Saturday Open Thread [2.13.16]

Filed in National by on February 13, 2016

NATIONALMorning Consult –Clinton 46, Sanders 39
NATIONALMorning Consult –Trump 44, Cruz 17, Carson 10, Rubio 10, Bush 8, Kasich 4
SOUTH CAROLINAOpinion Savvy–Trump 36, Cruz 20, Rubio 15, Bush 11, Kasich 9, Carson 5

Bush super PAC operative Mike Murphy posts South Carolina tracking numbers from another GOP campaign: Donald Trump leads with 34%, followed by Ted Cruz at 17%, Jeb Bush at 12%, Marco Rubio at 10% and John Kasich “in single digits.” I am not including it in our polls above, because of the obvious non-reliable nature of the material, still the results seem in line with the other standard polls. Further, South Carolina House Republicans apparently conducted their own poll and found Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 35%, followed by Ted Cruz at 16%, Jeb Bush at 13%, Marco Rubio at 12%, John Kasich at 9% and Ben Carson at 5%. Again, non reliable source but results are in line with the other polls.

“Some of the biggest Republican donors, who collectively have contributed tens of millions of dollars to shape the presidential race, are tightening their purse strings out of frustration with their inability to boost their favored candidates, or to slow Donald Trump,” Politico reports.

“Rather than continuing to write huge checks to support the cluster of establishment candidates jockeying to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump, a billionaire real estate showman roundly despised by the GOP elite, these donors have mostly retreated to the sidelines. They’re watching anxiously, hoping that the field sorts itself out.”

“Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, offered this year’s hopefuls advice about a hard-learned lesson: Release your tax returns before the primaries and avoid tough scrutiny later. But the top three Republicans leading in national polls don’t appear to be listening,” the AP reports.

“Even as other candidates — most notably Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush — have already disclosed years’ worth of private tax returns to dispel questions about their personal finances, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have failed to do the same despite promises to do so, sometimes after events that have now come and gone. None of the campaigns will say why they’ve delayed or when the candidates will release their returns.”

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau drafted a Donald Trump victory speech for the Daily Beast.

“It’s not something I necessarily enjoyed doing, anymore than I would enjoy channeling the voice of Kim Jong Un or a Kardashian. But Trump’s victory in New Hampshire has vaulted him to the top of the delegate race. He’s leading in dozens of other states. And since the possibility of a Trump nomination is as real as it’s ever been, I want people to be prepared for what he might sound like in a general election.”

First time I have ever seen Ellen speechless.

Michelle Goldberg in Slate:

I kept a mental list of every disappointing thing Hillary Clinton had ever done, from supporting welfare reform to voting for the Iraq war to co-sponsoring a Senate bill to ban flag-burning. I wrote article after article inveighing against the idea that Clinton was a feminist standard-bearer. In fact, Iargued, she exemplified “a phenomenon seen in many developing and crisis-ridden countries: the great man’s wife or daughter promising to continue his legacy.” I was livid when older feminists like Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, and Linda Hirshman denigrated the young feminists supporting Obama. “If feminism equaled supporting Hillary Clinton, I’m not the only one who wouldn’t want anything to do with it,” I sniffed.

It is strange, then, to find myself, eight years later, not only rooting for Clinton, but feeling exasperated by her left-wing critics. I know their case against Clinton. I agree with a lot of it. I worry about what Clinton’s many flaws would mean for a potential presidency. Now, however, watching her be rejected by young people swept up in an idealistic political movement, I feel sadness instead of glee.

Partly, this is because circumstances have changed. The Clinton of 2008 was running for her husband’s third term, touting her record as first lady as a qualification. Since then, she’s carved out a distinct record as secretary of state. She is running as a continuation of the Obama administration; the fact that she’s married to Bill Clinton is almost immaterial.

The Lid says Bernie Sanders doesn’t have his revolution yet, considering the fact that voter turnout has been down so far in 2016 as opposed to 2008:

“There’s absolutely no question that he’s built a formidable coalition that’s making him a real threat to the establishment. But if ‘revolution’ by involving a massive amount of new people in the political process is the goal, the two nominating contests in the books already aren’t slam-dunk advertisements for the plan so far. Democratic turnout in BOTH Iowa and New Hampshire was DOWN from 2008. New participants made up 44% of the electorate in this year’s Democratic contest in Iowa, down from 57% eight years ago. In New Hampshire, newcomers participated at about the same rate as in 2008.”

