Monday Open Thread [5.23.16]
Washington Post: “Looking at quarterly averages of Obama’s approval, you can see how stark the improvement has been by party. Democrats have slowly looked at Obama more favorably since the beginning of 2015, but independents have begun to look at Obama much more favorably. After a sharp slide following his reelection, independents turned their opinions of Obama around at the beginning of 2014. Over the past year, that’s escalated. And since ratings from Democrats and Republicans are more stable, that shift by independents moves the needle a lot.”
Dan Balz: “His political instincts are as rash as hers are cautious. Her policy proposals are as detailed and numerous as his are broad and few in numbers. Her public appearances are controlled and careful. His are the political equivalent of The Truman Show. She says he is unqualified to be president. He says she is unfit to serve.”
“There are certainly ideological differences between the two. But this is not an election that presents voters with the kind of choice they had in 2012. President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had sharply different views about social and cultural issues, the size and scope of government, the best ways to create jobs and projecting U.S. power abroad.”
BuzzFeed on what’s next for Bernie: “Over the last month, Sanders backers have started jockeying for a say in, and piece of, the assets, influence, and energy that has driven the Vermont senator’s rise. A former Sanders adviser, Zack Exley, has co-founded an effort aimed at to coordinating a nationwide slate of progressive House and Senate candidates. A volunteer and longtime organizer, Patrick DeTemple, has circulated a draft proposal urging the candidate to drop out after the June 7 contests and transfer his movement to a new entity. And overlapping groups of current and former aides are discussing who will retain Sanders’ massive email list, the campaign’s most precious asset, and for what kind of project.”
“For all the talk of the future, however, the Sanders legacy remains uncertain, even amid the chaos on display in Nevada last weekend. Those closest to Sanders insist that the senator himself remains focused on the final contests. The question of what’s next, they say, should and will be his alone to answer, how and when he wants to answer it.”
“Bill Clinton’s schedule many days is more packed than Hillary’s, though by design it rarely registers on the national radar,” the Washington Post reports.
“This is the invisi-Bill campaign. The former president who flickers occasionally on cable news channels remains a big draw on the off-Broadway circuit of presidential politics. It is a low-altitude tactical deployment that leaves a light footprint, aiming to maximize his value as a political asset without stirring the negatives that also trail him.”
“His new duties have not come without stumbles, and they conjure the implications of a Clinton restoration. Presidential spouses are expected to exert their influence over china patterns, not China policy. No one, however, is under the illusion that Bill Clinton would remain cloistered in the East Wing. Still open to question is whether voters will welcome his return or worry about it.”
Wall Street Journal: “Ohio, a state that has backed every presidential winner since 1964, presents both Mr. Trump’s best opportunity to carry a big swing state and reveals his team’s steep logistical challenges.”
“After winning the GOP nomination on a tight budget with a skeletal staff, Mr. Trump doesn’t have any general-election staff in the state, and senior aides in New York and Washington haven’t made contact with the state Republican Party. Efforts to recruit the state’s experienced operatives who helped elect Gov. John Kasich have so far been unsuccessful, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Mrs. Clinton has a small team of full-time aides in Ohio, where they are working to rebuild the organization that twice carried the state for President Barack Obama.”
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times says Obama’s pivot to Asia is working:
When President Obama declared in 2011 that he wanted U.S. foreign policy to pivot to Asia, some derided the move as a clumsy attempt to flee the messy conflicts of the Middle East.
But the pivot has actually worked pretty well – as will be evident when Obama travels to Asia this week. Almost every country in the region is clamoring for a closer relationship with the United States.
The most striking case is Vietnam, most of whose leaders are old enough to have fought in their country’s war with the United States. The communist regime has been openly courting a deeper military relationship, and has even invited the U.S. Navy to return to Cam Ranh Bay, its base during much of the war. During his visit, Obama is expected to announce an expansion of American military sales.
Jeet Heer at The New Republic says the race war version of The Apprentice is a disturbing glimpse into Trump’s mind:
Andrew Kaczynski has posted a remarkable audio of a 2005 appearance by Trump on “The Howard Stern Show” in which the presumptive Republican nominee talked about his unsuccessful push for a version of the reality show where the teams would be divided along racial lines. NBC nixed the idea but Trump was still keen on it, despite Stern’s skeptical questioning. “Wouldn’t that set off a racial war?” Stern asked.
