Monday Open Thread [2.29.16]

National—CNN/ORC–Trump 49, Rubio 16, Cruz 15, Carson 10, Kasich 6
National—CNN/ORC–Clinton 55, Sanders 38
Massachusetts—Suffolk University–Clinton 50, Sanders 42
Massachusetts—Suffolk University–Trump 43, Rubio 20, Kasich 17, Cruz 9, Carson 4
Alabama—Master Image–Trump 36, Rubio 19, Cruz 12, Carson 8, Kasich 7
Tennessee—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Trump 40, Cruz 22, Rubio 19, Carson 9, Kasich 6
Tennessee—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Clinton 60, Sanders 34
Texas—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Cruz 39, Trump 26, Rubio 16, Kasich 6, Carson 8
Texas—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Clinton 59, Sanders 38
Georgia—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Trump 30, Cruz 23, Rubio 23, Carson 9, Kasich 9
Georgia—NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl–Clinton 64, Sanders 30
Virginia—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 40, Rubio 27, Cruz 22, Kasich 6, Carson 4
Virginia—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 59, Sanders 39
Texas—CBS News/YouGov–Cruz 42, Trump 31, Rubio 19, Kasich 4, Carson 4
Texas—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 61, Sanders 37
Georgia—CBS News/YouGov–Trump 40, Cruz 29, Rubio 22, Carson 7, Kasich 2
Georgia—CBS News/YouGov–Clinton 63, Sanders 35
Kansas—Fort Hayes Statue University–Trump 26, Cruz 14, Rubio 13, Kasich 3, Carson 3

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds that as the GOP field shrinks, Trump’s support rises: He now leads nationally among Republicans with 44%, followed by Ted Cruz at 21%, Marco Rubio at 17%, John Kasich at 8% and Ben Carson at 7%. In a three-way match up: Trump 49%, Rubio 27%, Cruz 25%. In a two-way match up with Rubio, Trump leads 57% to 43%. With Cruz, Trump leads 58% to 42%.

As you may know, Donald Trump had himself a day yesterday. He repeatedly and pointedly refused to disavow the endorsements of David Duke and the KKK. Donald Trump’s biggest fan in all media, Joe Scarborough says this is now disqualifying, whereas the other racist things the Donald has said up until now weren’t apparently.

In a column for the Washington Post today, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked if “this is how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies.” Yes.

“The first question is why would Trump pretend to be so ignorant of American history that he refused to pass judgment on the Ku Klux Klan before receiving additional information?” he asked. “What kind of facts could possibly mitigate a century of sins committed by a violent hate group whose racist crimes terrorized Americans and placed a shameful blot on this nation’s history?”

Trump has repeatedly bragged about having the “world’s greatest memory” so it’s hard to believe Trump doesn’t know what the KKK stands for, he wrote. “The harsher reality is that the next GOP nominee will be a man who refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and one of its most infamous Grand Wizards when telling the ugly truth wouldn’t have cost him a single vote,” Scarborough said.

The Washington Post reports says the GOP is being torn apart by Donald Trump.

“The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.”

“At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.”

Chris Cillizza: Trump is remarkably dangerous to the Republican party

Iran has voted and the moderate reformers won in a massive landslide. The fundamentalists were obliterated. This is a direct result of President Obama’s policies, and it was something every Iran Deal critic said would not happen. They lied. Thanks, Obama.

Joshua Green says Cruz will never drop out: “Dropping out would violate the logic of Cruz’s whole political career. And anyone acquainted with his character and ambition should probably assume, as I do, that he won’t. Although his odds of winning the nomination are long, Cruz is bound to do what’s best for Cruz… That will entail staying in the race all the way through to the Republican convention in Cleveland—no matter what happens.”

Markos Moulitsas offers some thoughts on the coming end to the Democratic Primary:

Don’t be a dick! If you are a Hillary Clinton person, you want to spike that football, but we need to stick together to win the all-important general election. Never let go of the big picture.

On the flip side, if you think Clinton can’t win against Donald Trump, you are a fucking moron. Seriously, you are as dumb as rocks. “But!” you yell, “Her unfavorables are 54 percent!” Yes, they are! But a big chunk of that is Sanders supporters. Check out the chart below: see that inflection point when Clinton’s unfavorables overtook her favorables? That was April 2015. You know what month Bernie Sanders entered the campaign? April 2015. Most will come home after Sanders bows out.

Next up, you can’t argue 54 percent unfavorables makes her unelectable while claiming that Donald Trump can win with unfavorables of 58 percent. Look at his chart below. People have always thought that Donald Trump was a dick, and little has changed since the day they started polling his favorables. But you want to argue that the guy people have always hated is more electable than the woman who is less polarizing? That said, even his numbers will improve after he clinches the nomination as most Republicans rally home as well.

Clinton’s victory speech was fantastic! “We don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again.” Funny seeing conservatives, who love to yell about America being “number one!” suddenly arguing that this place is a hellhole. Optimism trumps hate. […]

There is no correlation between primary turnout and general election performance. Fact is, Democrats have long assumed (correctly) that Clinton would be the nominee, so there has been less impetus to vote than in the GOP civil war. In fact, the lower-than-expected turnout is an indictment on the Sanders campaign, because despite all the talk of revolution, fact is, he hasn’t inspired casual Democrats to turn out in any real numbers.

