.
Jeb: the only man so incompetent he can't win a 9/11 argument with Donald Trump. @tnycloseread https://t.co/ESL0pQQUtD
— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) October 19, 2015
Sasha Issenberg, at Bloomberg Politics, scored a long interview with the man who seems to stand in as JEB!’s version of Karl Rove. There has not been this much willful detachment from political reality on display since Baghdad Bob went on hiatus:
When Mike Murphy in June took the helm of his longtime friend and client Jeb Bush’s super-PAC, Right to Rise USA, he disappeared from the media, part of a concerted effort not to draw attention away from the candidate. In mid-August, Murphy—a witty narrator of presidential politics who has also guided campaigns by John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger—broke that uncharacteristic silence. “If other campaigns wish that we’re going to uncork money on Donald Trump, they’ll be disappointed,” Murphy told the Washington Post in August. “Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem.”…
The political landscape is now very different. After four months of Trump’s dominating both news coverage and polls, advisers to Bush—at least one of whom anonymously promised a “shock and awe” launch of his candidacy—find themselves where they never expected to be: struggling to reach fifth place in many national and early-state polls. Earlier this month, Murphy welcomed Bloomberg Politics’s Sasha Issenberg to his corner office in an unmarked suite in a Los Angeles office building for a candid and wide-ranging conversation about the super-PAC’s activities, plans, and the newly critical mission it has taken on: the Committee to Save Jeb…
Has the tempo of the race been different than what you had anticipated when you first developed a campaign plan?
Well, I knew it would be kind of hyper because that’s the business now. But one thing in hindsight is we got this paper crown of front-runner early that we didn’t want and I don’t think realistically we should have had. Because what happens is when the punditocracy says, “You’re the front-runner,” then they take a bunch of meaningless polls and a Donald Trump or a Kardashian or whatever jumps in and they say, “Now you’re not the front-runner.” So they put you on trial for them being wrong at the beginning. I think we’re getting a little bit of a bad rap on all that stuff but, you know, who cares? We’re going to power through it.
But the pledge of “shock and awe”—your side contributed to that front-runner designation. Things haven’t quite worked out that way.
I’m going to hunt down whoever came up with that. The bigger story was: we showed a lot of financial strength but we always said the voter strength would build slowly because we had to go tell the story. And somehow the punditocracy said, “Well, financial strength means you have to lead every poll and if you don’t you’re a loser.” I think them being wrong about that is something that we’ve been held accountable. I don’t take it too seriously because I keep saying I think the polls are completely meaningless on a national basis, but it’s irritating noise…
How has Trump’s entry changed the race?
It created a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he’ll never be president of the United States, ever. By definition I don’t think you can be a front-runner if you’re totally un-electable. I think there’s there an a-priori logic problem in that.
I assume thus far Trump has crowded out free media for some of the other candidates who could have emerged in your lane.
Yes. I think you can argue it’s been good for us in that it’s cut off oxygen to guys who can’t survive. We have an oxygen tank. I think Jeb is built from atom one to lead the positive conservative primary and I think that’s the ticket to win. Now if there’s been some huge categorical change in the party and the party is completely obsessed with a grievance candidate they can get one. You know, it’s possible: we lose 42 states, it’ll be Republican McGovern. But I think that’s unlikely. Not impossible but unlikely…
The golden nugget in this steaming pile of horse manure, as perceived by the professionals, is that JEB!’s handlers profess their candidate doesn’t have to do better than fourth place in any primaries before mid-March. Here is Jim Newell’s response, in Slate, to “The One Problem the Head of Bush’s Super PAC Can’t Solve“:
… Nowhere, between all his mockery, does he get to the heart of the matter: why people don’t like Jeb Bush right now, and how Right to Rise intends to change that…
… There will always be a fair share of bad national poll coverage. If there’s more of it this time, Murphy can blame the Republican National Committee and its media partners for pegging debate participation to national polling status. But it’s not like Bush is only doing badly in national polls that don’t matter, anyway. He’s doing poorly in polls of early states, too. Bush is doing lousy in Iowa. That’s fine: Bush is one thing and Iowa Republicans are a whole other thing. But he’s also performing lousy in New Hampshire, a state he has spent an extraordinary amount of time in and has been advertising in. He is not leading in Florida, his natural firewall, or South Carolina, the GOP establishment’s traditional firewall for their chosen representative….
