In the wake of tensions, both real and over-hyped, between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, New York Times reporters Jonathan Mahler and Yamiche Alcindor ask and address an important question: “Bernie Sanders Makes a Campaign Mark. Now, Can He Make a Legacy?” The legacy Sanders wants is a come-from-behind upset win of the Democratic presidential nomination. But it would be a shame if his coalition evaporates in the event of a Clinton victory. Alcindor and Mahler cite three core issues of the Sanders campaign — universal health care, free college tuition and reducing the influence of wealthy donors in politics. There is a concern that these issues will fade into the background without his candidacy or election. The authors discuss some possibilities for future political involvement of Sanders supporters beyond 2016. Win or lose, Sanders can make a significant contribution by mobilizing his supporters to “adopt” the midterm elections and help candidates who support his three core causes.
At Salon.com Michael Bourne makes the case why “Hillary must pick Bernie for VP: She may even need him more than he needs her.”
Salon.com’s Heather Digby Parton discusses Stan Greenberg’s memo, “The GOP Crash and the Historic Moment for Progressives.” Parton comments on Greenberg’s calculation that about 10 percent of conservatives are willing to vote for Clinton over Trump, “The question is what it will take to get them to vote for Democrats in this election…Where Greenberg sees an opening is in national investment, bank regulation and corporate governance which dovetails nicely with the populist agenda coming from the left wing of the party as well…If Greenberg is right and the Democrats pay attention and all the stars align, we could come out of this with a big progressive win, setting the stage for a fertile time of renewal and progress.”
It appears that Hillary Clinton is on solid political ground in calling for stricter gun control. “A New York Times/CBS News poll in January found that 57 percent of respondents wanted stricter laws governing gun sales, and 88 percent favored background checks for all purchases,” reports Amy Chozick at The New York Times.
I disagree with most of the points conservative commentator Matt Lewis makes in his rambling Daily Beast rant, “How the GOP Went South.” But some of his comments on the affected vernacular of various presidential candidates are on target, specifically his observation that “his father, former President George H. W. Bush, had been mocked as a tax‑raiser and a preppy wimp. George W. Bush did everything possible to be the opposite of that. The adoption of the Texas persona helped, but the younger Bush overswaggered and overtwanged. But hey, he managed to win two elections, and winning is everything, right?” Despite his sheltered preppy background, W did somehow have an ear for ‘regular guy’ chatter, his malapropisms notwithstanding. Although Gore and Kerry both had more real world life experience than Bush II, it was frequently noted that they both seemed a little on the stiff side. Could it be that a more casual persona is worth some votes?
Here’s why now would be a good time for Alabama Democrats to get their shite together. Such opportunities often pop up suddenly, and Dems in red states simply must do a better job of identifying, preparing and funding new candidates to meet the challenge.
Interesting statistical nuggets on the relationship between presidential primary turnouts and winning presidential candidates from Rhodes Cook’s “High Primary Turnouts: Any Clues for the Fall?” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Only in the open election of 2008 was there a clear correlation between the primary turnout and the November outcome. That year, 16 million more votes were cast in the Democratic primaries than the Republican ones, which proved a precursor of Democratic success that fall…In 2016, the Republican edge in the primary vote is much smaller than the Democrats enjoyed in 2008. Coming out of the May 10 primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia, the GOP margin stands at 4 million votes and shrinking. Among the eight states left to hold their presidential primaries are deep blue California and New Jersey. And in 2008, more than 2 million more votes were cast on the Democratic than Republican side of the California ballot.”
Quoctrung Bui’s Upshot post “Where the Middle Class Is Shrinking” provides some data that might be useful for targeting political messages and political ad expenditures.
Some salient comments from Sean J. Miller’s post “Republican Consultants keeping faith with facebook” at Campaigns & Elections: “Donald Trump has more fans on Facebook than any other presidential candidate. And Fox News drives more interactions on its Facebook page than any other news outlet in the world,” says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. GOP digital consultant Phillip Stutts adds “Facebook is the best targeting advertising platform available,” he said. “Older men and women vote and they are the largest segment joining Facebook right now. It would be political malpractice to our candidates to not use it.” Another GOP digital consultant Ian Patrick Hines echoes Facebook’s “data and ad targeting tools are unmatched.”

