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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: June 2016

Clinton Speech Sets New Tone, Shows Dems How to Confront Trump

Hillary Clinton turned a corner in San Diego yesterday. She opened up a fierce, broadside attack on Donald Trump that left the GOP’s presidential nominee-apparent sputttering weak cheap shots and resembling a schoolyard bully who just got a fat shiner from a kid half his size.
Clinton’s speech was a genuine masterpiece. It was exceptionally well-written, and brilliantly-delivered. Here it is:

Few who saw Clinton’s speech would doubt that she is more than tough enough to win a one-on-one battle with Trump. She accomplished what President Carter tried and failed to do in 1980 — portray his GOP adversary as dangerously unprepared to conduct U.S. foreign policy and serve as commander in chief.
Credit Clinton’s staff with an impressive job of crafting her speech. Even the optics were compelling, with Clinton delivering her address in front of 19 U.S. flags. Everything about her presentation conveyed the impression that this is a candidate for president who has the gravitas, maturity, judgement and work ethic Americans want in the White House, in very stark contrast to Donald Trump. As Clinton put it in lacerating comments about Trump in her speech:

“He is not just unprepared — he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,” Clinton said…This isn’t reality television. This is actual reality,” Clinton said as she chided the real estate mogul and political novice for his lack of experience on the world stage.
“He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia…The stakes in global statecraft are infinitely higher and more complex than in the world of luxury hotels…He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008”

As AP’s Julie Pace observed, “Gone was the wonky, meandering policy speech Clinton has delivered to lukewarm reviews in primary campaign appearances. Instead, she was focused and direct, lacing her remarks on the Islamic State group and Iranian nuclear accord with bumper sticker-worthy slogans about Trump.”
Stephen Collinson and Dan Merica noted at CNN Politics, “She attempted to convince voters that Trump’s ideas are a mix of “bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies.” She lambasted his “bragging” approach to foreign policy based on a string of “nasty tweets” and accused him of harboring a “bizarre” affinity for authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Communist rulers of China and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.”
“It wasn’t just an incredibly well written speech, it was arguably Clinton’s most compelling public moment of the entire campaign so far,” said Simon Rosenberg, founder and president of NDN, a Democratic think tank,” quoted in Alex Sewitz-Wald’s nbcnews.com post, “Did Clinton Just Finally Figure Out How to Hit Trump?
Until now, Trump has pretty much dictated presidential campaign news coverage with his daily barrage of tweets, insults and half-baked pronouncements. Clinton’s speech changes that dynamic, challenges the media to provide more thoughtful coverage and shames Republicans who are cowering in Trump’s shadow. She also eloquently challenges American voters to do some serious thinking about what kind of nation and world they want for their families, and to face the danger presented by the Republican’s nominee.


Political Strategy Notes

Melanie Trottman and Brody Mullins report at The Wall St. Journal on the labor movement’s efforts to challenge Trump’s inroads with a key constituency: “Unions spend heavily to support Democrats in elections and wield great influence over whether their members support those candidates. But labor leaders fear many of their members could be drawn to Mr. Trump. Merged Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling data from the first four months of the year show that among white union households, support is split evenly between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, at 44% each, in a potential general-election matchup…The AFL-CIO is preparing an education campaign to highlight some of Mr. Trump’s statements–such as that wages are too high–and lesser-known things about how he has run his businesses and treated employees, said Mike Podhorzer, political director of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions…More than half of the collective membership in AFL-CIO unions identify as Democrat, while about one-third identify as Republican and the rest as independent. The latter group is the one organized labor is most concerned about.”
Greg Sargent’s “Can Trump ride white anger into the White House? A new analysis suggests it’s a fantasy” at The Plum Line all but shreds one of the Trump campaign’s most treasured myths.
WaPo’s Ed O’Keefe and Mike DeBonis take a look “Inside Democrats’ Trump-fueled scramble to take back the House.” Most credible observations: “It’s unlikely that Democrats win back the House, but we can’t completely rule it out,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor of the Rothenberg & Gonzales political report. “Donald Trump puts enough volatility into the national political environment that we have to keep an open mind to lots of different scenarios. Gonzales anticipates that Democrats will gain at least 10 more seats, but he said that picking up the 30 needed for the majority will be “a challenge.”…House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted recently that she thinks she could reclaim the speaker’s gavel. If the election were held today, she said, “We would win. We would pick up more than the 20, we could get to the 30. But it’s not today.”…Privately, some Democrats say the party waited too long to find potential candidates.”
At nasdaq.com Marshall Gittler explains why “Dollar, US Economy, Stocks: They All Do Better Under Democrats.” National Democratic leadership really ought to make an ad using the numbers Gittler offers.
At cnbc.com Jake Novak opines about “The three biggest mistakes Hillary Clinton is making right now,” including: “1. She’s taking a dive off of the platitude plateau…2. She’s letting Trump drive the agenda…3. She’s not breaking with President Obama… on ANYTHING.”
Paul Singer’s “USA TODAY VP Power Rankings: Kaine tops the list for Clinton’s running mate” features the picks of a panel of 20 political observers.
Republicans don’t just depend on voter suppression; They brag about it.
Zachary Roth’s msnbc.com post “In Ohio, battle rages over access to voting” provides an update on GOP suppression in a key state for Democrats.
Weather wonks predict high voter turnout in CA, NJ primaries on Tuesday.