Trump had put much thought into his idea. He wanted the white team to be all blonde but the black team to be an “assortment” of blacks of differing skin colors. Racial consciousness and competition is clearly never far from his mind. Although Trump flip-flops on many issues, there are three he’s been consistent on all his life: supporting mercantilist trade wars, upholding gender hierarchy, and racism. If he’s elected, these ideas will play out on a stage far greater than a reality show.
David Atkins at The Washington Monthly says Get Ready for a Long, Very Ugly Election Won on the Ground:
… the way both sides will try to win is not to convince the disaffected that their candidate will affect dramatic positive changes (though Trump may have some disaffected voters with whom he can make that argument; Clinton’s chance of persuading her own version of the same is somewhat less due to her intentionally incrementalist message), but to scare them into believe that the other candidate will make dramatic negative changes.
In other words, Trump will try to convince apathetic conservative that Clinton will turn America into a gun-free Venezuelan socialist despotism, while Clinton will try to convince apathetic liberals that Trump will turn America into an unstable, trigger-happy fascist dictatorship. Clinton will use Trump’s lascivious past against him, even as Trump brings up decades of unsavory personal Clinton associations. It’s going to a very nasty affair. The one big advantage Democrats will have is a probable surge in the Latino vote out of genuine self-preservation.
In the meantime, the election will actually be won not in the air, but on the ground. The ugliness on the air will depress turnout even further, which will require campaign organizers to depend on millions of face-to-face conversations with voters on the fence about whether to vote at all.
All of which is to say this: as we approach the general election, those who want to help their candidate win in November should probably spend a lot less time arguing with other people in online forums or obsessing over television ads, and a lot more time making calls and knocking on doors. That’s where this very ugly game is going to be won and lost.
Jonathan Chait on Why Democrats Have Popular Presidents and Republicans Don’t:
As the matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton takes shape, it has begun to dawn on some conservatives that the Republican Party faces a distinct handicap: The Democrats will have two popular ex-presidents to campaign for them, and the GOP will have none. Bill Clinton is the party’s most effective surrogate for wife Hillary, writes Byron York in the conservative Washington Examiner: “Republicans haven’t had the same luck. The only two-term GOP president in the last generation, George W. Bush, has stayed mostly out of politics in the seven years since he left the White House.” Meanwhile, writing for The Wall Street Journal opinion page, Richard Benedetto grapples with President Obama’s value as a surrogate. “When Mr. Obama ran for office in 2008, a central part of his campaign strategy was to heap blame on George W. Bush,” writes Benedetto. “How has Mr. Obama dodged similar treatment?”
How indeed? The answer, I’d suggest, is something along the lines of by governing competently rather than presiding over a flaming wreck of a presidency. But this answer presumes a level of introspection into the success of the last two Democratic presidents, and the conspicuous failure of the one wedged between them, that is absent from both columns, and from conservative thought in general.
Ed Kilgore says soon it will suck to be Donald Trump:
Throughout the pre-primary and primary phases of the GOP presidential-nominating process, Trump had a bunch of advantages he will soon lose. He was a novice pol who was regularly defying expectations amidst almost universal predictions of failure. He was the dominant media object in a very crowded field of opponents. He had the strategic flexibility associated with doing relatively well in every region of the country and among every major category of Republican voter. He was independent of any sizable bloc of endorsers, donors, or surrogates, operating from his own tight-knit personal army. He was functioning within a Republican Party dominated by the older white voters that were his principal base, and where the minority voters he so deeply offends were rare and insignificant presences.
Now he is about to become the Titular Head of the Republican Party, with presumed responsibility for a big, divided and (at the moment) fearful coalition of down-ballot candidates and allied constituency and interest groups. Even if he minimizes the value of party support, he’ll have to deal with constant advice and admonitions from party officials, many of whom not-so-secretly would prefer that he lose and leave them to inherit the GOP. He’s already beginning to hustle money to finance his campaign.
