Last week I offered some advice to Democrats based on what I perceived to be a weakness exhibited by Sen. Bernie Sanders. This week I’ll do the same with a mistake by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, as I explained at New York:

Those who read this brief “campaign news” story from the New York Times‘ Jason Horowitz early Thursday morning may have missed its significance:

Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager, sat at the head of a conference table in the New York office of Clinton donor and Wall Street investor Marc Lasry, according to accounts from people in the room. Joining them for the state-of-the-race conversation over coffee were members of the campaign’s finance steering committee, including Maureen White, the former Democratic National Committee finance chairwoman, Alan Patricof, Michael Kempner, Robert Zimmerman, Betsy Cohen, Jay Snyder and others.
Mr. Mook told the donors that the outcome in Nevada, a state he ran for Mrs. Clinton in the 2008 campaign, was hard to predict and that, depending on turnout, Mrs. Clinton could win by a lot or win or lose by a tiny margin, according to several donors who requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting. But Mr. Mook stressed that the map leaned in Mrs. Clinton’s favor as the race moved to South Carolina, where he was confident she would win, and that she would do well on March 1, when more states voted.

I’m guessing the Times’ ruthless editors took out “Sadly missing the irony” at the beginning of the next sentence:

The collected fundraisers, who for years have bundled checks for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, listened approvingly as Ms. White, who seemed especially frustrated, expressed bewilderment that the campaign’s mobilization of grassroots support had been eclipsed in the news media by Bernie Sanders’s criticism of Mrs. Clinton as the establishment candidate representing big money …
Donors also voiced some frustration with the lack of media scrutiny of Mr. Sanders, who they said was essentially getting a pass. They pressed Mr. Mook to demonstrate that the Vermont senator’s policy proposals were entirely implausible promises and that his responses to essentially all substantive questions drew on excerpts of his stump speech and rants about the “millionaires and billionaires.”

And here’s the kicker:

One donor also asked Mr. Mook to go after the youth vote. With a straight face, attendees said, the operative took the suggestion under advisement.

Yuk Yuk. Yeah, wish we had thought of that.
Now, anyone who has ever worked for an organization that depends significantly on the largesse of rich and self-important people is familiar with the kind of “input” briefing the Clinton campaign conducted here. It’s mostly a courtesy, and, as in this case, it’s mainly an opportunity for donors to bitch and moan and kvetch and play the amateur political consultant, all the while reminding the unfortunate staffers “briefing” them that they help pay the bills. I’m sure their “advice” to Mook — including the brilliant suggestion that Clinton go after the youth vote — went in one of Mook’s ears and out the other, if indeed he was listening instead of taking peeks at his cell phone. The real problem that should have been anticipated — along with the advisability of meeting in a union hall or the back room of a chain restaurant instead of in a donor’s office on Wall Street — is that some of the donors involved would of course run straight to the Times with the story in order to share with the world their important role in Team Clinton. Robby Mook left Nevada at a critical moment to come brief me, the leak advertised. Suddenly a boring and probably meaningless meeting turned into big oppo fodder for the Bernie Sanders campaign.
And Sanders’s people took the cue. Here’s an excerpt from a Facebook post by the campaign:

Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Bernie 2016 said, “One of the biggest differences between our campaigns is that Bernie’s campaign does not take its marching orders from Wall Street and big money donors. It’s shameful that the Clinton campaign is parroting attacks at Sen. Sanders that The New York Times has documented come right from her big money backers. Now we are beginning to get a glimpse into what goes on in all those closed door meetings with Wall Street interests.”

I doubt that’s the case, but it’s not like the Clinton campaign can come out and say, This was a dog-and-pony show with no impact on our campaign. So they’ve fed one of the central talking points of the entire Sanders campaign and can only hope it’s a one-day story that everybody forgets.

That may be true, but it’s a bet no campaign can afford to lose. Just ask Bruce Braley, a 2014 Senate candidate from Iowa who never recovered from a video posted by a friend that showed him asking Texas trial lawyers to help him keep “Iowa farmer” Chuck Grassley from chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Optics matter.

