Tuesday Open Thread [12.1.15]

E.J. Dionne, Jr. observes, “One of the tasks of political analysis is to make sense of conflicting information, and a new book by Stanley Greenberg, who was a political scientist before he became a Democratic pollster, does not shy away from the messiness of our social and electoral landscape. My Dickensian “best of times, worst of times” analysis is drawn partly from Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant.” In it Greenberg sees Republicans in a long-term demographic “death spiral.” But the book is also unsparing in acknowledging that Democratic weaknesses among older white and rural voters leave the GOP “almost unopposed in nearly half of the states.””

At Daily Kos Steve Singiser considers an interesting question:, “Another barrier to Democratic down-ballot majorities: Are Democratic voters more ‘bipartisan’?” and notes, “there is more to the gradual decline of Democratic support at the state legislative level than mere gerrymandering. This week, we explore the possibility that Democrats are hamstrung, even if slightly, by a tendency of their “soft” supporters being more willing to reach across the aisle and support legislative Republicans than the converse. Indeed, we have heard much about asymmetric polarization. The decline in split-ticket voting (which has been well documented), it appears, may be happening asymmetrically, as well.” Singer and Kos crunched relevant data and found that only 13.4 percent of state legislative seats are in ‘split ticket’ legislative districts, with 62 percent held by Republican officeholders occupying seats carried by President Obama in 2012. Only 38 percent were Democratic officeholders in districts carried by Romney in 2012.

Poor Scott Walker. From Gawker:

The decline and fall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, at a Christmas tree lighting, in Madison, on Sunday: “After the tree lit up, he suddenly fell. The crowd hushed. He’s been ‘nipping at the eggnog a little bit, feeling festive,’ Tourism Secretary Stephanie Klett joked.”

Michelle Goldberg at Slate:

Naturally, abortion opponents will argue that it is unfair to hold them responsible for what crazy people do on behalf of their ideology. Liberals, after all, vehemently oppose blaming all Muslims for Islamist terror. We’re horrified when conservatives such as Cruz link the Black Lives Matter movement to the murder of police. Dear’s killing spree does not invalidate criticism of Planned Parenthood. (Though I’d argue that most of the criticism is invalid for other reasons.) But it defies common sense to insist that there is no connection between political rhetoric and political violence—to insist, essentially, that there is no such thing as incitement—particularly when there is a history of anti-abortion murder that goes back more than 20 years.

President Barack Obama before 150 world leaders at the COP21 Paris climate conference: “I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”

Ed Kilgore says conservatives cannot claim innocence or deny a link between their rhetoric and the conservative terrorist attack in Colorado.

[V]irtually every Republican presidential candidate has supported the mendacious campaign to accuse Planned Parenthood of “barbaric” practices involving illegal late-term abortions and “baby part sales.”

But there’s a second element of contemporary extremist rhetoric from conservatives that brings them much closer to incitement of violence: the claim that the Second Amendment encompasses a right to revolution against “tyrannical” government. Again, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz have embraced this idea most avidly. Here’s Cruz:

The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t just for protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against government tyranny—for the protection of liberty.

Ben Carson notoriously went so far as to suggest that had European Jewry possessed the gun rights Americans now claim, the Holocaust might have been significantly mitigated.

It’s not difficult to see how toxic these arguments become when combined. If legalized abortion (and its alleged extension into open infanticide via the “barbaric” practices of government-subsidized Planned Parenthood “baby-killers”) represents government-sponsored mass extermination and/or a perversion of the Constitution comparable to slavery, and there is a fundamental right to violent resistance against this and other acts of tyranny, then it could definitely cross the minds of conscientious gun-owning anti-choicers to emulate John Brown or the conspirators against Hitler. After all, the two greatest wars in American history were undertaken to destroy the Slave Power and Nazism. Why not a small individual war against their contemporary equivalent?

Gov. John Kasich took Donald Trump “to task again in a new advertisement that paints the billionaire businessman as too heartless for the presidency and highlights his recent mocking of a disabled reporter,” the New York Times reports.

Donald Trump “met privately on Monday with black pastors and religious figures at Trump Tower in Manhattan, trying to confront skepticism about his candidacy and project sensitivity about minority concerns,” the New York Times reports. Said Trump: “There was great love in the room.”

Politico: “Instead of endorsements, many black pastors issued Donald Trump demands for an apology for his treatment of racial minorities at a closed-door meeting at Trump Tower in New York on Monday.”

So demands for apologies equals great love. Personally, I believe these pastors and religious figures were fools to meet with him in the first place. You meet with Trump, you validate Trump, no matter what you say to Trump, because Trump will say you love him. And that is all the media hears.

Gov. Chris Christie rebuked a claim by Donald Trump that “thousands” of Muslims held “tailgate parties” in northern New Jersey on September 11th, NBC News reports.

Said Christie: “It didn’t happen, and the fact is people can say anything but the facts are the facts, that did not happen in New Jersey that day and it hasn’t happened since.”