I was staring at some polls the other day and a question hit me: what if “electability” were more or less taken out of the equation in presidential nominating contests? I decided to discuss that hypothesis and its implications at Washington Monthly:

One of the solid truisms of contemporary politics is that partisan and ideological polarization has significantly reduced the number of “swing voters” in most elections–especially presidential elections where major-party candidates are pretty well known by the time the campaign reaches its decisive phases. That also means there’s something of a “floor” beneath major-party candidates given the higher percentage of people who will eventually vote with their party (even if they prefer to call themselves “independent”) no matter what. So even if, say, Ted Cruz is Barry Goldwater reincarnated, he would, if nominated, do a lot better than Barry’s 38.5%.
But what if polarization (and for that matter such “fundamentals” as the economy) is even more powerful than we realize, and the exact identity of the candidates is pretty much irrelevant to the outcome? That could have a pretty profound impact on the nomination process, wouldn’t it, especially in a cycle like this one where partisans are understandably very anxious to win?
We’ll, it’s just one general election poll in one battleground state, and I’m pointing to it strictly as an example of something that might turn into a trend later on–but a new PPP survey of Iowa has this rather amazing range of general election trial heats:

PPP’s new Presidential poll in Iowa finds a tight race in the general election for President in the state. Hillary Clinton leads 7 of her Republican opponents while trailing 4 of them, but in none of the cases are the margins larger than 4 points. The strongest Republican against Clinton in the state is Ben Carson, who leads her 44/40. The other three GOP hopefuls ahead of Clinton all lead her by just a single point- Mike Huckabee at 44/43, Scott Walker at 44/43, and Marco Rubio at 43/42.
The Republicans who fare the worst against Clinton are Jeb Bush who trails by 4 at 44/40, and Rand Paul and Donald Trump who each trail by 3 at 43/40. The rest of the GOP hopefuls each trail Clinton by 2 points- Ted Cruz at 44/42, Carly Fiorina at 42/40, and Chris Christie and John Kasich each at 41/39.

PPP doesn’t test Bernie Sanders against the entire GOP field, but the tests it does offer show very small differences between his performance and HRC’s (he leads Trump 44/40; HRC leads Trump 43/40;) he leads Jebbie 41/40; she leads Jebbie 44/40).
If this does turn out to be a trend, what do you suppose might be the psychological effect among party activists, donors and “base” voters? They’d worry a lot less about electability and a lot more about how much they agree with–or would benefit from–the ideologies and policies of the various candidates, wouldn’t they?….
[W]hile my knee continues to jerk in a negative response to the proposition that ideological candidates are the only true or honorable candidates–sometimes “centrists” actually do believe in what they are proposing–it is entirely rational for ideologically motivated players in the presidential nominating process to prefer the maximum bang for their buck should their party win all other things being equal. My point here is that we may be approaching the day when all other things really are equal between “ideologues” and “centrists” in both parties when it comes to electability.

Republican strategists are understandably miffed that Donald Trump has degraded their brand with his bullying antics. But what they worry about more is the effects of Trump running as a write-in candidate.
If Trump loses the GOP nomination, runs as a write-in candidate after the primaries and draws, say, a net three or four percent of the vote away from the Republican nominee’s vote in a couple of key states, it could be enough to give a Democratic nominee the presidency.
After the primary season is over, Trump would likely run more as a centrist than a conservative, like other presidential candidates, and perhaps tone his theatrics down a notch.
At The Upshot Josh Barro argues that Trump is a moderate on some key issues. He has made vague statement of support for tax cuts and simplifying the tax code, but has so far refused to sign Grover Norquist’s tax pledge. Further,

The main way Mr. Trump stands out from the field on economic policy is leftward: While most Republicans favor free trade, Mr. Trump has called for much higher tariffs on imported goods to protect American industries from competition. He has also criticized his opponents for proposing cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
…..Instead of promoting his ideological purity, he notes that policy choices are circumstance-specific. For example, he’s not a priori opposed to single-payer health care. “It works in Canada,” he said at the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 6. “It works incredibly well in Scotland.” Even in the United States, “it could have worked in a different age,” but it wouldn’t work very well right now, he said. So instead, he’d replace Obamacare with “something terrific,” which would take care of people who can’t afford health insurance.