A major source of angst for many Democrats the last couple of weeks has been the advent of several general election polls showing Donald Trump catching up with Hillary Clinton after earlier polls showed him in very bad shape. I addressed the challenge of dealing with such polls at New York today:

Most political junkies realize there are some polling outlets that have what is known as a “house effect” — a more or less systematic tendency to show results bending one way or another to an extent that makes their surveys consistent outliers. Few Democrats, for example, will panic over an adverse Rasmussen poll. But some “house effects” are the product not of partisan or candidate bias, but of deployment of methodologies that over time tend to produce outlier results. I really don’t think Gallup in 2012 was shilling for Mitt Romney, even though its polls regularly and significantly inflated his odds of winning; the venerable organization made transparent and earnest efforts after the election to analyze and correct its errors.
It’s also clear that some phenomena — high cell-phone usage, declining response rates, and the increased expenses of live interviewing — are making polling more perilous and less scientific than most of us realize. All of this explains why the experts tell consumers of public-opinion research to rely on polling averages, not individual polls, to understand what’s going on politically, and to examine trends rather than absolute numbers. When it comes to polls about distant events, like the November general election, significantly more caution is in order. Some would argue that a general-election matchup poll prior to the party conventions is pretty much useless.
So the current hype about Trump more or less catching Clinton in general-election support should be taken with a shaker of salt and perhaps active disdain.
In a New York Times op-ed today, political scientists Norman Ornstein and Alan Abramowitz discuss all of the problems with such general-election polls and the methodologies they deploy, and then add this important observation:

When polling aficionados see results that seem surprising or unusual, the first instinct is to look under the hood at things like demographic and partisan distributions. When cable news hosts and talking heads see these kinds of results, they exult, report and analyze ad nauseam. Caveats or cautions are rarely included.

That’s particularly true if these “cable news hosts and talking heads” find validation for their point of view from outlier polls. The fact that Republicans and Bernie Sanders-supporting Democrats have a common interest in showing Clinton doing poorly against Trump adds to the noise, to the point where it’s the only thing many people hear.
Maybe these polls will turn out to be accurate, but we just don’t know that now. As Ornstein and Abramowitz conclude:

Smart analysts are working to sort out distorting effects of questions and poll design. In the meantime, voters and analysts alike should beware of polls that show implausible, eye-catching results. Look for polling averages and use gold-standard surveys, like Pew. Everyone needs to be better at reading polls — to first look deeper into the quality and nature of a poll before assessing the results.

Alternatively, just be careful about jumping to conclusions.

There’s plenty of time before the general election to look at data with some perspective.

Julie Pace of Associated Press addresses a critical problem for the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination:

How can the wonkish Clinton counteract Trump’s finely tuned ability to command attention? Can she win the White House by letting Trump run on his terms, hoping his unorthodox candidacy wears thin with voters by November?…Or does she need to make a positive case for her own candidacy, something she has struggled to articulate during the Democratic primary?

It’s a tough question. Trump’s ability to manipulate the media is unprecedented in U.S. presidential politics. Back in March, for example, a New York Times/mediaQquant study found that Trump had received $1.898 billion in free media coverage, compared to $746 million for Clinton and $321 million for Sanders.
As a reality TV star, he has learned that saying outrageous things positions his campaign to dominate headlines and television coverage. He undoubtedly hopes that it creates an unspoken subtext that he is “in control” of the narrative, regardless of how stupid or malevolent are the substance of his comments. Low-information voters, he hopes, will mistake his media domination for authority.
Further, notes Pace,

