Month: February 2016

This is the guy who will “Make America Great Again”?

by digby

This story about Trump’s half-assed, underfunded, lame operation in Iowa says more about him than any analysis I’ve seen. He didn’t want to spend money and he believed that his celebrity would automatically make people come out and caucus for him. He doesn’t have a clue. The man doesn’t think he politics is any different than getting TV ratings. He is wrong.

Trump’s staff “got outclassed and outmaneuvered ― the Iowa team simply didn’t have the tools they needed, which is why they overpromised and underperformed,” said a source close to the Trump campaign. “The Iowa team did an amazing job with the tools that they had, but that’s like saying that Al Qaeda did an amazing job in a battle with the U.S. Army because some Al Qaeda fighters didn’t get killed.”

On the ground in Iowa last month, Trump’s operation showed signs of disorganization and acrimony as it faced mounting doubts about its ability to identify and mobilize its high numbers of previously disengaged supporters and to persuade more traditional, but undecided, Republicans to caucus for Trump.

And some Trump allies were openly expressing doubts about the largely self-funding Trump’s willingness to pay for data analytics, as well as the aptitude of the campaign’s skeletal data team back in New York headquarters. It is headed by Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz, a pair of former data engineers for the Republican National Committee who lacked high-level national campaign experience. With less than a month to go until the caucuses, sources say, Braynard was still working to assemble a team to do what he described as a combination of high-level statistical analyses and “unglamorous political grunt work.” When one experienced data engineer asked when he could start working for the Trump campaign, Braynard immediately responded: “Now.”

The campaign didn’t start seriously building a data operation to target voters until mid-October, sources said, and even then it did not act with urgency. It waited until November to begin paying a data vendor, the nonpartisan firm L2, and until late November or early December to sign an agreement allowing it to use the RNC’s massive voter file. The RNC had initially offered the arrangement back in June, and it’s unclear what caused the delay in executing the agreement, but most other GOP campaigns signed similar agreements months before Trump.

At one point early in the campaign, Trump representatives talked to Cambridge Analytica ― the firm now being credited with engineering Cruz’s cutting-edge targeting operation ― about retaining the company’s services, but they decided it was too expensive. And, in early October, Trump’s Virginia state director, Mike Rubino, reached out to the nonpartisan voter data firm rVotes, writing in an email “We want to utilize this ASAP.” Steve Adler, rVotes’ owner, said the Trump campaign never followed up.

Through the end of last year, the period covered by the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Trump’s campaign had spent only about $560,000 on data-related costs, compared with at least $3.6 million for Cruz. Trump’s data outlays included $235,000 to L2 for “research consulting,” $17,500 to the voter data firm NationBuilder for software, and $200,000 in list rental payments to the conservative Newsmax Media. By contrast, the Trump campaign has spent at least $1.4 million on rally-related expenses and $1.2 million on hats ― presumably mostly for the now-iconic hats bearing Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

The campaign’s lackadaisical data effort is seen in some quarters as coming down to Trump’s lack of willingness to use his own cash on something that’s seen as essential in modern-day presidential politics. “Trump’s a businessman,” said Joe Rospars, who served as a chief digital strategist to President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “He’s not going to spend any more money than he has to, and he made his bet.”

And we’re just talking about Iowa. Imagine him at the helm of the the most powerful nation in the world.

Ted Cruz said today that he might nuke Denmark. (He didn’t offer his preferred method of taking out Denmark — carpet bombing.) But the fact is that this billionaire megalomaniac who is making all these grandiose impossible promises doesn’t know what he’s doing. And apparently he refuses to shake loose some of his pocket change to pay people who do.

Maybe he’ll right the ship. He’s not known to be stupid so perhaps he’ll start spending some of those millions and get it together. But he doesn’t seem like the type to admit he’s wrong and re-evaluate his strategy. After his past failures he just shifted his business from real estate and casinos to branding and reality TV and he made a lot of money doing that. But this is not the same thing. He’s going to have to deliver. And there’s little in his background that says he actually knows how to do that.

