by Cliston Brown | Jul 26, 2016 | Election Analysis, Political Commentary
I have been very critical of Bernie Sanders throughout this election season, but I’ll give it to him. He did everything I could have hoped for tonight. His full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton and his point-by-point recitation of how she will come through on issues dear to progressives were pitch perfect. Anybody on Team Sanders who doesn’t come around after this speech is simply unreachable.
Sanders was smart to acknowledge briefly his differences with Clinton; his supporters wouldn’t have bought it if he didn’t, and clearly, some didn’t buy it anyway, judging by some of the reactions from his supporters. But he spent far more time detailing the similarities. He did a very good job tonight. Now it will be up to him to follow through and keep making the case to the supporters he did so much to alienate from the party in the first place.
by Cliston Brown | Jul 25, 2016 | Election Analysis
After decades as a both a participant in, and observer of, the political process, I understand all too well the propensity of perpetually nervous Democrats to panic at every turn. Because I recognize this unfortunate tendency, I am going to try to offer a level-headed analysis.
Despite the recent flood of polling showing Donald Trump moving slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton (after a Republican convention that most of the smart-money people in the Beltway and its outer boroughs deemed a disaster), I still think the fundamentals of this election favor Clinton. Conventions tend to move polling numbers, and we should not put too much weight on what happened in the top of the inning without seeing what happens in the bottom of the inning.
I will note, however, that in my tweets following Trump’s speech I said he had nailed it and that he perfectly channeled, in his remarks, the audience he wanted to get: blue-collar whites. What we have seen in the polling numbers since Thursday demonstrates that my analysis was correct.
In reporting its latest polling numbers showing Trump ahead by 3% in a two-way matchup and 5% when including the Libertarian and Green candidates, CNN noted that Trump had lost ground with college-educated whites, but had boosted his margin among whites without degrees from 20% to 39%. The CNN poll gave him a 62%-23% edge among this demographic.
It is important to note that Mitt Romney received 62% of the white, blue-collar vote in 2012 but still lost the election, and this despite handily winning the votes of college-educated whites by a significant margin as well.
In short, at this point, Trump is winning the voters one would expect him to win. The key question is whether he has hit his ceiling. If he has, then he still doesn’t have the support he needs to win, and with his numbers among non-white voters likely to be abysmal, where he stands right now is not enough to get him over the top in November.
On the flip side, Clinton still has to close the sale with the voters who she has a realistic chance to persuade. She will have an opportunity to start making progress in that direction this week.
Tonight, Bernie Sanders will address the nation, and the onus will be on him to get his more level-headed supporters fully on board, while perhaps converting some of the die-hards. Among the holdouts still unreconciled to Clinton, Sanders needs to press the case that yes, he has certain disagreements with Clinton, but he and his supporters will get much more of what they want from her than from Trump.
For Sanders to paper over the differences or give a full-throated endorsement will not fly with these supporters, who would see such a speech as dishonest or a “sellout.” He needs to acknowledge the differences briefly, then focus like a laser beam on the similarities, and also on the victories that he and his supporters have won in the party platform. This will give his supporters a reason to feel that they made a difference and that it wasn’t all in vain.
One key thing to keep in mind going forward is that Clinton cannot win this election by simply making it about Trump’s many deficiencies. The people who support him do so even though many of them find him obnoxious and unpresidential. She is going to have to find a way to boost her own electability. Her biggest problem right now is that, as CNN’s article noted today, more than two-thirds of those surveyed find her dishonest and untrustworthy. To close the deal and nail down an election that the demographic fundamentals suggest she should win, she’s going to have to change that narrative.
It’s actually a very unfair narrative, and one that has taken root over a quarter century of bad blood between her and the nation’s political media. The long, bitter primary campaign, in which Sanders and his surrogates irresponsibly and divisively stoked intense anger on the far left against Clinton (and the Democratic Party in general), exacerbated that problem and made this election much more difficult than it needed to be. Sanders needs to start making up for that tonight, and he has an opportunity to do so. Let’s see what he does with it.
by Cliston Brown | Apr 14, 2016 | Election Analysis, Political Commentary
Much has been made of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s pledge that he will not accept the Republican presidential nomination if an open convention chooses him this July. We are expected to believe that this mere statement has definitively settled the issue and that there are no circumstances under which the Wisconsin Republican will be the party’s nominee.
Hogwash. Ryan’s statement settled nothing. In fact, his recent behavior — making a highly publicized speech and cutting a web video in which he went out of his way to be statesmanlike — indicates the opposite. These moves give every appearance of Ryan making himself available as an alternative. Even his protestations of disinterest are part of the silly dance expected of candidates.
History shows us that declarative statements are not binding. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released an open letter in which he said that if he were a delegate to that year’s Democratic convention, he would vote to renominate his vice president, the ultra-liberal Henry Wallace. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Roosevelt was actively working with Wallace’s detractors to ensure the nod would go to Senator Harry Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt as president when FDR died months later.
Politicians lie about their intentions all the time, so why should we automatically believe Ryan?
Oh, but we are told that this pledge is so ironclad that if he broke it, he’d be finished in politics.
