The prediction markets either are ahead of or lag behind the polls. Click for bigger picture.
Gabriel Sherman interviews Stuart Stevens:
You write in the book that the cruelest lesson in life, and sports, is what if? So what if Donald Trump becomes president?
[Laughs.] He’s not. He’s not! This goes down to, how am going to play in the next Super Bowl? It’s not going to happen. For Donald Trump to win, everything we know about politics has to be wrong. And I don’t think it is. The timing of when it falls apart is always more difficult to know than inevitably that it will.
The Hill:
Destroy The Donald. That threat has been coming for months from the Club for Growth, but on Tuesday the influential free-enterprise advocacy group finally put its money where its mouth has been.
The group’s political arm is launching a $1 million advertising campaign in Iowa starting later this week, branding Trump “the worst kind of politician.” The two advertisements highlight Trump’s past statements that he identifies as a Democrat and that he has supported using eminent domain to take private property. Trump, one of the ads says, is “playing us for chumps.”
In a small room packed with lights and TV cameras at the National Press Club, Club for Growth President David McIntosh declared: “Donald Trump has the worst [economic] record in the entire field with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders.”
More politics and policy below the fold.
Michael Tomasky:
OK, I wouldn’t expect Clinton to talk like [Bernie Sanders], but she could use a couple dashes of that vinegar. Clinton’s remarks were directed to the people who run the world; Sanders’s, to those who are run by it. Democratic primary voters are mostly the latter. Small wonder he’s connecting with them.
We’re still firmly in a post-meltdown political reality. To voters, it isn’t yet time to move on. It’s time to take sides. No one thinks Clinton should be Corbyn, since he’s almost certainly unelectable (the Scots voting nationalist in the numbers they are make it tough for any Labour candidate), but there is one big lesson she can learn from him. On the one great economic issue of the day, be loud and clear, and reassure the powerless first.
CBS/NY Times
NY Times on new national polling numbers:
Democratic voters seem more enthusiastic about Mrs. Clinton as the party’s possible nominee than Republicans do about Mr. Trump. Forty-eight percent of Democrats said they would support her enthusiastically, and 35 percent of Republicans said the same of Mr. Trump.
In the face of growing dissatisfaction among voters over all for Mrs. Clinton’s explanation about using a personal email server as secretary of state, female Democrats are starting to fall away — and male party members even more so. Thirty-nine percent of male Democrats now support her, down from 53 percent, and 54 percent of Democratic women backed Mrs. Clinton compared with 61 percent in August. One-quarter of Democratic voters said they were mostly dissatisfied with her explanations on the email issue.
While Democrats give Mrs. Clinton high marks for leadership, her rating on honesty and trustworthiness has fallen 10 percentage points to 64 percent from August. Long the choice of a majority of Democrats, Mrs. Clinton now draws support from 47 percent of them; Mr. Sanders has improved his standing by 10 points, to 27 percent.
But to be clear, Clinton leads (now a smaller lead, but a lead) and remains the frontrunner. If you want to know why, see the state polls. Here's
USC/LA Times on CA or
PPP on FL, e.g:
On the Democratic side, Florida continues to be a pretty strong state for Hillary Clinton. She's getting 55% to 18% for Bernie Sanders, 17% for Joe Biden, 2% for Martin O'Malley, and 1% each for Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb. Compared to our March poll in the state Clinton is down 3, Biden is up 3, and Sanders is up 15. But even though Clinton's lead is not quite as substantial as it was earlier in the year, these numbers do provide more evidence of strength for her in the south.
Consider also that without Biden (currently not running) her numbers change for the better in virtually every poll outside of NH.
See also Nate Cohn, who delves into her problems:
Perhaps all of these voters would have opposed her in the primary anyway. Mrs. Clinton, after all, still has a big lead in national polls. It’s no longer a record-setting advantage. But it’s a big one, and it’s underpinned by all of the fundamentals that help determine the outcome of the primary contest. This time, she won’t be facing a candidate, like Barack Obama, who has the potential to peel away a big part of her coalition.
Party elites haven’t begun to leave her candidacy either. Over the last month, Mrs. Clinton has rolled out still more endorsements. Reports from a meeting of the Democratic National Committee suggested that few party members were itching to jump ship.
Predictwise has Hillary 68% chance of winning, Biden 15% and Sanders 14%. They also, btw, have
Dems at 58% chance of winning, Rs 42%.
As for the Republicans, more from the NY Times:
The establishment candidates are battling fierce headwinds from a party electorate that vastly prefers a nominee from the business or private sector rather than a traditional politician, by 48 percent to 9 percent. Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, and Mr. Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, have lost the most support by far since delivering what many analysts called lackluster performances in the August debate. Eleven percent of Republicans viewed Mr. Bush as best positioned to win in the general election, compared with 23 percent in August; only 2 percent thought Mr. Walker was most likely to win, down from 8 percent.
Josh Marshall covers one of the worst performers in
Dead Man Walkering:
Take the just-released ABC/WaPo poll. It has Trump's highest number yet at a stunning 33% nationwide. He's followed by Ben Carson at 20%, who now looks like a legitimate second place, not just a momentary fluke in a single state. Jeb is at a new low at 8%. But Walker is at 2% support. 2%. Which is to say that he's running behind Huckabee and Kasich at 3%, tied with Fiorina at 2%, and one point ahead of Rick Perry who just had to leave the race.
Walker has fallen from 13% to 2% since July. That's about the best example of a full-blown collapse of a campaign as I've ever seen.
Star-Telegram:
Some came to see a celebrity. Others came to loyally back a Republican.
But some also came from the party underworld of birthers, Birchers and Buchananites, suspicious of global trade, diversity and anything foreign.
Cheryl Surber of Fort Worth, a former nominee for justice of the peace, said she’s for Trump because he’s a “natural-born citizen, unlike [Ted] Cruz, [Bobby] Jindal, [Marco] Rubio or [Rick] Santorum.” In the conspiracy world, all are ineligible because both parents must be citizens.
Outside, rally guests exchanged words with local Latino groups and Democrats who came to protest...
Dallas Democrat Domingo García told the 1,000 or so marchers Texas is a “bicultural and bilingual state — we’re proud of our heritage, proud of our Tejano black and brown.”
Of Texas’ 9 million Latinos, 4 million are voters.
“The same hands that pick the food we eat, the same hands that build the skyscrapers, those are the same hands that are going to pick the next president,” García said.
Those hands also belong to Americans.
And finally, this is what you get when you focus on policy from
David Ignatius:
The political circus surrounding the Iran nuclear deal shouldn’t obscure the fact that President Obama won an enormous victory in negotiating the agreement and mustering the necessary congressional votes to sustain it. It’s the most determined, strategic success of his presidency.
Republican presidential candidates have denounced the deal as a sellout by a weak, feckless Obama. And polls make clear that the public is wary about a deal painted by critics as a bargain with the devil.
But Obama’s bet is endorsed by many leading strategists in the United States and abroad. Even in Israel, there’s grudging support from a growing share of the national-security establishment, who see the deal as preferable to any realistic alternative. The outliers are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S Republican leadership, who reject an agreement most nations endorse. The political reality is that Obama outfoxed them at nearly every turn.
Obama to Republicans: you wanna go to the mat? Bring it on, I will beat you.