“Hillary Clinton Is Still The Candidate To Beat”: Her Biggest Task Is Clear; Get Out Of Her Own Way
She keeps putting obstacles in her own path, but Hillary Clinton remains the odds-on favorite to become our next president.
The headlines screaming “Clinton’s Support Erodes” are true, but only in a relative sense. In the contest for the Democratic nomination, according to the polls, she has slid all the way from “prohibitive favorite” to something like “strong favorite” — not bad, given the way she has hobbled herself with the e-mail scandal.
A new Post-ABC News poll gives a clear view of Clinton’s status. Among registered voters who are Democrats or lean toward that party, Clinton is at 42 percent while Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is at 24 percent and Vice President Joe Biden at 21 percent. Since July, according to the poll, Clinton’s support has fallen 21 points. So yes, her campaign has reason to be concerned. But not alarmed.
The saving grace for Clinton is that only half of that lost support has gone to Sanders, who is running a smart and effective campaign, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire. The other half has gone to Biden, who is not running a campaign at all — and may never do so.
In his recent media appearances, Biden has revealed his profound grief over the death of his son Beau. No one who watched him last week on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” could come away thinking that Biden is eager to run.
“I don’t think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president and, two, they can look at folks out there and say, ‘I promise you, you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy and my passion to do this,’ ” he told Colbert. “And I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there.”
If you take Biden at his word and leave him out of the equation, Clinton’s support leaps to 56 percent, according to the Post-ABC News poll, while Sanders’s increases only slightly to 28 percent.
The challenge for Sanders is that while he is hugely popular with young voters and progressives, he has not connected with other key segments of the Democratic Party coalition. In August, a Gallup survey found that Clinton had a favorable rating of 80 percent among African Americans compared to just 23 percent for Sanders. This doesn’t reflect any particular antipathy toward the Vermont senator. Rather, it’s because just 33 percent of African Americans told Gallup they were familiar with him.
Am I ignoring the big picture? Have I somehow missed the fact that the major themes of the campaign thus far have been disgust with politics as usual and rejection of establishment candidates?
No, it’s just that I believe the internal dynamics of the two parties are quite different. Clinton fatigue among Democrats is one thing, but the total anarchy in the Republican Party is quite another.
Back to the Post-ABC News poll: A full 33 percent of Republican or GOP-leaning registered voters support billionaire Donald Trump for their party’s nomination and another 20 percent support retired surgeon Ben Carson. That’s more than half the party rejecting not only the establishment’s favored choices but any contender who has held political office.
Indeed, when asked what kind of person they would like to see as the next president, more than 70 percent of Democratic-leaning voters said they want “someone with experience in how the political system works.” But more than half of GOP-leaning voters, and a stunning 64 percent of self-described “conservative” Republicans, want “someone from outside the existing political establishment.”
This is terrible news for Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz and the other current or former officeholders in the GOP race. It’s good news for Clinton, because if she gets the nomination she will likely face either a novice whose qualifications and temperament are in question or a veteran politician struggling to consolidate his own fractious party’s support.
All of this assumes that Clinton doesn’t find a way to defeat herself. And yes, I realize this is a dangerous year for making assumptions.
I’m hard-pressed to imagine how Clinton and her team could have done a worse job of handling the controversy over her State Department e-mails. Instead of getting the whole truth out at once, they have let it emerge ever so slowly — and kept a damaging story alive.
Clinton’s biggest task is clear: Get out of her own way.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 16, 2015
“Holes In Walker’s Electability Claims Getting Noticed”: Boilerplate Rhetoric With A Distinct Aroma Of Fraud
I’m going to do something I rarely do here at PA, but that will save time and space right now: quote extensively from an earlier post–in this case one on the different “electability” arguments of different GOP presidential candidates, as published back in March. Bear with me:
Jeb Bush’s is the traditional Median Voter Theorem-driven argument: conservatives need to avoid extremism on issues where they disagree with swing voters—you know, like immigration and education. GOP needs to trust their nominees to be ideologically reliable and give them flexibility to “run to the center.”
Rand Paul, who challenged Ted Cruz’s “winnability” yesterday, is offering what I’d call the “new coalition” argument based on picking off independents and even Democrats via an emphasis on common areas of interest like criminal justice reform and privacy. This is not a “move to the center” argument; it’s more like “move the debate” to subjects where there is a natural convergence without the need for much compromise.
And then there is Cruz, and even more strikingly Scott Walker, offering the traditional, if much-mocked, movement conservative argument that a combination of ultra-high “base” turnout, “hidden voter” turnout, and swing voters attracted by the sheer principled power of unadulterated conservative ideas is the winning formula.
