Thursday Open Thread [8.11.16]
WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–Marquette–Clinton 52, Trump 37
Well, so much for that theory among some that Trump’s alleged populist appeal and anti-trade talk would win him the midwest. The talk among the punditry, both liberal and conservative, is that Trump would not only be competitive in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but he would be the unique Republican to put Michigan and Wisconsin in play. We’ve seen the double digit leads for Hillary in Pennsylvania and Michigan dispel that notion, and now a 15 point lead in Wisconsin. Ohio is still too close for comfort given recent polls, but the Midwest Republican Resurgence is not happening.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post digs through the latest Bloomberg national poll and finds a number which should set off alarms at Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters:
“Bloomberg asked people if they would consider voting for the other candidate. More than half — 51 percent — said that they could never support Donald Trump. That’s more than 9-in-10 of those who weren’t currently supporting him. By contrast, 44 percent said they could never support Clinton, a little less than 9-in-10 of those who didn’t plan to vote for her.”
First Read: “With yet another poll showing Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by double digits — this time from NBC|SurveyMonkey — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has an important choice to make. Does he continue to block President Obama’s pick to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, Merrick Garland, and risk the possibility that a President Hillary Clinton could nominate someone much more liberal (and younger) instead? Or does he relent on the Garland blockade, realizing that it might be the best outcome for Senate Republicans — simply to turn the conversation away from Trump?”
“And it’s worth pointing out that Clinton running mate Tim Kaine didn’t 100% close the door on the possibility that Clinton might make her own Supreme Court pick if Republicans continue to block Garland.”
Playbook: “There is increasing concern in news and political circles that Donald Trump will not agree to the three slated presidential debates this fall, a historic break with political norms in the lead-up to the election. The three bouts — organized by the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates — are Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in New York, Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis and Oct. 19 in Las Vegas. They are usually wonky and tightly scripted affairs, and offer the next true reset point in the race for the White House.”
“Debate moderators have not been announced, but Republican and Democratic sources, senior media executives and anchors in New York and Washington are casting serious doubt about whether Trump will agree to participate in the primetime events.”
Trump is in fourth place among black voters: https://t.co/WG0ciZJyHu pic.twitter.com/LupXu95AIS
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) August 10, 2016
First Read digs into the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll and offers five observations that are good news for Democrats:
President Obama’s job-approval rating now stands at 52%, up one point from last month. It’s his highest rating since his second inauguration in Jan. 2013.
Just 32% think the country is headed in the right direction, but that’s up 14 points in the past month (the July poll was taken in the aftermath of the violence in Dallas, Louisiana and Minnesota).
Democrats hold a four-point advantage in congressional preference, with 47% of voters wanting a Democratic-controlled Congress and 43% wanting a GOP-controlled one. It was 46%-46% in July’s poll.
60% of Democrats say they’re satisfied with Clinton as their nominee, versus 45% of Republicans who say that about Trump.
There are signs the nation is more optimistic and wants more continuity than the conventional wisdom suggests: 54% say they are mainly hopeful and optimistic about the country’s future, and 50% believe the nation should continue with Democrats in the White House, versus 48% who say it’s time for change.
The Washington Post says the House GOP’s gerrymander is not so daunting as it is seems.
After the 2010 Census, the Republican Party put in motion its plan to redraw congressional districts more favorable to conservative candidates. Whereas bipartisan gerrymandering creates safe districts for both parties, the GOP undertook partisan gerrymandering, which packs the other party’s voters into as few districts as possible and spreads out the gerrymandering party’s voters across many districts, each of which that party can win but often by uncomfortably narrow margins.
Pennsylvania illustrates this strategy. In the 2012 election, Democratic congressional candidates won about 75,000 more votes than did Republican candidates, but the GOP captured 13 of 18 seats. Four of the five Democratic districts had been packed with Democratic voters. The safest of these districts scored D+38 on the Cook Report’s Partisan Voter Index (PVI), which means that voters in this district backed President Obama in 2008-2012 by 38 percentage points more than the national electorate.