“Yes, he’s raising massive amounts of money from small donors, which is an important data point here too. And yes, we’re only talking about the first two states, and there’s a lot of politicking left to come. But we’ll have to see some more raw vote totals — and an expansion of Sanders’ coalition in more diverse states — to be convinced that his movement is surpassing the scale of what Obama put together eight years ago.”

Politico: “Almost 85 percent of Republican insiders said Trump isn’t on a glide path to become the party’s nominee, despite a 22-point win in the New Hampshire primary this week.”

“Their rationale is partly about math – Trump has a solid plurality of the vote in many states, but polls suggest he is too polarizing to win over a majority of Republicans – and partly grounded in the belief that the brash, sometimes-profane real-estate mogul will wilt once the other candidates turn their fire on him.”

NBC News: “A focus group sponsored by The Riley Institute at Furman University and moderated by pollster Peter Hart revealed significant anxiety among some GOP primary voters about Trump as a candidate, but all of the ten participants said they would still support Trump over Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup, and all but two said they expect him to win the state’s primary next Saturday.”

“Asked to name the candidate most capable of beating the Democratic nominee in November, only one participant named the current GOP frontrunner. But while a majority called Trump divisive, all but three in the group said his candidacy has had a net positive effect on the party by mobilizing disaffected voters.”

Jonathan Martin at The New York Times gave the edge to Clinton in Thursday’s debate:

Facing off against Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton did not comport herself like someone who had just suffered a landslide loss in New Hampshire. She did not raise her voice or express anger. She did not demonize Mr. Sanders or suggest he would be a dangerous choice for Democrats. She remained calm as he pungently sought to highlight their differences.

Instead, she behaved like someone heading into Nevada and South Carolina with every reason to be confident and little to fear but her own missteps.

Steve Benen:

There’s no denying the fact that Sanders is a disciplined candidate with a powerful message: big banks and the very wealthy have rigged the economy in their favor, squeezing the middle class and creating unsustainable economic inequality. But if you listen to Sanders in a forum such as a debate, it’s obvious that he routinely works these concerns into as many answers as humanly possible. Whether you consider his focus “specific” or “narrow” depends largely on whether or not you’re inclined to support him.

But Clinton seems to believe she can start using this specificity against Sanders, characterizing him as a “single-issue candidate.” Clinton hopes Democrats start to see Sanders, who has admitted more than once that his campaign is doing far better than even he expected, as a protest candidate highlighting the issue he cares most about – which isn’t necessarily bad, but which doesn’t necessarily make him presidential material, either.

Matt Yglesias says Clinton turned Sanders’s attacks on her Wall Street ties into a game of chicken. And she won.

[T]he most significant exchange was arguably one that featured almost no drama. It’s a dog that didn’t bark: a moment where it initially looked like Sanders was going to hammer Clinton on her Achilles heel — personal, professional, and financial ties to Wall Street — but ended up retreating into generalities.

And what’s really striking about it is that it wasn’t a blunder or a missed opportunity on his part. He wasn’t able to blast away at Clinton’s weak spot because she very effectively covered it with a human shield named Barack Obama — forcing Sanders to choose between slamming a president who has a 90 percent approval rating among Democrats and abandoning his key argument against Clinton. […]

[Hillary]: I debated then-Sen. Obama numerous times on stages like this, and he was the recipient of the largest number of Wall Street donations of anybody running on the Democratic side ever.

Now, when it mattered, he stood up and took on Wall Street. He pushed through, and he passed the Dodd-Frank regulation, the toughest regulations since the 1930s. So, let’s not in anyway imply here that either President Obama or myself, would in anyway not take on any vested interested, whether it’s Wall Street, or drug companies, or insurance companies, or frankly, the gun lobby to stand up to do what’s best for the American people.

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  1. AQC says:

    Antonin Scalia is dead.

  2. pandora says:

    Is anyone watching the Republican debate? Trump is losing it (which might mean he’s winning?)