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Dreamy Rubio is really just Cruz with a prettier face

by digby

I wrote about Rubio’s bogus “mainstream” reputation for Salon today:

“Let’s get him up here – let’s get the boy in the bubble up here. Let’s see if he’ll handle your questions and take that. I don’t think he will. Now it’s time for him to man up and step up and stop letting his handlers write all of his speeches. I’m fascinated to hear his answers, and I’m sure you are too.

“Maybe he’ll answer more than two or three questions at a town hall and do more than 40 minutes and deliver something that isn’t the same canned speech he gives every time. This isn’t the student-council election everybody. This is the election for the president of the United States.

“Let’s get the boy in his bubble out of his bubble, and let’s see him play for the next week in New Hampshire. Let’s see if he’s ready to play because I’m ready to play.”

There’s more at the link, especially about foreign policy. Let’s just say he’s the son Dick Cheney never had.

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Oh Rick Santorum, I’m going to miss you

by digby

According to some, a lot of people will:

.@cnn reporting @RickSantorum leaving race and that the former PA senator will endorse. That will be significant. Lots of residual affection

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) February 3, 2016

I’m unsure about that, but ok.

I can’t imagine Santorum will be relevant in any way going forward so this will be the last time I’ll be able to post this wonderful video:

And this one too:

I will miss him so …

The question is to hom Santorum is going to throw his 12 supporters. I’d guess Trump. If you read the lyrics to “Game On” except for the “faithful to his wife and 7 kids” line, it’s a Trumpian ode to making America great again —“The first time since we had Ronald Reagan.”

Game on!

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A little historical reminder for some people who may not remember

by digby

I’ve been hearing some chatter about Citizens United lately among progressives who seem to think that Hillary Clinton backed the law that gutted the campaign finance regulations that had been in place. There is a grave misunderstanding there that needs to be cleared up. Whatever you may think of Clinton the idea that she backed Citizens United is patently absurd.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on the case:

Hillary: The Movie is a 2008 political documentary about United States Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It was produced by Citizens United. The film was scheduled to be offered as video-on-demand on cable TV right before the Democratic primaries in January 2008, but the federal government blocked it. The blocking of the film’s airing was the subject of the court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The documentary interviewed various conservative figures such as Dick Morris and Ann Coulter and reviewed various scandals in which Hillary Clinton participated in, such as the White House travel office controversy, White House FBI files controversy, Whitewater controversy, and cattle future controversy. 

In early 2008, the case, known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was brought to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. This court sided with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Hillary: The Movie could not be shown on television right before the 2008 Democratic primaries under the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. 

The Supreme Court docketed this case on August 18, 2008, and heard oral arguments on March 24, 2009. A decision was expected sometime in the early summer months of 2009. However, on June 29, 2009, the Supreme Court issued an order directing the parties to re-argue the case on September 9 after issuing briefs on larger issues. The court ruled 5-4 in 2010 that spending limits in the McCain-Feingold act were unconstitutional, allowing essentially unlimited contributions by corporations and unions to political action committees.

Here’s a thing I wrote about the background of this for Salon a while back:

People need to be clear about the forces at work in our politics if they want to be serious about politics. Everyone is perfectly entitled to have their opinion one way or the other about Clinton and Sanders, but unless you subscribe to a conspiracy theory so baroque that it has Clinton working with right wing operatives to set up a hit on herself in order to allow more money into politics, the idea that she was behind Citizens United doesn’t make a lot of sense.

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Trumpie’s daily whine


by digby

I don’t think Trump is a strategist. He relies on instinct. And in many cases it’s been pretty good, at least when it comes to finding the conservative id and stroking it. So the idea that he’s doing this for any reason other than a very sore ego strikes me as debatable. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work for him:

I would normally say that being a whiner isn’t a good look for a politician. The right wing blogs that are backing Cruz or Rubio are all suggesting this is a bad move. I’m not so sure.  But he probably sense that people think Cruz is an oily operator and suggesting that he stole the election will be something his followers will like. After all, how could Trump lose. He’s a winnah!