Walker is far and away the most articulate about this; his motto that “you don’t have to go to the center to win the center” is a direct repudiation of the traditional view Jeb’s team is espousing. And he has what he considers proof of this ancient conservative belief: his three wins in Wisconsin in four years, which he attributes to his ability to impress and attract Obama voters (a somewhat dubious proposition given the different electorates in presidential and midterm—not to mention specials like the Wisconsin recall election of 2012—elections, but it’s at least plausible) with exactly the kind of vicious and uncompromising conservatism the base prefers.
Cruz tries to emulate the Walker appeal by claiming he put together the same kind of “big tent” coalition in Texas, though it’s not real convincing since in his one general election he ran against weak Democratic opposition in a deep red state.
You will note the little hole in Walker’s electability argument that was evident to anyone who thought about it with an awareness of turnout disparities between presidential and non-presidential elections.
Well, now that awareness is spreading. On the day of Walker’s presidential announcement, Josh Kraushaar of National Journal went deep on the subject and threw a lot of cold water on the idea that the Wisconsin governor has shown any real appeal beyond “the base.”
Walker’s success had as much to do with the political calendar and the state’s polarized electorate as it did with crossover appeal. He won only 6 percent of Democratic voters in his 2014 reelection. Many African-American voters simply stayed home during Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns, while a disproportionate number of college students sat out the contentious June 2012 recall election—which took place after campuses’ spring semester concluded. That’s not likely to repeat itself if he’s the GOP presidential nominee.
According to exit polling, young adults under the age of 30 made up 20 percent of the 2012 presidential electorate, but that number dropped to 16 percent during the recall election. White voters made up 91 percent of the recall vote, but only 86 percent in the last presidential campaign. The African-American percentage of the electorate was nearly twice as high in November 2012 (7 percent) as it was two years prior in 2010 (4 percent). In the Democratic bastion of Milwaukee County, turnout for the 2014 midterm election was only 74 percent of the vote total for the 2012 presidential election. In deeply conservative Waukesha County, that number was much higher: 83 percent.
I found it interesting that on Twitter Mike Murphy, Jeb Bush’s chief strategist, was hyping Kraushaar’s findings.
Does it matter that Walker’s electability claims may be based on a misunderstanding? Maybe not. As I noted in the March post, it’s based not just on his electoral record but on an ancient conviction of movement conservatives (dating back to the title of Phyllis Schlafly’s pro-Goldwater book of 1964: A Choice Not an Echo). As a matter of fact, many folks on the left share it; you could put together a pretty good organizing meeting for the Church of Maximum Partisan Differentiation drawing from both tribes. If challenged on his record, Walker could easily say, as Cruz is prone to do, that the GOP tried the “median voter theory” approach in the last two cycles and lost.
Still, Walker’s electability claims are much like his “economic development” program in Wisconsin: boilerplate rhetoric with a distinct aroma of fraud. Another few polls showing him getting trounced by HRC in Wisconsin should do the trick, but won’t for true believers.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, July 14, 2015
“Still Scary, Narrow-Minded And Out Of Touch”: 2016 Republicans Are Completely Ignoring The Lessons Of Their 2012 ‘Autopsy’
After Mitt Romney’s bruising defeat in the 2012 presidential election, Republicans spent several months looking at what went wrong, and proposed a series of changes to make sure it didn’t happen again.
The 97-page report was an extraordinary public acknowledgement of the party’s weaknesses. It did not mince words. The report said the GOP was “marginalizing itself,” and that without major changes “it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election in the near future.”
Three key groups of voters were highlighted for special attention: Latinos, women, and young people. All were found to be moving away from the party.
If the last few months are any indication, Republicans have done little to pull these voters back into the GOP tent.
Latino voters are especially critical. The GOP autopsy report called for abandonment of the party’s anti-immigration stance, declaring that “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.”
More than two years later, however, Republicans are no closer to passing immigration reform, even though they control both houses of Congress. In fact, the party remains bitterly divided over the issue.
The party is so conflicted on immigration that even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is one of two Latino GOP presidential candidates — had to back away from his own reform plan when he found it incompatible with wooing GOP primary voters.
Women voters are another key voting group that the GOP has failed to reconnect with. The autopsy report concluded the GOP “must improve its efforts to include female voters and promote women to leadership ranks” and that “when developing our Party’s message, women need to be part of this process to represent some of the unique concerns that female voters may have.”
But even with a record number of candidates either currently seeking or planning to run for the GOP presidential nomination, only one — Carly Fiorina — is a woman. And she’s never held public office before.
Finally, young voters continue to abandon the GOP in record numbers. The autopsy report noted that young people were “rolling their eyes at what the party represents” and focus groups described Republicans as “scary,” “narrow-minded'” and “out of touch.” A recent Pew Research survey put numbers behind these observations and found a “wide ideological divide” between young voters and the Republican Party.