There have been many valuable discussions here at TDS and elsewhere about the significance of the opening on the U.S. Supreme Court after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. But there’s one aspect of the impending fight over Scalia’s successor that needs to be emphasized: the timing could make the shape of SCOTUS a big, mainstream presidential campaign issue for the first time ever. I wrote about this possibility for New York:

SCOTUS appointments have always been a big deal to liberal and conservative activists, particularly those focused on issues where constitutional law has had an important impact, such as abortion, civil liberties, federalism, and the regulation of businesses. That’s especially true with respect to the Court that Scalia’s death unsettled, where four consistently liberal justices were balanced by three-to-five conservatives, depending on where Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy were on any given case. A recent string of 5-4 splits has heightened the atmosphere of uncertainty, with decisions pending on affirmative action, climate-change regulations, the president’s ability to control immigration prosecutions, and a new wave of state abortion restrictions. With the Court now requiring 5-3 margins to overturn lower-court decisions, and three other justices (two liberals and the conservative/swing Justice Kennedy) over the age of 75, the current presidential-election cycle is rapidly becoming one of the most portentous ever in terms of the future shape of constitutional law.
The balance of the court is especially critical to conservatives stricken by Scalia’s death and fearful that their hopes of a truly and systematically conservative Court are in danger of slipping away. But it’s important to understand the other factor that ratchets up conservative anxiety over Court appointments to a high-pitch chattering whine: a legacy of betrayal by Republican-appointed justices. The best way to illustrate it is this: In 1992, the last time the Court had an opportunity to reverse Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion nationally, all five justices who voted to save Roe (O’Connor, Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, and Blackmun) had been appointed by Republican presidents.

This is largely why Ted Cruz is already out there arguing that the entire presidential campaign should be a “referendum” on SCOTUS. But there are other factors that could make Court appointments go viral:

The frequency and intensity of talk about the Supreme Court being the ultimate prize in Campaign 2016 will help it to spill over from the usual backstairs talk of activists into the broader public arena. Four other factors should virtually guarantee it: (1) President Obama’s decision to move ahead with an appointment, which he will then use to dramatize Republican obstruction, as the Senate refuses to hold hearings or a confirmation vote; (2) the likelihood that attitudes towards the Court and the Senate’s confirmation powers will become issues in close Senate races in presidential battleground states like Pennsylvania and Florida; (3) the paralysis of the Court in key cases where, absent Scalia or a successor, SCOTUS will split 4-4; and (4) the prevailing conventional wisdom that the 2016 contest will be a “base mobilization” rather than a “swing-voter persuasion” election, making highly emotional issues like abortion, guns, money-in-politics, and climate change much more prominent.

The issue is not going to go away any time soon, however:

It is not clear, however, that the election will resolve the Court deadlock. No matter who controls the Senate next year, the minority party will have the power to stop Supreme Court confirmations via the filibuster (unless the majority party extends to SCOTUS the “nuclear option” Harry Reid utilized in 2011 to end filibusters over lower-court and executive-branch confirmations, a fateful step that could, of course, backfire when shoes are on different feet). A campaign year of escalating and mutually reinforcing promises to hang very tough on the Court could all but eliminate the possibility of compromise.
So get used to the new reality: Fights over SCOTUS probably aren’t just for activists any more. Scalia’s replacement, if and when confirmed, could represent the definitive triumph of one vision of the Constitution over another.

And it’s likely we’ll all know it.

While I was watching the PBS Democratic presidential candidates’ debate Thursday night, I noticed Bernie Sanders doing something a lot of Democrats do: changing the subject when asked the non-congenial question of how much government implementing his agenda would involve? I wrote up some analysis and advice on this at New York:

The very first question posed to Bernie Sanders in Thursday night’s PBS debate in Milwaukee is one that’s been asked in some form in every one of the Democratic debates. It was from Judy Woodruff:

Coming off the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, there are many voters who are taking a closer look at you, and your ideas, and they’re asking how big a role do you foresee for the federal government? It’s already spending 21 percent of the entire U.S. economy. How much larger would government be in the lives of Americans under a Sanders presidency?

Sanders “answered” by talking about the redistribution of income to the wealthy that’s been under way for a long time, and the health-care entitlement as it exists in other countries, and then started through his whole policy agenda, until Woodruff interrupted:

But, my question is how big would government be? Would there be any limit on the size of the role of government?

Sanders began his answer with “Of course there will be a limit,” but instead of saying what that might be he wandered back into his recitation of things that needed to be done. Finally Clinton decided to give him a hand:

Judy, I think that the best analysis that I’ve seen based on Senator Sanders’s plans is that it would probably increase the size of the federal government by about 40 percent …