TPP to be signed this week in New Zealand

by Gaius Publius

I had meant to mine the terrific New York Review of Books article, “The Clinton System,” for the next few days since it’s so rich in detail. For example (my emphasis):

[D]irect payments to Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns, including for the Senate in 2000 and for the presidency in 2008 and now in 2016 … had reached a total of $712.4 million as of September 30, 2015, the most recent figures compiled by Open Secrets. Four of the top five sources of these funds are major banks: Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Morgan Stanley….

Seven hundred million dollars donated to one politician who only started campaigning in 2000 is one heck of a lot of money. Prior to this cycle, she’s been before the voters just three times, one of which (the 2006 Senate race) was a no-contest blowout. Again, that’s just the tip of the iceberg; the rest of the article is similarly loaded.

But let’s look at TPP, since it’s due to be signed this week in New Zealand.

TPP Countries to Sign Trade Pact in New Zealand Feb. 4

The 12 nations party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will formally sign the agreement on Feb. 4 in New Zealand.

Andres Rebolledo, director general of Chile’s General International Economic Relations Bureau (DIRECON), confirmed the Feb. 4 date in a meeting yesterday with the country’s National Human Rights Institute to discuss how the agreement would affect human rights issues in Chile. …

The signing will come four months after the 12 countries in the TPP concluded negotiations in the U.S. on Oct. 5. The 12 countries include Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam (193 ITD, 10/6/15).

“The signing will be a celebration, but the critical work comes after with the ratification process in national parliaments,” Gary Hufbauer, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Bloomberg BNA in a telephone interview.

Signed but not ratified or confirmed. As we learned recently, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tom Donohue thinks the vote will take place after the election — because it can’t pass otherwise — and also thinks that if Hillary Clinton is president, she’ll support it.

Which suggests a number of questions. First, is Donohue right? Does he know some insider something we don’t know? We know where candidate Bernie Sanders stands for sure. Sanders has always opposed these “trade” deals. From a January 28 campaign press release (my emphasis):

Sanders is leading the opposition in Congress to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be the biggest trade pact in history. He also was at the forefront in earlier battles against the North American Free Trade Agreement and permanent normal trade relations with China — trade agreements that Secretary Clinton supported which have led to the loss of more than 30,000 good-paying jobs in Iowa. “Can you be a great country when everything we buy is made in China?” he asked the union workers.

I’m not the only one now wondering if Tom Donohue knows something. From that same press release:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue told Bloomberg News he expects Clinton to support a 12-nation trade agreement, a deal she praised before recently signaling concerns.

Clinton had praised past trade agreements and once called the Pacific trade deal “the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.”

On October 8, however, she said that “as of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it. I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.” She hasn’t talked about it since then.

And we know from this anti-TPP petition that a number of Clinton-supporting congresspeople are opposed to TPP:

This petition is sponsored by DeFazio for Congress, Huffman for Congress, Sean Patrick Maloney For Congress, Nolan For Congress Volunteer Committee, Pingree For Congress, Pocan for Congress, Louise Slaughter Re-election Committee and Paul Tonko for Congress.

Only Peter DeFazio and Mark Pocan are not listed here as endorsing Ms. Clinton.

So will Ms. Clinton reassure her supporters (above) and the voting public that she still stands where her most recent statements put her? It could be awkward for these congresspeople if supporting her actually undermines their campaign against it. After all, this is not a winning argument: “I hate TPP and urge you to support Hillary Clinton, who could approve it after all.”

This is an important question, the one about Hillary Clinton and TPP. NAFTA, GATT and the WTO have devastated the fortunes of a generation of Americans, all to line the pockets of the wealthy, many of whom, I’m sad to say, have contributed over $700 million to finance her political career, as noted above.

It’s also an appropriate question, especially since it was the Chamber of Commerce that brought it up in the first place. TPP is finally due to be signed, and the clock on the fortunes of the next generation of Americans is ticking. Ms. Clinton — please clarify.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here. Updated to add Mark Pocan as not endorsing Clinton and for clarity.)

GP
 

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It takes more than an Obama-style campaign
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Molly Theobald for the aflcio2008 (PA: Working America Voter ID and Persuasion)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

People began asking early in 2015 if the local Democratic party was working on 2016. I told them we started working on 2016 the day after the election in 2014.

