pledge to support the GOP nominee, and proceeded to make conservative jaw drops with his answers to policy questions. Trump named education and healthcare as two of the top three functions of the federal government, and seemed to endorse the idea of Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia getting nuclear weapons. That doesn’t even get into the Corey Lewandowski incident, where Trump is now threatening legal action against reporter Michelle Fields, despite the criminal charges filed against his campaign manager.”
“It’s now more clear than ever that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, he won’t do it as a conservative in any traditional sense of the word, or as a candidate who fits any norm in American politics. Maybe that’s the secret to his success. But if Trump wins Wisconsin next week despite all of this – or even because of it – will a plausible path to blocking Trump continue to exist? This could be the showdown all sides have been waiting for.”
First Read: “Once again, it was a roller-coaster of a 24-hour news cycle with yesterday’s arrest of Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Here’s one piece of this story that really struck us, though: Not only has Trump stood by – and vehemently defended – an aide now charged with battery, but Trump has essentially tried to turn it into an illustration of why he’d be a good leader.”
Said Trump: “I don’t discard people. I stay with people, that’s why I stay with this country. That’s why I stay with a lot of people that are treated unfairly. And that’s one of the reasons I’m the frontrunner by a lot.”
“Setting aside the fact that he has in fact ended his relationship with two aides in this campaign already – Roger Stone and Sam Nunberg – AND setting aside the fact that much of his fame is derived from a show featuring the catchphrase ‘You’re Fired’ – it’s really a remarkable way to approach an incident that in any other campaign would be an unquestionable liability.”
The GOP Loyalty Oath is dead.
This has profound implications for the process going forward. Barring the oft-predicted but never realized collapse of Trump’s popularity, he will go into the convention with more pledged delegates and votes than any other individual candidate. But if he has not secured a majority of all delegates, the convention’s rules would allow the GOP to nominate someone who isn’t reviled by three out of four American women. Trump has already suggested that such a move would be illegitimate — so illegitimate, it would provoke riots from his hordes of aggrieved supporters. Now he seems to have made that stance official.
Former Trump strategist Stephanie Cegielski writes about why she left the campaign: “I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all. He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters.” She adds: “Trump acts as if he’s a fictional character. But like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction.”
Dara Lind says Donald Trump’s fragile ego would make him a terrible President.
Trump has a characterological inability to let go of a perceived slight or back down from a fight — even when it’s clear he’s in the wrong, and, more importantly, even when it’s clear that rationally he has more to lose by staying in than he would by getting out.
That trait (which is replicated in Trump’s campaign and hangers-on) is what turned Lewandowski’s grabbing of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields from a brief, single-news-cycle outrage to the subject of a criminal prosecution
It is, to say the least, not a great attribute to have in a presidential candidate or a likely major-party nominee. Or, for that matter, a president.
Team Trump's handling of the Fields incident is basically a blueprint for turning a minor airspace issue w/China into thermonuclear war.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) March 29, 2016
RE: Gallup enthusiasm poll, that metric hasn’t really ever correlated to election day turnout. It correlates most strongly with the nomination process…so by that table it’s more likely that those enthusiastic registered voters will be represented at the conventions by delegates. Which increases the likelihood of a Clinton nomination.
I think this table is a little more informative and tempers the tone of the first one. These data correlate better to actual voter turnout during elections. Which brings us back to whether or not the other Democratic candidate’s supporters will whip into line to support the nominee.
“The caucuses are the least democratic political operation in America. They cater to the people who have a lot of time on their hands, and what’s interesting is Sanders is the nominee of the caucuses and Hillary is the nominee of the primaries.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/03/barney_frank_is_not_impressed_by_bernie_sanders.html
Sort of how Obama was the nominee of the caucuses in ’08?
Sorta, except that Obama competed everywhere.
Sorta except, what Cassandra said, and the fact that Hillary 2008 ignored the early caucus states which allowed Obama to win not only them but the diverse primary states as well.
She would have preferred to focus on Republicans and likely moderate her message and tone to appeal to the middle. Instead, she’s had to look left.
And she’s surviving by looking left. So I’d speculate that given what the field might look like, she wouldn’t have to moderate much. I know that it is CW that you have to reach out to moderates for the General, but I think that she could get away *without* doing a wholesale refresh on the messaging.
When a candidate tailors her message, that’s a message in itself.
I want a candidate whose instincts, not her calculations, lead her to the right answers. Because when it counts, people rely on their instincts, and hers are craven. And I say that with all due respect because she’s the Democratic nominee and next president.
