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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: January 2016

January 29: The Debate Won By the Guy Who Wasn’t There

The Fox News GOP presidential debate from Iowa, boycotted by Daniel Trump, did not resolve a lot, as I explained last night at New York:

[N]obody who could have scored a real victory that mattered actually did. Ted Cruz had his worst debate by far, as Megyn Kelly and the other candidates basically called him a slick liar — not what you want when you are trying to convince Iowa evangelicals you are young King Josiah sent to cleanse the land. Speaking of slick: Cruz may have been the champion college debater, but Marco Rubio sounded like one with his determination to pack two minutes of stock speech into every minute of talk. His own flip-flopping on immigration was cast in sharp relief, and his gratuitous shout-outs to Jesus Christ were exceeded only by Cruz’s to Iowa nativist Steve King.
Meanwhile, some of the better performances were by candidates who are going nowhere in Iowa and are struggling to survive in New Hampshire. The last thing the Republican Establishment needs is for Chris Christie or John Kasich to get a second wind, since neither is going to win in New Hampshire or the states immediately following it on the calendar — but could take votes away from a more viable candidate like, say, Marco Rubio. Jeb Bush, who has just enough money left to run another $10 to $20 million in attack ads aimed at Rubio, had a pretty good night, too.
All of this is pretty good news for the guy who wasn’t there. But maybe I’m wrong. As I write this, Frank Luntz has one of his focus groups warbling about Marco Rubio. I seem to recall that Luntz’s focus group after the first Fox News debate thought Megyn Kelly had all but destroyed Donald Trump’s candidacy. So we’ll have to let Monday night’s caucusers have the last word.


The Debate Won By the Guy Who Wasn’t There

The Fox News GOP presidential debate from Iowa, boycotted by Daniel Trump, did not resolve a lot, as I explained last night at New York:

[N]obody who could have scored a real victory that mattered actually did. Ted Cruz had his worst debate by far, as Megyn Kelly and the other candidates basically called him a slick liar — not what you want when you are trying to convince Iowa evangelicals you are young King Josiah sent to cleanse the land. Speaking of slick: Cruz may have been the champion college debater, but Marco Rubio sounded like one with his determination to pack two minutes of stock speech into every minute of talk. His own flip-flopping on immigration was cast in sharp relief, and his gratuitous shout-outs to Jesus Christ were exceeded only by Cruz’s to Iowa nativist Steve King.
Meanwhile, some of the better performances were by candidates who are going nowhere in Iowa and are struggling to survive in New Hampshire. The last thing the Republican Establishment needs is for Chris Christie or John Kasich to get a second wind, since neither is going to win in New Hampshire or the states immediately following it on the calendar — but could take votes away from a more viable candidate like, say, Marco Rubio. Jeb Bush, who has just enough money left to run another $10 to $20 million in attack ads aimed at Rubio, had a pretty good night, too.
All of this is pretty good news for the guy who wasn’t there. But maybe I’m wrong. As I write this, Frank Luntz has one of his focus groups warbling about Marco Rubio. I seem to recall that Luntz’s focus group after the first Fox News debate thought Megyn Kelly had all but destroyed Donald Trump’s candidacy. So we’ll have to let Monday night’s caucusers have the last word.


Dems Making Cities Laboratories of Democracy

Most discussions of political strategy center on national and state politics — how to elect presidents, senators, House members and governors. Attention is even more narrowly focused in contentious election years like 2016.
But while the media and public are all yammering on about those high-profile electoral contests, a powerful progressive transformation is accelerating in America’s cities. Claire Cain Miller addresses the trend in her NYT Upshot column, “Liberals Turn to Cities to Pass Laws and Spread Ideas“:

If Congress won’t focus on a new policy idea, and if state legislatures are indifferent or hostile, why not skip them both and start at the city level?
That’s the approach with a proposed law in San Francisco to require businesses there to pay for employees’ parental leaves.
It might seem like a progressive pipe dream, the kind of liberal policy that could happen only in a place like San Francisco. But Scott Wiener, the city and county supervisor who proposed the policy, sees it differently.
“The more local jurisdictions that tackle these issues, the more momentum there is for statewide and eventually national action,” he said.