Being relatively liked by human beings who vote in elections is an important first step toward winning elections. We need not pay much attention to Bush’s top-line number in national polls, but we can look to his favorability ratings to see what sort of space he has to work with. Monmouth University’s latest national poll, released [Tuesday] morning, finds Bush at 5 percent nationally. Whatever. Skip to the favorability ratings, though, and the picture somehow looks even more grim. Of the six candidates’ whose favorables were polled among Republicans, Bush is the only one underwater—at 37 to 44 percent. This is indicative of the trend, and it corresponds with what any person paying vague attention to the news has seen…
There’s only so much UNLIMITED! CORPORATE! CASH! can do, when your candidate can be slapped around by a fawning Media Village courtier like Jake Tapper…
This video clip is why the Trump 9/11 comments are going to be a new potential headache for Jeb https://t.co/00fiP1NjHJ
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 19, 2015
Dave Weigel, at the Washington Post, has an even less flattering comparison — “Jeb Bush’s allies are starting to sound like Ron Paul’s in 2012… ”
… “We only have 10 pure winner-take-all states now,” Murphy insists. “The Republican Party, we used to be the Social Darwinists: second place got you a Greyhound ticket to Palookaville. Now we’re proportional, mostly by congressional district. From Feb. 1 to March 15, we have a bunch of big states; Ohio, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina probably.”
Issenberg pushes back on Murphy a bit, and gets this remarkable exchange:
MURPHY: March 15 is the big day. On the 16th, I don’t think anybody will have a mathematical lock, but there definitely will be a very strong leading candidate.
ISSENBERG: You’re describing a scenario where a candidate who has never finished higher than third or fourth in any particular state could still be the leading candidate on March 16?
MURPHY: Right.
ISSENBERG: Is that a problem from a media momentum perspective that if you’re not actually winning stuff and getting the coverage that comes along with being a winner?
MURPHY: It would choke out a lot of little guys.Now, it’s technically true that the quartet of early primary states don’t offer many delegates. When I followed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) around Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, that was one of his unspoken arguments: Alaska offered more than twice as many delegates as tiny New Hampshire. When I followed Ron Paul’s campaign in 2012, his team (including some former advisers now on trial) insisted that they were notching up delegate wins while a shiny-object-obsessed media focused on who got the most people to say a candidate’s name at non-binding caucuses.
The sages of Twitter have compared Murphy’s strategy to the one that failed Rudy Giuliani in 2008, but it looks a lot more like the one that failed Ron Paul…
Bush at 9 percent in Florida. It's almost like GOP voters don't actually want him to be president. https://t.co/e9BZBgOlbL
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) October 20, 2015
Mustang Bobby
A year from now Jeb Bush is going to be just another guy waiting in line at Starbucks on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.
Baud
This is good news for Jeb! Bush!
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
I wouldn’t even buy a reverse mortgage from him.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Educated Democrats Joe talks to are going to vote for Trump.
Zinsky
This Murphy guy sounds like a piece of work, just like Jeb! himself. Disgusting human being. I, for one, am not writing off Bush yet, though. The treachery and deviousness of that family knows no bounds. He may still find a way to steal the presidency, like his idiot brother did in 2000.
Anoniminous
JEB! cannot be counted out. McCain was polling this badly in 2007 and came back to win the nomination. In fact McCain didn’t get the lead in broad-field polling until the first half of January 2008.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: I’d like to know how Joe defines “educated Democrats.” To him it’s probably the homeless guy in on the corner.
raven
@Zinsky: You don’t know who he is?
raven
@Mustang Bobby: “Advanced Degrees”!