Oh, by the way — my sentence mirrored the sentence quoted. There weren’t any “excepts” in that one. Nice try, but the point stands — Obama was nominated in an un-Democratic way. Is it still bad, or is it okay now that Obama did it?
John Manifold,
No, the least democratic political operation in America is the “super-delegate” free-choice, no obligation to the will of the voters process. See the following from my facebook post:
Nothing is more threatening to a representative democracy than discouraging voters or disenfranchising them. Another incarnation of voter suppression and denial of access to the ballot box has surfaced in one of the most unlikely places. It is created within the Democratic Party by party rules and under the guise of the privileged “super-delegate” appointment. Clearly a creation of homage to a bygone era of aristocratic recognition within the party powerful, it allowed those at the top of the pyramid of power, often beholden to the status quo of party politics, to be given access to the party convention and front row seats from which to preen. This mimicking of the English style of a “House of Lords” and a “House of Commons” would seem harmless enough until the “super-delegates” presumed that their appointment precluded any vote of the party faithful yet to come.
Although legally placed as a Democratic Party rule, it is no less offensive than abrogating the party members’ votes or simply putting a match to the ballot box when these “super-delegates” preempt the primary election and pledge their allegiance and delegate vote to one candidate or the other before the votes have been cast and counted.
Let me make it perfectly clear that my challenge to this system is not based, in any way, on the individuals who are seeking the nomination. I do not care, in the least, about which candidate or candidates will be named or chosen for this benefit. It is the fact that preemptive pledging of a delegate vote will result in voter disenfranchisement, discourage voters from going to the polls (viewed as an exercise in futility thereby suppressing the vote), and render the ballots yet to be cast as meaningless. It is an almost arrogant presumption on the part of those appointed “super-delegates” to think that they have the right or privilege to force their personal choice (or that of the party apparatus that they feel allegiance to) upon the voters of record before their votes are recorded.
They can still enjoy the honor and recognition of their positions within the party but they should have absolutely no right to pledge their delegate vote anywhere other than to the majority dictate of the people who actually vote.
Representative John Kowalko
Hey, let’s have a compromise for the next election: No Super-Delegates and No Caucuses!!! Sounds like a great deal to me.
The Sanders campaign does value Super-delegates, for attracting the votes of Super-delegates is the only way they can win the nomination. They made that explicitly clear on Monday’s conference call. They want the Super-delegates to overturn the results of the primary and nominate Sanders.
In 2008, the Super-delegates ratified the choice of Barack Obama, the pledged delegate leader, who had a relatively small delegate lead of 70 delegates, while Hillary led the popular vote total. Super-delegates might have been justified in making Hillary the nominee in 2008, but they didn’t. They went with the pledged delegate leader.
Same thing will happen in 2016. The Super-delegates will ratify the leader of the pledged delegate race. Who will be Hillary.
If the Super-delegates do anything else but that, then it will be a corrupt and outrageous outcome.
Super delegates should to be eliminated from the process. It’s bad enough to deal with party elites as it is.
We are the democratic party, not the republican party. We don’t need special elites weighing in on what the voters want.
The GOP wishes it had superdelegates right now.
Actually, superdelegates can serve a good purpose. They, after all, have to run with the nominee. They have to organize the state parties who will carry the nominee’s banner. And they only constitute 12 percent of all delegates.
Our dear Republican friends are about to nominate a misanthrope whose support is drawn from voting-booth tourists, without adult supervision, who have no history in or loyalty to the Republican party. We can giggle at their fate, but a runaway train is not a model to emulate.
The redoubtable Elaine Kamarck explains further:
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/23/471563611/the-mind-boggling-story-of-our-arcane-and-convoluted-primary-politics
To prove my point, Bill Clinton has announced that if Bernie Sanders is the leader of the pledged delegate race, his vote as a super delegate will go to Sanders.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-clinton-superdelegate-vote-sanders
“They, after all, have to run with the nominee. They have to organize the state parties who will carry the nominee’s banner. ”
No, the don’t. Some super delegates don’t help at all.
Super delegates should to be eliminated from the process.
I remember hearing this in 2008. And here we are complaining about superdelegates when there was time to work at revising this part of the process.
Charge up that hill, Cass. Let me know how it goes for you.
Been there. Done that. Failed miserably. The party is completely happy to play on while the ship sinks.
“Super delegates should to be eliminated from the process.”
Why? They are also elected democratically.
@DD “If the Super-delegates do anything else but that, then it will be a corrupt and outrageous outcome.”
Uhhh. No. They are NOT anti-democratic as implied.
If your state has bad super-delegates then vote for better politicians.