June 1: Too Bad There Aren’t Many “Responsible Republicans” for Clinton to Woo

There’s been some buzz in connection with Hillary Clinton’s big speech tomorrow on foreign policy that she may aim her pitch at “responsible Republicans” who fear entrusting Donald Trump with the nuclear codes, much less putative “leadership of the free world.” But there’s a problem with the usual centrist strategy in this particular year, as I discussed today at New York:

The rapid and overwhelming consolidation of the Republican rank and file behind Trump is the first big story of the general-election campaign to come, and the most obvious reason for his suddenly strong standing against Clinton in early general-election trial heats. Unlike other “noises” from such polls, this isn’t a finding anyone should necessarily dismiss as “too early.” After all, self-identified Republicans are the voters most likely to have paid close attention to Trump and what he does and does not stand for during the primary season. Yet for all the high-profile (if quickly shrinking) elite Republican resistance to Trump, actual voters seem to be emphatically over all that.
The degree of rank-and-file consolidation behind Trump was nicely dramatized today by Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight, who compares Trump’s level of support (excluding third-party candidates) among self-identified Republicans to that of other non-incumbent GOP candidates a month after they secured the nomination. Trump’s at 85-7 against Hillary Clinton. That’s slightly better than George W. Bush in 2000 (83-7), and significantly better than Poppy Bush in 1988 (81-13) or Bob Dole in 1996 (79-18). But here’s the shocker: Trump’s doing better initially among Republicans than St. Ronald Reagan in 1980 (74-14)! The only nominee with higher early GOP support than Trump is Mitt Romney (87-6), who also benefited from the hyperpolarized atmosphere of the Obama presidency.
The general consensus of analysts is that Hillary Clinton has lost her polling lead over Trump because he’s already unified the GOP, while she’s still struggling to put out the Bern. If so, does it make a lot of sense for her to devote a major speech to exploiting a rift in the Republican ranks that no longer exists? I don’t think this strategy is terribly consistent with what she needs to do to unify her own party, particularly Sanders supporters who are not comfortable standing on the common ground Clinton shares with “responsible Republicans” (which once included, lest we forget, support for the Iraq War).
Maybe the Clinton campaign has unpublished evidence that she can reopen the divisions of the competitive Republican primaries via her own efforts. If not, she might want to avoid any conspicuous “move to the center” toward a party united in antipathy toward her and her party, particularly since any overt maneuvering could reinforce doubts about her honesty and constancy that are probably her biggest problem.

I’ll probably have my own card-carrying “centrist” credentials pulled for saying all this, but that’s how I see it at this moment. Another year might be totally different, and it’s also possible Trump will do something so egregious as to squander the rank-and-file GOP unity he currently enjoys.


Too Bad There Aren’t Many “Responsible Republicans” For Clinton To Woo

There’s been some buzz in connection with Hillary Clinton’s big speech tomorrow on foreign policy that she may aim her pitch at “responsible Republicans” who fear entrusting Donald Trump with the nuclear codes, much less putative “leadership of the free world.” But there’s a problem with the usual centrist strategy in this particular year, as I discussed today at New York:

