Friday Open Thread [4.29.16]

NATIONAL—Ipsos/Reuters–Clinton 53, Sanders 43
NATIONAL—Ipsos/Reuters–Trump 49, Cruz 28, Kasich 17
OREGON—Hoffman Research Group–Trump 43, Cruz 26, Kasich 17

A new Pew Research survey finds 62% of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the Republican party compared to 33% who view the party favorably. That is the highest since 1992. Even through George W. Bush, the GOP wasn’t as unpopular as it is now.

The Republican Party’s image, already quite negative, has slipped since last fall. Currently 33% of the public has a favorable impression of the Republican Party, while 62% have an unfavorable view. Unfavorable opinions of the GOP are now as high as at any point since 1992.

In October, 37% viewed the Republican Party favorably and 58% viewed it unfavorably. The decline in favorability since then has largely come among Republicans themselves: In the current survey, 68% of Republicans view their party positively, down from 79% last fall.

By contrast, public views of the Democratic Party are unchanged since October. Currently, 45% of the public has a favorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 50% have an unfavorable opinion.

I predict that the latest @CarlyFiorina merger will be as successful as her last one.

— Barbara Boxer (@BarbaraBoxer) April 27, 2016

New Pew Research Center study indicates that, since 1994, “something changed. College-educated Americans became increasingly persuaded to agree with the typically left-leaning position on a whole range of questions, and the percentage of “consistently liberal” college grads skyrocketed from 5 percent to 24 percent in two decades, according to Pew’s study…Over that same period of time, those with lower education levels also moved to the left — but by only by a little bit. Of Americans who only finished high school, the percentage who hold “consistently liberal” beliefs only rose from 1 percent to 5 percent…Highly educated adults — particularly those who have attended graduate school — are far more likely than those with less education to take predominantly liberal positions across a range of political values,” Pew’s report says. “And these differences have increased over the past two decades.,” reports Jeff Stein at Vox.

Be a card-carrying member of the female persuasion and get your #womancard Today! Amazing benefits included! pic.twitter.com/7ntpH91wau

— Terri – Web Designer (@SocialTerri) April 27, 2016

At the San Francisco Chronicle, John Wildermuth and Joe Garofoli explore a question that will interest politically-engaged Dems, “Will young Sanders backers stay and steer Democrats leftward?” The authors quote Ben Wikler, director of the MoveOn, which endorsed Sanders: “If Secretary (Hillary) Clinton is the nominee, then she has to make it crystal clear that the message of the resurgent progressive grassroots has been taken to heart…And if the Democratic convention reflects the values and boldness of the ideas that we’ve seen in the primary — and not a tack back to the center — then I think (Sanders’) people will be on board.” Further, write Wildemuth and Garofoli, “That surge of young, enthusiastic and progressive support for a longtime independent congressman and senator who wasn’t even registered as a Democrat until last year should be a loud wake-up call for the party, said Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, a center-left think tank…”This presents Democrats with an enormous opportunity to make their case” to many young people who are more identified with Sanders and his progressive ideals than with any particular party, said Rosenberg, a veteran of former President Bill Clinton’s campaigns. “The question of whether these folks become Democrats is up to the Democratic Party itself.”

More news on the success of President Obama’s containment strategy with ISIS:

The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria has dropped from roughly 2,000 a month down to 200 within the past year, according to the Pentagon, which says the waning numbers are further proof of the Islamic State’s declining stature.

The declining number of fighters is a direct result of strikes that have targeted the terror group’s infrastructure, Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter E. Gersten, the deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State, said Tuesday…

Last week, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y., published an article in its journal, the CTC Sentinel, that highlighted the Islamic State’s financial plight. Documents in the journal, and noted in a report published by The Post, show that the Islamic State is having difficulty compensating its fighters and workers while providing basic amenities such as electricity and fuel. Recent defectors from the group have indicated that many fighters are on half pay and some haven’t received salaries in months.