By contrast, the GOP currently holds four marginal districts, rated as R+2, R+1, or Even. Another six GOP districts are R+5 or R+6. The remaining three are R+9 or higher.
The Pennsylvania pattern holds up nationally, where the GOP holds numerous marginal districts. The chart below shows PVI ratings for all of the GOP’s House seats. Republicans hold 37 districts rated R+2 or lower and 18 at R+3 or R+4, for a total of 55 marginal districts. Democrats, by contrast, hold half as many.
If the Trump collapse and Clinton surge continue, they could reveal the perils of partisan redistricting. That strategy created so many marginal Republican districts that if the GOP loses the bulk of the seats at or below R+2, it would also lose its congressional majority. A catastrophe that claimed every GOP seat at or below R+4 would bring the GOP caucus close to the size of today’s House Democrats.
And right now, as you will see below, Hillary and the Dems are performing well enough to capture all seats R+5 and less.
Washington Post: “The pattern has repeated itself again and again. First come Trump’s attention-getting expressions. Then come the outraged reactions. The headlines follow. Finally, Trump, his aides and his supporters lash out at the media, accusing journalists of twisting his words or missing the joke. It happened last week, when Trump appeared to kick a baby out of a rally, then later insisted that he was kidding. It happened the week before, when he encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, then claimed he was just being sarcastic.”
“And with each new example, Trump’s rhetorical asides grow more alarming to many who hear them — and prompt condemnations from an ever-wider universe of critics.”
Inspired by @DanaHoule made a very quick graph of today's DCCC poll in swing CDs compared to Obama margins pic.twitter.com/iS9K61nKUp
— (((Will Cubbison))) (@wccubbison) August 10, 2016
More evidence media polls are missing scale of Clinton’s lead. If she’s leading swing CD’s by this, it’s a slaughter https://t.co/RVPEArJUD9
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 10, 2016
“Hillary Clinton is trouncing Donald Trump in several swing House districts, Democratic Party officials say in a new memo obtained by Politico that touts the party’s down-ballot prospects in November but does not predict they’ll capture the chamber.”
“The memo, which comes 90 days out from the election, says that Democrats intend to hitch their House opponents to Trump at every turn and misstep.”
Our kids see the president as a role model. How will they see Donald Trump?https://t.co/xOxe3LdL70
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016
Josh Kraushaar: “Republican leaders are choosing to pretend that these differences don’t exist, preferring to naively proclaim that Trump will embrace Paul Ryan’s conservative agenda if he’s elected president. That’s not what his voters signed up for. It’s why Trump’s rote espousal of more-traditional GOP positions, such as his economic speech at the Detroit Economic Club on Monday, will fall flat.”
“More likely, he will continue to use his outsize public platform to settle old scores. He might even try and launch his own television network to broadcast the populism that propelled his candidacy. He’s not going away, and neither are his core voters. The only question is whether more traditional GOP leaders have the charisma and credibility to bring Trump partisans into a new-look GOP, or whether his supporters will continue to stir up trouble within the party.”
Byron York: “What has Hillary Clinton been doing while Donald Trump has been careening from one controversy to the next? She’s been traveling the country giving speeches about jobs, hammering Trump on the economy, and mostly avoiding press contact that could bring attention to her email scandal, the Clinton Foundation, or her record as Secretary of State. And then she talks more about jobs.”
“Clinton’s speeches are boring. They don’t make much news. But they’re in line with voter concerns three months away from the presidential election.”
I hope the Dems are getting ready for whatever comes from Putin Puppet, Assange. I may well have a tin-foil hat on (kinda hope i do), but it seems more and more clear that Russia is making a serious play to get trump elected. Whatever “mr freedom’s” stake is, in getting a potentially genocidal mad-man elected president is a mystery, but I wonder what, if anything, they are sitting on for October. If wikileaks truly cared about transparency, they wouldn’t be playing this optics game.
A little more down-to-earth, I wonder if the R’s will effectively be able to use even non-existent smoking guns to insinuate down Clinton’s poll numbers. A couple things I know for sure (because it has already happened)
1. Anything that looks like a Clinton controversy will be treated as such by the Media in an attempt to look “fair”, given the daily shitstorm that is trump.