Timothy Noah notes at Politico:

It was during Trump’s leftward drift in 1999 that he first proposed a wealth tax — a one-time 14.25 percent levy on fortunes more than $10 million that inequality guru Thomas Piketty might salivate over. “The concept of a one-time tax on the super-wealthy is something he feels strongly about,” Stone told the Los Angeles Times.
“He’s nothing if not inconsistent,” said Bruce Bartlett, a onetime tax aide to the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R.-N.Y.) who excoriated Trump’s wealth tax 16 years ago in the Wall Street Journal. “He’s been on every side of every issue from every point of view as far as I can tell.”

Trump has worked with unions in his business and generally avoids the snarling anti-union tone of many of his fellow Republican candidates. However, notes Noah,

But even in 2000, Trump had a low regard for teacher’s unions, who he wrote “blow smoke about professional this and academic that” and stifle competition by resisting school choice options. Trump would also appear to share fellow GOP candidate Scott Walker’s disdain for public employee unions in general, having donated $15,000 during Walker’s 2012 recall fight to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which opposed it. “I believed what he was doing was the right thing,” Trump said…Trump parts with liberals in opposing an increase in the minimum wage…

Trump’s “leftward” credentials are more than a little compromised by his stated willingness to allow each state to formulate its own policies toward unions, rather than strengthen collective bargaining across the U.S., which many economists believe is needed to secure a thriving middle class. In substance, he is not so different than the others on the critical issue of restoring a healthy trade union movement. It’s ironic that Trump would take a moderate tone on any issues, including unions.
In a way, the Trump phenomenon is a test of just how far an in-your-face presidential candidate can go with policies that would disqualify other equally-‘moderate’ candidates with a less outrageous media profile. As Barro puts it

Mr. Trump is offering an unusual combination of extreme language, moderate policy and rudeness, and so far it’s connecting with Republican voters. Over the next few months, as voters learn more about Mr. Trump’s policy views, we’ll get to see which part of that combination is helping him soar, and whether his policy moderation and flexibility are liabilities.

Barro may be overstating Trump’s ‘moderation.’ It would be unwise to assume Trump would not vacillate again on his economic policies, since that’s been his pattern. His contradictions on policy make it hard to see how he could hold his own in a presidential debate.
But he has cleverly leveraged his outrageous media persona to catapult his candidacy to frontrunner status in the GOP, leaving his fellow presidential candidates flat-footed and unprepared. Most pundits still doubt he can win the Republican nomination — or the presidency. But If Trump can’t be the king, he could be a kingmaker.

At The Week Scott Lemieux examines the strategic flaws of a single-issue campaign — even when the cause is a very good one.
This is fun. At Politico Sen. Claire McCaskill explains “How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later.” from her book “Plenty Ladylike: A Memoir.”
At Roll Call’s Rothenblog, Nathan L. Gonzales notes “Democrats haven’t given up their effort to dig out of the minority in the House…Democrats face a difficult road to gain 30 seats and get back into the majority, but their prospects improved in a handful of races over the last few months.”
National Journal’s Alex Roarty, Andrea Drusch, Scott Bland and Josh Kraushaar present “Hotline’s Senate Rankings: The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip in 2016,” and 10 of their top 12 are now held by Republicans.
From Gallup, a potentially-useful metric for identifying swing states: “The difference between the percentage of state residents identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic and the percentage identifying as Republicans or leaning Republican.” States closest to zero (and under +/- 2.0) include: NV, 0.5; LA, -0.5; OH, -0.7; CO, 1.3; AZ, -1.3; NC, 1.4; and WI, 1.6. Louisiana is the surprise — any theories?
Not such a big surprise: The disrupter of the Bernie Sanders rally reportedly supported Sarah Palin and the tea party.
Nate Silver explains why “Donald Trump Is Winning The Polls — And Losing The Nomination.” Among Silver’s most cogent insights: The polls “contemplate a winner-take-all vote, but most states are not winner-take-all.”
At The American Prospect Rachel M. Cohen reports on “The Growing Movement to Restore Voting Rights to Former Felons.” Cohen observes, “According to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy group, there are roughly 5.85 million disenfranchised American citizens with felony convictions, and 2.2 million of them are black. That’s one out of every 13 African Americans…Eighteen states considered loosening ex-felon voting restrictions this year, up from 13 states in 2014. But passing legislation, as Maryland activists witnessed first-hand, is difficult. Only one state–Wyoming–ended up successfully loosening its restrictions.”
How a Georgia Democrat won a seat in the state legislature in a heavily-Republican district, and by a large margin, despite being outspent 2-1.

