Why The Media Missed Donald Trump's 2016 Win
Larry Sabato has beaten the rush and started on his self-recrimination early. All of the polling industry needs to rethink its assumptions and how it does its job, said Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia whose Crystal Ball is a staple of election forecasting.
But perhaps Sabato should hold off. Pollsters are catching a lot of "blame" for being "wrong" about the results of the presidential election. But were they wrong? Should they be blamed?
Or does a substantial amount of the blame belong to the media, who wanted a certain result, highlighted polling that confirmed their bias, and ignored signs of trouble for their favored candidate in hopes that ignoring the problems would make them go away?
More importantly, have the media learned anything from the backlash against their slanted, hysterical and, ultimately, inaccurate coverage?
The clues to Clinton's undoing were hidden in plain sight. The final RealClearPolitics polling average, released on Election Day, predicted Clinton would win the popular vote, which it looks as if she will, and showed Trump could very easily win the Electoral College vote. It also predicted Trump would win Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa, and found Pennsylvania within the margin of error.
Hillary Clinton Is No Barack Obama
If Hillary Clinton is to become the first female president, she'll have to do it differently than Barack Obama did in becoming our first African-American president.
The Obama coalition – women, Hispanics, African-Americans and young voters – seemed ripe for the picking for the former secretary of state, considering her opponent Donald Trump's remarks about women and Hispanics, his view that global warming, an issue important to millennials, is a hoax and his dogged pursuit of Obama's birth certificate.
But it has not turned out that way. With five weeks to go until Election Day, Clinton remains a slight favorite to become the 45th president. But the momentum appears to be behind Trump – 46 percent of his backers are enthusiastic about voting for him; only 33 percent of hers say that – and lackluster support from the Obama coalition appears to be a big reason why.
Among millennials, her support dropped 17 percent in the last month, and she and Trump both trail the combo of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein among this group.
Clinton's waning support among millennials has clearly begun to worry her campaign. Michelle Obama spent a day this week at Pennsylvania colleges stumping for Clinton, and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been deployed to campuses elsewhere to try to gin up support.
Trump Blisters Clinton As Most Corrupt Candidate Ever
Donald Trump unleashed a slashing series of attacks against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday in an attempt to reset his presidential campaign by framing his Democratic opponent as untrustworthy, beholden to special interests and plagued by a record of poor judgment.
"Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person to ever seek the presidency of the United States," Trump claimed in a blistering 40-minute scripted speech in New York City. "She's virtually done nothing right, she's virtually done nothing good."
The vicious assault on Clinton, which was postponed last week in the aftermath of the terror attack in Orlando, Florida, amounted to an all-encompassing indictment of the former secretary of state, using a combination of rhetorical bombast and dubious claims.
Trump also offered up more traditional Republican rhetoric like lifting restrictions on energy production, repealing and replacing President Obama's health care reform law and passing massive tax reform that would lower rates for all brackets.
"If I am Hillary Clinton I would be politically scared of this Trump, because not only did he prosecute Clinton's record, but he offered a vision of his own," says Ford O'Connell a GOP consultant who performed outreach for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "If I were Trump I would deliver a speech like this every week or two from now until Election Day. It could prove to be his most effective weapon in terms of catching up to and potentially surpassing Clinton in the polls."
Bernie Sanders Shouldn't Surrender To The Democratic Party Machine
Bernie Sanders is correct both that the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was rigged against him and that the chief culprit is Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
It goes far beyond the super delegate party regulars who support her almost unanimously and now make up most of her delegate lead. It goes beyond the near-riot at the Nevada state Democratic convention or even the closed nominating contests that favored Clinton even when the voters didn't.
Party chairs are supposed to remain neutral in presidential races, but Wasserman Schultz, who served as co-chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008, has not been neutral at all.
She sharply limited the number of debates and scheduled them for times when few were likely to watch, such as Saturday nights, to limit Clinton's exposure to attacks and deny her opponents name recognition. She entered into a joint fundraising agreement with the Clinton campaign in August 2015, then shut off Sanders' access to the party voter database last December, with the first primaries and caucuses just a few weeks out.
Small-Dollar Donor Mindset Helps Long-Shot Candidates Cash In
Daniel Moughon, an insurance salesman from Fort Worth, Texas, said he knew long shot Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was special after listening to one of her early Iowa speeches. He's donated to her 10 times since then.
