Wednesday Open Thread [5.11.16]
Bernie got a pyrrhic victory in West Virginia last night, considering the exit polls.
Bernie Sanders got 62% in West Virginia among those who want less liberal policies than the Obama Administration pic.twitter.com/BSxr6LTUcd
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 10, 2016
These are voters who are nominally Democrats or are unaffiliated and who vote Republican at all levels, but are just too lazy to change their party registration. They voted for Bernie last night in large numbers, probably because the GOP race is over and they wanted to screw over coal-hating Clinton.
Bernie gained 5 delegates over Hillary last night, winning the count 16-11. Hillary’s lead in the pledged delegate count is now 286. She has 1716 pledged delegates and Bernie has 1430. If you add in Super Delegates, Hillary’s total delegate count increases to 2239, just 144 shy of the clinching number of 2383. Bernie has 1469 total delegates once his 39 Super Delegates are factored in.
Hillary Clinton won the nonbinding “beauty contest” primary in Nebraska last night, 53% to 47% over Bernie. Nebraska allocated its delegates already pursuant to a state party caucus in March, so the win in Nebraska does nothing really.
Next up are primaries in Oregon and Kentucky next week. There has been no polling of Kentucky since last June, but given that it has some affinity for coal as well, Kentucky should be Sanders territory.
Meanwhile, we got a new poll out of Oregon yesterday that was somewhat surprising since you’d expect the Pacific Northwest to be Sanders territory too, and given how liberal Portland is, but:
OREGON—DHM Research–Clinton 48, Sanders 33
NATIONAL—NBC/SurveyMonkey–Clinton 53, Sanders 41
Speaking of polling, yes, we had three new Quinnipiac University polls out yesterday in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that showed close 1 to 2 to 4 point races between Trump and Clinton and Trump and Sanders in each, with Trump actually leading Hillary by 4 in Ohio. I am ignoring them, not because I don’t like the results. But because they are not realistic.
Without fail, the voting population has gotten less white for decades. According to Pew Research Center, 2016 will again follow that trend and be “the most diverse in U.S. history.” Yet, Quinnipiac assumes that the white vote will increase in 2016.
In order to estimate the results of a general election match-up, Quinnipiac has to estimate the composition of the general electorate. In November 2012, 79 percent of the electorate in Ohio was white — but Quinnipiac’s polling sample is 83 percent white in the state. In Florida, Quinnipiac’s sample is two points whiter than in 2012; in Pennsylvania, it’s three points whiter. And if the sample is more white, that almost necessarily means that it’s less non-white.
On the one hand, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Clinton has a comfortable edge in the battleground states. Quinnipiac, for good measure, has been pretty tough on the Democrats over the last few cycles. You can see some sign of that in the racial composition of the surveys. In Florida, for instance, Quinnipiac’s registered voters are 69 percent white, 11 percent black and 15 percent Hispanic. The official data from the Florida secretary of state (since voters are asked their race when they register to vote) is 65.7 percent white, 13.3 percent black and 14.8 percent Hispanic. Similarly, the census’ current population survey in 2014 found that 64.3 percent of registered voters were white, 15.2 percent were black and 17.9 percent Hispanic.
I guess you can look on Quinnipiac as what would happen if Trump got his missing white voter to turnout while at the same time not seeing an increasing minority turnout. It would be the best case scenario for Trump: increasing the white vote, holding the GOP together and decreasing minority turnout. That scenario is highly unlikely. We have already seen astronomical increases in Latino and African American registration, so it is likely that whatever increase in white vote occurs, it will be matched by the minority vote. But, if that Quinnipiac is Trump’s best case scenario, and he only leads in one swing state, than I am rather encouraged.
Donald Trump selected a white supremacist to be a delegate for him in California. Trump now says it was a database error, as in his database of white supremacist supporters got accidentally merged with a list of potential delegates. (I’m not sure that is a good excuse, Donald).
Politico on Paul Ryan’s predicament: “So here’s the House speaker’s play, according to multiple people in Ryan’s inner circle: he wants Trump to understand where he is coming from. Ryan wants to try to steer the party’s national political dialogue — as embodied by Trump’s barbed rhetoric — in a better direction. He wants an open line of communication between his operation and Trump’s. He isn’t going to try to extract policy concessions from Trump — he understands they are unlikely to ever agree on trade or immigration — but he wants some recognition that Ryan has 247 members of the House that need to be re-elected, and they can’t do so while wincing through the general election in November.”