But if you listen to the Republicans running for president, the reason the party hasn’t won the White House in recent years is because their candidates haven’t been conservative enough. Younger voters — including younger Republicans — are much less conservative than the party. They don’t agree with the party on many issues, from gay marriage to immigration to the role of government itself.
It’s almost as if no Republicans bothered to read the Republican autopsy report. They’re making the same mistakes once again.
By: Taegan Goddard , The Week, June 1, 2015
“An Outdated Reference”: Millennials Don’t Really Remember Ronald Reagan, And That’s A Problem For The Reagan-Loving GOP
In the summer of 2004, when I was 16, Ronald Reagan died. Washington, D.C., was within driving distance of our home, so when my mom proposed we go see the former president lying in state in the Capitol, I was game.
But that experience is about the extent to which he features in my political consciousness. Since then, I’ve become more and more interested in politics and less and less interested in Ronald Reagan. It’s not that I’m anti-Gipper — though I have been known to make a few Zombie Reagan jokes with each passing election cycle. It’s just that fealty to Reagan is not the measuring stick I naturally reach for when evaluating a candidate.
I don’t think this Reagan apathy is unique to me. I’m a decade older than 2016’s first-time voters, who were born in — oh geez — 1998. When I was visiting the Capitol, they were getting ready to graduate from kindergarten. So if Ronald Reagan appears but dimly in my political consciousness, he’s almost on par with Millard Fillmore for them.
At best, Reagan might be a George Washington-type figure for some millennials: He’s got some good quotes and we may have vaguely positive feelings about him, but when it comes to concrete policy decisions, Reagan fades into the background, eclipsed by more recent figures and considerations.
This may be due to the way high school history is taught, with minimal attention given to everything post-Marshall Plan. (I left an Advanced Placement history class with no idea who or what an Iran-Contra was.) But I suspect a more significant factor is simply the passage of time: Reagan left the White House 10 years before this election’s new voters were born. At 18, that’s more than half a lifetime. Add to that the breakneck pace at which the modern news cycle moves and you have a perfect recipe for Reagan’s near irrelevance to the bulk of the younger generation.
No one at Republican headquarters seems to have really absorbed this fact yet, even though the voters who can remember Reagan are not the ones the GOP needs to worry about attracting.
Indeed, for Republican presidential candidates, appeals to Reagan’s legacy are de rigueur. Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz are all eager to cite Reagan as the greatest president in recent history — even when that’s not the question they were asked. Carly Fiorina published an effusive blog post praising Reagan on his birthday during her 2010 Senate campaign; Rick Perry echoes his speeches; Rubio quotes Reagan quoting obscure quotes. Rand Paul mentions Reagan often on topics ranging from taxes to Iran, though he has been willing to call out Reagan’s intemperate fiscal policy.
Jeb Bush, to his credit, said in 2009 that Republicans should abandon the Reagan nostalgia for a more forward-thinking message. But so far his campaign isn’t living up to that hype — Bush has even hired numerous Reagan advisers to his own team. Similarly, Mike Huckabee argued in 2011 that Reagan would not be elected by the modern GOP, only to announce a “Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II Tour” tour for pastors from early primary states. And Rick Santorum pointed out last year that Reagan is an outdated reference, but just two months earlier he’d all but claimed the Reagan mantle for himself.
And that’s the heart of the problem: that there exists such an idea as the “Reagan mantle,” and that it’s desired even by Republicans who seem to get that Reagan may not be the best campaign icon in 2015.
This is bad marketing for an aging party that struggles to appeal to young people, but it’s even worse for policy innovation. As Jim Antle has ably argued at The American Conservative, appeals to the idealized Reagan of the Republican establishment’s memory have led to an excessively hawkish, unthoughtful GOP that values economic freedom while discounting civil liberties (a defining issue for millennials, who aren’t exactly on board with Reagan’s acceleration of the drug war, either).
Of course, political movements need motivational figures, and conservatives are particularly inclined to be inspired by and committed to the past.
But the invocation of Reagan in the Republican Party today is a malleable shorthand for “things we like,” as the real Reagan’s legacy is reduced to a myth of low taxes and aggressive foreign policy. As Richard Gamble writes, it is difficult to “point to any concrete evidence that the Reagan Revolution fundamentally altered the nation’s trajectory toward bloated, centralized, interventionist government,” and keeping Reagan around as a tired symbol of small government makes it similarly difficult to progress toward that goal — or capture the interest of the next generation.
By: Bonnie Kristian, The Week, June 2, 2015
“How Dems Can Peel Off GOP Voters”: The Birth Of The Left-Wing Wedge Issue
Here’s a little datum that may have slid by you: Gallup has just found that on social issues, the country is now equally split between liberals and conservatives. The question was: “Thinking about social issues, would you say your views are” very conservative, conservative, liberal, or very liberal?