Each week I pick up messages at our local Democratic headquarters. For months, people have called to ask how they can get in touch with the Bernie Sanders campaign. (Even a disenchanted Republican now and then.) For months, I’ve directed them to the grassroots group organizing for Sanders here. Several hundred volunteers. On the ground it looks like 2008 all over again. They are phone banking out of our offices twice a week. Bernie Sanders is not a registered Democrat, but the memo from DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz says he’s running on our ticket.

I also get (fewer) calls from people asking how they can get in touch with the local Hillary Clinton campaign. I tell them I wish I knew. They are nowhere to be seen. Unless you’ve got the money to attend a high-dollar fundraiser downstate. Clinton volunteers could use our space too. But so far there aren’t any.

A party activist in the Raleigh area confirmed Monday that she is seeing the same in Wake County. “Huuuuuuuge grassroots activist presence, already well organized and phonebanking into Iowa, NH, and SC,” she wrote. “Clinton’s NC presence is all fundraising.”

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday on the razor-thin margin between Clinton and Sanders in Iowa:

As the official results rolled in Monday night, a poll of voters entering the evening’s caucuses provided a picture of what went into their decision-making. Clinton had a huge margin among those Democrats — about 3 in 10 — who said their biggest concern about a nominee was having the right experience. By contrast, Sanders led strongly among those whose top priority was a president who “cares about people like me” or was “honest and trustworthy,” according to the entrance poll.

A Washington Post story this morning concludes:

… Clinton’s battle with Sanders has exposed vulnerabilities that her backers find worrisome. Chief among them is what is being called an “enthusiasm gap” — an apparent inability to ignite the kind of excitement that the gruff, rumpled Sanders is generating among young people and on the left.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and a Clinton supporter, told the Post:

“One of the things that I know the team will grapple with — and this is something that people like me have to grapple with — is just making it simple and straightforward,” Kaine said. “Bernie’s message is pretty darn simple. And it’s a message that kind of the rich are stepping all over everybody.”

[snip]

The lack of focus in Clinton’s message to voters has emerged as a weakness. Her stump speech, which can wind on for 40 minutes or more on the minutiae of virtually every major policy detail, tends to impress voters at her events, but it poses a challenge for her surrogates, who are countering a far simpler message from Sanders focused on income inequality.

Clinton is trying to run an Obama-style campaign. Since 2008, everybody wants to run an Obama-style campaign. North Carolina Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan ran a pretty solid campaign in 2014. An Obama-style campaign. Hagan lost. Problem was, Hagan wasn’t an Obama-style candidate.

Neither is Hillary Clinton. As her campaign makes adjustments post-Iowa, they might want to wake up and smell the cold pizza.

He may be more unpleasant than Richard Nixon but he’s our Richard Nixon



by digby

Here’s a conservative movement Cruz supporter explaining why his candidate being really creepy is actually such an awesome thing:

Ted Cruz won in impressive fashion. Not only did he beat Donald Trump by 4 points, but he outperformed the polls by 5 points and won more votes in the Iowa caucus than any GOP candidate ever. Everyone thought Trump was energizing the GOP base, but it turns out the folks in Iowa were much more excited about Cruz. This is particularly impressive when you consider the fact that Cruz is running as a small government, issues-oriented conservative. For God’s sake, he vigorously opposed ethanol subsidies in Iowa and still won — not only that, he won Iowa’s heaviest corn-producing counties. In an election cycle dominated by a pandering, big-government circus clown, Cruz stayed boring, stayed on message, and managed the most massive Republican win in the history of the state.

What does that tell us? Well, as pessimistic as I tend to be, it tells us there may be reason for optimism. Whether you support Cruz or not, you should be encouraged that someone like Cruz can win so handily, even while the media does everything in its power to hand the election to the guy from “The Apprentice.” Whatever else you might say about him, Cruz is radically conservative — he’s “so extreme,” as Viagra pitchman Bob Dole put it — and he runs on his ideas and his principles, not his personality.

