http://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/678403914769764352
http://twitter.com/micahcohen/status/678401871510392832
But with his hair on fleek like that (that’s what the kids say, right?), he gives the appearance of a nouveau Kennedy.
Martin O’Malley would be 54 on Jan. 20, 2017. He’s not that young.
“Different generation perspective” — O’Malley hating on the Boomers!
Well, there are two types of VP selections: those that counteract a perceived weakness of a candidate and (less commonly) those that accentuate a perceived strength. I’m not sure how O’Malley would accomplish either of those for Clinton, assuming she’s the nominee.
I gotta agree with Clare. There’s just no reason for him to be picked as vice president. The Democratic base doesn’t really like O’Malley. He isn’t from a swing state. He has no charisma. There’s a reason he left Maryland unpopular and hasn’t gotten anywhere in this presidential race.
Q: Do you think O’Malley is potential VP material? — Cameron Allen
A: No, I don’t think he is. I think he just has a really flat personality, to be honest, which has a lot to do with it. Obviously, he’s got solid progressive bona fides, but I just don’t see it. No chemistry!
As the candidates talk about intelligence in troubled regions and how America can listen on the ground, I’m reminded of Jehane Noujaim’s award-winning and chilling documentary “The Square” about the Egyptian revolution. It charts how a group of mostly-young revolutionaries working against Hosni Mubarak, who led Egypt for three decades, became factionalized by what the endgame of the revolution is, with some siding with the Muslim Brotherhood and others with secular leadership. It’s a gut-wrenching view into how hard it is to seek democracy. Linking to what Sanders said: “regime change is easy” and “what happens the day after” is key. Clinton and Sanders are going head-to-head on their records regarding regime change, but there are no easy answers.
That was one of the first times all campaign we’ve seen Bernie Sanders go on offense on foreign policy. Still, he gave Clinton a little bit of an “out” at the end.
Q: Question for the group: Is there any data on what types of debate quips are the most effective? For an example, Jeb(!) made a Saturday morning cartoon joke that was lost on people under 30 who didn’t have Saturday morning cartoons (a dog whistle-like joke?). Is it effective to: a) say you have a ‘plan’; b) go after the opposing party’s frontrunner; c) say that an opponent’s criticism is more ‘complicated’ than they allege; d) say that the solution is simple; e) we want to stop bickering; f) I balanced the budget/proposed X bill; and g) I’m at 43 percent and you’re at 3 percent. — James Prentiss
A: I think anything that hints that the opponent is speaking to the media echo chamber (Rubio spanking Bush for calling out his absentee record in Congress, for example, although I would argue that’s a valid issue) and anything that speaks to hubris or double-speak. But your point, James, about quips having a time/date stamp is true. A cultural reference targeted at millennials may be a “duh?” to Baby Boomers and vice-versa.
Yeah, Clare, this is another issue where the Democratic base and Americans differ. The most recent Monmouth University poll has 57 percent of Americans supporting ground troops, while just 40 percent of Democrats do. Again, the Democratic candidates seem to be playing to the base on this one.
Americans are very much in favor of both bombing ISIS and sending in ground troops: A November ABC poll found that 60 percent would back ground troops.
http://twitter.com/PostGraphics/status/678397232723415040
Where are voters on using U.S. ground troops to fight Islamic State?
On the issue of stopping or slowing the flow of Syrian refugees, most polling indicates that Americans are for it. For example, in an NBC News/WSJ poll out this week, 56 percent of Americans agreed with that stance. In the same poll, 38 percent of Democrats felt the same way. The Democratic presidential candidates seem to be playing to the base on this issue, but we’ll have to see if that hurts the eventual nominee in the general election
I feel like Clinton just had an “unfrozen caveman lawyer moment” (see: “Saturday Night Live”) when she said she didn’t really know about encryption technology but she hopes that tech companies will help law enforcement. Meanwhile, encryption has been seen as a key tool in protecting pro-democracy movements internationally. It raises the question of whether encryption and digital privacy more broadly will become something the U.S. supports abroad when they suit our interests, but less so at home.
