Wednesday Open Thread [4.13.16]

NATIONAL—NBC News/Survey Monkey–Trump 46, Cruz 30, Kasich 16
NATIONAL—NBC News/Survey Monkey–Clinton 49, Sanders 43
NEW YORK—Quinnipiac–Trump 55, Kasich 20, Cruz 19
NEW YORK—Quinnipiac–Clinton 53, Sanders 40
NEW YORK—PPP–Trump 51, Kasich 25, Cruz 20
NEW YORK—PPP–Clinton 51, Sanders 40
NEW YORK—Liberty Research–Trump 52, Kasich 23, Cruz 19
CONNECTICUT—Emerson–Trump 50, Kasich 26, Cruz 17
CONNECTICUT—Emerson–Clinton 49, Sanders 43
CONNECTICUT—Emerson–Clinton 48, Trump 40 | Sanders 49, Trump 40 \ Clinton 52, Cruz 31 | Sanders 55, Cruz 30
MARYLAND—NBC 4/Marist Maryland–Trump 41, Cruz 29, Kasich 24
MARYLAND—NBC 4/Marist Maryland–Clinton 58, Sanders 36
NEW YORK—PPP–Clinton 55, Trump 35 | Sanders 58, Trump 33 | Clinton 56, Cruz 30 | Sanders 59, Cruz 27
NEW YORK—NBC/WSJ/Marist–Clinton 61, Trump 32 | Sanders 64, Trump 31 | Clinton 61, Cruz 31 | Sanders 65, Cruz 28
MASSACHUSETTS—Western NE University–Clinton 62, Trump 26 | Sanders 70, Trump 23 | Clinton 63, Cruz 30 | Sanders 71, Cruz 24
MARYLAND–US SENATE—NBC 4/Marist Maryland–Van Hollen 44, Edwards 38

Byron York says the GOP is heading towards its very own Bush v. Gore: “And it could be worse than that. The 2000 winner of the popular vote, Al Gore, lost the presidency because of the constitutional structure under which electors, not popular vote totals, determine who enters the White House. Seeing the popular vote loser, George W. Bush, win the election was unfortunate — it hadn’t happened since the 19th Century — but it was specifically provided for in the Constitution. Democrats unhappily accepted the result because they accepted the Constitution as the bedrock of our system of government.”

“In an intra-party Republican fight, on the other hand, the winner of the 2016 nomination could be determined not by the Constitution but by rules written by party activists and insiders the week before the GOP convention. If those rules can be reasonably viewed as unfair, they won’t command the fundamental respect and consensus of a constitutional provision. And the resulting nominee won’t command that respect, either.”

Amanda Marcotte:

Lincoln Mitchell of the Observer, in a piece titled “Hillary Clinton Represents the Last Hurrah for Centrist Democrats.” It’s a standard we-may-lose-the-battle-but-we-will-win-the-war kind of piece.

“All primaries divide voters into different camps, but the divisions this year could endure because of the ideological break with the Democrats past for which Mr. Sanders is calling,” Mitchell writes, in part because “large segments of the party’s base, skewing younger and whiter, have moved significantly to the left of the party establishment.” So Clinton wins, but she doesn’t really win, because tomorrow is another day, etc. etc.

Mitchell isn’t wrong that left-leaning Americans have been drifting leftward, but trying to turn that into a triumphalist narrative of Sanders over the evil centrists is just wrong-headed. If anything, the Sanders campaign is a throwback, recycling 90s-era complaints about neoliberalism and claims that the Democratic party is so hopelessly corrupt that only an outsider with no loyalties to the party can fix it. It’s as if the past two decades haven’t even happened.

The reality is that Clinton’s campaign is much more representative of the liberalization trend than Sanders is. Despite the loud honking about centrism and DINOs coming from the Sanders camp, the truth is that the Democratic party is not a cluster of recalcitrant centrists and conservatives. The Democrats have been drifting leftward for decades now. Not as fast as the Republicans have been drifting rightward, because that’s impossible, but, even though it might be hard for Sanders fans to swallow, the movement to the left has been quite steady.

Clinton herself is part of this trend, with a Senate record that put her in the top third of most liberal Democrats, and even to the left of President Obama. She’s certainly more liberal than her husband, in part because her career as a politician started when his ended, meaning that she’s tracked left as the party has on issues like gay marriage and immigration. No wonder she voted with Sanders 93% of the time.

In other words, Sanders didn’t make what he calls socialism “an acceptable idea to a good chunk of the electorate,” as Mitchell would have you believe. On the contrary, there’s been a long, if boring, takeover of the Democratic party by the liberal wing, represented by Clinton and Obama, and Sanders is reaping the benefit of the mainstreaming of liberalism.