Mustang Bobby
@Anoniminous: True, but John McCain actually wanted the nomination. The feeling I get from Jeb! is that if it isn’t handed to him, he’d rather be doing something else. Like diving head-first into his own vomit.
Chyron HR
@Anoniminous:
You forgot Hashtag He Kept Us Safe.
Baud
@raven:
This is probably true.
Betty Cracker
@Anoniminous: Exactly right. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that Bush will be the last man standing when the circus is over.
Another Holocene Human
Wow, he used the word palooka!
Palooka is either one of those weird American inventions or it derives from the Bantu* word paluka, a conclusion of scholars of Black English that doesn’t seem to be accepted by the mainstream.
*-in this case, West African
amk
???
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Do they live in states with open primaries?
My anecdata includes blog comments by liberals stating they are going to vote Trump in their state primary for the lulz.
groucho48
I still think Jeb! will be the guy. Yes, he is self-destructing, but, so are all the other candidates. But, he has gobs more money than they do. He really can lose a bunch of states early on and still win. They can’t. Half of them are already running out of money and that’s not going to get any better anytime soon. Trump will get all the attention until it finally sinks in to the base that he has quite a few positions they hate, hate, hate. Then it’ll be like 2012, where each crazy gets his/her moment in the sun, then fades away, leaving Jeb! and his hundreds of millions to emerge as the winner.
Of course, this analysis is from someone who freely admits he can’t comprehend the typical baser’s thought processes at all. So, don’t bet the farm on it.
Another Holocene Human
@amk: oxygen = $$$$$$$
built from atom one = JEB! is a superhero of GOP candidates who can beat the Dems
Anoniminous
@Mustang Bobby:
McCain also had favorable press which JEB! is losing. And McCain could campaign which JEB! can’t, e.g., he dumped a buttload of money into NH without moving his numbers outside of the MOE. JEB! still has the Establishment and Corporate Wing support and the delegates those control along with State and local party organizations for GOTV.
Granted the schlub has to win some primaries, somewhere, and as of 10/21/15 that’s a bit of a headscratcher.
sm*t cl*de
That’s some good poll-unskewing right there. “Trump cannot possibly follow a victory in the primaries with an actual election victory; therefore I reject any reality in which he wins the primary.”
Another Holocene Human
@groucho48: Trump staked out his position right from the start: I hate all the people you hate. That’s all there is to it and they don’t care about policy. Trump won’t even really release policies and they don’t care.
Murphy’s whole argument is “electability” and I don’t think Teapublicans have cared about that since Sharron Angle.
Another Holocene Human
@Anoniminous: I thought the majority of GOP delegates are voted for. So what’s the establishment’s next move?
SFAW
@raven:
Michael Ellis Murphy? Seriously? Does his moron boss only hire people that share some part of his own name?
If so, how will he find someone with “Not Really the Smarter Brother” in his name?
Or did you just do some judicious editing of Murphy’s bio?
Mustang Bobby
@Anoniminous: The only way I can see Jeb! getting the nomination is if Trump actually wins a primary or two. The entire GOP Establishment will break out into assholes and shit themselves to death, and there’s his opening, so to speak.
David Koch
Mike Murphy is a well known drunk.
way to go ¿Jeb?
Anoniminous
@Another Holocene Human:
The traditional method is to “unskew” the vote. Example is Missouri in 2012. The state voted overwhelmingly for Santorum but the final delegate count was 31 delegates for Romney while Santorum got 13.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Standing as the man that even Republicans can’t stand but the RNC says they have to vote for. Now that’s a winning ticket.
Anoniminous
@Mustang Bobby:
At this point I don’t see how JEB! wins. I’m not predicting he will win. All I’m saying is don’t count the obnoxious little shit out.