Though there’s considerable disagreement over the damage, if any, done to Donald Trump in last week’s first official Republican presidential debate, there’s no question one candidate is getting roses strewn in her path for her performance in the “Happy Hour” forum among those who didn’t make the debate cut. I discussed the Carly Fiorina phenomenon, and the glaring question it raises, at Washington Monthly yesterday:

She’s basically running even with Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio in the only national GOP poll (from Rasmussen) taken since the debates, as is also the case in a new poll of Iowa from PPP. She’s not quite so strong in another new Iowa poll from Suffolk, but is running ahead of Bush, Huckabee and Paul there. Hell, Huck was campaigning in Iowa at a time when Carly was still counting her please-go-away money from HP and thinking about launching a losing Senate campaign. So her standing is pretty impressive.
It will be interesting to see if and when her standing compels her rivals or media to begin challenging her extremely thin qualifications to become president of the United States. Yes, the whole GOP needs her for gender diversity and for launching toxic attacks on Hillary Clinton into the atmosphere without too much gender backlash. But at some point, if you’re Jeb Bush with your two terms as Governor of Florida or Mike Huckabee with your two-plus terms as Governor of Arkansas or Rick Perry with your three-plus terms as Governor of Texas, you might get tired of looking up the leader board at Fiorina while pretending it’s non-germane that she blew up the company in her one CEO gig and lost her one political campaign by a near-landslide in the best Republican year since World War II…..
Maybe none of this matters to Republicans looking for an “outsider” candidate who’s done more than her share of Power Point presentations and has a good personal story (including being a cancer survivor). But we’ll never know until the questions get asked.

Tick tock.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman takes a look at the last GOP presidential debate, and finds the field limping along and struggling to provide any convincing criticism of President Obama’s impressive record. Krugman explains,

…The shared premise of everyone on the Republican side is that the Obama years have been a time of policy disaster on every front. Yet the candidates on that stage had almost nothing to say about any of the supposed disaster areas.
And there was a good reason they seemed so tongue-tied: Out there in the real world, none of the disasters their party predicted have actually come to pass. President Obama just keeps failing to fail. And that’s a big problem for the G.O.P. — even bigger than Donald Trump.
Start with health reform. Talk to right-wingers, and they will inevitably assert that it has been a disaster. But ask exactly what form this disaster has taken, and at best you get unverified anecdotes about rate hikes and declining quality.
Meanwhile, actual numbers show that the Affordable Care Act has sharply reduced the number of uninsured Americans — especially in blue states that have been willing to expand Medicaid — while costing substantially less than expected. The newly insured are, by and large, pleased with their coverage, and the law has clearly improved access to care.