Miller cites Baltimore’s ‘living wage ‘ law enacted in 1994, along with “soda taxes, universal health care, calorie counts on menus, mandatory composting and bans on smoking indoors” as examples of the phenomenon. Many cities, she adds, are well-positioned to serve as “incubators of ideas” and policies to fill the void left by a gridlocked federal congress.
There is significant opposition to the cities taking the lead, coming from conservative organizations like ALEC, the NRA and the tobacco lobby, which have had some success in blocking reforms passed by cities, including “gun control, plastic bag bans, paid leave, fracking, union membership and the minimum wage.”
Yet the reforms enacted by cities have sometimes take root as causes gaining national support. As Miller notes,

Paid sick leave is an example. The first city to require it was San Francisco in 2006. It is now the law in 23 cities and states, and President Obama last fall required federal contractors to provide it. (Meanwhile, more than a dozen states have pre-emption laws to stop cities from requiring paid sick leave.)
Minimum wage is another example. SeaTac, Wash., passed a $15 minimum wage in 2013. Nearby Seattle followed, and then so did San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mountain View, Calif., and Emeryville, Calif.
Fourteen states have since changed their minimum wage laws, two bills in Congress would do the same nationally, and all three Democratic presidential contenders have said they would raise the federal minimum wage.

Democrats are driving the reforms in the cities and in some key states, like California. What has changed most significantly is the severity of gridlock in congress, which gives added incentive to the cities to lead the way in building America’s future. If the cities can meet daunting challenges like eliminating traffic jams, pollution and crime, their examples will prove irresistible to national politicians, rendering the GOP’s gridlock strategy inoperative.


January 28: Last Big Bipartisan Initiative Under Fire From the Right

In this era of gridlock in Congress, enforced by a policy of Republican obstructionism, there has been one bright flickering hope: for criminal justice reform, which has been promoting by a fragile but wide-ranging left-right coalition convinced that the mandatory minimum sentences and mass incarceration associated with the “war on drugs” and other law-and-order measures of past decades has been a failure with massive human and fiscal costs. But now that initiative is under fire from the Right, as I explained this week at New York:

The temptation of law-and-order politics is pulling more and more conservatives away from the carefully cultivated, Evangelical-blessed, libertarian-influenced, bipartisan criminal-justice-reform movement, which was moving toward fruition in Congress.
The immediate flash point is in the Senate, where a bill to allow for reconsideration of federal sentences imposed under the idiotic regime of mandatory minimum sentences had been considered a very good prospect for enactment in this legislatively barren election year. Two of its most prominent backers were hyperconservative senators John Cornyn of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, and it had overcome its supposedly most difficult obstacle when Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley approved it.
But now a backlash — I am using the term very deliberately — is building, led by freshman Republican senator and conservative superstar Tom Cotton of Arkansas, supported by backbenchers who pretty clearly want to show off their law-and-order credentials. Politico‘s Seung Min Kim reports Cotton’s efforts could convince Mitch McConnell to deep-six the legislation for this Congress:

Cotton, the hawkish upstart who’s already made waves on the Iran nuclear deal and government surveillance programs, is now leading a new rebellion against a bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system — hoping to torpedo one of the few pieces of major legislation that could pass Congress in President Barack Obama’s final year.
GOP tensions over a bill that would effectively loosen some mandatory minimum sentences spilled over during a party lunch last week, when Cotton (R-Ark.), the outspoken Senate freshman, lobbied his colleagues heavily against the legislation, according to people familiar with the closed-door conversation. The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall with bipartisan support….
Cotton isn’t alone. Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and David Perdue of Georgia, also registered their strong opposition during the lunch, even as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vigorously defended the bill, which he helped negotiate. Risch stressed this message, according to one Republican source: Shouldn’t the GOP be a party of law and order?
Risch declined to elaborate on his concerns over the bill, saying he was displeased that his private remarks made during a party lunch were made public. But the deepening Republican split over reforming key elements of the criminal justice system — an effort years in the making that has been powered by an influential right-left coalition — may imperil whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ultimately will take up the measure later in this election year.