Given the binary nature of general elections, he can no longer count on the kind of huge margins in media coverage he enjoyed when it was 16 Lilliputians trying to overcome the orange-haired Gulliver. For that matter, in Hillary Clinton he will finally face an opponent as well known as he is. He will not be able to run a national campaign that divides and conquers a scattered and regionally dependent opposition. He’ll be fighting Clinton one-on-one in the same fixed set of battlefield states. Instead of dealing with an electorate where he can find support all across demographic groups, Trump will be beginning in a deep, deep hole with African-Americans, Latinos, and professional women, with sure support only from groups like non-college-educated conservative white men, which any Republican can and must carry by huge margins.
At key moments in the campaign like the debates, Trump will no longer be addressing an audience that inherently hates “political correctness” and thus has a high tolerance for borderline racist and sexist rhetoric and insult-comedy. And Clinton and her allies will be able deploy their massive oppo-research files on Trump in a consistent, relentless manner very much unlike the occasional, clumsy, and halfhearted Trump-bashing undertaken by his primary opponents and the mainstream media. After all, it’s not like Democrats need to treat him with kid gloves because they’ll need to appeal to his core supporters down the road.
Sen. Bernie Sanders was given unprecedented say over the Democratic Party platform very late Monday night in a move party leaders hope will soothe a bitter split with backers of the longshot challenger to Hillary Clinton…
Clinton has picked six members of the 15-member committee that writes the platform, and Sanders has named five.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DNC, will name four.
Sanders named Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, among his most prominent elected backers, author and environmental activist Bill McKibben, Native American activist Deborah Parker, author and racial justice activist Cornel West, and James Zogby, a longtime activist for Palestinian rights as well as a DNC member and official.
The Clinton campaign’s choices are Wendy Sherman, a former top State Department official and Clinton surrogate; Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a longtime Clinton confidante; Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois; Carol Browner, a former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Ohio state Rep. Alicia Reece; and Paul Booth of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.
Wasserman Schultz also named former congressman Howard Berman of California; Rep. Barbara Lee of California; and executive Bonnie Schaefer, and the chair, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland,
DNC rules allow the chairman to pick the entire slate of 15 people who govern the platform that will be presented at the party convention in July. Past chairmen have done just that, in consultation with the White House or the winning Democratic candidate.
The change was made to be inclusive of Sanders supporters after the strong liberal challenge he mounted.
The platform is nonbinding, however, and presidents have ignored parts of it in the past.
@k “…presidents have ignored parts of it in the past.”
Parts? More like they stuck it in a drawer and totally ignored it in full.
If that’s all it takes to appease Sanders, then this whole fight was basically nuts. This is nothing more than a fig leaf to allows him to save face and cover his shame of bad behavior.
I had hoped that there was more substance to Sanders, and that it really wasn’t just about him…
The platform is and has been for many years a vestigial organ of the party. Considering that the purpose of the platform is to appeal to the general public, it makes sense that it is an anachronism. After all, in this period, the party must appeal to the vast and growing independent segment which actually controls the outcome of national elections.
Considering the independent demographic is not monolithic, running on a progressive (in this case) platform does not contribute to the candidate’s chance of success because most of the independents are relatively moderate.
So yeah, enshrine the platform and then put it in the back of the closet and pull it out and dust it off on holidays and other important occasions. Of course it does serve one useful purpose, in that it can be used as a consolation prize for the candidate that did not win the nomination.
It’s sort of a Catch-22. You can’t win with a platform that appeals only to a narrow slice of voters and you can’t execute the platform if you don’t win. Thus, strategically, the platform is all but ignored. Although, ignored is probably the wrong word because the President tries to adhere to the principles contained in the platforms but reality always seems to intrude upon those good intentions.
For those who want to delve further into the topic, here are the party platforms from the American Presidency Project since 1840 (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php). You can judge for yourselves how well the party adhered to their platforms.
Independent since 1972 .. yes, we are “not monolithic” .. Anyone have stats that we are mostly conservative? I have been an antiestablishment , socialistic, progressive my entire civic life, when unafilliated independents were only 2-3% of the voting public in this country. Now we are 42-45%.