“It might work, it might not. Ryan could endorse Trump at some point — but there are no guarantees. His posture: at least I tried to make things work.”
Donald Trump’s “behavior in recent days — the political threats to the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan; the name-calling on Twitter; the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s marriage — has deeply puzzled Republicans who expected him to move to unite the party, start acting presidential and begin courting the female voters he will need in the general election,” the New York Times reports.
“But Mr. Trump’s choices reflect an unusual conviction: He said he had a ‘mandate’ from his supporters to run as a fiery populist outsider and to rely on his raucous rallies to build support through “word of mouth,” rather than to embrace a traditional, mellower and more inclusive approach that congressional Republicans will advocate in meetings with him on Thursday.”
A new Morning Consult poll finds that if a candidate running for elected office said they support Donald Trump, 38% of voters said they were “much less likely” to support them and 11 percent said they were “somewhat less likely.”
Among those who identified as independents, roughly one-third (34%) said they were much less likely to support a Trump-backing candidate, while 40 percent said they were more likely to support a candidate who opposed him.
Dave Wasserman says Paul Ryan may want to lose the House this year if he has any hope of a political future:
Imagine this scenario in 2017: Democrats keep the White House and Senate, leaving Speaker Ryan and House Republicans as the only backstop against an unpopular President Hillary Clinton, who owes her election to a disastrous GOP nominee. Ryan might face no choice but to cut deals with Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer to avert a shutdown or default – or to simply keep himself in power.
Ryan’s national ambitions are a mystery, but if he were to desire to run for president in 2020 or 2024, pitching that kind of record to the same GOP voters that nominated Trump would likely be about as practical as trying to convince a brick wall to crumble. Losing the House majority in 2016 – though still an unlikely prospect – would relieve him of that nightmarish burden.
Today’s GOP voters are already extremely contemptuous of their own politicians and their suspicion would likely only metastasize under a Clinton administration. That’s why Ryan — or for that matter Marco Rubio or anyone who has partaken in bipartisan legislative efforts — might be better off starting a new party altogether than subjecting themselves to a hostile national GOP primary electorate that openly rejects their “inclusive” and “optimistic” brand of conservatism.
Matt Yglesias on the real reason Bernie Sanders will enthusiastically endorse Hillary Clinton:
As Bernie Sanders’s odds of winning the Democratic Party nomination have shrunk toward nothingness, talk has naturally turned to party unity. Sanders is promising to do everything in his power to keep Republicans out of the White House, but also suggesting that concessions may be needed from the Clinton camp to spur enthusiasm on the part of his voters.
The reality, however, is that nobody is better positioned to make the case to Sanders voters than Sanders himself. And Sanders already has all the reasons he could possibly need to give Clinton his full-throated support.
Thanks to the primaries, Sanders has emerged as a substantial factional leader inside the Democratic Party — someone whose statements and tweets will garner media attention, whose email list will be coveted and envied by other Democrats in Congress, and whose support or opposition to a measure will matter to a national constituency. That gives him, potentially, considerably more influence over national affairs than he’s had in his previous 25 years in Washington. But essentially all of that influence hinges on Clinton winning the election in November.
That, rather than anything to do with platform concessions or “lesser of two evils” talk, is why Sanders will almost certainly do everything in his power to boost Clinton this fall. He’ll do it because it’s the right thing for Bernie Sanders.
That’s exactly right. If Trump wins, Bernie or his policy concerns really don’t have a future, as all Democratic attention will be diverted to preparing for the Second Civil War. Further, there may be some resentment among over half the party.
Jonathan Cohn writes that: Hillary Clinton Is A Progressive Democrat, Despite What You May Have Heard.
If Sanders is the standard by which you’re going to decide whether a politician is a progressive, then almost nobody from the Democratic Party would qualify. Take Sanders out of the equation, and suddenly Clinton looks an awful lot like a mainstream progressive — firmly on the left side of the American ideological spectrum and maybe on the left side of the Democratic Party’s, as well.
One reason it’s easy to miss this is that Clinton’s domestic policy agenda doesn’t include one signature idea or position that’s going to dominate the headlines or get activists excited. Instead, it’s a series of proposals that, together, would fortify the social safety net, strengthen regulation of industry, and bolster public services. To the extent these programs require new spending, the money would largely come from new taxes on the wealthy.
The White House announced yesterday that Obama will be the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima.
