by Cliston Brown | Feb 13, 2016 | Debate Analysis
I’ve watched a lot of debates over the last 30-some years, and I have never seen a more shameful exhibit of childishness as tonight’s GOP Debate. Four of the six people on stage spent most of the night engaging in a food fight that would be shameful in a junior-high cafeteria, and how anybody could watch these people and see someone they would want to see as president is beyond me.
The only clear winner tonight was John Kasich. He was the only candidate, besides the woefully inadequate Ben Carson, who stayed away from the food fight and behaved like an adult. He gave thoughtful answers and spoke about how to uplift the country. As a liberal Democrat, I disagree with most of his solutions, but at least he behaved seriously and didn’t act like a clown.
I thought Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio largely whiffed on their opportunity to pump up the conservative base regarding the new Supreme Court vacancy. If I had been advising either of those Senators, I would have told them to make sure they made clear they would filibuster any nomination the president might offer.
It will be interesting to see what will happen with Donald Trump after directly calling former President George W. Bush a liar, in so many words. The former president is still well-liked among Republicans. Has he finally gone too far? If I had a dollar for every time I thought he’d gone too far in the past six or seven months, I could retire. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Jeb Bush stood up against Trump better than ever, but picked a fight with Kasich and lost.
Rubio, untroubled tonight by Chris Christie, did a much better job and didn’t repeat canned talking points four times in a row, which qualifies as progress. He had a generally good performance and probably helped himself. Bush probably did as well. I think it’s going to be a dogfight between these two for third place in South Carolina next week.
I thought Cruz and Trump embarrassed themselves, but they may not have hurt their positions. Carson came across as a very nice guy who remains completely in over his head.
The only winner was Kasich. Let’s see if it helps his very low South Carolina poll numbers and his dwindling cash reserves.
by Cliston Brown | Feb 13, 2016 | Election Analysis, Political Commentary
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia has added a major new dimension to the 2016 elections, as what was previously theoretical is now an undisputed fact: the next president of the United States, and the Senate sworn in the first week of January 2017, will determine whether the Supreme Court will have a liberal or conservative majority. Scalia’s death leaves the court with four liberals and four conservatives, so the next justice will become the swing vote.
Of course, it must be immediately understood that the current Republican-controlled Senate will not approve any appointee that President Barack Obama nominates. With Republicans holding a 54-46 majority, the president would have to get four Republican Senators to support his nominee, with Vice President Joe Biden breaking the tie. While there may be a slight possibility of getting four Republicans, there is no chance whatsoever that the president would get the 14 Republican Senators he would need to break a filibuster. It probably won’t even come to that. It is doubtful that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) would even allow a nomination to come to the floor.
It is not difficult to predict how this issue will play out over the course of the election. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) will angle for votes by promising to filibuster any candidate the president nominates for the remainder of his term. They will also use this opening to undermine Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump by telling conservatives that they can’t trust Trump to appoint a “true conservative” to fill Scalia’s vacated seat. All the other Republican candidates will also promise to appoint a “strict, constitutional conservative,” but Cruz and Rubio, the only Senators in the field, will have the advantage here, and they’ll milk it for all it’s worth.
The Democratic presidential contenders will both stress to their bases the opportunity inherent in this situation to change the composition of the court away from its longtime conservative majority. Hillary Clinton will hammer home to the Democratic base the idea that she is more electable than Bernie Sanders and that it is crucial to nominate the candidate with the best chance to win the election, in order to ensure a liberal majority on the court. Sanders will cast this as an opportunity to bring about revolutionary change and may well float the idea of appointing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) to the court.
President Obama will likely hammer the Republican Senate at every opportunity between now and the election for refusing to act on his nominee or nominees and leaving a Supreme Court seat vacant for a year or more for political reasons. All candidates of both parties will stress the need for their party to control the Senate in 2017. With Senate control up for grabs this year, this will be a key point of emphasis.
This election just got ratcheted up to Defcon 1.
by Cliston Brown | Feb 11, 2016 | Debate Analysis
Hillary Clinton went nuclear on Bernie Sanders at the end of tonight’s debate when she brought up his interview with Thom Hartmann in which Sanders called President Obama “weak” and “disappointing” and called for a primary challenger to the president in 2012. Despite Sanders aide Tad Devine’s factually challenged insistence on Hardball With Chris Matthews that Sanders never called the president weak, here’s the videotape:
Sanders’ response that Senators have the right to be critical of the president was weak tea. Of course Senators have the right to differ with the president, but his extremely biting, personal comments about the president being “weak” and “disappointing” will undoubtedly be a sore spot with Obama supporters.
Clearly, Clinton is going after Sanders on these comments in order to rile and engage President Obama’s supporters heading into the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary. She followed up with an amazingly strong closing statement in which she made the point that she was not a single-issue candidate. More importantly, she broke out of what seemed to be a very managed, handled performance at times and exuded authenticity and passion.
Sanders had some good moments, and his very intelligent disquisition on American interventionism was probably his best foreign policy moment ever. But Clinton blew him out of the water at the end. Her play here may have been obvious, but it was effective.
by Cliston Brown | Feb 9, 2016 | Election Analysis
WINNERS
Let’s start with the obvious. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the big winners tonight. They both won by crushing margins.
