NBC News interviews Clinton campaign in NV (yes, it’s Hillary camp but point is, Bernie is gaining):
Do you think Bernie Sanders is making gains on the Clinton campaign in terms of getting support in the Latino community?
Yeah, I think he is. I think we always expected this to be a close race and that's exactly what we're seeing. However, Latinos recognize Hillary Clinton's long, long partnership and representation of our community and it's really difficult to wipe out a relationship of more than 30 years in 30 days. I also have so many stories and so much confidence in the vast support that we have seen from Latinos.
I expect Bernie to be competitive in many other states, though we’ll have to see what effect winning or losing has on subsequent contests.
Byron Tau:
With five days to go before the Nevada Democratic caucuses, there are so few polls that the state of the race here is almost a total mystery.
Nevada is the third state in the Democratic nominating process, but only six public polls have been conducted in the last year.
Too close to call, dearth of good polling. Maybe Hillary has a slight edge, maybe not. But NV is not SC, and it’s not a firewall for anyone. Some feel, however, that Bernie needs to win states like NV to have a chance in the delegate race. [Note to readers, feel free to weigh in on the analysis, or correct the record. Support your choice, but please leave the ‘candidate X is the spawn of the devil, which is why I’ll never vote for them’ comments for elsewhere. We are all tired of them and they chase readers away.]
Politico:
Donald Trump continued his attacks on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush over eminent domain and his brother's presidency as former President George W. Bush begins campaigning for his brother in South Carolina.
Trump on Monday unleashed a series of tweets calling Jeb Bush a "liar" and "just another clueless politician."
I still think Trump’s appeal is like W’s, i.e. authoritarian (see Demystifying the Trump Coalition: It’s the Authoritarianism, Stupid). That means there’s leeway to like both and not transfer it to Jeb!. Trump will tell you, Jeb! is weak. That’s why he says that. And it’s working (see Byron York, below).
I also think Trump going after W on 9/11 is a huge big deal.
Jonathan Chait:
Republicans disagree internally on aspects of Bush’s domestic legacy, but his record on counterterrorism remains a point of unified party doctrine. Bush, they agree, Kept Us Safe. To praise the president who oversaw the worst domestic terrorist attack in American history for preventing domestic terrorism is deeply weird, and the only way this makes any sense is to treat 9/11 as a kind of starting point, for which his predecessor is to blame. (Marco Rubio, rushing to Dubya’s defense at Saturday night’s Republican debate, explained, “The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.”) Trump not only pointed out that Bush was president on 9/11 and that the attacks that day count toward his final grade, but he also noted that Bush failed to heed intelligence warnings about the pending attack and that his administration lied to the public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Jeet Heer:
It’s hard to interpret this tweet as anything other than a response to the constant emasculation that Bush has suffered at the hands of Donald Trump. The real estate mogul has spent months cutting Bush down with insults that suggested the former Florida governor was less than a man.
Huffington Post reporter Paul Blumenthal found an apposite quote from Freud: “It is quite unmistakable that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ.”
But in showing off the size of his gun, Bush has made himself an even sadder figure.
NBC News:
Here's what we don't know. Is Trump falling in the polls after the debate and especially after his tough 9/11 critique on George W. Bush? Or is he in a commanding position to win South Carolina, which would put him in the driver's seat to win the GOP nomination? And does George W. Bush help Jeb enough to finish third, which would give him a pulse in the Republican race? Or does Marco Rubio (or John Kasich) have a better path to third?
Seth Masket:
Senator Bernie Sanders has staged an impressive insurgency so far against the Democratic party's presumed choice for its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. In some ways, he's following a similar path that Barack Obama forged against Clinton eight years ago, inviting numerous comparisons. But the coalition backing Sanders differs from the one that backed Obama in important ways.
Sanders' and Obama's levels of support are surprisingly similar across several subgroups, including men, women, whites, liberals, and younger voters. The one striking disparity is among African Americans. Barack Obama had tremendous support from the African-American community. In the 2008 survey, 76 percent of African Americans said they were supporting Obama; only 16 percent were backing Clinton. Today, however, the tables are reversed, with only eight percent of African Americans backing Sanders, and 82 percent backing Clinton.
Bernie can overcome this, but it’s work clearly needing to be done.