Another Holocene Human
I wish 9% for JEB! was a statement about his popularity in Florida but sadly it’s more because the FlaGOP is splitting their vote amongst nuttier offerings such as Ben Carson. FlaGOP primary voter is very Tea Party’d up. The sad thing is when the Dems can’t muster the turnout to beat them in the general.
There are also still more moderate GOP voters than you’d think. I don’t know if they split tickets for president or vote crazies for president and moderates for state offices and US Rep and Senate. They do vote for ideologues (and just bad at their jobniks) like Pam Bondi (Florida AG, anti gay, anti Obamacare, flubbed the Trayvon thing), so who the hell knows. Just pointing out that it’s complicated.
The right wingers haven’t succeeded in slitting the throats of the moderates yet although they are trying really hard with these new district maps. What should happen is that the Dems should take those seats. But it’s Fla Dem Party so who knows. The new chair seems like a really tough fighter with a vision. I feel much more confident that stuff will happen than with Rod Smith who just came off as demoralized and distracted. (He had a job in Gainesville doing worker’s comp cases, of which there are MANY, small industry, so no wonder John Morgan jumped in to fill the vaccuum.)
Baud
@Anoniminous:
Maybe Jeb! will win the nomination without winning a single primary.
I wonder if the Supreme Court will get involved.
Another Holocene Human
@Anoniminous: Welp, that’ll end well.
Santorum’s base were geriatric old timey Christians who shuffled off into the good night when the party sent them away. Trump? Ah, not so much.
Amir Khalid
I suppose if you’re rooting for Jeb in this cycle, the only relief for the pain you must be suffering at his ineptitude must be obliviousness to it. For all anyone knows, Jeb might indeed be the last Republican candidate standing. There was certainly little else to distinguish McCain in 2008 or Mitt in 2012 from their competition.
I don’t buy the argument that Donald will fold just because he’s a hollow candidate. The Republican field is all hollow candidates. The guy does think he’s as qualified to lead America as anyone else, and he’s been no worse than his competition so far.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Why would they? Nobody’s entitled to vote for a party’s candidate. That’s why it’s called the “preference primary”. They can pick their leader in a back room.
Maybe a tax lawyer can step in. Non profits are required to have certain governance structures by IRS code but each type of non profit does have different requirements. If the Silly Party has a board that’s elected by members yadda yadda, that may be all that’s required to maintain non profit status. Nor do they have to file to be a non profit. They could operate as an LLC.
And while parties compromised with the states to get those primaries on the ballot there is no way for a state to force a party to even seat their delegates. I know this because: Fannie Lou Hamer. Or 2008 when Florida got cut out for moving their primary date early.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: 2008 is a better argument than 2012. In the 2012 cycle, there was this long period when various clown-car Republican candidates had their turn and flamed out, but through the whole business Mitt Romney was never doing worse than a strong second place. He waited them out.
Mustang Bobby
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve been back in Florida for 15 years and I have a better chance of seeing a Florida panther (the feline version as opposed to the hockey team) than I do of the Florida Democratic Party. They’re a myth, and if they keep running candidates like Charlie Crist, a used Republican, for governor, the FlaGOP could run Teddy the Wonder Lizard and win.
Robert Sneddon
@Anoniminous: That’s it pretty much. Like Senator Clinton, Governor Bush has the professional establishment of their party supporting them, the folks who organise the caucuses and votes at the state and county level, the ones who head up the GOTV effort for primaries and the general election. They know Trump (and Sanders too) don’t have that support and won’t get it, at least in the whole-hearted way the Establishment picks do. In 2008 the Obama team had to build an entire nationwide shadow organisation to match Senator Clinton’s half-hearted run for the nomination and even so it was close in the end as the establishment machine picked up a lot of the later states for Clinton.