Trump is a really YUUUUUUGE winner tonight, because the upcoming primary calendar puts him in a very strong position. I have to think he’s going to do very well in South Carolina and the South in general, and that’s where the bulk of the contests between now and March 1st are going to be. By three weeks from now, he could have a substantial lead on the Republican side.
Sanders does not appear to be set up nearly as well as Trump in the coming weeks, but the magnitude of his victory and his strong victory speech tonight are bound to get him a look from some people who hadn’t considered him before. I’ll be very interested in seeing how he does in Nevada on Feb. 20. But he has got a big job ahead of him to cut into his deficits with nonwhite voters, and if he can’t do that, he won’t be the nominee. Sanders is on the clock. He’s got a couple weeks to change that dynamic.
John Kasich won by placing second tonight, but he doesn’t have the personality, the charisma or the money to take charge of the GOP’s “establishment lane”. I doubt he’ll win very many more contests. Kasich placing second was the absolute worst thing that could have happened to the GOP establishment (for reasons to be explained below). His rambling, touchy-feely speech tonight demonstrates that he is out of touch with the mad-as-hell GOP base. He’d better enjoy tonight, because there won’t be many more celebrations.
Ted Cruz, who’s in a dogfight for third place with Jeb Bush, did just well enough not to be hurt, and he benefits by the fact that the “establishment lane” no longer has a frontrunner.
MEH
Bush passed Marco Rubio tonight, which he’ll call a victory, but he’s still going nowhere. Then again, with Rubio in free fall (at least for now) and Christie done for (see below), he might still have a chance at coalescing the establishment lane. But he’s got a lot to overcome.
LOSERS
Everybody else, but in particular Rubio and the Republican establishment, who tie for biggest loser of the night. Rubio, riding a wave of momentum after a strong finish in Iowa, was poised to take over the “establishment lane” in the GOP contest. There was a feeling that the establishment wing of the party was likely to pull the plug on Kasich, Bush and Christie and coalesce behind Rubio.
Then the debate last Saturday happened, and Rubio absolutely embarrassed himself. It looks like he may finish fifth in New Hampshire. Suddenly, the establishment lane is wide open again, which helps Trump and maybe Cruz. The longer there is no united front behind one candidate on the establishment side, the more victories Trump and Cruz will win. The utter failure of Rubio in last weekend’s debate creates an establishment vacuum that Kasich is not big enough to fill.
The next biggest loser is Chris Christie. He took down Rubio but didn’t help himself. He’s headed for sixth place in a state that really should have been exactly the kind of place he should have won. He managed to place in the bottom half of the field, with less than 10 percent of the vote, even after being endorsed by the most powerful conservative newspaper in New England. Even if he stays in the race, he’s dead.
Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and Jim Gilmore aren’t even relevant enough to be among the biggest losers. What they’re hanging around for is beyond me.
And Hillary Clinton is in the loser category as well. By getting blown out tonight, she guarantees herself at least a week and a half of bad headlines and endless questions about “What’s Wrong With Hillary’s Campaign?” But of all tonight’s losers, she’s the one in the best position. She still has a friendly calendar and a massive superdelegate lead, and she is still the frontrunner, despite all the prophecies of doom we are going to hear over the next couple of weeks.
by Cliston Brown | Feb 8, 2016 | Election Analysis
Last week in Iowa, even vaunted pollster Ann Selzer got it wrong, missing Ted Cruz’s win over Donald Trump, and nearly getting hung with an L in the Democratic caucuses as well. It just goes to show that polling remains an unreliable guide.
This is the key lesson I take from Iowa as I look ahead to New Hampshire tomorrow. Yes, all polling shows Trump way ahead on the GOP side, and Bernie Sanders way ahead on the Democratic side. Both are clearly likely to win, but that isn’t going to be the key story.
On the Democratic side, the key question is the final margin. Hillary Clinton has unquestionably been cutting into Sanders’s lead. I suspect the final margin will probably hover right around 10 points–a good, solid win for Sanders, but compared to his huge polling margins, a win that might feel a bit like a loss.
On the GOP side, the key question is who places second and third. If it’s Trump, Rubio, Cruz, in any order, that’s significant, because that’s probably the end for everyone else. But after Marco Rubio’s disastrous debate performance on Saturday, the door is now open for John Kasich to run strongly. Kasich probably doesn’t have the persona or the raw ability to make a real run, but the longer he, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie can delay Rubio’s consolidation of the vaunted GOP establishment, the better it is for Trump and Cruz.
Given the fact that the most interesting action is on the GOP side, I expect the bulk of independents and moderates to vote in the Republican primary. That probably benefits Sanders, who will benefit from a more liberal Democratic electorate, and also Kasich.
Therefore, I expect Sanders to defeat Clinton by about 10 percentage points, and Trump to win a closer-than-expected victory over Kasich, followed by Cruz and Rubio. I expect Bush, Christie, Carson, Fiorina and Gilmore to fill out the field, in that order.
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