More from Gallup, who take a close look at Hillary and Bernie fav/unfav by race/ethnic makeup (see SC below for separate numbers):
Based on our latest figures, whites constitute 57% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic in their political orientation, by far Democrats' largest racial or ethnic group. Blacks constitute about 22% of Democrats, while Hispanics make up 16%.
The current SC registration (all parties) is 30% black. In 2008 primary exit polls, 55% of D voters were black and 57% were moderate/conservative voters. I’m thinking this doesn’t look like IA or NH, and it’s why Hillary is expected to win that state (voting is a week from Saturday).
Byron York with insight on SC Republican voters:
Nearly everyone expressed deep admiration for W. But that admiration did not mean blanket approval of his actions as president. So when I asked whether, looking back, going to war in Iraq was a mistake, here is what I got. Seventeen said yes, it was a mistake. Seventeen said no, it was not a mistake. And seven said some variation of, "It's complicated."
Many of those who said the war was a mistake took care to add that they thought W did the best he could with the information he had at the time. Many of those who said it wasn't a mistake said they don't necessarily approve of it today, as they look back, but they don't want to apply 20/20 hindsight and criticize a decision made at a different time. Some blamed today's mess on Barack Obama. In other words, no matter what they said, they were inclined to cut W some slack.
Some of the "It's complicated" people seemed truly torn by the question. In the end, I came away with the impression that most of them didn't really disagree with each other very much. Some of them leaned a little more to the "mistake" side than others, but none of them were in a mood to blame the former president sitting on the stage.
Jonathan Ladd:
Obama's optimal strategy depends on whether Senate Republicans can be won over
Obama has now issued a statement that he intends to make a nomination. He will likely want someone young. Anyone to the left of Justice Anthony Kennedy would move the Court's median voter to the left, possibly substantially. If Obama gets a centrist (but more liberal than Kennedy) candidate confirmed, that person would be the new median voter (replacing Kennedy). If the new justice is to the left of Kagan, that would make Kagan the new median voter. So Obama has an incentive to try to get a nominee confirmed, even if his probability of success is less than 50 percent.
Two-dimensional ideology estimates of current Supreme Court Justices and President Obama. (Data from Michael Bailey. Figure created by David Cottrell and Charles Shipan)
Obama's best strategy depends on whether there is any hope of wining over Senate Republicans. If Obama thinks the Senate could be convinced to confirm one of his nominees as long as he nominated a moderate Democrat, then he might pick someone like Eighth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Jane Kelly or DC Circuit Appeals Court Judge Sri Srinivasan. Both are recent Obama nominees who were confirmed unanimously and are well-liked by Senate Republicans.
Brian Beutler:
Supreme Court confirmation fights are notoriously dominated (more even than most political combat) by disingenuous bullshit and false piety. This one promises to break all records. So here’s my (undoubtedly futile) plea that everyone abandon high-minded pretenses and admit that the principle animating this fight is will to power.
Paul Waldman:
The idea of systemic racism has symbolic weight, but it’s primarily practical. It does speak to the fundamental truth that black people understand and that some whites resist, that racism exists in a thousand places at once, both those we can see and those we overlook. Saying you understand systemic racism is a way of saying that you see the problem as deep, wide, and historically grounded.
But it’s also a way of saying: This is a problem we, and the president him or herself, can actually do something about. If the racism that imposes itself on people’s lives is to be found in systems, then the way you attack it is to change the way those systems operate, through changes in law and policy.
In short — and if you’ll allow me to oversimplify things a bit — when it comes to race, unlike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton doesn’t care how you feel.
Well of course she cares, but it’s not her primary concern. This is both her weakness and her strength.
CJR on the Hillary emails:
Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why Clinton’s private email server is a serious issue—there are cybersecurity concerns, it violated State Department rules, and it allowed her to completely circumvent the Freedom of Information Act process for years. But let’s stop treating the contents of the email like they are huge national security secrets that imperiled the nation just because US intelligence agencies said so. Most evidence points to the fact that they just another example of the overclassification epidemic that has infected our government for years.
The same charade happens virtually every time the State Department releases a batch of emails as part of complying with multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits: Several media organizations “report” several of the emails contain highly classified information and feign shock that such a thing could ever happen.