Krugman ads that Republican politicians know now that bashing Obamacare is getting harder to sell and that it is not the job-killer they predicted. “In the year and a half since Obamacare went fully into effect, the U.S. economy has added an average of 237,000 private-sector jobs per month,” notes Krugman, “better than anything we’ve seen since the 1990s.”
As for the GOP candidates’ discussion of economic policies in the debate, Krugman explains “Why didn’t the other candidates say more? Probably because at this point the Obama economy doesn’t look too bad…domestic oil production has soared and oil imports have plunged since Mr. Obama took office,” adds Krugman. if you compare unemployment rates over the course of the Obama administration with unemployment rates under Reagan, Mr. Obama ends up looking better – unemployment was higher when he took office, and it’s now lower than it was at this point under Reagan.”
Further, “the Obama economy has utterly failed to deliver the disasters — hyperinflation! a plunging dollar! fiscal crisis! — that just about everyone on the right predicted. And this has evidently left the Republican presidential field with nothing much to say.”
Krugman distills the GOP candidates’ core meme: “The only way to thrive, the right insists, is to be nice to the rich and cruel to the poor, while letting corporations do as they please.”
Meanwhile, President Obama “raises taxes on the 1 percent while subsidizing health care for lower-income families, ” and “provides stimulus in a recession…regulates banks and expands environmental protection.”
Krugman acknowledges the unmet expectations of the President’s economic policies, but adds that Obama has a nonetheless impressive litany of accomplishments, which are very hard to criticize in a credible way. Republicans are forced to rely on tired memes, while the longer term benefits of President Obama’s leadership are starting to kick in.
Without getting too optimistic, Dems are in good position to hold the presidency and make significant gains at the federal, state and local levels. President Obama and the Democrats have done their part to improve Democratic prospects. Now Republicans are cooperating with a weak field of candidates, a circus-like atmosphere, unconvincing arguments and no accomplishments of their own.

The following post by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The debate season is starting, and there is no doubt that it is entertaining. The media’s obsession with Trump will not be diminished by last night’s debate, as both the moderators and the other candidates in both the prime time and happy hour debates circled around the persona of Trump as the planets circle the sun. The run-up to the debate over the last week has been all-Trump-all-the-time, and there’s no reason to think that will stop anytime soon.
Ultimately, though, I firmly believe that Donald Trump will not be the Republican presidential nominee- and I don’t think it will be because he blows himself up with an outrageous comment, as he has already proved that making outrageous comments only adds to his appeal. What will finally defeat Trump is not likely to be the Donald himself, but the combined might of the people who control the Republican party: mainly the Koch brothers and those, both politicians and other big money players, who trail in their wake. As Congressman Tim Ryan said last night, “What’s happening this evening is an audition for the billionaires, the Koch brothers.” What they were auditioning for was to be the anti-Trump candidate the Kochs will muscle through the nomination process.
Last year, in tapes of the secret meetings the Kochs hosted in Orange County that my colleague Lauren Windsor obtained, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said to the Koch brothers, “I want to start by thanking you, Charles and David, for the important work you’re doing. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”
I noted at the time how true McConnell’s words were:

In fact, McConnell does know where his Republican Party would be without the Kochs and their network of millionaire and billionaire donors — nowhere. Saddled with a deeply unpopular economic and social agenda, locked down by a primary electorate that won’t allow even occasional forays into moderate policy or rhetoric, crippled by demographic trends that are making their voting base smaller and smaller, Republicans have lost the popular vote six of the last seven presidential elections. Without the Koch money, there would have been no tea party movement or 2010 tidal wave. Without the Koch money, the 2012 presidential race wouldn’t have even been competitive… The only thing keeping the Republicans in the game is the Kochs and their big-money friends dumping hundreds of millions of dollars ($290 million this cycle according to some accounts, $500 million according to at least one source) into the pot, and McConnell and other party leaders know it.

