Wednesday Open Thread [2.10.16]

Obviously, Sanders absolutely crushed Clinton last night, getting a 20 point victory and necessary momentum. No way to spin this for Clinton, it was a loss, and a challenge. At the same, Sanderistas shouldn’t get too excited, just as Clintonistas shouldn’t get too depressed. What is next is a long primary, one that I expect Clinton to win. Bernie Sanders absolutely had to have this win, and he had to win it by the margins he did to have any chance going forward (because if he had won only in the single digits, that would have been spun as a Clinton victory). So Sanders gets his day in the sun and he should enjoy it. For a couple hours. Because then it is onto South Carolina and Nevada and then all the states in Super Tuesday. So he has a lot of work to do.

And you can take it or leave it from me, but he is still behind the eight ball. If you include the superdelegates, who can of course change their commitments at any time, Clinton is now ahead with a 394-42 delegate lead. But unlike in 2008, when superdelegates did change their mind and go with Obama, do you think that would happen in 2016? Nope, not in a million years. Not unless Hillary dies or drops out. Sanders is not Obama. He does not have a shot in the general election like Obama did. He is not even a Democrat, and does not support Democratic candidates. That’s important to superdelegates. So there is no way they will abandon Hillary to go with Sanders. To beat them, he will have to sweep the primaries coming up.

And that may prove to be a tough task. The last poll out of South Carolina had Clinton up 64-27, and in Nevada, Clinton was up 50-27. So Bernie has a long way to go. But still, good win.

Ed Kilgore says that Bernie won every demographic in New Hampshire, and thus the pressure is on Hillary:

Clinton is the one facing the pressure, though. She’s gone from being the “inevitable” nominee to having to make excuses for a win in Iowa so narrow as to be meaningless, and then a pretty bad loss in the state that saved her bacon in 2008. Even before she reaches what should be the safe haven of South Carolina, she needs to show that her organization can win another caucus state in Nevada. And like Barack Obama facing a stubborn Clinton campaign eight years ago, each week will bring her an opportunity to regain an unstoppable lead — or to face another agonizing challenge in another state from an energized opponent.

Matt Yglesias says Bernie Sanders is the future of the Democratic Party, so that is a victory in and of itself, even if he doesn’t win the nomination.

Any young and ambitious Democrat looking at the demographics of the party and the demographics of Sanders supporters has to conclude that his brand of politics is extremely promising for the future. There are racial and demographic gaps between Clinton and Sanders supporters, but the overwhelming reality is that for all groups, the young people are feeling the Bern. […]

Hillary Clinton’s campaign — and, frankly, many DC journalists — has been repeatedly taken by surprise by the potency of some of Sanders’s attacks, because they apply to such a broad swath of the party. But this is precisely the point. Sanders and his youthful supporters want the Democrats to be a different kind of party: a more ideological, more left-wing one. […]

Sanders may or may not be the right person for the job, and 2016 may or may not be the year it happens. But it looks clear that the rising generation of Democrats want to try to build that party, and that the future belongs to politicians who’ll promise to build it with them.

Jeet Heer agrees:

Clinton could still, of course, win the nomination. Her institutional advantages in terms of having elected officials and party elders behind her remain formidable. But whatever Bernie Sanders’s fate as a presidential candidate after Tuesday’s triumph, his campaign is the harbinger of a deep change in the Democratic Party. In coming years, Democratic politicians will have to echo Sanders’s slashing critique of Wall Street and his call for a far more robust welfare state if they want to hold on to the rising generation in their party. The future belongs to Sanders’s brand of Democrat.

And I, while not a Sanders supporter in 2016, do agree that this is the future of the Party. I am just saying Sanders is an imperfect messenger for that change. It’s too easy to characterize Bernie as a socialist/communist and be done with him. That is toxic to the general electorate, still. And I won’t change my mind on that and I will spend every day after the election in November posting “I told you so” posts as we are relocated to Trump’s internment camps. If Elizabeth Warren was running, or if she runs in 2020 after Sander’s massive defeat to Trump in November, the message will be better received.

But, Ed Kilgore says Sander’s coalition needs to get a lot more diverse:

What hasn’t gotten much attention, though, is that the reasonably well-established nonwhite voter preference for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders is also going to affect the millennial category as we get beyond the exceptionally pale electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire. The reason is simple enough: Millennials are the most diverse of the commonly identified generational cohorts, with 43 percent of them being nonwhite. Nonwhite millennials are also more prone to identification as Democrats, and they vote Democratic in significantly higher numbers (Mitt Romney actually carried white millennials in 2012). So it’s not a reach to guess that nonwhites could form a majority or near-majority of millennials voting in Democratic primaries nationally.

Yes, there are signs that nonwhite millennials are much more open to the Sanders appeal than are older nonwhite voters. But even a Reuters analysis that’s widely in circulation to show the strong nature of Sanders support has him carrying about 38 percent of black voters under 30. That’s good, but not the stuff of generational ownership.

Will “the Bern” be felt more deeply by nonwhite millennials as they get to know the Vermont senator? Perhaps, but there’s no particular reason to assume it; Sanders’s support levels have not monolithically gone up in direct relationship with his name ID. So it might be a good idea to wait for a few more primaries to make generalizations about millennial voting patterns in 2016, much less years into the future.