And before anyone could ask her where she got that cruise missile of a statistic, Clinton went off on a criticism of the Sanders health plan.
Now it’s not entirely clear what “size of government” means without some context. Is it the size of the federal budget? The number of federal employees? The magnitude or intrusiveness of bureaucracy? The burden on taxpayers or businesses? Does it matter if “big government” is concentrated in Washington or power is shared with states and localities?
All these distinctions could be useful to Sanders in defending himself from charges of being an agent of Big Government, which a lot of voters (and not just conservatives) dislike more than Big Corporations or Wall Street. More progressive taxes aren’t necessarily more difficult to administer than less progressive taxes. Breaking up big banks may not be more complicated than trying to regulate them, and once they are broken up, regulation could become easier. Medicare For All would utilize an existing and relatively efficient federal program. Higher infrastructure spending would utilize existing intergovernmental programs that give states and localities some discretion.
The closest Sanders has come to counter-punching on the cost or size-of-government implications of his agenda is his argument that higher taxes for single-payer health care would actually represent net savings for many (if not most) people because they’d no longer have to pay private health insurance premiums (his exact claims are in dispute, but the idea is entirely sound). He could easily extend this argument by pointing out how much people hate to deal with profit-driven health insurance bureaucrats who routinely deny claims and micromanage the choice of providers and prescription drugs. Banks have bureaucracies, too, as anyone who has applied for a loan can tell you, and it would be smart for a candidate like Sanders who doesn’t exactly seem business-friendly to talk about the how the financial industry messes with businesses and investors as well as consumers.
You could almost imagine a Bernie-rific rap where the candidate lays out a vision of what life would be like for most people if his agenda were implemented, and then implicitly (or explicitly) asks if some abstract objection to Big Government is a good reason to reject it.
And beyond that, you would figure that given his foreign-policy views he could suggest some reductions in the size and cost of the very large part of Big Government represented by the Department of Defense.
So far, at least in the debates, he’s not doing any of that. Perhaps he thinks being identified with Big Government is just an occupational hazard for every socialist.
But the questions won’t stop. And Clinton’s drive-by suggestions that a Sanders administration would represent a choice between policies that can’t be enacted and a government that can’t be sustained provide a small, bitter taste of what Republicans will shovel out should Sanders be nominated.

Actually, all Democrats–including Hillary Clinton–will be asked some version of the “Big Government” question by the media and by Republicans. Changing the subject is a bad Democratic habit that needs to stop. Silence isn’t golden; the opposition will fill these gaps with their own version of what Democrats believe, and some voters will just assume the worst.

Before you let anyone convince you that Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s surprise second-place finish in New Hamsphire gives Republicans an electable new option, consider this evaluation I made of his prospects at New York this morning:

Kasich pursued the same basic strategy as his chief political adviser, longtime McCain hand John Weaver, laid out for 2012 candidate Jon Huntsman: In a crowded field of candidates trying to out-conservative each other, go for that wallflower at the dance, the moderate or “somewhat conservative” voter, where they are most in abundance. Among the early states, that would be New Hampshire.
And so Kasich poured all his resources (including an estimated $10 million or so in ads, mostly run by a super-pac) into the Granite State, and accentuated two features considered a handicap by most candidates: the longest history of elected service in the field (he was elected to the Ohio Senate when Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were small children), and such moderate positions as support for the Obamacare-provided Medicaid expansion and a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. The other candidates for the most part ignored Kasich and conceded him the RINO vote. Going down the stretch, his trajectory was similar to Huntsman’s (the former Utah governor got 17 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, which was enough for a third-place finish well behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, but not enough to sustain a campaign going forward). But then Kasich got lucky. In a pre-primary debate, Chris Christie humiliated presumed Establishment champion Marco Rubio, and in the ensuing scrum, the Ohioan sneaked through untouched to narrowly finish second. With 16 percent, he actually did a bit worse than Huntsman, but context is everything.
If you look at the exit polls from New Hampshire, Kasich’s narrow but sufficient (in this state, anyway) path to second place was pretty clear: He won 20 percent or more among self-identified moderates, those earning over $200,000, people who perceive themselves as “getting ahead financially,” voters focused on the economy and jobs, and those who reject banning Muslim immigration and favor a path to legalization for the undocumented. It’s very important to understand that voters like this are not in heavy supply in South Carolina or in the southern states that crowd the calendar on March 1. With both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio struggling to survive in what’s left of the “Establishment Lane,” Kasich can no longer expect a relatively benign treatment from other candidates. His willingness to defend a Medicaid expansion is the rankest heresy charge he will face, though there are already signs that his budget-cutting record will be savaged in the Palmetto State by Bush ally Lindsey Graham for threatening defense spending, a holy sacrament in that state sagging with military facilities. It’s unclear how Kasich will respond other than by spending little time in South Carolina and hoping he can somehow remain viable until Michigan and his own Ohio vote on March 8 and March 15 (respectively). He has zero infrastructure in the intervening states, in any event, and it’s unclear whether his New Hampshire showing will loosen many purse strings on his behalf.
Kasich could presumably zigzag strategically and stop trying to sound less conservative than his own record would indicate. But it seems like the issue that gets him personally excited is that perpetual snoozer, a balanced budget constitutional amendment. At a moment when conservatives appear to have again forgotten about fiscal probity in their zeal to cut taxes and deport immigrants and prosecute Middle Eastern wars, Kasich appears more than a bit out of touch.
All in all, Kasich’s moment in the sun doesn’t look likely to last very long. He could perhaps be lifted over the many obstacles to this nomination — or at least kept in contention until those April and May primary states where self-identifed moderates again walk the earth in sizable numbers — if Republican elites concluded he was their best bet to keep Donald Trump and Ted Cruz away from the nomination. But to paraphrase the late journalist Hunter Thompson, counting on John Kasich to stop Donald Trump is a bit like sending out a three-toed sloth to seize turf from a wolverine. Who would want to place a multi-million-dollar bet on that?

