Monday Open Thread [4.4.16]

Wisconsin—Loras College–Cruz 38, Trump 31, Kasich 18
Wisconsin—Loras College–Clinton 47, Sanders 41
Wisconsin—YouGov/CBS News–Cruz 43, Trump 37, Kasich 18
Wisconsin—YouGov/CBS News–Sanders 49, Clinton 47
New York—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 52, Cruz 21, Kasich 20
New York—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 53, Sanders 43
Pennsylvania—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 47, Cruz 29, Kasich 22

Four of the last five polls in Wisconsin in the last week show Sanders ahead by 2, 4, 5 and 6 points. According to the Huffington Post Pollster Trend, Sanders is ahead by 4.2 in Wisconsin. So this Loras poll showing Hillary ahead by 6 seems like an outlier. Or it could be it could be a leading indicator of a trend in her favor, which seems confirmed at least by the CBS/YouGov poll out yesterday that has her down only by 2, rather than 4, 5 or 6 points. Regardless, I still consider Sanders to be likely to win Wisconsin on Tuesday, but I also expect the result to be close, as all these polls indicate, something in the range of 51-49 to 52-48. That would lead to a nearly even split of the delegates.

Donald Trump told the Washington Post that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. “The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.” Trump also insisted that he would be able to get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years.”

This is the same man who thought the real estate market was stable and a good investment in 2007, as the collapse was underway. Five bankruptcies. So many failed businesses and brands. And he is the one who is both predicting a very massive recession, against all evidence, which of course would sap the government of revenue, and predicting a pay off of a $19T debt in 8 years without raising taxes, selling off Texas, or eliminating all government programs everywhere, including all those in the Department of Defense.

Yeah, he is just saying anything.

Nate Silver: “At the prediction market Betfair on Friday morning, bettors put Donald Trump’s chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination at 56 percent. That’s down a fair bit — Trump had been hovering at about 70 percent after his win in Arizona (and loss in Utah) last week. Meanwhile, the likelihood of a contested convention according to bettors has considerably increased. There’s now a 63 percent chance that the convention in Cleveland will require multiple ballots, according to Betfair.”

“Here’s the thing, though: Those markets don’t make a lot of sense. If you really think the chance of a multi-ballot convention is 63 percent, but also still have Trump with a 56 percent chance of winning the nomination, that implies there’s a fairly good chance that Trump will win if voting goes beyond the first ballot. That’s probably wrong. If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, he’s probably screwed.”

Politico: “North Dakota will select its delegates to the Republican National Convention this weekend, but the party won’t be asking any actual voters to help do it. Instead, state party officials are relying on the ultimate insider process, one that tilts the playing field toward a party-backed candidate like Ted Cruz — and puts Donald Trump at a deep disadvantage.”

Ed Kilgore on Sander’s convention demands.

The much-feared rupture in Denver [in 2008] did not occur because Clinton, her husband, and her campaign chose to surrender unconditionally. That made considerable sense from her point of view. For all the passions her candidacy aroused, especially among women, it was not an ideological crusade in which she and Obama represented fundamentally different paths ahead for the Democratic Party. The biggest threat to her future political interests lay in being held partly responsible for a party defeat (no one at that point was anticipating the blowout that eventually developed). Being gracious and demanding no significant concessions not only came as a great relief to the nominee and his staff; it set the stage for her next steps as a party leader.

But if anyone in the current Team Clinton expects Bernie Sanders to emulate her 2008 surrender, they’d better get over it quickly. It’s not happening. […]

It’s important to understand that the Sanders campaign began as an effort by ideological progressives to “keep Hillary honest,” and then with success became an insurgency against the policies and political strategies of both the Clinton and Obama administrations. Unlike Clinton (and, for that matter, Obama) in 2008, Sanders is not the embodiment of some disenfranchised identity; he’s not the candidate of septuagenarian Jewish men. And he presumably has no personal political future to protect. It’s all about shaping the future of the party, and if he cannot do that as the nominee himself, he can make his mark via his own convention speech and Clinton’s, supplemented by concessions on the platform and perhaps the future Clinton administration.

So the template for Sanders isn’t Clinton ’08, but something more like Kennedy ’80 or Jackson ’88 — candidates who lost in the primaries but had the leverage to make all sorts of demands on the winner at the convention, and chose to exercise that power.

What might Sanders expect? This, from Martin Longman:

This would include consultations on the veep, and concessions on many key appointments. Sanders will want a say in the staffing at Treasury, for example. He may have other demands, too. He’ll need to get some very visible wins that he can show his voters so they can feel like what they’ve done has made a difference and can continue to make a difference.

I would also play to Sander’s ego, which is pretty massive and has only been buoyed by his primary run. I would tell Bernie that he is still in charge of his revolution, that he, with the full financial backing of the DNC, DSCC and DCCC but without the interference of either, can travel the country over the next four years finding progressive candidates to run for office. Hillary can’t adopt his entire platform, because right now it is not financially, fiscally, or politically possible. For the precise reason that Bernie put the cart before the horse. Put Bernie in charge of grooming the horse to be a champion, and it will be a good thing for all.

Steven Greenhouse on the short (but way too long) history of the $15 wage.