You know who did turn out given the opportunity? African Americans in South Carolina. That’s the Trump effect. So yeah, white Bernie Sanders supporters might not be feeling the Clinton, but that’s because you don’t have Donald Trump challenging your very right to exist. If you are a Sanders supporter and can’t understand that, perhaps that’s why you weren’t able to help expand Sanders’ support beyond his white base. [..]

Sander’s best-case scenario for Tuesday is a hometown blowout victory (Vermont), along with Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts. Indeed, those are the only states in which his campaign is currently spending on the air. He pulls that off, five of 11 states, and he lives to fight another day. Worst case? He wins just one or two, and any rational impetus to carry on is severely compromised. Clinton lingered long past her time in 2008 and it was pathetic. We don’t need that this year, not when we need to focus our guns on Donald Trump.

So what is Sanders’ deadline to show real results? Not this Tuesday, but by March 15. By then, the states of Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina will have voted. Right now, Clinton has big leads in all of them (where polling is available). If Sanders can’t win a significant chunk of those, then it’s over. Winning the Maine and/or Nebraska caucuses aren’t a viable counterbalance.

Ross Douthat: “The Trump uprising is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: There would be no Trumpism if George W. Bush’s presidency hadn’t cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadn’t alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.”

“But Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Obama didn’t give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isn’t an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends — with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.”

The only way Obama is responsible for Trump is indirectly, in that it was the racism of those who opposed Obama simply because he was black led those racist to follow the racist Trump.

Ariel Edwards-Levy, the polling director for the Huffington Post, has some good news for Democrats.

…Such animosity [between Hillary and Bernie supporters] hasn’t taken much hold among the majority of party voters, who like both their candidates and are already largely willing to rally behind either in a general election. Exit polls in South Carolina, like those in previous states, show that a strong majority of voters would be satisfied to see either candidate as the nominee. And a national HuffPost/YouGov poll, conducted before the primary, shows Democrats generally happy to accept either candidate.

According to that survey, 77 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide would be at least satisfied with a Clinton nomination, and 63 percent would be at least satisfied with Sanders as the nominee. Fewer than a fifth would be angry about either outcome.

While Clinton, who continues to hold a small lead in national polls, has the edge, even those who’d be less than happy with a Sanders victory would support him over a Republican rival.

Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly say they’ll stay within party lines come November, with 76 percent saying they’d vote for Clinton and 77 percent that they’d vote for Sanders. The remainder are more likely to say they’re undecided or not planning to vote than that they’d turn out for a Republican.

In fact, the percentage who’ll eventually end up voting along partisan lines is likely even higher. In 2008, after a protracted battle that left some die-hard Clinton supporters vowing that they’d never support Obama, about 89 percent of Democrats ended up voting for their party’s nominee over John McCain.

And most Democratic primary voters have nothing but good feelings for their fellow party members, regardless of whom they’re backing. Seventy-three percent take a positive view of Clinton supporters, while 69 percent feel warmly toward Sanders’ supporters.

The bad actors, like the worst of the BernieBros or the Hillary PUMAs, get the most press, and it may seem like everyone is against each other. But the truth is we are rather united.

The Upshot’s Nate Cohn says that the “results in South Carolina — as well as in Nevada, where Mrs. Clinton also won black voters by a wide margin — suggest that she can count on big wins in six Super Tuesday states where black voters represent an above-average share of Democratic voters: Alabama, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Georgia. The polls say the same thing…As a result, the Sanders campaign has effectively conceded the South on Super Tuesday. The campaign is not airing advertisements there, according to NBC News data.”

Nate Silver tells us not to assume conservatives will rally around Trump:

[O]ne should be careful about one’s assumptions. For instance, the assumption that the parties will rally behind their respective nominees may or may not be reliable. True, recent elections have had very little voting across party lines: 93 percent of Republicans who voted in 2012 supported Romney, for example, despite complaints from the base that he was insufficiently conservative. And in November 2008, some 89 percent of Democrats who voted supported Barack Obama after his long battle with Hillary Clinton.

But we may be entering a new era, and through the broader sweep of American history, there’s sometimes been quite a bit of voting across party lines. The table below reflects, in each election since 1952, what share of a party’s voters voted against their party’s presidential candidate (e.g., a Democrat voting Republican or for a third-party ticket). There’s a lot of fascinating political history embedded in the table, but one theme is that divisive nominations have consequences.

[…] I’d be equally surprised if there were total capitulation to Trump. Instead, I’d expect quite a bit of resistance from Republican elites. One thing this election has probably taught us is that there are fewer movement conservatives than those within the conservative movement might want to admit. Rank-and-file Republican voters aren’t necessarily all that ideological, and they might buy into some of the Republican platform while rejecting other parts of it. They might care more about Trump’s personality than his policy views.

But there are certainly some movement conservatives, and they have outsized influence on social media, talk radio, television and in other arenas of political discourse. And if you are a movement conservative, Trump is arguably a pretty terrible choice, taking your conservative party and remaking it in his unpredictable medley of nationalism, populism and big-government Trumpism.

If you’re one of these ideological conservatives, it may even be in your best interest for Trump to lose in November. If Trump loses, especially by a wide margin, his brand of politics will probably be discredited, or his nomination might look like a strange, one-off “black swan” that you’ll be better equipped to prevent the next time around. You’ll have an opportunity to get your party back in 2020, and your nominee might stand a pretty decent chance against Clinton, who could be elected despite being quite unpopular because Trump is even less popular and who would be aiming for the Democratic Party’s fourth straight term in office.