Because party politics does not represent us .. Democratic platform unbinding, indeed! That is what is wrong to those of us who vote on the issues ..(and the dirty back room machinations to win at any cost that both parties and mass media are guilty of)
One political pundit’s opinion that Sanders is being appeased by the allowance of choosing a few people on one of the DNC’s committees .. I have heard nothing of the sort from him or his campaign .. and most everyone that I know is Bernie or Bust and will never vote for Clinton. We do not care to be gathered into your corruption, and do not care if Trump and the Republicans win the White House .. at least they are upfront about their dirty politics .. unlike Clinton and the Democrats.
Oh my. That should end well.
“We do not care to be gathered into your corruption, and do not care if Trump and the Republicans win the White House ..”
Then whatever happens is on you. If This country engages in religious persecution… it will be because of YOUR willingness to let bad things happen to other people. I dont like Clinton either, but I’ll be damned if I let fellow humans face the kind of danger that my ancestors faced in Germany. What a blind, privileged statement that is.
“Anyone have stats that we are mostly conservative?”
Not for the that specific question. However, the data does show that 20% of the independents consider themselves liberal, 35% consider themselves conservative, and 40% consider themselves moderate. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx) So as a progressive independent, you only represent 20% of the 42-45% of the independent voters.
Further, liberals trail conservatives overall (http://www.gallup.com/poll/180452/liberals-record-trail-conservatives.aspx), and really if you “do not care if Trump and the Republicans win the White House ” then perhaps you should consider staying home this election and maybe every election.
Platforms feed the base but the simple fact of life of is that both parties need the moderate vote to win and so the candidates steer courses to the center, unless they are assuming the guise of Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Kate – I fully understand your disgust. I share it. What can you do with disgust through? You can turn it into something positive, or something negative. I don’t see how sitting out elections applies any positive pressure.
“20% of the independents consider themselves liberal, 35% consider themselves conservative, and 40% consider themselves moderate. ”
“Moderate” is another word for “Republican.”
Yeah… no, it’s not. How many bridges do we plan on burning? Just curious.
Being “Independent” is a charade. The liberal 20% always* vote for the Dem, conservative 35% always* vote for the Republican, and the “moderate” 40% always* vote for whoever appears to have the winning momentum.
* By always I mean statistically reliable.
Being “Independent” is a charade.
No, it’s not. It’s actually about being thoughtful and not beholden to any party.
I’ve been eligible to vote and have voted since the late ’80s. I have never voted for a Biden. Ever. I’ll write my own name in before I vote for one of those corrupt grifters.
Also never voted for a Bush or a Gore.
I am guilty of voting for a serial adulterer/alleged rapist more than once. His wife is currently running for President. She famously said “if you elect him, you get me.” Does that mean if we elect HER, we get him?
“If that’s all it takes to appease Sanders, then this whole fight was basically nuts.”
The platform committee concessions were a welcome sign of good faith from DNC, or rather an admission that ~40% of Democrats prefer Bernie. It’s a good start.
“How many bridges do we plan on burning? Just curious.”
As many as necessary. And no you’re not.
Actually, I am curious. How many people will we be getting rid of in this purity test? I wrote about Tea Party purity tests (and how it’s an elimination game with only one person left standing) years ago. How’d that work out?
It’s amazing how quickly we’re kicking people out and calling names rather than having a discussion. Some moderates are “Republican” (lean right) and some are “Democrats” (lean left); to toss them into the same pot and label all of them as the enemy isn’t productive. Persuasion is a big part of politics – make your case and convince people to see your point of view. If you can’t do that you won’t win elections – If you can’t do that don’t be surprised when people throw up their hands and walk away.
There’s been endless (and I mean endless) talk about how it’s Hillary’s (and her supporters) job to woo Bernie’s supporters. There’s a lot of truth in that statement, but here’s where I’m at: I’m about over it. Don’t vote for Hillary. Everyone is an adult. I don’t have the energy to deal with the constant stream of nonsense of who’s a liberal/progressive/a “real” Democrat – which sounds an awful lot like Palin’s “real” American.
“I wrote about Tea Party purity tests (and how it’s an elimination game with only one person left standing) years ago. How’d that work out?”
Did you write about how the Tea Party kicked Democrat butts and took over control of the House and increases their control over statehouses? The Tea Party holds lessons for Democrats, including how to avoid overreaching.