Your daily Josh Marshall:

If you are thematically invoking racial or gender stereotypes without doing so openly or explicitly you can mobilize societal prejudice in your favor – what we sometimes generically call ‘dog-whistling’. But if you’re attacking your opponent as a women – and yes, attacking her as only doing well because she’s a woman or ‘playing the woman card’ – that’s not a gender war. It’s a gender massacre and you’re the one being massacred.

What’s more, it’s contagious. Trump’s rhetoric is normalizing the public invocation of increasingly vulgar and rancid attacks on Clinton. A top Republican official in Florida is quoted in the Post this morning confidently predicting that “I think when Donald Trump debates Hillary Clinton she’s going to go down like Monica Lewinsky.”

I don’t want to be Pollyannaish about this. This is ugly stuff and it’s going to bring a lot of ugliness to the surface, just as Trump’s playing to white identity politics has in the primaries. But the numbers tell the story pretty clearly. If you are planning to fight a campaign explicitly on gender divisiveness, in this day and age and as long as the 19th Amendment isn’t repealed this summer (Republican Congress, who knows?) you’re toast.

Politico: “Republicans are only slightly more bullish on Trump’s prospects than Democrats: More than three-quarters of GOP insiders expect Clinton to best the Republican front-runner in a general-election contest in their respective states. Among Democrats, the belief is nearly universal: 99 percent of surveyed said will Clinton will beat Trump.”

“In three of the biggest swing states—Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida—Republicans were particularly downbeat about the prospect of a Trump-Clinton contest.”

“Ted Cruz got crushed in Virginia on primary day, but even Donald Trump’s forces believe he’s about to stuff the state’s national convention delegation full of supporters anyway,” Politico reports.

“Virginia GOP insiders with knowledge of the state’s delegate selection process expect Cruz backers to overrun this Saturday’s state convention and use their numbers to guarantee that the 13 statewide delegates to the national convention lean Cruz.”

Scott Lemieux says Hillary will govern like her last name is Sanders rather than Clinton:

Last week, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe announced that voting rights will be restored for convicted felons who are no longer in prison. If his executive order is upheld, this will enfranchise more than 200,000 citizens of the state who have paid their debt to society and deserve a voice in their state government. It’s a bold, progressive action, exactly the kind of policy core Democratic voters are coming to expect from their leaders.

Before assuming office, McAuliffe seemed like the ultimate political hack.
This major progressive reform didn’t come out entirely of the blue, either. On his first day in office, McAuliffe signed an executive order banning discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation. In an action that foreshadowed his enfranchisement of felons, McAuliffe removed questions about criminal history from government job applications. He has been limited by a Republican-controlled legislature—his valiant fight to accept the Medicaid expansion ultimately failed—but he’s been a solidly progressive governor.

What’s interesting about this is that before assuming office, McAuliffe seemed like the ultimate political hack. The Clinton crony and prodigious fundraiser seemed worth voting for only because the Republicans were running the odious former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli against him.

Sound familiar?

The real lesson of McAuliffe is that leaders don’t govern in a vacuum. Political context matters. If McAuliffe had been elected governor in the 1990s he likely would have been much more timorous and inclined to compromise with Republicans. But it ain’t the ‘90s anymore, and McAuliffe has gotten the message.

Paul Krugman at The New York Times examines how Republicans ended up with Trump as their presumptive nominee:

Both parties make promises to their bases. But while the Democratic establishment more or less tries to make good on those promises, the Republican establishment has essentially been playing bait-and-switch for decades. And voters finally rebelled against the con. […]

[The Republican] party has historically won elections by appealing to racial enmity and cultural anxiety, but its actual policy agenda is dedicated to serving the interests of the 1 percent, above all through tax cuts for the rich — which even Republican voters don’t support, while they truly loathe elite ideas like privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

What Donald Trump has been doing is telling the base that it can order à la carte. He has, in effect, been telling aggrieved white men that they can feed their anger without being forced to swallow supply-side economics, too. Yes, his actual policy proposals still involve huge tax cuts for the rich, but his supporters don’t know that — and it’s possible that he doesn’t, either. Details aren’t his thing.