Last week a lot of the news about the Democratic presidential primary focused on Bernie Sanders’ interview with the New York Daily News. It is worth noting that Hillary Clinton sat down for an interview with the same publication on Saturday. It seems she was much more persuasive and knowledgeable, as the The Daily News’ primary endorsement isn’t just an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, it’s a non-endorsement of Bernie Sanders.

On April 19, New York Democrats will have unusual say over the party’s nominee. They have in Clinton a superprepared warrior realist. They have in opponent Bernie Sanders a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality. By choosing Clinton, Empire State Dems would powerfully signal that the party has gotten real about achieving long-sought goals.

Clinton is unsparingly clear-eyed about what’s wrong with America while holding firm to what’s right with America. She fully understands the toll that adverse economic forces have taken on the country.
She is supremely knowledgeable about the powers a President can wield to lift fortunes in need of lifting. She possesses the strength and the shrewdness to confront the tough politics of advancing an ambitious Democratic agenda in the White House. Still more, she is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumb’s up for taking out Osama Bin Laden and who is far the wiser about the use of American power, having served as secretary of state and seen the consequences of the war in Iraq. These truths about America’s most well-known public figure are long past debating among Democrats, above all in New York, the state Clinton represented in the U.S. Senate.

Here then the moment has arrived to reckon, instead, with truths about Sanders and his programs: Subjected to meaningful scrutiny for the first time, the senator from Vermont proved utterly unprepared for the Oval Office while confirming that the central thrusts of his campaign are politically impossible. Which, paradoxically, is good news, because some of the most prominent Sanderisms would likely wreak epic economic damage.

As a basic premise, Sanders calls for enormously expanding the federal government’s role in American life, supported by equally huge tax increases — most of them falling on the wealthy but also hammering average middle-income earners to the tune of $4,700 a year. On that score, he assumes that wage earners would happily shell out big bucks year after year because, trust him, health care would be free.

And trust him, raising government spending by 40%, perhaps by more than 50%, would be a boon to America — never mind that the prospect of smothering the economy frightens even left-leaning experts. And trust him, the government would have enough money to provide free public college education to all — never mind that credible studies say he would fall short of financing all of his ideas by more than $3 trillion over 10 years. And trust him, he would arrive in Washington as leader of a “revolution” powerful enough to bulldoze congressional Republicans — even in a time-wasting drive to replace the Obamacare they hate with a still more hated full government takeover of health insurance. And trust him, he would end income inequality by launching an all-out assault on America’s largest banks — never credibly explaining how forcibly breaking up the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Citibank would add a dime to a single paycheck.

As would happen with any ideological phenomenon, close inspection of Sanders’ thinking clarifies that trust is misplaced. So it was when he appeared before the Daily News Editorial Board.

And it goes on like that.

“Ted Cruz is close to ensuring that Donald Trump cannot win the GOP nomination on a second ballot at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, scooping up scores of delegates who have pledged to vote for him instead of the front-runner if given the chance,” the Washington Post reports.

“The push by Cruz means that it is more essential than ever for Trump to clinch the nomination by winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested and drawn-out convention fight, which Trump seems almost certain to lose.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential bid in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday morning, becoming the first sitting U.S. senator to back Sanders.

“After considering the biggest challenges facing our nation and the future I want for my children and our country, I have decided to become the first member of the Senate to support my colleague Bernie Sanders for president,” Merkley wrote in the op-ed.

Dana Lind reports on a strange phenomena: There are moderate and conservative Democrats who think Obama and Clinton are too liberal, and they support Bernie Sanders.

Every once and a while, a national poll will show either Sanders leading by 1 or 2, or behind by 1 or 2, or tied with Hillary, and Sanders supporters are excited by this. And that is all fine. But Jeff Stein wants to remind us about some history, since it seems everyone everywhere has forgotten entirely the lessons of the 2008 primary.

[I]n 2008 Clinton significantly outpolled Barack Obama in national Democratic polling several times, even after he had effectively won the race. As late as early May 2008, two polls put Clinton 7 points ahead of Obama. Clinton didn’t win the nomination simply because she was doing better in some national Democratic polling.

The rivalry between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 was so vicious, it left “deep and lasting scars on both the Clinton and Obama camps, and they are still shockingly fresh,” writes Kate Andersen Brower in the new tome, First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies, according to the New York Post.

“The book, out Tuesday from ­HarperCollins, reportedly reveals Michelle Obama was even hoping Joe Biden would launch a presidential run so he could beat Hillary this time around.”

Said one former Obama adviser: “When Michelle Obama views the Clintons, I don’t want to say she’s looking down her nose at them — but she kind of is.” The book adds that Michelle’s relationship with Hillary was “fraught with hurt feelings and resentment.”

Damn. Michelle can hold a grudge. Get over it, Mrs. Obama. You won.