You can see that the rise of terrorism as an issue has put the Democratic candidates in an awkward position. Trump gives them a way out of it — he’s basically a real-life straw man.
Harry was just saying that Bernie always pivots back to the economy — he’s maybe speaking to those Reagan Democrats who might see Trump’s message as attractive in some ways, perhaps as a way to channel their anger about the economy.
And there’s a little bit of an Operation Chaos tactic for Clinton in engaging Trump. If she provokes him into a reaction, that’s yet another news cycle that will be dominated by Trump instead of one of the more electable Republicans.
The Trump existential crisis is an interesting presence in this debate. Clinton is making the point that guys like Lindsey Graham made the other night: Trump is making America more unsafe with inflammatory statements.
Hillary Clinton said: “The first line of defense against radicalization is in the Muslim-American community. … I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here in the United States and literally around the world that there is a clash of civilizations, that there is some kind of western plot or even war against Islam, which then I believe fans the flames of radicalization. So guns have to be looked at as its own problem, but we also have to figure out how we’re going to deal with theradicalization here in the United States.”
There’s an interesting push-back that you can see in this tweet from entrepreneur Rafat Ali of Skift:
I believe (and am willing to be corrected) that his comments are about who is asked to take responsibility for the behavior of others in their group. (E.g. are white Americans asked to answer for white shooters?) On top of that, the U.S. government has no concrete idea how many Muslims are in America because the government doesn’t measure their faith in the census and other surveys. The government’s estimates put the Muslim population in the U.S. between 2 million and 7 million.
We really need Donald Trump to get on the stage and remind O’Malley of where he’s polling.
Must be tough for O’Malley to be ganged up on here, but that’s what happens when you’re the overwhelming frontrunner for your party’s nomination.
http://twitter.com/SuzyKhimm/status/678392944882135041
True, Nate. Clinton was echoing some of the tones that Obama struck in his national address after the San Bernardino shooting — that the Muslim community needs to be more vigilant about sussing out extremism.
It’s interesting that none of the Democratic candidates — not even Bernie Sanders — is doing much to debate the premise that ISIS poses an existential threat to the United States.
Let me put it this way Micah, the voters are not with the Democratic Party on either guns or terrorism. According to a Pew Research Center poll out this week, Americans are more trusting of Republicans on both gun control and terrorism.
Harry, where are Democratic voters on guns and terrorism in the wake of San Bernardino?
I think it was probably smart for her to try to gloss over it during the debate — people would probably see it as pretty petty, and I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of talk (like there is going on right now) about national security.
So Clare, how do you think Clinton handled the data breach issue?
Martin O’Malley is currently polling at 2.7 percent in the Huffington Post/Pollster New Hampshire aggregate, which is somehow lower than nine Republicans. That’s amazing given that there are 14 Republicans running, while there are only three Democrats. His campaign has truly gone nowhere.
As additional reporting has come out about Bernie Sanders’s campaign’s breach of DNC data, it seems clear the issue was more serious than the Sanders campaign implied originally.
But in my view, it was nevertheless a poor strategic decision for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to make such a fuss over it. Why? Because the media isn’t all that interested in the policy substance of the Democratic campaign — and instead is looking for reasons to play up the drama of the horse race between Clinton and Sanders. This sort of inside-baseball story will provide a perfect excuse for them to make the Democratic primary seem more contentious than it really is.
Agreed, Clare. Clinton said move on. O’Malley was the one who didn’t.
I think O’Malley is over-reaching with the “bickering” there. Sounds like a line he rehearsed before.
Well, he certainly walked through the the process in detail there — we don’t know all that much about the first incident, which he says was dealt with quietly— and he’s just apologized. It seems like it might not turn into the dust-up that it could have been, especially given Clinton’s response. They’re remaining pretty civil per the usual.