“He’s good at dominating the news cycle and changing the news cycle to fit his purposes,” said Rick Tyler, former communications director for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign. “He has this ability to just change the trajectory of where the news is going by using amazing distractions that are just too delicious to pass up.”

if Sanders can somehow pull offf an upset and win the Democratic nomination, he is going to have the same problem. Although Clinton has received more popular votes than Trump, and Sanders has received nearly as many, neither one has received anything close to the media coverage Trump now takes for granted. Trump’s campaign is the ultimate test of the proposition that even bad media is better than no media.
The danger for the Democratic presidential candidates is that their ability to be pro-active in their messaging gets smothered by Trump’s outrage du jour. As Pace writes,

…Clinton has overcome her messaging struggles in the primary and is close to clinching the Democratic nomination. But facing Trump will be another matter, with his capacity to set the tone for the day in the morning through frequent tweets and calls into news shows, catching his rivals off guard and leaving them scrambling to catch up.

It’s possible to over-worry about all of this. A lot of Trump’s coverage is not just bad; It’s horribly negative and that has to hurt some over time. Millions of voters are going to see video collages of his most unflattering moments in the months ahead and it could have a devastating effect on his campaign.
There are a lot of options in between ignoring Trump’s daily tirade and blasting him with well-targeted soundbites. But what the Democratic presidential nominee must have is a disciplined, pro-active messaging strategy and a positive political identity that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s reckless and obnoxious persona.

Yes, preregistration does increase young voter turnout, reports Journalist’s Resource.

How secure is online voting? Sari Horwitz addresses the issue in her troubling Washington Post article “More than 30 states offer online voting, but experts warn it isn’t secure.”

A perceptive quote from Connor Kilpatrick’s “Burying the White Working Class” at The Jacobin: “The working class is central to a meaningful progressive politics because they have the numbers, the economic incentive and the potential power to halt capital in its tracks — to check the power of our ruling class and build a truly democratic society out of this miserable oligarchy we all find ourselves stuck in today.”

Quinnipiac University Poll puts Christie’s Trump grovel into perspective.

AP glorifies Trump’s lily-white list of eight potential Supreme Court nominees

Telling stats from Niall Stanage’s post “Trump, Clinton face most diverse electorate in history” at The Hill: “Non-whites also represent a higher proportion of new voters who have come of age since 2012. Non-whites accounted for 43 percent of the eligible voters who turned 18 between 2012 and 2016, despite representing only about 30 percent of the overall electorate…Pew counts a net increase of about 7.5 million eligible voters who are members of ethnic minorities since 2012. Among whites, that number is just 3.2 million.”

Lapdog media dutifully parrots the latest Dems in Disarray narrative, even though the Nevada state Democratic convention incident is dwarfed by the GOP’s more numerous and intense internecine slugfests.

Rachel Maddow brings a more measured perspective on the lasting effects of contentious primary season divisions.

Trevor Noah has some choice zingers describing Megyn Kelly’s softball “interview” with Trump.

Like most political writers, I was looking forward to the rare spectacle of a contested convention in Cleveland this summer before Donald Trump killed that dream by winning the nomination. But he’s got some other exciting plans, as I discussed today at New York:

[I]t’s obviously too late to kill off these quadrennial snoozers this year, but leave it to Donald J. Trump to undertake the next best thing: transforming the Republican convention into a cheesy four-day TV special featuring maximum exposure of his own self. If by necessity it’s going to be an empty spectacle, it doesn’t have to be a boring empty spectacle, does it? Nosiree, according to a report from Politico:

“This is the part of politics he would naturally enjoy, and he wants to control it 100 percent,” said a high-level Trump campaign source. “This is a massive television production and he is a television star.”

And the star isn’t about to be confined to a single Thursday night acceptance speech.

Whereas the vice presidential nominee has generally spoken on the third night of the convention and the presidential candidate has taken the stage on the fourth and final night, Trump is considering a scenario that puts him on stage, delivering remarks on all four nights, reaching millions of potential voters, and driving ratings, according to one source.