But then again, Bernie Sanders win in New Hampshire is a remarkable achievement, or so says Andrew Prokop:

Sanders’s victory — which would have been all but unimaginable a year ago — is a truly remarkable achievement for a “democratic socialist” who began the campaign as a mere blip in the polls, little-known nationally and lacking any party establishment support whatsoever.

The Vermont senator’s triumph is a testament to the power of his economics-focused message, to his supporters’ enthusiasm and organization, and to his wild popularity among young voters. It’s also a stinging rejection of the Democratic establishment and Hillary Clinton by primary voters in the Granite State. And it’s a strong follow-up to Sanders’s tie with Clinton in last week’s Iowa caucuses.

Some will argue that Sanders’s win isn’t that big a deal, since he’s from the neighboring state of Vermont, and it’s long been known that Sanders does well among the white Democrats overrepresented in New Hampshire. Yet it’s worth remembering that when 2015 began, Sanders trailed Clinton by around 40 points in the Granite State. And though tonight’s votes are still being counted, the early calls in Sanders favor suggest that it isn’t even close.

Still, all this doesn’t mean Sanders is favored to win the Democratic nomination. To pull that off, there’s one big thing he still needs to do: hugely improve his numbers among the nonwhite voters who are so crucial to the party’s coalition nationally. In the coming days, we’ll see whether he can make that happen.

Martin Longman says Hillary Clinton needs a plan to win back Congress, otherwise the fact of gridlock makes Sanders more appealing since neither him or Clinton will get things done, so you might as well go with the more radical nominee.

Neither of them will be able to do almost anything legislatively they say that they want to do, so the decision shouldn’t be made on the basis of who is being more practical. In fact, this situation favors the more ideologically committed candidate because most of their impact will be made at their discretion through executive actions.

Clinton should get credit for realism, but Sanders should get credit for having vision and ambition. More than anything, though, Clinton’s best argument is that she can get stuff done and that Bernie cannot. But, without a theory for how to win back the House, she’s undermining her best argument.

If the Clintons really do retool their campaign after New Hampshire, they should focus on creating a “real plan to win Congress or state offices” so the central rationale for her candidacy isn’t so easily dismissed as “a different flavor of wishful thinking.”

Politico: “Far from winnowing the crowded field of mainstream GOP contenders and allowing it to unify around a standard-bearer, New Hampshire thrust it further into chaos. Marco Rubio, after taking steps last week to coalesce the backing of the party’s upper echelons, saw his momentum halted in the state, which punished him for delivering an overly scripted debate performance.”

“The establishment lane is now more crowded than ever, with Rubio, Jeb Bush, and New Hampshire runner-up John Kasich heading for a brutal fight in South Carolina – a state known for its rough-and-tumble political culture. Chris Christie, who was also competing for establishment support, is reassessing his campaign’s future.”

“This campaign is not dead.” — Jeb Bush, quoted by Politico, after finishing fourth in New Hampshire. When you have to say that, it usually means your campaign is dead. Regardless, “Bush is already laying the groundwork for a brutal South Carolina campaign against establishment rivals John Kasich and Marco Rubio,” according to Politico. So he will take down the only establishment alternatives to Trump, ensuring that either Trump or Cruz win, because Jeb, I hate to break it to ya: you ain’t winning shit this year. Nada. You won’t be President.

Meanwhile, Chris Christie is heading home to New Jersey to take a breath. When you announce that, it is highly likely you are going to be suspending your campaign in short order.

Taegen Goddard:

For the Republican establishment, having Donald Trump win the New Hampshire primary by a wide margin is a big problem. He’ll continue to dominate the race as he has for months. But the bigger problem is that there is no viable alternative for GOP leaders to rally around. […] Meanwhile, Ted Cruz has only Ben Carson as a rival for evangelical voters. He’s well-funded and ready to compete in South Carolina and the SEC primary. It’s a complete mess for the establishment. If Trump has a ceiling to his support, a big field helps him enormously. Even if Republicans eventually consolidate around an alternative to Trump and Cruz, it’s going to take many more weeks. Meanwhile, Trump and Cruz will be racking up delegates. Of course, the race is far from over and it’s still hard to predict the outcome. The odds of a contested convention went up tonight. But there’s little question that the New Hampshire result was not what the GOP establishment wanted.

Ezra Klein says the rise of Donald Trump is a terrifying moment in American history.

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash. […]

Behind Trump’s success is an unerring instinct for harnessing anger, resentment, and fear. His view of the economy is entirely zero-sum — for Americans to win, others must lose. “We’re going to make America great again,” he said in his New Hampshire victory speech, “but we’re going to do it the old fashioned way. We’re going to beat China, Japan, beat Mexico at trade. We’re going to beat all of these countries that are taking so much of our money away from us on a daily basis. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

Trump answers America’s rage with more rage. As the journalist Molly Ball observed, “All the other candidates say ‘Americans are angry, and I understand.’ Trump says, ‘I’M angry.'” Trump doesn’t offer solutions so much as he offers villains. His message isn’t so much that he’ll help you as he’ll hurt them.

Matt Yglesias says that Donald Trump is winning the GOP Nomination.

I don’t say that Trump will win. He might not! But for him to lose, someone actually has to beat him. There is no automatic process through which he deflates, and no winnowing magic through which he can be defeated without someone actually taking the trouble to defeat him.

The schedule gets very Trump friendly from here on out…