It’s easy to laugh at Risch’s displeasure at being caught in mid-demagoguery, but he is unquestionably articulating views that are in the air. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, after all, likes to talk about an immigrant-driven “crime wave” that requires a new crackdown on the lowlifes and losers who are challenging police authorities in the cities. And his attitude seems to have softened the commitment to criminal-justice reform of his sometimes Mini-Me and now-deadly rival, Ted Cruz.
But what may most be animating this collapse of bipartisanship is not the 2016 presidential election, but the next one or the one after that: whenever it is that Tom Cotton makes his inevitable move toward the White House. Possessor of a mile-long pre-political résumé (two Harvard degrees, circuit court clerkship, military service in Afghanistan and Iraq, a stint with McKinsey & Company), and already distinguishing himself as the hawkiest of hawks, Cotton is the purveyor of a grim, Calvinist, old-school conservatism that still has a lot of support in the GOP. As a House member he talked about the prospect of a debt limit breach and an ensuing recession as though it might be a good, bracing tonic for a nation too accustomed to easy credit. He’s just the guy to slam the prison door shut on those who might have gotten a tardy but life-saving reprieve from hammer-headed sentences.

I’d hate to guess when this rock might be pushed back up the Hill again if Cotton rolls it down.


Last Big Bipartisan Initiative Under Fire From the Right

In this era of gridlock in Congress, enforced by a policy of Republican obstructionism, there has been one bright flickering hope: for criminal justice reform, which has been promoting by a fragile but wide-ranging left-right coalition convinced that the mandatory minimum sentences and mass incarceration associated with the “war on drugs” and other law-and-order measures of past decades has been a failure with massive human and fiscal costs. But now that initiative is under fire from the Right, as I explained this week at New York:

The temptation of law-and-order politics is pulling more and more conservatives away from the carefully cultivated, Evangelical-blessed, libertarian-influenced, bipartisan criminal-justice-reform movement, which was moving toward fruition in Congress.
The immediate flash point is in the Senate, where a bill to allow for reconsideration of federal sentences imposed under the idiotic regime of mandatory minimum sentences had been considered a very good prospect for enactment in this legislatively barren election year. Two of its most prominent backers were hyperconservative senators John Cornyn of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, and it had overcome its supposedly most difficult obstacle when Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley approved it.
But now a backlash — I am using the term very deliberately — is building, led by freshman Republican senator and conservative superstar Tom Cotton of Arkansas, supported by backbenchers who pretty clearly want to show off their law-and-order credentials. Politico‘s Seung Min Kim reports Cotton’s efforts could convince Mitch McConnell to deep-six the legislation for this Congress:

Cotton, the hawkish upstart who’s already made waves on the Iran nuclear deal and government surveillance programs, is now leading a new rebellion against a bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system — hoping to torpedo one of the few pieces of major legislation that could pass Congress in President Barack Obama’s final year.
GOP tensions over a bill that would effectively loosen some mandatory minimum sentences spilled over during a party lunch last week, when Cotton (R-Ark.), the outspoken Senate freshman, lobbied his colleagues heavily against the legislation, according to people familiar with the closed-door conversation. The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall with bipartisan support….
Cotton isn’t alone. Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and David Perdue of Georgia, also registered their strong opposition during the lunch, even as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vigorously defended the bill, which he helped negotiate. Risch stressed this message, according to one Republican source: Shouldn’t the GOP be a party of law and order?
Risch declined to elaborate on his concerns over the bill, saying he was displeased that his private remarks made during a party lunch were made public. But the deepening Republican split over reforming key elements of the criminal justice system — an effort years in the making that has been powered by an influential right-left coalition — may imperil whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ultimately will take up the measure later in this election year.

