Delaware Dem

Wednesday Open Thread [7.8.15]

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos with a very interesting analogy and analysis:

[T]his early version of Sanders appears to be an eerie carbon copy of the Howard Dean 2003 campaign—wildly popular with the party’s white, educated, middle-class base … and few others.

The most recent CNN national poll had Sanders getting 19 percent of the white Democratic vote, and just 9 percent of the non-white vote. Clinton’s numbers were the opposite, getting 53 percent of the white vote, but 61 percent of the non-white vote. Given that non-whites will make up around 40 percent of primary voters, Sanders needs to gain with those groups if he is to have any shot at the big upset.

And that’s not even considering the huge gender gap already emerging. In that CNN poll, Clinton gets 50 percent of men, and a whopping 63 percent among women. Meanwhile, Sanders gets 20 percent of men, and just 9 percent of women. We see that same gender gap in Iowa, where Clinton gets 46 percent of men and 56 percent of women. Meanwhile, Sanders gets 37 percent of men, and 29 percent of women.

Being a white male is finally a disadvantage somewhere. Clinton benefits from an age gap—in the CNN national poll she gets 61 percent of voters over the age of 50, and 53 percent of those under 50. Sanders is stronger with younger voters, which is exciting, sure, but a group of voters not generally inclined to vote. And then there’s education. Sanders gets 19 percent of the vote from Democrats who have attended college. But he gets just eight percent from those who haven’t. So younger, whiter, more male, and more educated. Yup, that’s the Dean coalition, and unless Sanders can bust beyond it, his fate will be the same as Dean’s.

I likewise have this feeling that Bernie Sanders is a boomlet that can’t last. But here is hoping that Hillary Clinton is no John Kerry.

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Tuesday Open Thread [7.7.15]

According to Brian Beutler, President Obama’s actions have boxed the Republicans into a backwards and reactionary campaign and corner, and set a favorable playing field for the Democratic nominee.

But across the board, Republican candidates are committed to adjusting the status quo backward. They oppose the Iran negotiations, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the very notion of an international agreement to curb global warming; they oppose administrative policies, like deferred action and overtime pay rules, that improve the lives of minorities and workers; and they oppose social legislation like the Affordable Care Act. Of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Walker holds the most extreme view that the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage should be reversed and returned to the states. But all of these candidates oppose same-sex marriage, and when conflicts arise between supporters and opponents of marriage equality, they will side with the opponents.

Taken as a whole, these issue positions will make it difficult for Republicans to cast themselves as forward-looking candidates. But the substantive developments themselves share a thematic quality that will do more than complicate the GOP’s branding strategy. They are all designed to force Republican candidates to make unreasonable promises that will be hard to defend in a general election, and harder to execute should a Republican become president. Obama is using his first-mover advantage not just to shore up his own legacy, but to set the terms of the coming presidential campaign favorably for the Democratic nominee.

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Monday Open Thread [7.6.15]

The Guardian: “Nearly three weeks after the business tycoon announced his candidacy to be US president with a speech in which he claimed Mexican immigrants were criminals whose presence was undermining American greatness, the row refuses to die.”

“Outrage has been widespread among the Mexican people, from those struggling to make a living on the streets to some of the richest businessmen in the world. In a country fraught with divisions over how to create the jobs and security necessary to make mass migration unnecessary, opposition to Trump’s remarks has provided rare unity.”

Yeah, I think if I and all my countrymen were called murderers and rapists simply to my ethnic or national origin, I and all of my countrymen would be rightly pissed too. And now Donald Trump is saying that he did not expected such universal condemnation and outrage on both sides of the border over his racist comments. That tells me that he, like most Republicans, lives in a hermetically sealed world where the only news he receives is from Fox and the only people he interacts with are sycophants and fellow conservative rich guys who all think alike.

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Sunday Open Thread [7.5.15]

Politico on how the South skewers America: “A lot of the traits that make the United States exceptional these days are undesirable, like higher violence and less social mobility. Many of these differences can be attributed largely to the South… Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden.”

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Fourth of July Open Thread [7.4.15]

The conventional wisdom is starting to coalesce around my thought that President Obama is the best President of my lifetime. Benjy Sarlin published a piece on the Obama legacy last weekend:

“At the end of the day, we’re part of a long-running story,” Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick in one interview. “We just try to get our paragraph right.”

Now consider what the paragraph version of Obama’s presidency looks like as of now, with the key terms for next week’s social studies midterm highlighted in bold.

“The first black president, President Obama took office amid the Great Recession, stabilized the economy with a stimulus and auto bailout, passed universal health care and Wall Street reform over fierce opposition, and implemented a suite of regulations aimed at combatting climate change. The first president to embrace marriage equality, he presided over the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing it nationwide.”

Steve Benen thinks that’s a “pretty impressive paragraph that suggets Obama will be remembered as a great and important president.”

Vox’s Dylan Matthews agreed last week that “there’s no longer any doubt: Barack Obama is one of the most consequential presidents in American history – and he will be a particularly towering figure in the history of American progressivism.”

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