The money they raise is important for the candidates that don’t have that establishment support but it’s not the real key to getting the nomination, it’s a way of staying afloat until the real decisions get made in the run up to the caucuses and to keep their names viable in the eyes of the establishment foot-soldiers who will work for them later.
David Koch
Monmouth University Poll — National Oct 15-18
Trump………………28%
Carson……………..18%
Cruz………………..10%
Fiorina………………6%
Rubio………………..6%
¿Jeb?……………….5%◄
Keep fucking that chicken, Murphy.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
I was kidding about the Court. I hope the GOP pulls some shenanigans to get Jeb the nom.
@Mustang Bobby:
I don’t know why no one can take the bull by the horns and fill that power vacuum.
Baud
Happy Back to the Future Day!
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid:
McCain had fabled crossover appeal. This was well known, and GOP voters gambled that he could beat the Democrats. And he might have if not for Sarah Palin. Crucial point.
After the election, GOP primary voters were angry and disgusted and swore they wouldn’t vote for a squish they hated again.
Mitt prevailed because a) beating Obama would be nigh impossible, and all other serious candidates knew this. Mitt drank too much GOP koolaid. b) literally everybody else out there except Santorum, who was drinking his own koolaid, was grifting. I mean, Santorum was grifting too but he was actually running. The problem is that except for religious extremists nobody liked him. c) Once again, many GOP voters thought Mitt would be an Obama-killer. Not sure why they thought this, but they expressed this notion frequently.
Again, they lost, again they swore they wouldn’t vote for somebody they hated again.
The current field is clown city but JEB! is far less competent than McCain at campaigning (that should be obvious), and of course, there’s Trump. Somebody who plays the media like a fiddle as well as firing up the 27%. Carson is taking Santorum’s former demo, which turns out to be bigger than JEB!’s
JEB! is so bad at campaigning that not even the most delusional GOPer can tell themselves that he can beat the Democrats. It may have looked that way last year (hence Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi) but it doesn’t look that way right now.
David Koch
You do need money to win the nomination, but money, alone, can’t buy you the nomination.
In 1980 John Connolly raised the most money, not Reagan, and he won a grand total of 1 delegate.
In 1996 Phil Gramm raised the most money and didn’t win a single delegate.
In 2008 Giuliani raised the most money and didn’t win a single delegate.
In 1964 the mega-rich Rockefeller raised the most money and lost to a deranged Trump-like kook.
¿Jeb? is going down and he’s going down hard.
amk
@Another Holocene Human:
Another big point in fav of donald dreck is that he has been riding the polls since September without dumping actual money on ads, which is exact opposite of ¿Jeb ? (h/t david koch).
Robert Sneddon
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m beginning to detect a pattern here… Whoever gets the GOP nomination is guaranteed about 45 million votes in the Presidential election, regardless of what the rock-ribbed super-patriot freedom eagle liberty GOP voters have said about the candidate in the past. Invoking the Magical Balance Fairy, die-hard Marxist Commie liberal Sanders supporters will go out and vote for Senator Clinton in the election despite their protestations today because, reasons.
From the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human:
C’mon, who wouldn’t think that Mitt, a Self Made Man ™ and Master of the Universe ™ couldn’t beat the Affirmative Action President ™ ?
Mustang Bobby
@Baud: It’s tough to find a candidate who can win in Democratic strongholds like South Florida (Miami-Dade and Fort Lauderdale) and still appeal to the voters upstate. North of Orlando the state is basically Lower Alabama. When I was in Lakeland last weekend, a city half-way between Tampa and Orlando, I saw plenty of Confederate flags on pick-ups and “I’m With Ben” stickers. Sen. Bill Nelson is the only state-wide elected Democrat, and he’s about as middle of the road as you can get without being a dead armadillo.
The Democrats vying for the open Senate seat that Rubio is vacating are Patrick Murphy, a Republican-turned-Democrat, and Alan Grayson. Grayson is already out with attack ads on Murphy. Oy.