Recall that presidential nominees did not even appear at conventions until FDR broke that taboo in 1936. As for appearing prior to the acceptance speech, there are only two precedents I can think of: Ronald Reagan showing up in 1980 to announce George H.W. Bush as his running mate (or, to be more precise, to preempt out-of-control speculation that former president Gerald Ford would join the ticket and perhaps create a “co-presidency”), and Bill Clinton’s brief live remarks each evening from a train hurtling toward the Chicago convention site in 1996.
Framing the whole event around the maximum number of prime-time speeches by the nominee simply pushes the devolution of conventions to a logical end — an event that’s entirely about the nominee and not at all about the party. And the good thing about nominating a candidate the entire party Establishment opposed is that he’s probably not going to let the traditional courtesies afforded to other politicians of his party get in the way of the convention’s show-business potential. It’s not like any of these birds lifted a finger to help Trump win the nomination, right?
Once you get rid of all the precedents, there are plenty of ways to exploit the convention for drama and high ratings:

And Trump plans to create news events too, not just line up speeches by up-and-coming members of the GOP. He’s toying with unveiling a running mate at the convention rather than before. He’s even considering whether to announce his would-be Cabinet.

Ah yes. One could imagine the darkened arena, and then the dramatic voice-of-God PA announcer intoning: At attorney general, 5-foot-11, 300 pounds, out of Mendham, New Jersey — Chriiiiiiiis CHRISTIE! as flares shoot up from the arena floor and the New Jersey governor trots onto the floor wearing a warm-up suit with TRUMP emblazoned across the front and back.

Yeah, Cleveland could be fun after all, and like most things to do with Donald Trump, at the same time shameful.

Although former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got nearly 2,000 more popular votes than Sen. Bernie Sanders in the KY primary, Sanders is ahead by about 36,000 more popular votes than Clinton in Oregon, where 70 percent of the votes cast have been counted, according to the Associated Press.
The two candidates are expected to split the delegates in KY, while Sanders will reduce Clinton’s delegate lead slightly as a result of his Oregon victory. Dana Tims of The Oregonian noted,

Sanders locked up the Oregon victory by establishing insurmountable leads in Democratic strongholds including Multnomah and Lane counties. But they’ll share 74 delegates proportionally, meaning Sanders’ victory will do little to cut into Clinton’s overall lead in delegates.
…A sizable surge in voter registration, particularly among young voters apparently sparked by Sanders’ populist message, preceded the primary.
Registration among those ages 18 to 29 increased by 21 percent from September 2015 to April 2016. No other age group managed to break double digits, with voters ages 30 to 39 coming closest at 9 percent, according to Oregon Secretary of State’s Office figures.
During that same eight-month period, Democratic registration grew by 16 percent. Democrats now comprise 42 percent of the electorate, up from 38 percent less than a year ago. Republican registration, by contrast, grew by 7 percent during the period. Their share of the electorate remained unchanged at 30 percent.

Thus far, Clinton has received more than 3 milllion more popular votes than has Sanders. As for overall delegate totals, Tims notes,

Although precise delegate tallies can change day-to-day, Clinton, prior to Oregon and other Tuesday contests, counted 1,716 delegates awarded on the basis of the votes she’s gotten. That’s an edge of 283 over Sanders’ 1,433 pledged delegates.
When superdelegates are factored in, Clinton’s lead grows daunting, giving her a 2,240-to-1,473 edge over Sanders…Unpledged Democratic party leaders are free to support the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their states’ voters leaned. A vast majority of the party’s 714 superdelegates – 524 to 40 to be precise – have declared their support for Clinton.