This cycle, the Kochs and their billionaire friends have pledged $900 million to help the Republicans win — and that doesn’t include the hundreds of millions they are investing in think tanks, academic institutions, PR, and other ways of influencing the broader political narrative. Closely allied to McConnell and most of the other party leaders, they dominate the party’s thinking on climate change, taxes, the federal budget, regulatory policy, education policy, and a host of smaller behind-the-scenes issues.
The Kochs run the Republican show, and they will not let someone outside of their orbit like Trump get his hands on the prize. The Kochs are playing the long game — they have been happy to accept short-term losses to keep their hands on the controls of the party. So if Trump decides to blow up the Republican chances this year by running as an independent, they will take that hit.
It is important to understand why this is such a serious development for the future of our democracy. These are bad people, not because they are conservative, not because they throw around a lot of money, and not only because they blatantly act in their own self-interest. I have seen all of that before in spades. I’ve been in politics a long time, been involved in presidential campaigns since 1984, worked in a White House and on two transition teams, and believe me I have seen, and faced off against, all kinds of naked self-interest and big money, for decades. But no one in my lifetime, or in American politics over the last hundred years, has had as much power as the Kochs, and no one has abused that power so egregiously.
I will come back to the big picture in a minute, but first let me tell you about one of the Kochs’ closest associates, a man named Kevin Gentry. Gentry has two big titles in Koch world, simultaneously serving as vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and as vice president of special projects at Koch Industries. Gentry served as the emcee of the secret Koch conference held last year, speaking more on the tapes Lauren was given than any other person at the conference.
And Kevin Gentry is a thug. I don’t say this lightly, as I respect most of my political opponents and believe in treating them with dignity. But the VP of Koch Industries and the Charles Koch Foundation roughly grabbed two young women at their conference this last weekend, twisting the arm of one of them so much that paramedics were called. Read Lauren Windsor’s harrowing account of the incident here.
This wasn’t some rogue security guard, some junior level staffer that lost it and went out of control. This was one of the Kochs’ very top people, and I think you can be guaranteed he will not be fired for this incident. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that people with such raw power and Ayn Rand-like political views feel like they can commit assault and battery without blinking an eye. In Gentry’s case, he actually laughed about it.
Meanwhile, their political agenda as spelled out very clearly at their secret meetings last year, is another form of assault and battery. I wrote at the time:

In a series of big ideological speeches given the first day of their retreat (which Mitch McConnell called “very inspiring”), Charles Koch, his “grand strategist” Richard Fink, and the Charles Koch Institute’s VP for Research and Policy, Will Ruger, laid out a vision of government and society that would be pretty terrifying to anyone this side of Ayn Rand: The minimum wage (which leads to Nazi-ism) should be abolished; homeless people should be told to “get off [their] ass and work hard like we did”; and government should get out of the business of anything except the police force, military, and judicial system — no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, student loans, clean air or water rules, national or state parks, food safety, Wall Street oversight.

This would be assault and battery on everyone in America outside of the top 1%, so you can be sure that when Kevin Gentry manhandles two women, the Kochs won’t blink an eye. These are the people with an iron grip on the throat of the Republican Party, and I guarantee you they will not let the party or its political leadership out of their control. Donald Trump is a fun, fascinating, thoroughly entertaining sideshow, but the real action was behind the scenes in Orange County last weekend.

For an impressive expose of the Republicans’ disinformation complex, check out “They Don’t Gove a Damn About Governing: Conservative Media’s Influence on the Republican Party” by Jackie Calmes at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Here’s the real reason why Republicans so strongly advocate tightening up voter i.d. laws.
Trump’s support is stable in new NBC poll taken after the debates. “The big gainers were Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson,” reports Kevin Drum at Mother Jones..
At the National Journal, Ronald Brownstein explains why “Trump’s Shaky Electoral Foundation” is not likely to prevail, as suggested by the historical record.
Jonathan Chait has a perceptive summation the Trump threat to the GOP’s 2016 prospects: “…The significance of his performance lies in his deadly serious threat to run a third-party campaign, siphoning off the immigrant-haters and amorphously angry blue-collar whites the actual nominee will need for himself. The intense barrage of pointed questions displayed how seriously Roger Ailes takes Trump’s threat to hijack the GOP for his own end. It failed to reckon with the other threat: that the Republican plan to drive Trump from their party might instead work all too well.”
Yet, as NYT columnist Paul Krugman explains, “…While it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.” Krugman provides examples to back up his assertion.
“Pro-business” New Democratic Coalition is preparing new initiatives to cut deals with Republicans, reports Lauren French at Politico.
Yes, it’s early, but if anyone needed another reason why Dems should not relax their efforts in the wake of the Trump follies distraction, here’s one: “We predict that the Democratic nominee for president will win the election by the slimmest of margins with precisely 270 electoral votes. The Republican nominee will fall just short with 268 votes,” says Mark Zandi, writing at the Street about the prediction off Moody’s Analytics presidential election model, which “is constructed based on presidential election results since the 1980 Reagan-Carter contest, and captures the impact on voting decisions of the health of state economies in the lead-up to the election as well as the party affiliation and political realities in each state.”
Shell quits ALEC. That’s one gas brand you can put in your car that doesn’t subsidize Republican legislation through ALEC with your money every few days. Same for BP. However, ExxonMobil still funds ALEC, as does AMOCO and Chevron, Texaco and Marathon.