…on May 27, the President will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site at the center of the city dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing, where he will share his reflections on the significance of the site and the events that occurred there. He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.
In making this visit, the President will shine a spotlight on the tremendous and devastating human toll of war….
The President’s time in Hiroshima also will reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment – and the President’s personal commitment – to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.
As the President has said, the United States has a special responsibility to continue to lead in pursuit of that objective as we are the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon.
@DD “They voted for Bernie last night in large numbers, probably because the GOP race is over and they wanted to screw over coal-hating Clinton.”
We’ve seen this in several primaries where the polls were somehow very wrong.
This was a huge factor in Michigan and Indiana, and now we see this effect in WV. Upcoming open primaries are SD ND and MT. Watch for it there…
Oh… And there is ZERO chance that Hillary will win WV in the fall, and so there is no reason we should pay attention to this scheming now.
“Take Sanders out of the equation, and suddenly Clinton looks an awful lot like a mainstream progressive — firmly on the left side of the American ideological spectrum and maybe on the left side of the Democratic Party’s, as well.”
Sweet Jesus, but Jonathan Cohn is useless. No shit, Sherlock. Move the frame to the right for 35 years and the Clintons look “progressive.”
America’s “mainstream progressives” would be center-right in most European nations. I notice that everybody who thinks Hillary is progressive thinks of herself as progressive, too, and those people to the left of them are radicals.
I really can’t stress this enough: Most of the rest of the industrialized world is facing political chaos, too, and it has nothing to do there with guns or abortion or any other social issue. It’s the rigged economy, stupid.
I love the fact that favoring continuing or increasing the planet’s largest, incredibly bloated military budget in order to pursue a foreign policy that has been relentless militarized by Presidents Democrat and Republican alike over the past two decades is now somehow a position firmly on the left side of the American ideological spectrum and maybe on the left side of the Democratic Party’s, as well.
I love the fact that being a promoter and co-architect of turning the US into not just a surveillance state, but a militarized police state, is firmly on the left side of the American ideological spectrum and maybe on the left side of the Democratic Party’s, as well..
I love the fact that promising to pay for all new social programs and expansions of the ACA and child care by additional taxes on the rich while cozying up to the nation’s biggest banks to further insulate them from harm is firmly on the left side of the American ideological spectrum and maybe on the left side of the Democratic Party’s, as well..
I’ve got to go back and look at my history books (class being over for the summer), but it seems like the definition of “progressive” has been rewritten. (Particularly since President Obama, I was often told on these pages during the last eight years, was clearly a “centrist” rather than a “progressive,” and Clinton is pretty much running to complete his “third term.”)
You don’t have to move the frame to the right for her to look like a mainstream progressive. The operating word here is mainstream.
It took 30+ years for the Reagan Revolution to get to this current rigged economy and it won’t change overnight, no matter what Bernie tells you. Certainly not with this Congress. A progressive platform that could accomplish this (again, I’m cynical with this Congress):
Starts putting its thumb on the scale for middle and working class people.
This doesn’t look like cozying up to Wall Street to me.
“…on May 27, the President will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site…dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing,”
Is it sad or funny that this will cause wingnuts to spaz out about the President’s continuing “apology tour” ?
I think… sad.
“it won’t change overnight, no matter what Bernie tells you.”
Exactly, but if someone says it long enough and loud enough, people will believe it.
Progressives are the Chicago Cubs of the political world. Part of the problem is the progressive orthodoxy is designed to easily excommunicate and exclude rather than admit and include.
Will we ever have a progressive Chief Executive? History suggests no because with almost absolute certainty the progressive candidate will be excommunicated the moment they dare try to appeal to a broader America. Even liberals are not good enough. Heck, I’ll predict that in less than 10 years time, the progressives will be referring to Obama as center-right and in just a bit more time he will be a Republican lite.
Yep, the Cubs of the political world. The key difference is the Cubs have an affectionate nickname “Loveable Losers.”
@Dave: Given that you’re no progressive and not even a Democrat, why should I give a fuck about what you think? The very fact that you’re for Hillary demonstrates what’s wrong with her. Any candidate you find acceptable is too wedded to the status quo for me.
By the way, the country already had a progressive president. Name was Theodore Roosevelt. You might have heard of him. They carved his face into a mountain in South Dakota.
You lack both courage and vision. You’re trying to sell those bugs as features.
On the plus side, Hillary can now challenge Donald Trump’s decision to not release his tax returns by releasing the speech transcripts and challenging him to come clean as well.