Probably no one. And so John Kasich will likely turn out to be the political equivalent of a one-hit wonder.

As the Democratic presidential nominating contest gets tense after the photo-finish in Iowa, it brings back memories of past post-Iowa “moments” that turned out to be dramatic and consequential. I wrote about one of them–the so-called “Dean Scream” of 2004–at New York, with some warnings for the 2016 candidates:

One of the fruits of ESPN’s acquisition of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight is the capacity to produce films, and so the wonky “data journalism” site has produced for our post-Iowa enjoyment a brief video look back at the “Dean Scream” — the iconic moment on the night of the Iowa caucuses when the soon-to-be-former Democratic presidential front-runner appeared to be losing it.
With footage featuring Dean himself, well-known figures from his 2004 campaign like Joe Trippi and Tricia Enright, and even John Kerry staffers like Stephanie Cutter and Mary Beth Cahill, the film doesn’t break new ground, but it might be a revelation to those who weren’t around or paying close attention to politics 12 years ago. In short, “the Scream” (a litany of states Dean promised to go into and win, followed by a fist-pumping “Ahhhhh” or “Yeeehaahhh!” depending on your interpretation of inarticulate noises) was largely an illusion created by TV mics that picked up Dean’s voice but not the incredibly noisy crowd in the Val Air Ballroom in Des Moines. Rather than reflecting some unhinged aspect of the candidate’s personality, his speech was actually a direct reflection of what he was told to say by his most important Iowa backer, then-senator Tom Harkin. And far from killing Dean’s campaign, it simply placed an exclamation point on the disaster of a third-place Iowa finish for the man who had become a national front-runner not too many weeks earlier. Questionable campaign-resource allocations, momentarily positive news from Iraq, and some shrewd moves by Dean’s opponents had a lot more to do with the demise of his candidacy that the debatable effect of a single speech.
But as Silver & Co. note in a chat about the film, what “the Scream” actually did was reinforce a powerful media narrative that was already emerging about Dean as an “angry man” leading an emotional but not terribly responsible antiwar movement. And so it was probably one of the earliest videos to go viral, inspiring countless comedy routines, music videos, and even weather reports (“And then the storm’s going to hit South Dakota, and then Minnesota, and then Wisconsin! Yeeehaahhh!”). And eventually the narrative completely overwhelmed the facts, and people “remember” “the Scream” as having devastated a presidential candidacy.
The lesson of “the Scream” seems to be that strong media narratives about a candidacy don’t need much fuel to burn brightly, and evocative moments that reinforce them can quickly become iconic and hard to shake. Silver guesses Donald Trump could be the victim of something similar if, like Dean, he continues to underperform expectations and confirm the original suspicion that he’s not a viable candidate. But I dunno: Trump’s already overcome so many supposedly fatal “moments” in debates and speeches that it’s hard to imagine him being felled by such a blunt object as a video. Looking back at Dean’s campaign, it’s hard to avoid the similarities between his kiddie crusade and Bernie Sanders’s; Bernie’s youth brigades in Iowa could be the youngest brothers and sisters (or nieces and nephews) of the orange-hat hordes that flooded the state for Dean in 2004. Lucky for Sanders, his young supporters don’t seem to have freaked out older Iowans quite the way Dean’s did. And on caucus night, Sanders more or less gave his stock speech rather than a pep talk (it helps distinguish him from Dean that he was not conceding defeat).
But there’s no question elements of the media and political opponents alike would love to depict Bernie as an aging, strident ideologue serving as a pied piper to uninhibited and “idealistic” youth. And he already has a tendency to speak loudly (I’ve been advised by one acquaintance that drawing attention to Sanders’s volume as a speaker is an anti-Semitic dog whistle, but having grown up around some very loud southern Baptists, I just don’t buy it). A “Scream” moment is always a possibility.
Howard Dean might warn his fellow Vermonter about his experience, but the irony is that Dean (and for that matter, the instigator of “the Scream,” Tom Harkin) is supporting Clinton; in FiveThirtyEight’s film he returns to Iowa for the first time since “the Scream” to thump the tubs for Hillary. So maybe Dean and Harkin can advise their candidate that she, too, should beware of images and utterances that reinforce negative media narratives. Someone on her team should be assigned a full-time job watching for and heading off “gotcha” moments that suggest she’s dishonest.

Media narratives are always restlessly in search of validation, And nothing does that quite like video. Candidates beware,