Yesterday’s two events on Fox News, involving all 17 Republican presidential candidates, offered quite an extended show. But Fox took a more aggressive role in shaping the field than any media operation in memory. That’s what I wrote about this morning at TPMCafe:

The Republican Party has famously missed most of the markers set out for it in the RNC’s so-called “autopsy report” in March of 2013.
[But] here’s one thing Republicans promised themselves to do after the last cycle that’s actually been implemented: partner with conservative media so that the GOP candidates weren’t being subjected to hostile questioning from “outsiders.”
So today we had the first official GOP presidential debate, and the seven-candidate “undercard” forum earlier in the day, both sponsored by Fox News. And they put their stamp on the events in a way that is almost certain to shape, if not winnow, the gigantic GOP field.
At the 5:00 p.m. “Happy Hour” debate, virtually all of the questions were framed from the point of view of a conservative movement vetting the candidates, beginning with a battery about electability and exploring potential ideological heresies like Lindsey Graham’s openness to compromise with Democrats and Rick Santorum’s strange interest in wage levels for working-class people.
The candidate Republicans in general most wanted to promote to a higher tier, Carly Fiorina, was universally proclaimed the winner of the early forum, partly because she was one of two candidates who drew a question that enabled her to take a shot at Donald Trump even as she pandered to his followers. No one asked her (not in the forum, or in the extensive pre- or post-forum discussion at Fox) about her uniquely disastrous business and political record. It helped that Santorum, Pataki and Gilmore were clearly living in the 1990s, while Rick Perry returned to his inarticulate and gaffe-ridden 2012 ways. Bobby Jindal hung on to his prospects of serving in somebody else’s cabinet. All in all, it’s exactly what Republicans wanted from this event.
Fox News’ purpose in the main 10-candidate event was made plain with the first question: an in-your-face spotlight on Donald Trump’s refusal to promise not to run as an independent candidate. And the relentless pounding of Trump–on his bankruptcies, his past support for single-payer health care and abortion rights, his “specific evidence” for claiming Mexico has dispatched criminals to the U.S. (slurs about immigrants by other candidates didn’t come up) and even his sexist tweets—continued right on through to Frank Luntz’s post-debate focus group, designed to show how much damage Trump had sustained. It was by far the least impartial showing by debate sponsors I have seen, up to and including the disgraceful ABC-moderated 2008 Democratic event that involved a deliberate trashing of all the candidates.
The Trump-bashing agenda distracted from the other candidates significantly. In what may have been another example of Fox carrying water for the GOP and conservative orthodoxy, Chris Christie was invited to savage Rand Paul on surveillance policy and aid to Israel. Paul responded with a nasty crack at Christie’s famous hug of Obama, and Christie responded by citing the 9/11 survivors he had hugged (and that Paul had implicitly disrespected by objecting to warrantless wiretapping and so forth). On a separate front, Christie and Huckabee were invited to mix it up on “entitlement reform,” and they did so rather cordially. But these were the rare non-Trump points of collision.
The strange direction of the questioning made it hard to name a “winner.” Jeb Bush deftly handled a Common Core question. Scott Walker misdirected his way around a pointed question about his jobs record. Ben Carson gave some glimpses of the craziness of his world view (a reference to Saul Alinsky, an apparent dismissal of complaints about torture as–you guessed it!–political correctness), but recovered with a nice rap about his surgical successes in his closing. Rubio apparently impressed people who hadn’t heard his well-worn up-from-poverty story; he also covered his ideological flanks by denying he was for a rape/incest exception to a hypothetical abortion ban. And Kasich (who benefited from a home-crowd advantage) probably struck a chord with people who are not “base” conservatives and are thus open to his defense of his Medicaid expansion and his interest in people “left in the shadows.”
From the perspective of Fox News and its GOP allies, you’d guess the ideal denouement would be Trump crashing in the polls, to be replaced in the top ten by Carly Fiorina. We’ll see how avidly and universally the conservative spin machine pursues that outcome in the days just ahead.