Clare, is Sanders giving a fair representation of things here?
DataGate Is Deep Insider Politics
Sometime during a commercial, take a look at this 2012 “Daily Show” sketch about the Democrats’ “big tent.” It’s funny, but also reveals the delicate demographic footwork Democrats are expected to perform to please internal constituencies from labor to African-Americans to LGBTQ Americans (none of whom lack the freedom to vote their own minds, of course). Here’s the point: Sanders/Clinton DataGate is hot news now, but it’s deep insider politics for most folks and it doesn’t surface fundamental fissures over ideology or demographics in the party that haven’t surfaced before. This is important because the GOP debates have provided ample fodder for general election partisan attack ads; the Democratic debates, far less so.
Just a coincidence that Martin O’Malley looks a little bit like President Garrett Walker from “House of Cards”?
A: I tend to think that any truly persuadable voter in the general election is almost certainly not watching any of these debates right now. And if they are, they probably won’t be persuaded by anything they hear. Those voters won’t make up their minds until after the primaries have concluded. That’s the reason polls tend to get more accurate after the primaries, and then much more accurate after the conventions.
Why We’re Watching Iowa More Than New Hampshire
Tonight’s Democratic debate is in New Hampshire — where Bernie Sanders appears to be roughly tied with Hillary Clinton in the polls. But between now and Feb. 1, I’ll probably be paying more attention to Iowa, where Sanders is currently behind.
How come? The first reason is simple: Whatever happens in Iowa will affect the New Hampshire outcome. The polling “bounce” for an Iowa winner in New Hampshire has varied from election to election, but it’s averaged around 7 percentage points, more than the margin currently separating Clinton and Sanders in New Hampshire polls.
There’s another, more subtle reason, too. Iowa is one of the most favorable states in the country for Sanders based on its demographics, with lots of white liberals and college students. It’s maybe not quite as favorable for him as New Hampshire (especially given that Sanders hails from neighboring Vermont), but it’s way more favorable than the vast majority of states to hold primaries and caucuses. So if Sanders can’t win Iowa, there’s no reason to think that he’ll be competitive in more diverse states like Florida and Ohio that vote later.
The good news for Sanders? He’s close enough to Clinton in Iowa — and it’s plenty early enough there — that he could easily win the Hawkeye State.
I think she might get into it a little bit — her campaign manager Robby Mook was vocal today about his distaste for the Sanders campaign’s move to fundraise off the breach and the ensuing DNC lockout. So, his words might be an indication that Clinton will take Sanders to task a little.
I would guess somewhere in between. There’s no reason for her to get dragged through the mud, but Clinton has gone on the offensive before. So I really have zero clue, which I think gives at least a little life to this debate.
Anyone have a prediction for how Clinton will handle the data breach stuff? Does she take Sanders’s side? The DNC’s side? Somewhere in between?
Are The Gloves Off Now?
The Democratic primary has been a largely civilized affair — not quite at the level of raised pinkies and clattering teacups, but Bernie Sanders refusing to go after Hillary Clinton about her emails in the first debate was pretty indicative of the tone of things. It’s been sort of like a well-heeled family having a muted public disagreement. Lots of strained looks and passive-aggressive mentions.
But things got a little declasse yesterday when Bernie Sanders sued the Democratic National Committee after it shut off his campaign’s access to its all-important voter file (a list of voter names, election participation history, age, gender, etc). The DNC discovered that thanks to a software bug, some Sanders staffers had gained access to proprietary Clinton lists of potential voters.
Early this morning, the DNC and the Sanders campaign announced that they had reached detente. The Sanders organization has access to the file again and can continue with its regular business of canvassing and calling voters, but the breach might affect the tenor of tonight’s debate. The Sanders camp basically said the DNC was in the tank for Clinton — in a press release they said that the party leadership was “actively attempting to undermine our campaign.”
We’ll see how polite things stay between Sanders and Clinton tonight.
