Thursday Open Thread [5.26.2016]

Trump is underperforming among the Rust Belt voters he's supposed to be awesomely owning, new poll finds: https://t.co/3lwIFKTWUv

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 26, 2016

Nancy LeTourneau on the most important legacy of Barack and Michelle Obama:

Barack and Michelle Obama entered the White House not only with an awareness about what was coming, but also an understanding that they would face this kind of onslaught as the first African Americans to live there. There have been times that I’ve tried to imagine the weight they willingly took on their shoulders to avoid those kinds of entanglements – knowing what the slightest human imperfection would trigger.

It’s not that Republicans haven’t tried. We’ve seen attempts to blow up everything from a gun-running sting gone bad, mistreated veterans, the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange, Secret Service debauchery, the IRS targeting, Hillary Clinton’s email server and Benghazi. That doesn’t even count all the times we’ve been subjected to complaints about teleprompters, the President’s golf game, family vacations, and the color of the suit the President wore for a press conference (to name just a few). But other than in the minds of the conspiracy-obsessed, nothing stuck.

As we approach the 2016 election and the end of this President’s second term, we’ll continue to see attempts to summarize his legacy of accomplishments. This one should be at the top of any list. That is partly because an attempt to de-legitimize him via scandal has failed. It is also why he will be positioned to be an asset to Hillary Clinton. But in ways that are probably not yet imagined, Barack and Michelle Obama have paved the way for countless young African Americans to be proud, and aspire to follow in their footsteps.

Obama says world leaders are 'rattled' by Donald Trump and have good reason to feel that way, @nbenac reports. https://t.co/BEsomyc75Z

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 26, 2016

Ed Kilgore says being Obama’s third term is now an asset for Hillary Clinton:

The general-election risk of Clinton being perceived as running for “Barack Obama’s third term” rose when she suddenly faced a serious challenge from Bernie Sanders and chose to associate herself closely with the incumbent strictly because it made sense in the dynamics of Democratic primaries where constituencies (e.g., African-Americans) particularly fond of Obama became critical to her ability to win. Much as she’d need to “pivot to the center” after Sanders generated left-bent pressure during the nomination contest, would she also need to pivot away from the controversial incumbent and once again become her “own woman”?

It’s now beginning to appear, however, that such fears were misplaced. Barack Obama’s steadily improving job-approval ratings as he approaches the end of his presidency are suddenly looking less like an albatross for Clinton and more like the wind beneath her wings. It’s been a gradual rise; last year, his average job-approval number in weekly tracking from Gallup was 46 percent. This last week, it was up to 51 percent — precisely where it was the week he was reelected in 2012.

Moreover, Obama’s particular areas of political strength are well synchronized with constituencies Clinton should and must be able to attract and energize in a general-election contest with Donald Trump.According to NBC, Obama’s job-approval ratings among Sanders’s primary voters is 82 percent; it’s 64 percent among those ages 18-34, and 73 percent among Latinos, a group that has, on occasion, felt tepid toward him. Add in his 90 percent approval rating from African-Americans, and it’s obvious the so-called Obama Coalition is alive and well. So now, instead of pivoting away from Obama after she’s won the nomination, Clinton can continue her close association with the incumbent as an asset in the general elections, as well as the primaries.

If Obama’s job-approval ratings continue to rise, it could be Republicans and Donald Trump who have an incumbency problem given their relentless and redundant attacks on Obama.

FiveThirtyEight: “Gary Johnson might be on the verge of becoming a household name. At the moment, he’s probably most often confused with that plumber who fixed your running toilet last month or your spouse’s weird friend from work who keeps calling the landline, but he’s neither — he’s the former governor of New Mexico, likely Libertarian candidate for president, and he’s polling at 10 percent in two recently released national polls against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”

“Given that Trump and Clinton are sporting historically high negative ratings, Johnson’s polling makes a fair bit of sense; Gary Johnson is neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton. He might not win a state, but he could make some noise.”

Jeet Heer says Bernie might be helping, not hurting, Hillary right now:

While campaigning in California over the last few days, Sanders made a significant shift in his stump speech, erasing his standard critique of Clinton and focusing almost exclusively on criticizing Trump. Significantly, former Sanders advisers such as Zack Exley have drafted a document outlining the case for conceding to Clinton and securing Sanders’s political revolution in the party by working for progressive down-ballot candidates.

The strategy outlined by his former staffers would involve Sanders’s giving up his outsider status and becoming a full-blown Democratic kingmaker. As Clinton supporters like to point out, Sanders has long self-identified as an independent and only started declaring himself a Democrat when he decided to run for the nomination. Yet if he is to have a lasting legacy, it’ll be as someone who remade the party he spent most of his life keeping at arm’s length. By running an unexpectedly strong campaign, Sanders has become a Democratic wheeler-dealer, a bigwig in the party whose establishment he loves to rail against. It’s this paradoxical situation that will dictate the closure of his campaign: He’s preparing to support Clinton, but only at the price that the party gives him and his followers a seat at the table.

