Tuesday Open Thread [10.6.2015]

Filed in National by on October 6, 2015

Joan Walsh examines Hillary Clinton’s new gun control plan:

Gun control is one issue where Clinton stands to Sanders’s left. The Vermont socialist isn’t terrible on guns: Though the NRA endorsed him in his first race for Congress, he has a D-minus rating from the group. He supported the 2013 background-check bill, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, and closing the gun-show sales loophole. […] Sanders’s mixed stand on guns reflects his political reality: He’s the senator from a pro-gun state that suffers little gun violence. In fact, he touts his record appealing to gun owners as giving him the kind of broad populist appeal that might, in the general election, help Democrats in red states and rural areas, where party leaders are often seen as gun-grabbing elitists.

Yet it could hurt him in Democratic primaries. Clearly, after a summer spent losing ground to Sanders on her left, Clinton has begun an offensive on a crucial issue that could have Sanders playing defense. In a season marked by shocking multiple gun-killings from Charleston, South Carolina, to Roanoke, Virginia, to Roseburg, Oregon, the former New York senator has raised the issue of gun control with steadily rising fervor.

Dan Balz: “The Republican presidential contest is not, regardless of what is seems some days, all about Donald Trump. There’s another dynamic unfolding that has almost nothing to do with the businessman-politician currently atop the polls but that will have a major influence on who becomes the party’s nominee.”

“This other struggle involves the competition among Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich. History suggests that whoever emerges triumphant in this three-way rivalry will be in a strong position to claim the nomination, though admittedly the past has been a poor predictor of events so far in this campaign.”

“There’s homophobes still left. Most of them are running for president, I think.” — Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by The Hill.

Jon Chait wonders why the Right in the House doesn’t feel good after finally getting their boogeyman Boehner:

The videos instantly catapulted Planned Parenthood to the top of conservative activists’ hierarchy of intolerable evil, thus triggering an ingrained response to shut down the federal government, as had been threatened over Obama’s immigration policies and carried out over Obamacare. Most Republicans, including Boehner, regarded this plan as horrendously misguided. Some recent NBC–Wall Street Journal poll numbers help explain their reluctance. Americans dislike the Republican Party quite a lot: Only 29 percent view it favorably, 45 percent unfavorably. They regard President Obama more favorably (46-40) and Planned Parenthood more favorably still (47-31). Another poll found that only a fifth of the public would rather shut down Washington than maintain funding for Planned Parenthood. The proposed strategy — an unpopular party using an unpopular tactic against a popular president in order to defund a popular organization — understandably struck Boehner as ill-advised.

Faced with the Speaker’s reluctance to join in their suicidal gesture du jour, his tormentors resorted to the only leverage at their disposal: threatening to depose him. (Boehner’s party controls 247 of 435 seats, meaning a defection of just 29 agitated Republicans could, in theory, take the gavel out of his hand.) The ritual of demands, threats, and nervous pacification proceeded much as it has many times before, until it climaxed with Boehner’s unexpected announcement that they could take this job and shove it.

This was something new. The activists in the House had not just flexed their muscles but achieved a win. Far from delivering them a cherished victory, however, Boehner’s announced resignation threw the rebels into disarray. This became clear in the ensuing days, during the succession struggle over the party leadership.

[C]ontrary to the recriminations of Boehner’s Republican critics and the nostalgia-tinged accolades heaped on him by moderates, Boehner did not preside over an era of compromise or bipartisanship. The overwhelming thrust of his tenure was one of obstruction. But obstructionism meant stalemate, and stalemate meant maintaining the status quo. Having deemed the status quo after two years of Obamaism a socialist monstrosity, the rebels demanded that the GOP bend the president to its will. Lacking the two-thirds majority required in both chambers to override a veto, however, it never had a chance to do this. None of which prevented bitter recriminations. The ultimate source of right-wing anger at Boehner was the Obama administration’s continued existence.

Fury over not having enough power to force your leader to wield more power than is constitutionally possible is not an emotional state conducive to stable coalition-building. Over the years, right-wing discontent has sundered the party into a number of ever-shifting sub-factions. The “Republican Study Committee” used to serve as headquarters for those most dedicated to annoying their party’s leaders. In 2010, the “Tea Party Caucus” formed, overshadowing the RSC before fading away. This past January, believing the ranks of the RSC had swollen with too many halfhearted members, a core of true believers split off to form the “Freedom Caucus.” Perhaps eventually the Freedom Caucus will give way to a Blood-Dimmed Tide Is Loosed Coalition.

This is the age-old question of what happens when the dog actually catches the car? Victory doesn’t feel good because they realize that what Boehner said was right. That is why really no Tea Party Republican wants to be in the leadership. Because if they get that responsiblity, they will become Boehner.