2. What she “does” will be treated with WAY more outrage than things trump keeps doing, because we have already become numb to it. It’s normal now.
…..THAT, ladies and germs, is the trump effect I’ve always feared most. Now someone far more competent than him can run on the same platform, but not be such a loser.
“And it’s worth pointing out that Clinton running mate Tim Kaine didn’t 100% close the door on the possibility that Clinton might make her own Supreme Court pick if Republicans continue to block Garland.”
Hillary should nominate Dr. Cornel West in waiting.
Great Ann Kirkpatrick ad. John McCain survived the Hanoi Hilton but is being brought low by Trump National.
Obamacare crisis in 2017?
If this meltdown comes to pass, will it be resolved by moving toward a public option and in the direction of single payer? Or will it be resolved by shoveling more money to the private insurers?
Hillary’s proposals for building on Obamacare are more on the “shovel” side. Massive new subsidies for Obamacare could reignite debt-limit brinksmanship and austerity hawks, and give Republicans and DINOs a hammer to claw back whatever they will have lost in 2016.
“Massive new subsidies for Obamacare could reignite debt-limit brinksmanship and austerity hawks, and give Republicans and DINOs a hammer to claw back whatever they will have lost in 2016.”
And monkeys could fly out of your butt. I’d say both possibilities are close to zero, but it’s your butt, so I dunno.
A very Trump-ian response.
Gotta disagree with Kraushaar: Trump will so go away once his humiliating defeat is history. Who will have him? His brand is based on winning, and he’s a loser. How quickly do these people dump a loser? Ask Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who combined for what, 2%, in this cycle’s primaries?
His supporters will look for someone like him, and I assume they’ll find that someone. But Trump himself is finished. His business “empire” is in shambles. His vaunted name isn’t worth $3, let alone $3 billion. All those buildings and golf courses that literally are with him in name only will flush him away. And he might just do time behind that Trump U. scam.
@puck: That’s all it deserved. That’s concern trolling you’re engaged in, son, and it smells lousy.
We hashed this out eight years ago. Obamacare sucks. If your worries about the future take more than one “if this, then that,” it’s not worth worrying about. Except for concern trolls.
Nothing trollish about noting early signs that the privatization chickens are coming home to roost. The question is how to greet them – with more privatization, or more single payer?
Actually it is a good thing that private insurers are losing money, or rather, not making the obscene killing they desire. If that’s true then Obamacare is working as I hope it is designed, as a gateway to single payer.
“moving toward a public option and in the direction of single payer?”
Any thoughts into what such a movement would look like? Seems to me that it’s pretty binary. You either have a public option or you don’t. The public option is Medicare, which automatically comes with single payer. If you implement Medicare for all, you have to determine how it gets paid for AND you have structure the insured pool to ensure that the Medicare option pool contains the appropriate mix of relatively healthy (medically and financially) insured. Otherwise, the pool becomes a bottomless pit.
I see the same articles at every right-wing site that covers policy, so you might want to rethink whether it’s trollish or not.
This is the insurers’ effort at helping Trump.
“Otherwise, the pool becomes a bottomless pit.”
If you’re actually interested in fixing health care, you eliminate insurance, which adds costs but no benefits to the overall system. But if you two want a pointless debate about it, have at it.
How does Medicare for all get paid for? You’re serious? All those insurance premiums, that’s how.
Trump is beyond help. Insurers are more focused on making sure Hillary maintains their profits. Are you on board with that?
“Trump will so go away once his humiliating defeat is history.”
That’s an interesting question. I say question because I don’t think it’s been fully explored what happens to Trump if he loses.
His entire id/ego/super-ego are structured around his outsized view of himself and the world. A loss – especially a very public and perhaps overwhelming loss is anathema to him. The more overwhelming the loss, the less he is able to spin it and the more it becomes a repudiation to everything he is and stands for.
