VINE: American Idol meets American politics https://t.co/DtewxqicKk
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 27, 2016
“Quietly acknowledging that a direct path to the Democratic nomination is all but blocked, Bernie Sanders and his advisers are zeroing in on making policy changes to the party platform and reforming the presidential nominating process,” Politico reports. “The Vermont senator and his closest aides have been considering convention end-game scenarios for months, and they have already been in contact with the Democratic National Convention’s organizers to talk through the logistics of July’s party gathering in Philadelphia.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tore into Donald Trump’s speech on foreign policy, calling it “unnerving,” “pathetic” and “scary,” Politico reports. Said Graham: “If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, this speech should’ve removed it. It took every problem and fear I have with Donald Trump and put in on steroids.”
The Lid on why Cruz picked Fiorina as a running mate: “On the plus side, Cruz was at least partially able to shake up a bad news cycle by teasing and then confirming the announcement. The pick of a woman who’s never held elected office and has a good record of fiery debates gives him a high-value surrogate who is eager to fight a two-front war against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And Fiorina is the kind of candidate who’s gotten under Trump’s skin before and could conceivably provoke a damaging reaction from the GOP frontrunner. But plenty of critics are deriding the move as desperate, presumptuous and calculating – themes that Donald Trump is sure to repeat for the rest of the week. And being perceived as desperate is a tough place for Cruz to be with a must-win contest in Indiana just days away.”
The only two plausible explanations for it are 1) blunting Trump’s news cycle yesterday to disrupt the CW that the primary is over and 2) somehow thinking Fiorina will help him with California Republicans. It was a desperate and short sighted move, for it removes his biggest piece of leverage at a contested convention (if it even happens): bargaining for the VP nomination. It was the last desperate move of a drowning man.
Josh Marshall on Clinton v. Trump:
These two candidates aren’t just appealing to different demographics or voting coalitions. They’re operating in what almost amounts to two different political universes. In linguistic terms it is almost like two mutually unintelligible languages. I guarantee you that everyone who has voted for Trump in any primary so far loved those remarks. They hate Hillary. They hate ‘political correctness’. More than anything else they love provocation itself. But this kind of talk, while a single instance itself, reminds us that Trump has already all but disqualified himself with huge swaths of the electorate. It’s like a long fingernail drag over the chalkboard for a significant majority of voters. Trump has a 70%+ disapproval rating among women; roughly 80% disapproval among Hispanics; and the list goes on and on. At the moment he’s even doing fairly poorly among whites! But we should expect those numbers to rise significantly as Republican partisans unify around Trump.
Meanwhile Clinton is talking about opportunity, inclusion across racial groups and the gender divide. It is a message framed around inclusion for rising groups, young people and incremental improvements in the safety net and wages for those just hanging on in the 21st century economy. It really amounts to a simple continuity message with the Obama presidency. What he did. My point isn’t to pump this agenda. This is an ideologically agnostic point. It is to point out how it is virtually incomprehensible in the Trump universe. Gibberish or nonsense in a worldview based on reclaiming things your supporters believe were or are being taken away from them by others, and a powerful leader reclaiming what you lost from domestic newcomers and foreign adversaries. They’re just categorically different, not just in policy terms, but in language, manner of acting in public, concept of leadership. Everything. They’re mutually incomprehensible, seemingly indifferent to what folks on the other side of the divide even think.
Think about it this way. Can you imagine Trump and Clinton actually debating or discussing a specific issue? Let alone engaging in a formal debate?
What worries Republicans profoundly and has Democrats what I would call cautiously ecstatic is that if both candidates are doubling down on these portions of the population – Clinton’s chunk looks significantly larger than Trump’s. The biggest driver in November may turn out to be gender. But seen through a racial prism, which seems more likely: that Trump will significantly drive up the white vote or that Clinton will significantly drive up the minority vote? Trump seems dramatically less popular with Hispanic voters than Romney and it is difficult to see him making up much of that ground. Remember too that there are fewer white voters in 2016 than there were in 2012.
Wall Street Journal: “Some 58% of Republican voters in Pennsylvania said the primary process had divided the party, exit polls showed. A far smaller share, 40%, said the primaries had energized the party.”
“Moreover, one-quarter of Republican primary voters in Maryland and Connecticut, and nearly that share in Pennsylvania, said they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Trump in a general election. That signaled a problem for Mr. Trump in one of his top tasks, should be become the nominee: unifying his own party.”
First Read: “Here’s something else that might give GOP consultants the night sweats: In battleground Pennsylvania, 69% of Democratic primary voters said their race was energizing their party, versus 58% of Republicans who said their nominating contest was dividing theirs.”
The Atlantic says demography, not ideology, is destiny: “On both sides, the leading candidates have established clear patterns of support—and have faced largely intractable pockets of resistance. For the most part, demography has trumped geography, with the big exception that in the Democratic race challenger Bernie Sanders has run much better against front-runner Hillary Clinton among several groups of voters outside of the South than in Dixie, including whites, the middle-aged, and those who describe themselves as very liberal.”
It was why Bernie lost the primary. Bernie’s success at winning 8 demographically favorable states in a row did nothing to change the minds of voters in demographically unfavorable states over the last two weeks.
William Galston says the Reagan Era in Republican politics is over: “The minute-to-minute coverage of the 2016 presidential primaries threatens to obscure the larger story: While Sen. Bernie Sanders is pressing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to move further and faster down the progressive road, Donald Trump is waging and winning the third major revolution in the Republican Party since World War II.”
“Mr. Trump’s candidacy has showed that the cadre of genuine social conservatives is smaller than long assumed, that grass-roots Republican support for large military commitments in the Middle East has withered, and that the business community is politically homeless.”
“So it has come to this: A mercantilist isolationist is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination.”
A federal judge sentenced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to 15 months in prison for evading banking rules in what prosecutors said was a bid to hide sexual misconduct allegations from decades ago, the Wall Street Journal reports. Said U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin: “The defendant was a serial child molester.” The sentence of 15 months, plus two years of supervised released, was beyond the up to six months in prison that was suggested in the plea agreement he reached with federal prosecutors last year. I hope he gets what he deserves in prison.
Nathan Gonzales on how Democrats can take back the House: “As Democratic chances of taking back the House improve with the success of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, party strategists are trying to figure out exactly how and where it’s going to happen. It’s not too difficult to see Democrats gaining 10, or even 20, seats in November, but gaining the 30 required for a majority is more difficult and will require Democrats winning a large swath of seats where Republicans are currently heavy favorites.”
“In order to win the majority, Democrats likely need to win a clear majority of a batch of 16 seats, which includes pricey plays, scenario seats, late bloomers, and slippery targets.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning to lay off “hundreds” of campaign staffers across the country and focus much of his remaining effort on winning California, the New York Times reports. “The Vermont senator revealed the changes a day after losing four of the five states that voted Tuesday and falling further behind Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite the changes, Mr. Sanders said he would remain in the race through the party’s summer convention and stressed that he hoped to bring staff members back on board if his political fortunes improved.”