As for his personality, I admit it leaves plenty to be desired. It’s even kind of off-putting at times. He has no style. He’s not much of a charmer. He tells bad jokes. He has a weird face. He’s not entertaining at all. He’s not the type of dude you’d necessarily want to get a beer with. I bet he’d order a Stella Artois and spend the whole time giving his list of the most outrageous 20th century Supreme Court decisions, which I actually think would be pretty interesting, but I’m guessing a lot of people would find it lame and head over to the other end of the bar where Chris Christie is shotgunning Miller Lite.

The point is, the people who support Cruz support him because they like his ideas, they think he’s competent, and they trust him to stick to his principles once he’s in office. You might think there’s someone in the race who better fits this bill (Rand Paul at least equals Cruz in this regard, but unfortunately he’s not going to win), but you should still be happy that so many GOP voters are voting based on the right things and for the right reasons. It would be a sign of national health if a wonkish nerd with no swag won the presidency.

Cruz is a long way from winning, but last night was a good start for anyone who values substance over style.

Actually it wasn’t that many GOP voters who went for his “substance. He got 27% of the vote. You do the math. He did outperform expectations but expectations are a parlor game when it comes to Iowa. The fact is that Cruz won because he organized in a very smart, modern, data driven way. Nobody ever said the guy was dumb.Whether he can pull of that kind of meticulous organizing anywhere else or if it would produce the same results remains to be seen. But he had the best ground game in the race for the Iowa caucus. And it produced results for him.

I have been told forever that all people care about in a politician is authenticity. Cruz is the most authentic conservative in the race, by far. Nobody can out-conservative him. And yet he’s not popular with most Republicans, not even close. Many of the hardcore evangelicals and movement conservatives in Iowa, a very pious and conservative state rewarded him with 27% of the GOP vote. If this country wants Cruz-style conservatism, shouldn’t it have been more?

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Which of Ted Cruz’s potential voters does he think will buy this?

by digby

I don’t get it:

Evangelicals? Conservative movement activists? Small government conservatives? Doesn’t seem likely.

If I had to guess, it’s a play for the Trump white skinhead constituency. I don’t think will do it.

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Yes, they are suppressing the vote

by digby

No surprise to people with common sense but it’s nice to have the data:

For years, researchers warned that laws requiring voters to show certain forms of photo identification at the poll would discriminate against racial minorities and other groups. Now, the first study has been released showing that the proliferation of voter ID laws in recent years has indeed driven down minority voter turnout, and by a significant amount.

In a new paper entitled “Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes”, researchers at the University of California, San Diego — Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi — and Bucknell University — Lindsay Nielson — used data from the annual Cooperative Congressional Election Study to compare states with strict voter ID laws to those that allow voters without photo ID to cast a ballot. They found a clear and significant dampening effect on minority turnout in strict voter ID states.

“Democratic turnout drops by an estimated 8.8 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws are in place,” compared to just 3.6 percentage points for Republicans.
(Note: ThinkProgress was provided an updated version of the paper [not currently available on the web] that includes data from the 2014 elections. The numbers in this article reflect the updated paper, not the web version linked above.)

For example, the researchers found that in primary elections, “a strict ID law could be expected to depress Latino turnout by 9.3 points, Black turnout by 8.6 points, and Asian American turnout by 12.5 points.”

The impact of strict voter ID was also evident in general elections, where minority turnout plummeted in relation to the white vote. “For Latinos in the general election, the predicted gap more than doubles from 4.9 points in states without strict ID laws to 13.5 points in states with strict photo ID laws,” the study found. That gap increased by 2.2 points for African Americans and by 5 points for Asian Americans. The effect was even more pronounced in primary elections.
The study found that strict voter ID laws had little impact on younger voters as a whole, while there were “small indications” that poorer Americans were adversely impacted, though likely not to the same degree racial minorities were.

Given that minorities tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, researchers were left with little doubt that strict voter ID laws were hurting Democratic candidates.

And what makes this especially sweet is the fact that there is no evidence of the voter fraud these people got a bunch of conservative judges to pretend existed so as to keep the Democratic Party coalition from winning elections. It is one of the most cynical strategies ever undertaken, with the full cooperation of conservative state legislatures, and the state and federal courts.

Bravo conservatives. You’ve done yourself proud.

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