One final note: it’s interesting the biggest strategic decision facing the GOP in the days just ahead–whether to pursue various “defunding” demands up to and beyond the point of a government shutdown–came up briefly at the early event but not at all during the official debate. It makes you wonder if there was a call from the offices of the Senate Republican Leader to Fox News poohbahs indicating a candidate feeding frenzy on that subject would not be helpful.
That couldn’t happen, could it?

For cord-cutters and others who missed the Republican presidential debates last night, you can watch clips gratis at Fox News. For a blow by blow analysis, however, you can’t do better than Ed Kilgore’s live-blogging at The Washington Monthly, which political wonks and junkies will be perusing for further clues throughout the day. Kilgore has other perceptive posts on the debate and the Fox News’s relentless attack against Trump here, here and here.
In addition to Trump’s increased leverage, the trans-media consensus seems to be that one clear winner was…Carly Fiorina, who used her spot in the ‘happy hour” pre-debate to amp up her political persona as one of the more sober candidates. Despite her dubious track record as a business leader, Fiorina may have at least secured a spot on the short list of veep candidates. Kilgore however likens her performance to “a former CEO used to doing power-point presentations for stockholders doing her standard speech, amplified by a very lucky question she got about Donald Trump.”
Elsewhere, Michael Barbaro and Nicholas Confessore provide short takes at the New York Times, with plaudits for Rubio, Paul and Kasich. In another Times article Barbaro does an excellent job of showing how boorish was Trump’s performance, almost beyond expectations, although his verbal output at center stage tripled that of the others. He probably enhanced his image as the new face of the GOP, much to the party’s detriment.
At The Times Upshot, Nate Cohn credits Walker and Kasich with “good performances,” and Rubio “the debate’s top performer.” (To me Walker seemed somewhat muffled and Rubio and Kasich just so-so, while Bush did better than I expected).
At WaPo’s The Fix, Chris Cillizza’s “Winners and losers from the first Republican presidential debate” credits Ben Carson with the best closing statement, and puts Rubio Kasich and Fiorina in the winner’s circle. WaPo’s Stephen Stromberg argues that Christie, Kasich and Rubio “won the debate,” while the Post’s Jonathan Capehart gives the nod to Rubio and Fiorina.
Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. adds, “I saw three shows tonight during Fox News’ Republican debate: The Trump Show, The Kasich Dissent, and Everybody Else. Among those in that last category, Jeb Bush had a good night, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had his moments, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) won more friends.”
In “Three Takeaways From the GOP Debate” the Wall St. Journal says Walker, Rubio, Kasich and Bush looked the most “presidential.”
Of course pundit consensus will not necessarily be reflected in opinion polls or election results going forward — especially when the wild card is a joker named Trump. While Trump may not have what it takes to be elected president, his refusal to rule out a run as a write-in Independent could make him a potential kingmaker. That prospect makes the GOP strategists and their minions at Fox News very nervous.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the anniversary is likely to be overshadowed by the first major televised debates of Republican presidential candidates. The big debate, the one with the candidates leading in the polls, with Donald Trump and nine others, will be broadcast from Cleveland at 8:50 EDT. There will also be a sort of a pre-game ‘weenie bowl’ broadcast at 5 pm for the 7 candidates who didn’t make the top ten cut, but it’s unclear who will show up for that unhappy affair (Would you?). In any event, the hope is that all of the candidates who participate will be at least asked to address GOP-driven voter suppression on the day our nation commemorates one of the most significant milestones in the history of democracy. For those who can bear it, Fox News is providing an “Election HQ 2016 app.”