And the answer came back: Grouping the first two into one category and the last two into another, it was a dead heat at 31 percent each. This is pretty close to seismic. Just five years ago, the conservative edge on social issues was 39 to 22 percent. Now it’s totally wiped out. The implications for our electoral politics are obvious and enormous, and I mean good-enormous.
I’m not sure when people started using the phrase “wedge issue.” But we’re all sure what wedge issues are: They’re cultural politics issues used in elections by the right—and always only the right—to drive a wedge into the liberal coalition. Nixon did it expertly, even though the phrase wasn’t in use back then. Reagan did it well, cleaving so many working-class white ethnics away from the Democratic Party. George H.W. Bush and Jim Baker did it—remember Willie Horton (race was the original wedge issue). And Bush the younger and Karl Rove expanded it out to include guns and gays.
And now, Gallup is suggesting to us, the era of the wedge issue may be over.
But wait! Why should it be over? Maybe it’s time for some liberal wedge issues! I like the sound of that a lot.
Gay marriage was a great wedge issue for Dubya and Rove in 2004, as you’ll recall. They got anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot in 11 states, many of them key swing states; studies have tended to find that in Ohio, which Bush carried and which was the difference between victory and defeat in the Electoral College, the initiative did goose evangelical turnout a bit (and remember, Bush won the state by just 118,000 votes out of around 5.6 million cast). It may have also helped him win more African Americans than he would have otherwise, hence the wedge.
Well, in 2016, same-sex marriage can be a wedge issue again, but this time, for our team. The numbers are now so decisive that surely in the key swing states with the bushels of electoral votes, the likely Democratic candidate can cast shame upon the head of her opponent. In Florida, support for gay marriage was 57 percent a year ago, and it’s probably a little higher now. In Ohio, support-to-opposition was 52-37 in 2012, and that’s surely higher now. In Virginia in 2013, support registered at 56 percent. The issue isn’t a loser in any important swing state, with the possible exception of North Carolina, which of course is just icing for the Democrats anyway.
How could Hillary Clinton and her party use this, exactly? That gets a little harder to say. The thing that makes a wedge issue a wedge issue is that, historically anyway, it’s been about fear. The blacks are coming. The gays are coming. The anti-gun nuts are going to be pounding on your door, warrant in hand. As has often been said, it’s the best motivator in politics.
The crucial psychic element of fear-mongering is that you have to persuade the majority that some minority is “taking over” and they, your majority, will soon be the trampled minority unless they act. That’s what gets the blood cooking in the old amygdala. (What?! Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize amygdala?!) Conservatives are much better at this than liberals are, and in any case, if liberals tried this it just wouldn’t make sense or work. Everybody knows that the anti-same-sex-marriage side is losing fast, so fear is a non-starter here.
No, the psychic ingredient of the liberal wedge campaign has to be something else. And of course it has to resonate with people on some level, be in tune with what they’re actually thinking. So, what are people (not just liberals, but average, quasi-informed people) thinking about conservatives right now? I’d suggest it’s that they’re just out of it. Out of touch with the times. Holding us back.
Certainly this is so with respect to same-sex marriage, although the problem is hardly limited to that by a long shot. One issue I’d really love to see Clinton and the Democrats plop down smack in the middle of the table this election is the way conservatism today just strangles opportunity for middle-class people, and for young people in particular, in the name of their messianic tax-cutting.
TPM ran a great piece Friday on how the Republican governors who are running for president are destroying their higher-education systems in the name of cutting state income taxes and never, ever raising another tax of any kind. Bobby Jindal has cut taxes six times in Louisiana, which has produced a $1.6 billion shortfall. To plug the gap, he’s cutting higher-ed funding by as much as $600 million, which is 82 percent of state higher-ed aid. Scott Walker’s half-a-billion dollars in tax cuts in Wisconsin have led to a $2 billion shortfall, so he’s slashing higher ed by $300 million.
These, too, are wedge issues, if you ask me. Republicans send their kids to college too. Yes, they like their tax cuts. But I would assume that they don’t like whopping tuition hikes, or their kids having to drop out of college altogether, any more than Democrats or independents do. If the Democrats can connect these dots in the right way—on this and a whole range of Warrenesque “household economics” issues—they can peel off a decent chunk of voters who have been traditionally Republican.
Republicans will still roll out their wedge issues, but it seems that the pickings are pretty slim. Fear just isn’t selling. To borrow from A.J. Liebling’s nice line about sweet Louisiana corn, fear just doesn’t travel well anymore outside the right-wing base. Muslim-bashing may be the exception to that, but even that won’t work without a triggering event of some kind. Republicans might actually have to talk about issues. Which of course is even worse for them.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 26, 2015
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