Last Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced a deal with state lawmakers to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 — a move expected to lift pay for five million workers. And late Thursday Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York reached a deal with legislative leaders to adopt a $15 minimum wage in New York City in 2018 and in its suburbs in 2021, with a $12.50 minimum in upstate New York. …

In New Jersey, Democratic lawmakers have warned Gov. Chris Christie that if he vetoes a $15 statewide minimum, they will ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment that sets a $15 floor. And in Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has announced plans to push the City Council to embrace the idea. The Legislatures in Connecticut and Massachusetts are also weighing $15.

“There’s still a lot of pro-labor, pro-worker sentiment,” said Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University who has written about populism and popular movements. “Inequality is a big issue nowadays. The Fight for $15 has become the way that civil rights was in the early ’60s — it’s an issue you can’t avoid. For politicians — or at least Democratic politicians — you want to be on the right side.”

Neil Irwin:

This Is the Job Market We’ve Been Hoping for All These Years

If you were going to sit down and sketch out an ideal scenario for the American job market in 2016, it would look something like this:

The United States would keep adding jobs at a steady clip. Wages would rise gradually — enough to put more money in workers’ pockets, but not so fast as to lead the Federal Reserve to move abruptly to keep the economy from overheating. Steady job growth wouldn’t show up in continued drops in the unemployment rate, but rather in a rising labor force. That is, people who had stopped even looking for a job in recent years would come back into the job market, allowing for strong job growth mixed with a steady jobless rate.

That happens to be the reality revealed in the March jobs numbers released Friday, and really in every jobs report published so far in 2016.

John Cassidy:

Even if he does badly in Wisconsin, it won’t necessarily imply that [Donald Trump] can’t get to twelve hundred and thirty-seven, or that a contested convention is inevitable. After Tuesday, the race moves to the Northeastern Corridor, where Trump will be hoping to rack up some big wins. In New York, for example, where ninety-five delegates will be up for grabs, on April 19th, a new survey from Quinnipiac University shows him leading Cruz by a huge margin, thirty-six percentage points, with Kasich even further behind. In Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which vote the following week, not much polling has been done recently. But the evidence that exists suggests that Trump is ahead.

In other words, he is still in a strong strategic position and remains the firm favorite, even as cracks are showing. Predictwise, a Web site that combines data from polls and betting markets, estimates that the probability of him getting the nomination is sixty-six per cent. But it’s worth noting that that number has dropped over the past week or so, from eighty per cent.

Since the Never Trump movement formed, its strategy has been to narrow the Republican field, unite the anti-Trump forces, and keep up the pressure on Trump to see if he self-destructs. It would be an exaggeration to say that this has already happened, but his enemies have reasons to be encouraged.

David Byler with some important points looking beyond the primary:

Sander Isn’t Going to Win the 2016 Nomination

Before we can talk about the future of the Democratic Party, it’s important to nail down what’s going on right now: Clinton is leading the primary by a solid margin and will almost certainly win her party’s nomination. Some simple demographic and delegate math demonstrates why…

But Sanders’s Voters Could Be the Foundation for a Future Coalition

Sanders’s delegate woes are a symptom of a larger problem: His coalition simply isn’t big enough. He’s won a bit over 40 percent of the popular vote so far — that’s not enough to grab the nomination, but if a future candidate were able to appeal to his base and add one or two of Clinton’s factions to it, that candidate might be able to snag the nomination while proposing one of the most liberal platforms in decades.

Taegan Goddard:

If Donald Trump loses the Wisconsin primary next week, the most likely scenario is that he ends the GOP primary season with more delegates than any other candidate but not enough to secure the presidential nomination. […]

Republicans are best served by nominating a presidential candidate who is satisfactory to the largest majority of the party’s rank-and-file voters. Moving forward with a candidate who wins just a plurality could lead the party to splinter further. It quite easy to see that happening with Trump as the nominee. It’s also easy to see that with Ted Cruz as the nominee.

The danger of a divided Republican party is much more than losing a presidential race. It would also put many down-ballot races into play. The Republican delegates at the convention will be very attuned to the environment in their home states and will do everything they can to avoid losing these races.

That’s why a contested convention may be the best path forward for Republicans. Multiple rounds of balloting can create a consensus candidate — perhaps one much stronger than any of the three finalists.

Martin Longman:

I’d also say that Sanders is screwed if he needs to rely on superdelegates, which he will absolutely need to do. In a really best case scenario for Sanders where he pretty much runs the table of the remaining primaries and caucuses, he might manage to win the most pledged delegates, but he cannot win an outright majority of all the delegates. That’s why he and his campaign are talking about swaying superdelegates who have already committed to Clinton to change their minds.

I think this is a hopeless strategy, and mostly for the same reasons that Trump can’t hope to win on a second ballot.

The Sanders camp has adopted an adversarial posture toward the DNC and isn’t raising money for the party or many of the party’s officeholders. Clinton, meanwhile, is raising millions for both. Basic self-interest suggests that most superdelegates will prefer the candidate who is a team player and who brings in much needed money that will be used for organizing and advertising.

I don’t think Sanders has aroused the same kind of antipathy as Trump, but he isn’t doing the things he should do considering that his only path to success is to win over the party establishment.

If you spend your entire campaign attacking the establishment and the party as corrupt and criminal, you cannot rely on that same establishment and party to save you. When you run as an outsider attacking the king, you cannot ask the king’s help to depose the king. You either win on your own, or you die. Not literally of course.