How would he recover? Can he recover? The biggest prize of his life gone. Would he be content with becoming a Fox commentator? After all he couldn’t even be considered as an elder statesman of the party. A loss for Trump is inconceivable and unthinkable. I’m guessing that the same ol’ Trump dose not emerge on the other side of a loss. But if it’s not the same ol’ Trump who is it?
Trump does not work for others, so no TV job as commentator. I suppose he’ll go back to reality TV, which is the only thing he’s ever truly succeeded at.
The first thing to do is to take a good, hard look at the financials of the companies that are planning to bail on ACA exchanges. United Health is publically traded and if you look at their 10-Q for the last quarter they are *definitively* making money. UNC in particular is really wrapped up in government health care — with contracts with Tricare, and they did the web development for the Fed exchange, etc. If they can make money everyplace except with the state-wide exchanges, that suggests to me that they have a problem with their risk pools.
Still, I do think that a public option would help to mitigate this. It would mean that there is a choice for consumers, and if insurance companies want to be a part of the marketplace, they’d have to compete for that.
@puck: I’m single-payer all the way, as the comments above should indicate. But I’ve already accepted the compromise that is Hillary, and whatever she wants to do on this is something else I’ll have to accept as well — not happily, but I’m not going to dwell on the negatives until the second week of November. I’ll worry about the details once Trump is destroyed.
“How does Medicare for all get paid for? You’re serious?”
Of course I’m serious. I’m always serious. It’s easy to say “insurance premiums” We pay 1.45% of our earnings into FICA. Employers pay another 1.45%, bringing the total to 2.9%. That is hardly sufficient for both Part A and Part B. There are assertions that Medicare would become more efficient, but there is no evidence that can or would happen.
Most analyses conclude that something like Medicare for all would only work with significant cost savings and lower benefits. Lower benefits of course means lower benefits for those who do not have the means. People like Trump would still receive higher benefits because he doesn’t rely upon Medicare.
One of the negative outcomes of Medicare for all would be stratification of benefits between the 1% and the 99%. Any reduction in benefits would only effect the 99%.
Medicare for all may actually be viable, but let’s not pretend it’s simply a case of putting into effect and then raising the taxes to pay for it.
Best commentary I’ve seen on Trump’s “jokes”:
https://twitter.com/5thCircAppeals/status/763101843870261249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Implementing Medicare for all as a public option means taking up where Bernie left off. A Medicare-for-all plan would have to be implemented in stages, with or without additional subsidies.
We are headed into a world where the rich do not need us as workers to maintain their wealth. Notice how productivity and GDP keep going up while real wages and workforce participation decline.
In that brave new world, it is time to talk about redistribution and how to manage it. The rich must pay for the rest of us to maintain a civilized standard of living or a guaranteed basic income, including health care.
Uh, Dave…all that money currently spent on insurance premiums will be freed up for actual health care. That’s why I asked if you were serious.
Medicare for all won’t cost the consumer money, it will save him money, even with higher taxes.
It’s not my job to play with decimal places. Yours either, best I’m aware, so sorry, I’m not interested in nuts and bolts. To pretend it wouldn’t work is to pretend that health care in every other country doesn’t work.
It will never work to everyone’s satisfaction, because eventually we all die anyway. But every other nation does just as well for half the cost. Do we really have to hash out the entire argument again?
Beyond that, why exactly are we talking about Obamacare? Again, this is concern trolling given the circumstances. I’m bowing out of this now. You two can play with each other.
OK, back to “OMG-Trump-said-WHAT?”
Actually, I thought the link I posted went well beyond “he said WHAT?” It explains the process of injecting ideas into the mainstream via humor. But then, that’s about more than the political process, so it might not interest many here.
@puck: And here’s a cartoon I think you’ll like:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/11/1558107/-Cartoon-Attention-illegals-Prepare-for-deportation
My thoughts on immigration summed up in one awesome cartoon:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/11/1558107/-Cartoon-Attention-illegals-Prepare-for-deportation
lol
See, I knew you’d like it. 😉
Well — Marco Rubio could lose his Senate race to a Democrat.