Moughon is not giving millions, though. He's not even giving thousands.
In fact, he has added just $273 to the former Hewlett-Packard CEO's campaign coffers through small donations ranging from $7 up to $100.
Why Fiorina? "Well, one, you can't trust elected Republicans, they've let us down time after time," Moughon said. "Carly Fiorina has a clear message. She's a true outsider and a true proven leader."
It's not a lot of money, but he and others like him account for 45 percent of the $1.7 million Fiorina's campaign has raised so far, according to the Federal Election Commission. And Fiorina is not the only presidential long shot who is doing well with small-dollar donors this campaign season.
By end of the last filing period, June 30, Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont had raised $13.6 million, over 80 percent of which came from donations of $200 or less. Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson's campaign had raised $10.6 million, three quarters of which came from similarly small donations, according to the Federal Election Commission.
While dollars flowed into Fiorina's and Carson's campaigns amid low polling earlier this summer and continue to do so, an array of GOP strategists and political scientists say the two outsider candidates don't stand much of a shot at actually being the Republican presidential nominee.
"Let's put it this way-- the last time someone who's never held public office won the presidency, let alone the nomination, was [Dwight] Eisenhower," said Ford O'Connell, a Republican commentator and adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
O'Connell said that while Fiorina and Carson tap into a group of conservatives who are fed up with Washington, some political experience is necessary.
"Republicans are more about ideology than a lot of other things, but they also like to see someone have a track record," O'Connell said.
Read more from Emily Hoerner and Phoebe Tollefson at U.S. News & World Report
GOP Courts Black Voters With Sweet Tea
In North Carolina, an order of Republican politics comes with a free hot dog and a glass of sweet tea. On Friday, the GOP’s North Carolina African-American Engagement Office put on “Sweet Tea and Politics,” at Hwy 55 Burgers Shakes and Fries in Hoke County, in an attempt to woo more black voters into the party’s fold.
This is the local side to a larger national push by Republicans to solve the demographics problems outlined in the party’s March 2013 “Growth and Opportunity Project,” commissioned by the Republican National Committee’s chairman Reince Priebus after Mitt Romney’s bruising loss in 2012. Last month, according to MSNBC, Priebus said the party was spending about $8.5 million a month to engage potential African-American, Latino and Asian voters, which the party needs more of in order to compete with Democrats on a national scale. North Carolina is one of 13 states – presidential battleground states, plus a handful of Southern states – that Republicans are especially targeting for black engagement.
But will free sweet teas and hot dogs really move the dial?
Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, says that conservatives are “beyond in the doghouse” with black voters, so showing up at churches, at barber shops, anywhere in the community, does help. O’Connell argues that it’s not about the events Republican groups are hosting, but what happens next.
“It’s whether or not you get past the meet and greet stage,” O’Connell says.
Using the example of canvassing during a presidential election, O’Connell talks about what happens when a stranger shows up at a someone’s door versus a friendly face.
“Usually you don’t have warm and fuzzies about them,” O’Connell says. “If one of your neighbors shows up and says I’m voting for him … [it’s] a lot more powerful conduit.”
O’Connell also used the real life example of Reverend James Meeks, a black pastor from Chicago’s South Side, who’s supporting the GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner. Meeks’ endorsement is opening the door for his predominantly black parishioners to ditch the Democratic governor, too.
A big part of this is making the right pitch, and there are issues that might play especially well with black voters, the RNC’s Watson suggested. Among them: jobs and education.
Don't Accept Obama's Impeachment Dare
In the pantheon of dumbest ideas in modern American history, there was New Coke, Microsoft Bob, the 1987 Yugo GV, the vibrating ab belt and the Snuggie for dogs. But not one of those would rival President Barack Obama’s current dare to congressional Republicans to impeach him.
If Republicans take up the dare, it would cost them the Senate in 2014, the presidency in 2016 and relevance for perhaps a decade or more. And that includes if Obama takes out his pen and phone and signs an executive order legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants. Even if a Republican could get elected president in, say, 2020, Democrats then would be in position to impeach with political impunity 20 minutes after the inauguration ended.
This is bad governance, bad politics and bad strategy. It would be political suicide even to contemplate it seriously.