Ari Berman, political correspondent for The Nation and author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” has an op-ed in the New York Times, “Why the Voting Rights Act Is Once Again Under Threat.” Berman notes that, despite growing protests against voter suppression in NC and other states, “The voting rights landscape today most closely resembles the period before 1965, when the blight of voting discrimination could be challenged only on a torturous case-by-case basis.”
Greg Speed, president, America Votes and America Votes Action Fund, writes at HuffPo: “While there is little prospect of congressional action on strengthening the VRA in the near future, there has been a growing trend of state legislation building modern, more accessible voting systems signaling hope for breaking down some barriers to minority voters and other segments of the electorate…Colorado, Oregon and California have excelled in the movement to modernize election systems with significant changes, such as automatic mail ballots and, in Oregon, automatic voter registration….This year, states like Florida, New Mexico and Indiana also took important steps forward by enacting election modernization laws with strong bipartisan support. America Votes was deeply engaged in the push for online registration in Florida and New Mexico, where state and local officials from both parties strongly supported online voter registration…Seeing bipartisan support in states this year for online registration and other laws expanding early voting, rights restoration and Election Day registration is very encouraging. ”
At The Plum Line Greg Sargent reports on a new Washington Post poll: “…A large majority of Americans now thinks the country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights… 52-43. There’s been a big shift towards seeing a need for more racial change among whites overall (now at 53-44) and independents (62-34)…But Republicans and conservatives differ with majority sentiment: majorities of Republicans (63-34) and conservatives (52-46) say that the country has already made “the changes needed to give blacks equal rights with whites.”
Facing South’s Sue Sturgis has “A Texas-sized reminder of why the Voting Rights Act still matters.” One of her revealing stats: “While the GOP majority in the Texas legislature claimed rampant voter fraud makes strict photo ID rules necessary, number of people who have actually been accused of such ballot fraud since 2004: 4.”
Adel M. Stan reports at The American Prospect on the Koch Brothers grovelfest last week and “why Jeb Bush’s Pitch to the Koch brothers Should Scare You.” Stan defines the stakes in 2016 for Bush in particular. But it could also apply to most of the other GOP presidential candidates: “…The election of a president who is ready to make life easier for the biggest hoarders of private capital could be devastating to any shred of democracy left in our political system…The appointment of Supreme Court justices by a president who holds the shrouded workings of private capital in such high esteem promises future decisions that will make Citizens United look like a ray of sunlight…In his bid to become the third in his family’s dynasty of mediocrity to occupy the White House, Jeb Bush is ready to sell the nation to the most secretive corner of the 1 percent…With masses of private capital to back him–routed through the Kochs’ opaquely funded nonprofits–he could actually win.”
Republicans switching parties to become, gasp, Democrats? It happens …sometimes, reports Nathan L. Gonzales at Rothenblog.
Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster crunch some polling data at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and observe “Democratic and Republican primary voters in 2016 are likely to be drawn disproportionately from the angriest segment of each party’s base and that candidates who can tap into that anger are likely to do well…No matter who wins the Democratic and Republican nominations next year, we can expect anger at the opposing party’s candidate to run high, and we can expect both parties’ nominees to seek to tap into this anger in order to energize and mobilize their supporters. It promises to be a long and nasty campaign.”
Hey Republicans, you really think this guy can manage America’s budget?