The Clinton campaign believes they can clinch the delegates needed for the Democratic nomination on June 7, when California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota hold their primaries and caucuses. Sanders has pledged to stay in the campaign “until the last ballot is cast” and “take our fight to the convention.”
Regarding the angry conflict between Clinton and Sanders supporters at the Nevada state Democratic convention, Clare Foran observes at The Atlantic:

The challenge for Democrats, and particularly for Clinton, is to find out how to preserve unity as the primary drags on. One question is whether the kind of hostility seen in Nevada will play out at the national convention this summer. “There’s not going to be any violence in Philadelphia,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN on Tuesday. “Whoever the ultimate nominee is we want to unify the party… so that we can all go out and defeat Donald Trump in the fall. I don’t think there’s any question about that. What happened in Nevada, I think, is an aberration.” That likely won’t be enough to quell fears among Democrats who are concerned that unity will be difficult to achieve.

Let anger, chaos and violence define the GOP brand. The last two Democratic national conventions have provided excellent displays of civility, event management and party unity — that’s a tradition worth keeping.

From Andrew Prokop’s Vox.com post, “Why Democrats increasingly think Donald Trump can deliver them a Senate landslide“:

In addition to competing in a set of Senate contests that have long been expected to be in play, Democrats have managed to recruit well-credentialed and potentially formidable challengers in many “reach” Senate races where the party wouldn’t ordinarily expect a win.
These contenders are running mostly in red states, and most of them would likely lose in a “normal” presidential election year. But a backlash against Trump could potentially put these seats into play, so long as credible challengers were ready and waiting to take advantage of the situation.
“We wanted to have as many surfers on the water as we could, because we didn’t know how big the wave would be,” a Democratic strategist involved in Senate races recently told me.
Indeed, the surprise dynamics of the presidential race and the apparent strength of these contenders make the upper bound for Democratic gains very high indeed — north of 10 seats. With a strong performance across the board, Democrats could end up with 56 seats or even more overall, which is a very solid majority.

Prokop adds, “The upshot, of course, is that Democrats get to pick and choose which Republican-held seats to gun for, while playing defense in very few races.” He sees three basic categories of 2016 U.S. Senate races:

The top-tier GOP-held battlegrounds: These are six Republican-held seats that have long looked vulnerable — Obama managed to win all these states twice. In five of these, senators who first won their seats in 2010 will face a presidential-year electorate for the first time, while the other seat is open.
The “reach” GOP-held targets: Then there are another six GOP-held seats, mostly in redder states, that would likely be out of reach in a typical year. But Democrats think they’ve recruited strong challengers in all six who could be competitive in the Year of Trump.
The few Democratic defenses: Finally, there are a mere two Democratic-held seats that are being seriously contested by the GOP. And both are in states with growing Hispanic populations, so Democrats are hoping Trump’s rise will hurt Republicans badly here.

Here’s a map illustrating Democratic prospects for winning a senate majority at the current political moment, based on Prokop’s analysis:

Prokop has paragraphs analyzing each key senate race, and you can read more about it right here.

At The Washington Post Abby Phillip reports on Clinton campaign preparations in the Rust Belt battleground, “particularly in economically struggling states that have been hit hard by global free-trade agreements”: Phillip notes, “…Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is preparing to dispatch resources to vote-rich industrial states that have been safely Democratic for a generation…Democrats say that Clinton will need to work assiduously to court Sanders’s supporters in these parts of the country — including younger millennials and working-class voters concerned about economic fairness but also frustrated with government.”

WaPo’s Anne Gearan and Dan Balz explore the ramifications of Hillary Clinton’s personal “weaknesses” as a candidate, including “poor showings with young women, untrustworthiness, unlikability and a lackluster style on the stump. Supporters also worry that she is a conventional candidate in an unconventional election in which voters clearly favor renegades.” They quote Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who says “I bring it down to one thing and one thing only, and that is likability…To counter these challenges, Clinton is relying primarily on the prospect that her likely Republican opponent’s weaknesses are even greater. But advisers also are working to soften her stiff public image by highlighting her compassion and to combat perceptions about trustworthiness and authenticity by playing up her problem-solving abilities.” I would add that part of the problem is that Trump is hogging media coverage with his outrage du jour, which denies Clinton opportunities to showcase her likeable qualities. That won’t change. Therefore, the debates will be critical in showing which candidate is more likeable. Also, her campaign should make more extensive use of social media opportunities to show her in a favorable light.