And it’s not being contemplated by serious people. But mere discussion of impeachment by fringe players, such as Sarah Palin and Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, has enabled Democrats to raise millions of dollars with desperate email appeals to “have Barack’s back.”
It’s not the fringe of the Democratic Party that talks about impeachment. It’s the marquee names — Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden — who push the I word. And it’s not hard to figure out why. Democrats face a turnout debacle in 2014. Their younger voters are less enthusiastic. The independents who twice made Obama president are not on board. Current polling gives Republicans a 14-point engagement advantage. And this time around, it’s been Democratic candidates — Bruce Braley, running for Senate in Iowa, for example — whose missteps have dominated campaign coverage.
Eric Cantor Lost Touch With His Constituents Before Primary Loss
On the night Eric Cantor lost to David Brat in the Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, Twitter was “atwitter” with the fact that Cantor had spent more in steakhouses during the campaign than Brat had spent total.
This served to reinforce the narrative that Cantor was in all those steakhouses fat-catting with his campaign staff while Brat’s hungry advisers were pounding the pavement. But what Cantor really was doing in those steakhouses more accurately explains his loss. He was raising funds – and helping others to raise funds – for fellow Republicans throughout the House of Representatives.
He made time for big-dollar private fundraisers to curry favor with other members of Congress, but hedid not make time for constituent service. He walked the halls of power instead of the streets of his suburban Richmond district. His approach to Brat was to caricature him as an extremist one-issue candidate with scurrilous friends and little idea of what he would do if elected when his constituents wanted to hear what he planned to do to better serve their interests.
And after all, he was the House majority leader. He not only could direct legislation to help his district and state, he could lean on appropriators – many of whose campaigns he had helped fund – to get things done. But it turns out having your congressman in a leadership position doesn’t have the appeal it used to.
The GOP Goes Pragmatic In 2014
Did Mitch McConnell keep his word and bury the tea party?
The overwhelming victory of McConnell himself — the embodiment of the Republican establishment — over tea party-aligned Matt Bevin in the Kentucky Republican Senate primary would suggest so. So, many would say, did the victory by Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s speaker of the House, in the Republican primary to take on incumbent Kay Hagan. Tea party Senate candidates in Georgia and Colorado have been vanquished as well.
But most expect Tillis will earn tea party support when the dust clears, and Georgians are expected to line up behind their eventual nominee as well. Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, a tea party challenger to Thad Cochran, who has been in the Senate since 1978, could well win. And David Dewhurst, an establishment Republican stalwart, could lose his job as lieutenant governor of Texas if present trends continue.
This is disturbing not to Republicans but to Democratic operatives and their friends in the media. As Robert Costa and Phillip Rucker wrote in The Washington Post, “Democrats were left disappointed” with Tuesday’s primary results, as “GOP Senate candidates prone to making controversial statements lost to better-financed, more disciplined rivals with the potential to capitalize on Obama’s unpopularity and the troubles with his signature health-care law.”
That is, candidates who can win won, and candidates prone to blow it blew it.
Mother Jones’ Desperate Hit Job On Susana Martinez
Brace yourself. This may come as a shock. Susana Martinez owes the Cuss Jar.
Yes, it turns out the governor of New Mexico utters the occasional naughty word. She once called her opponent a “bitch.” She may even have dropped an F-bomb during her term as governor.
She also once wondered aloud what the New Mexico State Commission on the Status of Women did all day and why its leader is a member of her cabinet. A lot of voters probably would be interested in the answer to that question as well.
That is the best Mother Jones magazine could come up with in a 5,000-word hit piece released earlier this week, complete with purloined recordings of meetings and conference calls and other “inside” information on the 2010 campaign that put her in office.
To be charitable, the timing is interesting. Martinez is up for re-election in November. More importantly, her name has made its way to various short lists of potential vice presidential candidates in the 2016 election. It’s even possible she may run herself. And with Democrats stuck in the Hillary Clinton vortex– they can’t move decisively in any direction until she declares whether she will run in 2016 – her party and its supplicants in the press, such as MoJo, are spending their time trying to dirty up potential Republican presidential candidates.
The carousel of character assassination was bound to stop on Martinez at some point. MSNBC’s merciless round-the-clock coverage of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Bridgegate not only failed to knock him out of the race; it didn’t even manage to knock him from the top spot in the polls.