It’s easy to laugh at Risch’s displeasure at being caught in mid-demagoguery, but he is unquestionably articulating views that are in the air. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, after all, likes to talk about an immigrant-driven “crime wave” that requires a new crackdown on the lowlifes and losers who are challenging police authorities in the cities. And his attitude seems to have softened the commitment to criminal-justice reform of his sometimes Mini-Me and now-deadly rival, Ted Cruz.
But what may most be animating this collapse of bipartisanship is not the 2016 presidential election, but the next one or the one after that: whenever it is that Tom Cotton makes his inevitable move toward the White House. Possessor of a mile-long pre-political résumé (two Harvard degrees, circuit court clerkship, military service in Afghanistan and Iraq, a stint with McKinsey & Company), and already distinguishing himself as the hawkiest of hawks, Cotton is the purveyor of a grim, Calvinist, old-school conservatism that still has a lot of support in the GOP. As a House member he talked about the prospect of a debt limit breach and an ensuing recession as though it might be a good, bracing tonic for a nation too accustomed to easy credit. He’s just the guy to slam the prison door shut on those who might have gotten a tardy but life-saving reprieve from hammer-headed sentences.

I’d hate to guess when this rock might be pushed back up the Hill again if Cotton rolls it down.


Political Strategy Notes

There are good reasons why running as a third party candidate should be a non-starter for an astute business leader, even one richer than Trump. Brendan Nyhan explains at The Upshot. Conservative columnist George Will agrees, albeit for different reasons.
What can American workers learn from worker organizing in other countries? Eric Dirnbach addresses the issue in is Labor Notes article reviewing “New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class Struggle Unionism,” edited by Immanuel Ness. See also Ness’s newer book, “Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class.”
For an in-depth look at the thinking of angry white working-class voters, read “Why I’m voting for Trump: CNN talks to more than 150 people in 31 cities to explore what’s driving the Trump phenomenon.”
Americablog’s Jon Green reports that “Virginia Republicans take aim at absentee voting in latest voter suppression push.”
Carl Hulse explains at The New York Times how Dems plan to leverage the GOP’s Planned Parenthood fiasco.
AP reports that “More white Americans now share the view, long held by minorities, that racism is a national problem and should be confronted, according to an analysis of recent public opinion polling…The review, compiled by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in conjunction with the Northeastern University School of Journalism, concludes that a majority of Americans across racial groups think more should be done to end racism.”
In RawStory’s “Trump’s battle with the GOP pits ‘silent majority’ against conservative establishment,” University of Oregon political science professor Joseph Lowndes has an insightful take on the devolution of the Republican Party.
In addition to the horrific human cost of the Flint water crisis, the economic costs and scope of needed repairs are astounding. Rachel Maddow continues her superb reporting on the Flint water debacle with an illuminating interview with a master plumber on what it will take to restore safe drinking and bathing water to the city.
Both Trump and Megyn Kelly have to be thinking that tonight’s GOP presidential debate ratings will be higher still if he changes his mind and shows. Either way, Trump has played the MSM again, despite Kelly’s assertion that “the truth is, he doesn’t get to control the media.” If Trump shows, credit him, once again, with clever ratings manipulation. If he skips out, he will be roundly lambasted as a wimp. Hey didn’t John McCain lose cred for a no-show threat late in the ’08 campaign? Trump’s critics, particularly cartoonists, are already having a glorious snarkfest (see here, here and here).


Can GOP Boot Their House Majority?

The prevailing pundit wisdom is that the Republicans’ majority in the U.S. House of Representatives will hold through the 2016 elections. As Kyle Kondik wrote at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, “a continuing GOP House majority remains by far the likeliest outcome of next year’s House election.” At Politico, Lauren French writes, “Democratic leaders privately admit that they don’t have a chance of regaining control of the House even with Trump or Cruz as the Republican nominee.”
Most of the pundits who hold this view say that Democrats do, on the other hand, have a good chance of winning back majority control of the U.S. Senate. Given the high negatives of current GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, however, Democrats can’t be blamed for entertaining hopes that the pundits are wrong about the House elections.
A net Democratic pick-up of the necessary 30 House seats to win a majority and the speakership is an ambitious goal. But is it really impossible? In the 21st century, there have been net gains of that magnitude on two occasions. Dems only picked up 1 seat in 2000, while Republicans netted 8 House seats in 2002 and 3 seats in 2004. Democrats picked up 31 House seats in 2006 and 21 more in 2008. Republicans picked up 63 House seats in 2010. Democrats only picked up 8 seats in 2012, and lost 13 seats in 2014. So two of the 8 House election years of the 21st century had one party picking up more than 30 seats.
Factors like intensifying polarization and gerrymandering add to the obstacles facing Democrats in meeting the challenge of a 30-seatHouse net gain in 2016. On the other hand. But, as Brent Bukowsky writes at The Hill:

Almost all Democrats are praying that Republicans nominate for president Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. From Democratic establishment insiders who support Hillary Clinton to populist insurgents who support Bernie Sanders, there is a virtually unanimous view that Trump or Cruz would lead the GOP to a defeat so devastating Democrats would probably regain control of the Senate and have a fighting chance to take back the House.