Gindy51
Unlike McCain and Romney, John Ellis Bush has his brother’s legacy of shame hanging around his neck. The more John defends George, the lower he goes in the polls.
Kay
I don’t think you know until some more drop out. It seems like Walker’s voters went to Trump but I think the Carson/Cruz people are the fundie Christian part of the GOP base- that’s who they are here, anyway. Are they going to Trump?
ThresherK
Jeb reminds me of so many toddlers and infants who, by dint of blood, succeeded to various princehoods and dukedoms in the Middle Ages on the death of an adult.
And all the adults in his party are already dead.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Did Walker ever even have supporters in significant numbers? I seem to recall he was polling at “near enough zero as makes no diff” when he quit.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby:
The party once was an alliance between northeast liberals and southern segregationists. I find it hard to believe current divisions are more difficult to overcome.
Easy to say, I guess.
benw
@Robert Sneddon: I can assure you that me and the other die-hard Marxist Commie liberal Sanders supporter will totes vote Clinton in the general.
SANDERS/LIZARD 2016
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: I know I should be nodding along, as I know that GOP voters thunk this one, but I personally can’t get over Columbia-educated UC (UC!!) professor on the one hand, and the guy who got his tail beat by Ted Kennedy with one hand behind his back on the other hand.
Mitt Romney: my biggest idea in government was spraypainting barrels on the Esplanade to show Boston who was boss.
NonyNony
@Another Holocene Human:
I thinks you mean “the economy going to shit right in the middle of his campaign, followed by his unforced error of ‘suspending’ his campaign to deal with the crisis, and generally behaving like a fool who didn’t know what he was doing throughout the general election campaign. Also singing ‘Bomb, bomb Iran’ and thinking it was funny”.
McCain made a metric fuckton of missteps in that campaign. His choice of Palin gets the blame by the media because they love curmudgeonly John McCain and think it’s a shame that he lost, so they want to pin the blame on the obvious grifter. But almost every single choice he made in that general election campaign was a bad one – Palin was just the cherry on his shit sundae of decision making. He was unlikely to win based on the economy turning to shit anyway, but a better “moderate Republican” who didn’t have such poor judgment could have probably made it a closer race.
@Kay:
They will go to whoever wins the Republican nomination. If it’s Trump, they’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for him. It won’t be the first time they’ve voted for a womanizing charlatan who says what they want to hear (see 1980) and it won’t be the last.
That said – if Carson and Cruz both drop out of the primary race and it gets down to a choice between Trump, Rubio and Jeb!? They’ll vote for Trump or stay home.
@Anne Laurie
Reading this as if it refers to our local Jeb! supporter makes me laugh.
David Koch
They just dumped 1/4 of their war chest on ads and according to PPP’s weekend poll ¿Jeb? is a 9 measly percent while Trump is at 28%
The more exposure, the more he tumbles.
Another Holocene Human
@Mustang Bobby:
Because of course he is. That’s who Grayson is. I hope to hell voters see through his stupid act and send him back to Disney World.
Patrick Murphy is not as eloquent as Grayson, no. He came from construction and Grayson was a trial lawyer. But he is the real deal. He also beat Allan West. Grayson can’t say that. When Grayson had a tough election, he made like Mitt Romney and lost big.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
I think he started really strong in Iowa but you’re right, by the end he was single digits. I just think some of these other people have to drop out before anything becomes clearer. Fundamentalist Christians were George W Bush’s most loyal supporters in 2000 and 2004. If Jeb can get them plus the GOP money people/wealthier voters that’s the Bush base right there, and that’s enough for a primary.
benw
@Baud: Great Scott!
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: The divisions are cultural and organizational.
The Dem machine in the South is based on counties. So they don’t need the rest of the state. The rest of the state does its own (spotty) organizing.
Pensacola/Santa Rosa is red, but the concentrations of red and blue voters are moving geographically and there has been serious D organizing activity there in the last few years.