Politico: “With less than four weeks left in his decades-long congressional career, Boehner is maneuvering to shape the House Republican Conference on his way out. His goal is to leave the conference he helped build —with countless hours of grunt work and hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising — in the strongest position possible.”

“He has all but officially endorsed Rep. Kevin McCarthy to succeed him, giving the majority leader enough of a nod to express confidence but short of the full-throated endorsement that could sink him. Boehner tried to lure a candidate into the majority leader race against one of his own top lieutenants, a move aimed at bolstering McCarthy’s right flank.”

According to Politico, it was Joe Biden himself who first talked to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, “painting a tragic portrait of a dying son, Beau’s face partially paralyzed, sitting his father down and trying to make him promise to run for president because ‘the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.’”

“It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column. People read Dowd and started reaching out, those around the vice president would say by way of defensive explanation. He was just answering the phone and listening. But in truth, Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times, asking them to call.”

First, I am not sure if that is more or less crass than if someone else relayed the story or if the Vice President himself did it. Second, I do not believe that exact quote ever escaped the mouth of Beau Biden. I could see “Dad, you should run. You must run.” But not “The White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”

I mean, really?

When this story first came out back in August, I chucked that quote up to a hyperbolic fabrication or paraphrase on the part of Maureen Dowd, because she is known for that. But if Vice President Biden was the source of the story and quote, whoa boy. That means those words are Joe Biden’s creation. And that tells us that he is running and he is going to go extremely negative on Hillary.

And that will be a devastating end to his career.

If this whole story is true in the first place.

Charlie Cook: “It is hard to over­state the un­usu­al boom-and-bust nature of our elec­tions these days. De­pend­ing on wheth­er the year is di­vis­ible by four, we have two very dif­fer­ent Amer­icas. One of them ex­ists when the pres­id­ency is at stake, and the elect­or­ate is big, broad, and demo­graph­ic­ally di­verse—look­ing pretty much like the coun­try. But midterm-elec­tion Amer­ica, with an elect­or­ate only about 60 per­cent the size of pres­id­en­tial years, is older, whiter, more con­ser­vat­ive, and more Re­pub­lic­an. This, in ef­fect, puts a thumb on the scale that simply isn’t there in pres­id­en­tial years, when the turnout is sub­stan­tially lar­ger.”

“The res­ult: Demo­crats have fared well in Sen­ate races when the pres­id­ency was up for grabs. In 2008 and 2012, they picked up eight and two seats, re­spect­ively. Their gain in 2012 wasn’t lar­ger be­cause they’d already picked up four seats in 2000 and six more in 2006—the two pre­vi­ous times this class of sen­at­ors had faced voters—leav­ing few­er ad­di­tion­al seats with­in their reach.”

In 2016, the Democrats will net 6 seats (Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania), and they have a competitive shot at two more (Arizona, Missouri), while successfully defending Nevada, Colorado and North Dakota. That would be mean a Democratic majority of 52 to 46.

First Read says time is not on Kevin McCarthy’s side: “Speaking of McCarthy, with the leadership elections now set for Oct. 29, time isn’t his friend as he runs to succeed John Boehner as speaker. Think about it: His opponents now have three weeks to thwart his bid. And maybe more importantly, if the Benghazi hearing on Oct. 22 doesn’t go well for Republicans (with Hillary using McCarthy’s comments as a shield), you might have plenty of upset House Republicans. So that’s the danger for McCarthy. The good news perhaps is that the additional three weeks gives him more time to shore up his position. But those three weeks could also make things worse.”

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  1. Jason330 says:

    Your take on the Biden story is spot on.

  2. Anonymous says:

    DD, if Joe runs is that going to put you in a tizzy?

  3. SussexWatcher says:

    That “quote” that you think Beau said to Joe is anything but.

    This is the Dowd column:

    “Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”

    The “revert to the Clintons” and “Biden values” phrasing are Dowd’s words, her interpretation of what she was told by someone – not an “exact quote” from either Beau or Joe.

    In other words, you are frothing about Joe allegedly speaking Dowd’s words. There is a world of difference between Dowd’s paraphrasing and the actual words attributed to either Biden.

    Please reread the original again if you like: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-joe-biden-in-2016-what-would-beau-do.html

    Now, I think Politico is right on about Joe being Dowd’s source – at the very least, he authorized the leak explicitly. I don’t see anyone else in the Biden camp having the inclination or stones to leak a deathbed conversation of their own volition. The cadence of some of the conversation as reported also sounds like Joe. But don’t hang words on the man that a columnist invented.

  4. SussexWatcher says:

    *crickets*