Kondik says that “Democrats probably cannot win the House next year, but Republicans can lose it with a combination of boneheaded missteps.” Yet, given the tone and tenor of recent GOP campaign screw-ups, “boneheaded missteps” in the Republican presidential field’s near future don’t seem all that improbable.
If the GOP regains enough sanity to nominate someone other than Trump or Cruz, the pundits will likely prove correct — that the Republicans will hold their House majority. Even if Trump or Cruz wins the nomination, however, their party could still hold the House majority — but it is far less likely.


Iowa Ads Offer Clues for Dems

Democratic strategists should be paying close attention to Republican TV ads in Iowa. This is the opening salvo, and the quality, quantity, message content, slant, tone, placement choices, cost and other aspects of the GOP ads offer clues about how to beat their eventual presidential nominee. We can also get a sense of how good their ad machinery is, as the 2016 campaign cranks up.
Toward that end, Nick Corosaniti’s “As Iowa Caucuses Approach, Political Ads Swamp TV Channels” provides an instructive introduction. Among Corosaniti’s observations:

Ted Cruz was accused of proposing a socialist tax plan. Marco Rubio was called out for supporting “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Bernie Sanders denounced the “rigged economy,” and Jeb Bush’s campaign was called a “train wreck.”
And that was just during the 6 o’clock news.

Corosaniti goes on to note that presidential candidates of both parties have spend $40 million on ads, $6 million in the last week for 167 different political ads. That tells you that campaigns nowadays allocate on average roughly a third of their ad budgets for TV for the final two weeks leading up to a primary.
As for who is spending what, Corosaniti notes, “Trump is spending $500,000 a week of advertising on the air in the state…While Mr. Bush is spending robustly in New Hampshire, the super PAC supporting him, Right to Rise, has spent nearly $8 million in Iowa and is running a battery of ads attacking Mr. Rubio, John R. Kasich and Chris Christie, in hopes of weakening them before they head to New Hampshire…” Debate drop-out Rand Paul is still in the Iowa ad game, and his Super-PAC has a couple of ads airing on the local NBC affiliate. Carson’s campaign is “one of the biggest spenders in Iowa with more than $2.6 million on television.”
Iowa ad spending is a little different, owing to its status as the first state-wide caucus. Further, “In Iowa, you’re talking about a fairly small universe of caucusgoers, compared to the general population or general voting public,” said Carl Forti, a Republican strategist. “You’re spending a lot of money to talk to very few.” It’s important to remember, however, that Iowa is a sometimes swing state.
Corosaniti has some interesting insights about the choice of ad placement in Iowa:

..Saturday night’s “Wheel of Fortune,” for example, was blanketed by 11 political ads from nine candidates in its half-hour broadcast. The show’s older audience, including many holdovers who watch the nightly news, was a high-value target for candidates in both parties.
The weekend’s major sports events allowed some ads to avoid being lost in a blizzard of others. Viewers of the United States Figure Skating Championships on NBC saw a 60-second advertisement from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign twice in 20 minutes.
And during the A.F.C. championship game between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos, viewers saw Mr. Rubio make trick football catches in one ad and Mr. Cruz go duck hunting with Phil Robertson of the TV show “Duck Dynasty” in another.