The rapid and overwhelming consolidation of the Republican rank and file behind Trump is the first big story of the general-election campaign to come, and the most obvious reason for his suddenly strong standing against Clinton in early general-election trial heats. Unlike other “noises” from such polls, this isn’t a finding anyone should necessarily dismiss as “too early.” After all, self-identified Republicans are the voters most likely to have paid close attention to Trump and what he does and does not stand for during the primary season. Yet for all the high-profile (if quickly shrinking) elite Republican resistance to Trump, actual voters seem to be emphatically over all that.
The degree of rank-and-file consolidation behind Trump was nicely dramatized today by Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight, who compares Trump’s level of support (excluding third-party candidates) among self-identified Republicans to that of other non-incumbent GOP candidates a month after they secured the nomination. Trump’s at 85-7 against Hillary Clinton. That’s slightly better than George W. Bush in 2000 (83-7), and significantly better than Poppy Bush in 1988 (81-13) or Bob Dole in 1996 (79-18). But here’s the shocker: Trump’s doing better initially among Republicans than St. Ronald Reagan in 1980 (74-14)! The only nominee with higher early GOP support than Trump is Mitt Romney (87-6), who also benefited from the hyperpolarized atmosphere of the Obama presidency.
The general consensus of analysts is that Hillary Clinton has lost her polling lead over Trump because he’s already unified the GOP, while she’s still struggling to put out the Bern. If so, does it make a lot of sense for her to devote a major speech to exploiting a rift in the Republican ranks that no longer exists? I don’t think this strategy is terribly consistent with what she needs to do to unify her own party, particularly Sanders supporters who are not comfortable standing on the common ground Clinton shares with “responsible Republicans” (which once included, lest we forget, support for the Iraq War).
Maybe the Clinton campaign has unpublished evidence that she can reopen the divisions of the competitive Republican primaries via her own efforts. If not, she might want to avoid any conspicuous “move to the center” toward a party united in antipathy toward her and her party, particularly since any overt maneuvering could reinforce doubts about her honesty and constancy that are probably her biggest problem.

I’ll probably have my own card-carrying “centrist” credentials pulled for saying all this, but that’s how I see it at this moment. Another year might be totally different, and it’s also possible Trump will do something so egregious as to squander the rank-and-file GOP unity he currently enjoys.


Could a Clinton-Sanders Popular Vote Pact Help Dems?

In his Huiffpo post “Can Democrats Avoid the Circular Firing Squad?,” Robert Kuttner, cofounder and co-editor of The American Prospect discusses one scenario for an upset win of the Democratic nomination:

…Hillary Clinton could still lock up the nomination by the last primaries on June 14, but not without relying on super-delegates. Here are the numbers:
Clinton has 1,769 pledged delegates won in caucuses and primaries, out of 2,310 delegates required for nomination. There are 913 yet to be awarded in the last round of primaries. To go over the top before the convention, not counting super-delegates, Clinton needs to win 541 more delegates, or well over half. But with Sanders surging nearly everywhere, that seems extremely unlikely.
So the state of play after the six states vote June 7 (DC votes June 14, but has only 20 delegates) is likely to show Clinton with 50 to 100 votes short, Sanders with momentum, and the Sanders campaign mounting a last ditch effort to persuade most of the 712 super-delegates (541 of whom have already declared for Clinton) to reconsider, on the premise that Sanders has the better shot at beating Trump.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze this delegate math. But the nightmare scenario for Democrats would be if one of the two candidate wins the popular vote majority, while the other wins the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. No matter which candidate is nominated under those circumstances, it would be tainted, perhaps fatally.
It is the popular vote that confers moral legitimacy on a candidate. That’s one reason why the Bush II presidency will always be viewed as a failure of democracy, and one which led to horrific consequences.
If Clinton wins the popular vote but loses the nomination, many of her supporters will call it out as yet another example of systemic denial of women’s rights, and not a few will stay home on election day. Some may even write her in.
If Sanders wins the popular vote, but not the necessary delegates, many of his supporters may stay home on election day, vote for a write-in or third party candidate or, worse, support Trump as a protest.
Either one of these “winning ugly” scenarios will cast the dark shadow of the ‘Dems in Disarray’ narrative over the election, and dramatically reduce the possibility of a Democratic victory. It would almost certainly gut hopes for a Democratic landslide that extends down ballot.
It’s possible that separate winners of the Democratic popular vote in the primaries and delegates would not necessarily lead to a Trump presidency, and that a Democrat could win. Trump in the White House is such a frightening prospect, that a Democratic nominee just might be able to win without having first won a majority of the party’s primary votes. But that’s a pretty high-stakes gamble.
At present Clinton leads Sanders by about 3 million popular votes. It would be a tall order for Sanders to finish with more popular votes in the Democratic primaries, but it could happen. He has some momentum.
But, if Sanders and Clinton made a mutual pledge to ask their delegates to support the candidate who wins the most popular votes when the primaries and caucuses are all finished, it would affirm the Democratic Party’s commitment to democracy and enhance Democratic voter solidarity. it would show that both Democratic candidates support the will of the people over super delegate politics.
It’s really not such a radical idea. The super delegate system is a train wreck in waiting. It should be dumped at the earliest opportunity. But both candidates can render it harmless right away with a popular vote pact that doesn’t require a rules change.
Polls indicate that Sanders and Clinton can both beat Trump, assuming Democrats unify behind their nominee. A popular vote pact between them could promote Democratic unity. It’s a good choice both Democratic candidates can make with little or no downside, and the timing is about right.