Four years ago everyone was hot to have Mitt Romney release his tax returns because they were sure they would find a smoking gun. Little or nothing in or on his website for positions on financial regulations or tax reform pleased anybody because they didn’t trust him.
This year we are being told to trust Clinton’s website policy proposals and not ask to see the text of the incredibly well-paid speeches she made to banking executives behind closed doors.
Yes, those speeches are in fact strong circumstantial evidence of “cozying up,” as are the donation totals from the banking and finance industries.
“why should I give a fuck about what you think?”
No one said you should.
Teddy a “progressive”??!!
A member of the 1%, Led the Rough Riders in an imperialistic war, threatened coal miners with federal troops….
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
“I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them.”
What in God’s name are you ingesting? I suggest immediate detox.
Teddy Roosevelt would hardly qualify as a Democrat under your progressive standards today!
And yet he went after the trusts. Imagine that!
Check your history book. Roosevelt considered himself a “progressive conservative,” but we today remember him mainly as the father of conservation as a political issue and his war on “malefactors of great wealth” and, yes, a progressive. The term mainly refers to good governance. Your examples of him trashing non-Anglos is of no interest to me, as that has nothing to do with governance.
What I’m ingesting is called “knowledge.” What you’re ingesting is called “fear.”
The point Dave is making, I believe, is that if Teddy were calling himself a progressive because he wanted to bust up the trusts today, we would tell him that he is full of shit.
By your measure, he is progressive in one dimension, and therefore a progressive. WTF?
@Steve: From the few accounts we have of people who attended, she said nothing very interesting, which makes me wonder why they hired her three times, but hey, it’s their money once they’ve stolen it from us.
Trump’s tax returns, on the other hand, would destroy him, because they will show that he’s worth less than $1 billion.
Yeah, I know what point he’s making. If it’s obvious and tedious, it’s a point Dave is making.
Take your identity politics and shove it. I truly don’t care what he thought about Indians and criminals given the primitive genetic science of the time.
not ask to see the text of the incredibly well-paid speeches she made to banking executives behind closed doors.
Your problem here, of course, is that I’m certainly not asking any one to back off of the speeches. I even posted a link to one on You Tube.
es, those speeches are in fact strong circumstantial evidence of “cozying up,” as are the donation totals from the banking and finance industries.
Since you haven’t seen these speeches, you’ve no idea what kind of evidence there might be there. If she is campaigning on reigning in dark money, then that is a thing she can be held accountable for. And addressing the dark money problem is the most hopeful thing in that policy page. Not that there will be much appetite for that in Congress, but still. This is a solidly good government position.
@cassandra – There is Youtube of an unpaid speech Hillary gave to a women’s outreach group at Goldman Sachs. However, the controversial speeches are the PAID speeches Hillary gave to at a closed retreat for Goldman Sachs executives. Hillary’s speaker contract with Goldman Sachs reportedly required that no video or audio was allowed. Please stop claiming you know about a Youtube video of one of these paid speeches.
And YOU can stop claiming that these speeches are controversial until you actually see a transcript from one. Because until you do, the only thing that can be contrived as a controversy is whether or not she releases them. Which, of course, is a demand of no other candidate.
When I pay someone to give a speech (something I do on a regular basis), it’s really not for the actual speech. It’s really for the numerous after-speech discussions that go on all day, and often into the evening (usually at an upscale restaurant). The speech is what we put on the paperwork to justify the expense, but the real action of value usually comes later.
It should be blatantly obvious that Hillary said nothing of note during her speeches. And that the real reason for her fee was for the discussions both before and after the worthless marquee event. And you’re not going learn about that from getting your hands on any silly transcript or video.
And she may be legally bound to not talk about her speech. For that kind of money, I’d expect there to be an enforceable NDA. Back in the day when I gave “industrial” speeches, I always signed NDAs, in case I learned something (which I always did)…
Well I’m glad that’s put to bed.
“When I pay someone to give a speech (something I do on a regular basis)”
This certainly explains your strong love of the status quo.
@a “This certainly explains your strong love of the status quo.”
When did I ever claim that??? That’s certainly not true. I’m constantly rocking the boat affecting change where I can…
Don’t confuse competence with status quo…
If you’re pro-Hillary, you’re for the status quo. “Effecting” change is what you mean, and I doubt you effect as much of it as you think you do. Except for the people you’re overpaying for speeches.
Competence? Says who?