Nonsense. There are all kinds of ways to wiggle out of a pledge. Imagine we’re going on the third or fourth ballot at a chaotic GOP convention, and Ryan says this:
“As I have repeatedly said, I did not want the nomination. But many leaders in our party who I respect greatly have told me that I am the only person who can unite our party and lead us to victory in the fall. I cannot in good conscience refuse this call, and so it is with great personal reluctance that I have decided to accept my party’s nomination for president of the United States.”
There. It almost sounds noble, doesn’t it?
Never take any politician at face value if he or she disclaims any interest whatsoever in being president. If the nomination is gift-wrapped and handed to Ryan on a platter, he’ll take it, just the same way he took the speakership he said he had absolutely no interest whatsoever in taking. Don’t be naive. Ryan’s past pledge meant nothing, so why is this one guaranteed to be for real?
by Cliston Brown | Mar 1, 2016 | Election Analysis
If anything became crystal clear tonight, it’s the stark diversity divide between Bernie Sanders‘ supporters and Hillary Clinton‘s supporters. Her big wins in the South tonight demonstrated that her shellacking of Sanders among black voters in South Carolina on Saturday was no fluke.
The one constant throughout the Democratic primaries and caucuses so far has been that the fewer black voters a state or portion of a state has, the more Clinton struggles. She barely won Iowa, got clobbered in New Hampshire, and got clobbered tonight in Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma and Vermont, but absolutely destroyed Sanders in Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. And while Massachusetts is pretty white, it’s more diverse than Iowa or New Hampshire; the small percentage of Massachusetts voters who are black very well could have been the difference for her in that state tonight. Clinton won the cities; Sanders won the lily-white rural areas.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Any candidate who cannot win a significant number of votes in diverse communities cannot win the Democratic nomination. There is no way to put together a coalition in the Democratic Party that doesn’t include voters of color. If Sanders can’t start making serious inroads into communities of color very soon, he has no chance of reversing his fortunes.
by Cliston Brown | Mar 1, 2016 | Election Analysis
The Republican establishment took it on the chin once again tonight, as the big winners were Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio finally got his first victory in Minnesota, but he desperately needed a win in Virginia and couldn’t get it. John Kasich might eke out a win in Vermont (still not called as of 11:25 Eastern), but with only 16 delegates, it won’t count for much.
Trump remains in very solid shape to win the GOP nomination, and Cruz has reestablished himself as Trump’s chief competition. Rubio comes out of tonight looking weaker than ever. Both Rubio and Kasich will come out of Super Tuesday with, at most, one win apiece. That’s enough to keep them alive for their own home state primaries in Florida and Ohio, respectively, two weeks from tonight, but they’re going to have to start winning in some other places to be viable contenders.
One potential YUUUUGE weakness for Trump that emerged tonight: look at his numbers in Minnesota, where he is running a distant third. He also lost Iowa. The results thus far during the primary season indicate that Trump is not particularly strong in the Midwest. This might not cost him the nomination, but it certainly could lose him the general election in November; of all the nation’s different regions, the Midwest is the “swing” region that determines elections.
But that’s down the road. Right now, there’s no reason at all to think that Trump is not still the favorite on the Republican side.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton did herself a huge favor by winning Massachusetts. If Bernie Sanders had won Massachusetts, he would have gotten out of tonight winning all five of his target states and fighting Clinton to a near draw in the number of states won. Even considering the fact that she’ll come out of tonight with a huge delegate lead (by virtue of her crushing victories in the South), if Sanders had won five of 11 states, it would have been a big hit to Clinton in terms of perception. Winning a key state right in Sanders’s backyard was a big win for Clinton.
In short, nothing changed tonight. Trump and Clinton are still well ahead in their respective races, and there is going to have to be a major change in the trajectory of either race to change that fact.
by Cliston Brown | Feb 22, 2016 | Election Analysis
There seems to be no doubt that Donald Trump will win Tuesday’s Republican caucuses in Nevada. Jon Ralston, the foremost political analyst in Nevada, knows the political pulse of the state inside and out. When he says Trump is sure to win in the Silver State, I know I can take it to the bank. So I’m predicting Trump wins.
There has been a lot of talk that Marco Rubio has worked hard to build an organization in Nevada. What little polling there is shows he’s in a tight battle with Ted Cruz for second place. I’m going to take Rubio to place and Cruz to show, with John Kasich beating out Ben Carson for a distant fourth.
The key question here is whether anybody but Trump will get any delegates. Despite placing second in South Carolina on Saturday, Rubio (and the rest of the field besides Trump) claimed no delegates; all 50 went to Trump. According to TheGreenPapers.com, Nevada awards 30 Republican delegates: 10 to the statewide winner, four to the winner of each Congressional district, five “bonus” delegates and three party delegates. If Trump wins by a large margin, he may well sweep Nevada’s delegates as well, a fact which will render the remaining order of finish essentially irrelevant.
Barring one of the most stunning collapses in the history of U.S. politics, Hillary Clinton is a shoo-in to win the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday. Her polling leads in the Palmetto State have consistently been massive, and Bernie Sanders has not come within 20 points in a week’s time. For Sanders, anything less than a 20-point loss would be a positive result.
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