It’s no surprise that football rules when it comes to reaching white working-class voters, who conservative Republicans view as a major element of their base in every state. The ‘Wheel of Fortune’ placement is likely designed to reach high-turnout, low-to-medium information, working-class seniors.
It’s kind of pathetic, when you think about it, that crappy TV programs are among the most effective pathways to reach key constituencies. Are the better news documentaries or more substantial movies so unworthy of political ad placement?
I gather that most of the GOP ads are pretty shrill, although Corosaniti doesn’t shed much light on the tone choices of individual candidate ads, other than one of Carson’s spots, which mirrors his comparatively low-key personality: “Accompanied by slow music, it showed Carson supporters with outstretched hands, as the written words “Our Hands” gave way to “Heal,” “Learn,” “Unite” and more.” He ads that Carson is also working the hell out of Facebook feeds. Doesn’t sound like that one is going viral.
I assume that Democratic ad wizards are watching GOP political spots closely. Most of the aggregate data about how individual ads are perceived will remain secret. But so far there is not much buzz about any specific ads, such as Justin Trudeau’s viral ‘escalator’ spot in Canada. The sour overall tone of the Republican candidates interaction thus far suggests that any of them pitching an optimistic spirit for the future under a Republican administration will not be an easy sell.
Online ad share is growing fast. But broadcast television still rules, when it comes to ad budgets and is projected to account for about $8.5 billion of the $11.4 total ad spending for 2016, compared to about $1 billion for digital media, according to Issie Lapowsky, writing in Wired. But Larry Grisolano, who supervised political ads for the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns, predicts that in 2016 presidential campaigns will allocate “nearly a quarter of their spending to digital media.”
The distinction may prove to be moot, sooner than later. With the arrival of the new generation of affordable ‘Smart’ TVs, a rapidly growing share of viewers will be checking their emails and Facebook feeds on the couch, creating a far more seamless viewer connection between both forms of media. Viewers are increasingly watching the same ads on their TVs, iPads and cell phones — an accelerating trend which could favor Democrats’ ability to reach younger voters.


Political Strategy Notes

“Democrats view this year’s crop of [U. S. Senate] candidates as strong, and they say they will be bolstered by the presidential election, which often helps coax minority and younger voters to the ballot box. Many Democrats are feeling confident they will win the net five seats needed to take back the chamber. A pickup of just four seats would be enough if the Democrats also retain the presidency, because the vice president breaks ties.” – from Kristina Peterson’s “In Senate Races, Democrats See Prizes, Pitfalls: The party believes it can take control, but primary battles, recruitment pose challenges in some states” in the Wall St. Journal. Peterson quotes Sen. Chuck Schumer: “The fact that middle-class incomes are stagnating and Democrats have much better answers than Republicans, the fact that the GOP presidential race is in shambles, and the fact that we have a very good map and we have candidates to take advantage of that map all bodes very well for us taking back the Senate…”
At CNN Politics Manu Raju takes an in-depth look at developing Democratic strategy to win Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate seat and the obstacles threatening Paul as a result of his limp presidential candidacy.
Senate Democrats have unveiled the ‘Reducing Educational Debt (RED) Act,’ as an impressive pitch for the votes of millennials and their families. Key elements: 1. Opportunities to refinance federal and private student loans at a lower interest rate; 2. Indexing Pell Grant awards to inflation to insure adequate assistance; 3. Funding to “waive community college tuition and fees for eligible students before other financial aid is applied.” Senator Schumer’s soundbite pitch: Democrats will create a “path toward debt-free college.”
This Morning Consult poll shows a Michael Bloomberg independent presidential candidacy hurting Dems more than the GOP. Should Sanders win the Democratic nomination, Krugman sees a Bloomberg run as a likely path to a Trump presidency.
At NYT ‘First Draft,’ Michael Barbaro reports on presidential candidate reactions to a possible Bloomberg candidacy, including the reaction of the two leading Democrats: “The way I read what he said is, if I didn’t get the nomination we might consider it,” she [Clinton] said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…She added: “Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn’t have to” run….Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose campaign bemoans the influence of the super rich, quickly incorporated Mr. Bloomberg’s flirtation into his message….”My reaction is, if Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in, you’re going to have two multibillionaires running for president of the United States against me,” Mr. Sanders said on “Meet the Press.” “And I think the American people do not want to see our nation move toward an oligarchy, where billionaires control the political process.”
An interesting analytical nugget from the conservative GOP establishment via Mario Loyola at the National Review: “The working-class Republican voter feels he’s getting screwed from every direction: corporations, lazy people on welfare, criminals who have learned to play the victim, illegal immigrants, foreign governments, and of course the politicians who sell out to all of them. He looks at the political firmament and sees nobody who addresses his grievances, nobody who speaks like him, nobody who speaks for him. Victimized and voiceless, the Republican working-class voter had already lost faith in the party. Now he may be losing faith in democracy itself.”
Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt takes a look at the potential influence of the Latino vote, and observes: “…Hispanics account for more than 5 percent of eligible voters in only three of the 10 national swing states: Colorado, Nevada and Florida. Whatever losses the party sustains among Hispanics — and Asian-Americans also turned off by anti-immigration rhetoric — will be more than offset, they believe, by the energizing of alienated white voters…” On the other hand, Hunt quotes Sen. Lindsey Graham, who warns “”Donald Trump today has an 81 percent disapproval rating with Hispanics…The Democrats will destroy this guy.”
This will be a very tough sell.
Trump video mash-ups were becoming a new art form (see here, for example) even before last week’s Palin endorsement fiasco and Trump’s “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” tirade. The challenge for Democrats in producing a devastating viral video on Trump, should he win the nomination, will be what to leave out.