I would never lecture someone about being a real Democrat. That party is an imperfect vehicle for liberal policies. So was the Republican Party back when it had a liberal wing.
The problem with too many people on this blog is that they see “Democrat” as a synonym for “liberal.”
@a “”The problem with too many people on this blog is that they see “Democrat” as a synonym for “liberal.”
Sounds like BS. There is no one here like that.
I’d say that a bigger problem is that there are too many people here who equate fighting against the Democratic Party to promoting liberal causes.
You don’t know what a liberal cause is. You think it has something to do with identity politics.
Politicians like Hillary and DWS are not the keepers of the “liberal cause.” The conscience of the Democratic Party is currently best represented by Bernie and Elizabeth Warren.
I’m a hard left liberal and I would vote for the Green Party every time if I thought it would help them or accomplish something.
I vote Green for presidential elections, and it accomplishes no more nor less than voting for one of the major party candidates. The most diluted vote an American can cast is for President.
Collectively treating people as a statistic dehumanizes them, turning them into a stereotype. Sure there are uses for labeling people, especially in a campaign where targeting is essential. But when the outcome of labeling becomes a purity test for who is or is not one thing or another or who can or cannot belong, it sure seems like something that is antithetical to liberal and Democratic Party principles.
There isn’t any difference between “You’re not a real conservative” and “You’re not a real liberal.” It is exclusionary. One does not and cannot belong unless they are in full compliance to a canon for which there are so many definitions that any individual can be denied membership based on someone’s definition.
Someone said at DL once said to me that labels are useful. I accept that, but at the same time, labels are harmful when used as cudgel, especially when you use them against each other, who supposedly are on the same side. Really this should demonstrate the dangers of orthodoxy on society, or at least on the body politic of Democrats.
@Dave: Yawn. So what about when people who pretend to belong to your tribe join in and take it over? Should we not label them but pretend that they are on our side?
Hillary is not on my side. DWS not only is not on my side, she is incompetent, but one person here defends her because Bernie is attacking her.
This isn’t liberalism. This is identity politics.
Just as an aside, it’s usually a bad idea for outsiders to insinuate themselves into a family fight. We’re fighting about the future of liberalism in the American political system. As I understand it, you do not care about that. You just want Trump defeated.
“The problem with too many people on this blog is that they see “Democrat” as a synonym for “liberal.”
I agree. The Democratic Party has a pretty big tent. Some are pretty liberal, some are pretty conservative. Even so, I believe they all generally hold a common set of principles.
“Even so, I believe they all generally hold a common set of principles.”
No, they don’t, and never have. The Democratic Party has never been unified by any set of ideas other than the acquisition of power (neither has the Republican Party).
The entire “big tent” idea coalesced in the days when the party gathered together organized labor and ethnics in the North with diehard racists in the South. The ethnics (“Reagan Democrats”) and racists have joined the GOP, but they’ve been replaced by the managerial class that used to represent the liberal wing of the Republican Party. The current coalitions might seem more unified because there are no liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats anymore, but both parties are, and always will be, coalitions of convenience.
At any rate, what I”m talking about are the not-infrequent calls for “party unity” behind Hillary Clinton. That’s about party, not about issues.
“Just as an aside, it’s usually a bad idea for outsiders to insinuate themselves into a family fight. We’re fighting about the future of liberalism in the American political system.”
You might be fighting about the future of your liberalism, which is evident when you referred to “your side.” But the fact is you have decided “your side” is the right side, which other liberals might take exception to (at least I hope they would because otherwise it makes you the arbiter of what “liberalism” is and my point is that it ain’t just one thing).
However, since you’re telling me to butt out of the family fight (does one have to be a registered Democrat to be “family”? who else should be excluded on that basis? and how very exclusionary of you), I’ll go do something else.
” it’s usually a bad idea for outsiders to insinuate themselves into a family fight.”
This from someone kicking family members out of the family. 🙂
Families have unconditional love, which is not an appropriate analogy for politics. A better analogy is football or basketball. You pick which side you are on, you advance the ball toward the other team’s goal, and you block them from advancing toward your own goal. If one of your players keeps passing the ball to the other side, she gets cut from the team. If a player wants to argue about which basket they should be shooting at – cut ’em.