There’s evidence that this strategy is already paying off. The Democratic National Committee has already conceded that Sanders will have a stronger say in party platform than most losing candidates do: He was given the power to pick five of the 15 members of the committee that will write the party platform; his choices are notably left-of-center, including philosopher Cornell West and Congressman Keith Ellison. (Clinton gets six members, and the remaining four will be picked by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose is facing a primary challenge in her home district by Sanders-backed Tim Canova.) With his committee picks, Sanders is hoping to push the party to adopt some of his signature policies.

Ezra Klein says the internals of the polls showing Trump ahead are actually terrible for him:

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll sure looks like a nightmare for Donald Trump.

• 57 percent of voters have an unfavorable impression of Trump
• 56 percent of voters think Trump is unqualified for the presidency
• A plurality of voters (44-39) think Clinton better understands “the problems of people like you”
• A plurality of voters (44-40) say Clinton better represents their personal values
• A majority of voters (59-33) think Clinton has a better personality and temperament to serve as president
• A majority of voters (57-34) think Clinton has more realistic policy proposals
• A majority of voters (50-36) trust Clinton more to look out for the middle class
• A plurality of voters (48-47) prefer a candidate with political experience to an outsider
• A majority of voters (64-25) think Trump would do more to advance the interests of the wealthy than Clinton would
• A plurality of Republican-leaning voters don’t think Trump represents the values of their party
All in all, a disastrous poll for Donald Trump. Except for one thing: Among registered voters, he leads 46-44. (He trails by 6 among all adults.)

So the question arises: What the hell is going on here? How can the candidate that most voters consider an unqualified champion of the plutocratic class be leading in the polls? One answer, of course, is that this is just one poll. But the broader trend of Trump tightening against Clinton — even as his own numbers are terrible — is visible across many polls.

A second reason is Sanders voters angry that Sanders did not win the nomination right now. They are telling pollsters that they are either staying home or voting Trump. They will be back in Clinton’s column soon enough.

Proof?

First Read: “While Democrats are backing Clinton by an 83%-to-9% clip in the poll, just 66% of Democratic primary voters preferring Sanders support Clinton in a matchup against Trump (compared with 88% of Clinton primary voters who favor Sanders in a hypothetical general-election contest).” “What’s more, Clinton’s fav/unfav rating among Democratic voters supporting Sanders is 38% positive, 41% negative (-3); Sanders’ rating among Clinton supporters is 54% positive, 23% negative (+31).”

“So this is Clinton’s challenge: Can she win over Sanders’ supporters in what has become an increasingly asymmetric Democratic contest — with Clinton supporters liking Sanders, but with Sanders supporters disliking Clinton? It could be the difference between Democrats holding the advantage in November, or an incredibly close general-election contest.”

There are a couple of interesting items out of a PPP North Carolina poll this week, and neither are good news for the GOP.

PPP’s newest North Carolina poll continues to find that HB2 is very unpopular, and voters want to see it repealed.

Only 35% of voters in the state support the bill, to 44% who are opposed to it. We continue to find that there are a lot more Republicans (28%) who are opposed to it than there are Democrats (16%) in support of it. 50% of voters in the state would like to see it repealed, compared to only 38% who think it should stay on the books. That includes a 46/39 spread among independents in favor of repealing it.

The reason for voters wanting HB2 repealed are pretty straightforward- they think it’s hurting the state both economically and in terms of its national reputation.

Newt Gingrich “has, in effect, launched his own campaign” to become Donald Trump’s running mate, National Review reports. Said Trump super PAC operative Ed Rollins: “I think Newt is lobbying to be the vice president, and I think their people are paying a lot of attention to him.” He added: “It’d be a ticket with six former wives, kind of like a Henry VIII thing. They certainly understand women.”

I pray it happens, but if you campaign openly for the job, you never get it. Then again, this is Trump here. He likes being inflating his ego and groveling before him.

Josh Marshall:

As I’ve noted in other contexts, everything that isn’t about unifying the party to defeat Donald Trump is a distraction and one Democrats cannot afford. If tossing Wasserman Schultz would allow Sanders backers to feel their grievances were heard or addressed, great. Do it. […]

The relevant point it’s not about being right. It’s not about anyone’s feelings. Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee. She won fair and square. The only relevant issue is putting her in the oval office rather than Donald Trump. Anything that gets in the way of that goal is a disaster for the Democrats. If there’s some background negotiation to replace Wasserman Schultz as part of reuniting the party, making Sanders supporters feel their grievances were heard, putting a new person in charge that both sides have confidence in, nothing should stand in the way of that.

Alan Abramowitz: “Perhaps the key lesson that we can learn from the results of the 2008 battle between Clinton and Obama is that Sanders supporters probably do not have to love Clinton in order to vote for her in the general election. They merely have to like her as well or better than Trump, and that should be a very easy bar to clear.”

“Trump has far less appeal to Democratic voters in 2016 than McCain had in 2008. According to the 2008 ANES data, McCain was viewed favorably by 23% of all Democratic identifiers and leaners and unfavorably by 58%. In contrast, according to four recent national polls… Donald Trump is viewed favorably by only 5% to 12% of Democratic voters and unfavorably by 82% to 89%. And while these polls did not provide data on Trump favorability among Clinton and Sanders supporters, it seems unlikely that he is viewed more favorably by Sanders voters, who tend to be, if anything, further to the left and more suspicious of billionaires than Clinton supporters.”