Palin Passes the Torch to Trump

The “surprise” endorsement of Donald Trump by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin didn’t surprise me at all, as I explained at New York the night the deal went down:

Notwithstanding the howls of pain and rage from supporters of Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin’s decision to endorse Donald Trump for president makes perfect sense when you think about what she has distinctively represented in the Republican Party….She represents almost perfectly the passion and resentment of grassroots cultural-issues activists. When John McCain vaulted her into national politics, she was known for two things other than her gender: She was a “walk the walk” role model for the anti-abortion movement, thanks to her small child Trig, and she had taken on the “crony capitalist” GOP Establishment in Alaska and won. Thus she was a fellow “maverick” with Christian-right street cred and a “game-changing” identity.
The remarkably widespread belief that Palin lost the 2008 presidential election for her party is even more far-fetched than the hope that she could win it. And so the many fans she made in that campaign developed — with a lot of help from Palin herself — a deep resentment of all of the Democrats, Republicans, and media elites who belittled her. In a very real sense, she was the authentic representative of those local right-to-life activists — disproportionately women — who had staffed countless GOP campaigns and gotten little in return (this was before the 2010 midterm elections began to produce serious anti-choice gains in the states) other than the thinly disguised contempt of Beltway Republicans. And after 2008 she generated a sort of perpetual motion machine in which her fans loved her precisely for the mockery she so reliably inspired.
Unfortunately for those fans, St. Joan of the Tundra was never quite up to the demands of a statewide — much less national — political career. So she opportunistically intervened in politics between books and television specials and widely broadcast family sagas, mostly through well-timed candidate endorsements. It’s striking, though not surprising, that Palin is now endorsing the nemesis of one of her most successful “Mama Grizzly” protégées, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, on the turf of another, Iowa’s Joni Ernst.
But in many respects, the Trump campaign is the presidential campaign Palin herself might have aspired to run if she had the money and energy to do so. Her famous disregard for wonky facts and historical context is but a shadow of Trump’s. His facility with the big and effective lie can’t quite match Palin’s, who after all convinced many millions of people in a Facebook post that the Affordable Care Act authorized “death panels.” And both of them, of course, exemplify the demagogue’s zest for flouting standards of respectable discourse and playing the table-turning triumphant victim/conqueror of privileged elites.
Conservatism for both Trump and Palin simply supplies the raw material of politics and a preassembled group of aggrieved white people ready to follow anyone purporting to protect hard-earned threatened privileges, whether it’s Social Security and Medicare benefits or religious hegemony. So it’s natural Palin would gravitate to Trump rather than Cruz, who’s a professional ideologue but a mere amateur demagogue. The endorser and the endorsee were meant for each other.

And it’s a token of Palin’s esteem for The Donald that she didn’t expect him (or so it seems) to offer her the same position on the ticket she had in 2008. She’ll be happy as his Secretary of Energy, where she can continue her feud with oil companies even as she encourages them to “Drill, Baby, Drill.”