Tallahassee/Leon County is bright blue, with good organizing. They pulled an upset putting Gwen Graham in the House.
Gainesville/Alachua County is consistently blue and has its own, fairly isolated county/city (they’re combined) organizing apparatus. The GOP is weak and calls in reinforcements from the fratty, nasty Jax GOP.
Marion County has seen unprecedented union organizing activity and the unions just weighed in on a close city election. There is a vein of Black voters in the county which have been sliced off into Corrine Brown’s district but that’s likely to change.
Jacksonville is VERY religious. The city itself is showing an ability to elect Democrats but they are conservative. Outside the city is deep red. Another problem is Jax is a lot of corruption within the civic unions.
St Augustine goes Dem.
Port St Lucie is majority minority or close to it.
And then there’s Central Florida. They have exploded in size and will probably be generating their own candidates soon. Large Puerto Rican and otherwise West Indian communities, South Asian communities, & non Florida native US newcomers. Spanish is the widely spoken 2nd language.
South Florida seems to ignore everything north of Yeehaw Jct. That’s a problem.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
I just think the religious base of the GOP primary electorate would align with Bush over Trump and they’re probably not happy with Trump attacking W. They absolutely loved W. I think that’s why Carson is polling so well. If Bush sticks it out and gets most of that crowd then it’s really competitive Trump v Bush and Bush will make his electability argument for the general. Moral superiority of the candidate is really, really important for that part of the GOP base. It’s almost the only thing that matters. I don’t know if Trump meets the “he’s a good man” standard :)
Patricia Kayden
@David Koch: In the super duper unskewed poll, Jeb! is actually at 90%. We just don’t know it yet.
@Amir Khalid: “I don’t buy the argument that Donald will fold just because he’s a hollow candidate.” Agreed. The only reason Trump will drop out is if he starts losing big primaries. Otherwise, he’ll go all the way (to a resounding defeat against the Democratic nominee).
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Thanks for the rundown. Parochial Democrats really stick in my craw.
SRW1
Is that why RtR bhas gone into hiding!?
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: My god, how can you watch Joe every morning without slitting your throat?
amk
42 percent of Republicans expect Trump to win nomination.
¿Jeb ? snags 4th place with a yuuuge 7%.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/trump-abc-wapo-poll-214993#ixzz3pCdOrYf0
Robert Sneddon
@Kay:
It’s perhaps simplistic but I think many GOP supporters love a good story, they don’t care too much whether it’s true or connected to reality in any way. Black hatted villains and white hatted heroes, underhanded and unscrupulous opponents, fear of the monsters under the bed or The Other. Yes that is a bit childish but in part it is a childhood mindset, including the idea that the best times are past despite the evidence.
The GOP candidates are telling stories — build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, the Others are taking our stuff, guns everywhere will make us bulletproof. Of course the stories don’t make sense but they’re being told to an audience that reads chain emails proving Barry Soetero was a foreign student and welfare queens suck down six-figure sums from the poor oppressed taxpayers. The level of grift perpetrated on these folks by evangelical leaders and political manipulators sucking up billions of dollars each year is proof that a well-told story will do the job every time.
It doesn’t help to try and knock down these emails, to argue reality or point out the lies, like kids they’d rather believe in Santa Claus than not, that Barack Hussein Obama is not an American citizen, that the End Times are just around the corner, there’s no anthropic global warming effect etc. etc.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
But it was a very STRONG near-zero.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: His wife hides all the knives.