NYT’s Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey roll out “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private,” which won’t shock the reading public, but is a pretty devastating portrait nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is reportedly preparing a new round of personal attacks designed to lower the level of political discourse even further. But it will most likely backfire. As Patrick Healy reports at the Times, quoting Melanne Verveer, a longtime friend and former chief of staff to Mrs. Clinton: “She is so prepared to be president, but holding her head high and staying dignified during the campaign is probably what will help her the most…Trump is yet another way she will be tested personally — one of her greatest tests yet.” Dignity could indeed be the key here, since Trump has long ago forfeited any semblance of it on the gamble that a majority of American voters are going to be able to forget his mud-wrestling by election day. Not likely in the era of facebook and YouTube.

It’s a smallish sample and all of the usual caveats apply, but the Fayetteville Observer reports some good news from the Tarheel state for Democrats: “The Civitas Institute, a Raleigh think tank that bills itself as “North Carolina’s Conservative Voice,” released a poll in late April of key statewide races…The biggest takeaway was Republican Gov. Pat McCrory trailing his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Roy Cooper, by 10 percentage points…According to the Real Clear Politics website, Cooper is leading McCrory by an average of 4 points. The average was taken from four recent polls – three in April and one in February.” Also, “In another statewide race surveyed by Civitas poll, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a two-term Republican, is leading Democratic challenger Deborah Ross, 37 percent to 35 percent,” well within the m.o.e.

In his New York Times op-ed, “Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?,” Neil Gross probes the politics of resentment, specifically attitudes of and toward post-grad educated voters. Gross warns, “It is probably right that something like a culture of critical discourse can be found in the workplaces and households and in the publications read by Americans who have attended graduate or professional school. The challenge for the Democrats moving forward will be to develop appeals to voters that resonate not just with this important constituency, but also with other crucial groups in the Democratic coalition. Some of the draw of Donald Trump for white working-class male voters, for example, is that he does not speak in a culture of critical discourse. Indeed, he mocks that culture, tapping into class resentments…Democrats may find they need to give up a little of their wonkiness if they want resounding victories. It’s not in their long-term interest to be too much what Pat Buchanan once referred to as “the party of the Ph.D.s.”

Yes, Republicans, do this. Make chaos your friend — because it worked so well for the Whigs 180 years ago.

At The Daily Beast Betsy Woodruff has a nicely-tailored summary of one of the Trump/Priebus campaign’s worst weeks yet: “Priebus’s walk of Sunday shame came in the wake of a brutal few days for Trump. The Washington Post produced audio of Trump allegedly pretending to be his own PR flack, the New York Times released a scorching report about Trump’s creepy and predatory treatment of pageant contestants and female employees. On top of that, Trump spent the week arguing that he doesn’t have a responsibility to release his tax returns and that nobody wants to look at them anyway…The tax returns–which Trump has said he will probably release at some point–are a uniquely thorny issue. When Face the Nation host John Dickerson asked Priebus whether Trump should release his tax returns, the chairman replied that voters don’t really care either way.”

Far be it from TDS to pile on and savor the pain and suffering of Republicans forced to defend the character of their nominee-apparent. And yet we must flag Paul Waldman’s chuckle-rich American Prospect post, “Spare a Thought For Those Condemned to Defend Donald Trump: It’s a soul-crushing job, but someone has to do it.” A sample: “…What is Reince Priebus supposed to do? I suppose he could say, “You’re right, we really screwed the pooch by nominating this train wreck of a candidate. This is a living nightmare”…So Republicans have to pretend that they oppose Hillary Clinton not just because she’s a liberal and they’re conservatives–which ought to be more than reason enough–but also because she’s some kind of cartoonish psychopath who would strangle your children’s puppy if she had the chance.”