Sherparick
Something to keep in mind is that Republican electorate has changed over the years. They have been marinated in the magical thinking of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levine, Laura Ingraham, Fox News, and the hundreds of local clones on talk radio across the country. They hear their preachers every Sunday rail against the wicked homosexual agenda, abortion, and how their “religious liberty” to oppress gays and women is being undermined. This has been going on for 25 years, and after Obama got elected, it went into hyperdrive, funded by some of very plutocrats who are now astounded that Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz are getting 60% of the Republican electorate. This credulous and poorly informed mass movement in our population is also seething in resentment. They have seen their principal property asset, their homes, lose 25% of their real value the last 10 years. Their wages are flat and declining in real terms. Their white and heterosexual privileges within society are under threat. And a Black guy is in the White House. A McCain or Romney may have been acceptable in 2008 or 2012, but they lost to a Black guy. What losers! And JEB! seems like a complete loser to them (a weakness that Trump has spotted from the get go). Digby, as she so often has hits the nails on the head.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/trump-is-not-political-leader-hes-cult.html
lol
So Murphy’s plan is predicated on the premise that Jeb! is the only one with an “oxygen tank” to last the whole primary season and he’s already setting the expectation that they’ll lose a bunch of states? The problem, of course, is that he’s running against a man who makes his own oxygen.
Don’t get me wrong, the RNC establishment will fuck over Trump by any means necessary so that he’ll never get the nomination (See the delegate shenanigans described above from 2012) but that’s a lot different than the idea Jeb! can win on his own.
Kay
@Robert Sneddon:
It’s just central to them that their candidate be better than the Democrat on the things they value – the “good man” set of qualifications, so a man (because it has to be a man) who uses the specific language of fundie Christianity, “loves his family”, makes bold and difficult decisions even if liberal elites jeer, is sure of what he believes and never wavers….
That’ll be doubly important versus a Clinton because they really did believe the Clintons had no “values”. They can’t really run that moral superiority scenario with Trump.
Sherparick
@Another Holocene Human: Another problem in Florida is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. I get it that her base of power is fund raising from New York snowbirds who come down to Florida. Socially liberal on abortion and gay rights, neoliberal on economics, almost Likudink on foreign policy , and tone death on the political interests or cultures outside the New York City – Miami Beach axis. And because she has big time fund raising cred, used that fund raising cred to tie herself to both Clintons and Obama, she has made herself the DNC chair, a job she is woefully incompetent at. She has not built a state wide party in Florida, so little surprise that she has presided over Democratic catastrophes nationally outside of the 2012 Presidential election, where she had no role except to write checks.
OzarkHillbilly
@Robert Sneddon:
They certainly seem fond of The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: If so, that sounds like Ben Carson to me. He’s actually a Seventh-Day Adventist, but he can slip into conventional Protestant fundamentalist talk as needed.
The question is whether “our black guy who says comforting things about race” overrides “black guy”. I suspect it actually does, that a majority of modern American racists really like to be flattered about how they’re not racist, but prognostications vary.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: They will invite that guy to the party but they’ll never let him pick the food cause they just don’t like watermelon that much..
Betty Cracker
@Sherparick: I agree DWS hasn’t been a very good DNC chair, but it’s not her job to build a state party.
boatboy_srq
Naturally, there’s the presumption amongst the VSP crowd that anyone not one of us is some lowbrow usurper. The attitude is totally unsurprising – and totally ineffective. HEB! isn’t running for God-King of the Very Serious People, he’s running for POTUS, and that position isn’t won by the Most Deserving but by the person who is elected by the populace (however indirectly). One presumes John Q Adams felt similarly about that presumptuous hick Andrew Jackson, and look how 1828 turned out.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Right, but I don’t think it will be Ben Carson because that’s just a slice of the GOP base. They are important though. All you have to do is look how much time and energy DC Republicans put into anti-abortion and “religious liberty” posturing. If that part of the base goes to Bush he’s okay v Trump and then the “holy shit, it can’t be Donald Trump” people will weigh in.
Applejinx
@groucho48:
Nope, nope, nope. Since when do they care about positions? As long as Trump WANTS to be the nominee, he will be. If for any reason he stops wanting that he’ll take his ball and go home.
His ‘tell those washington peoples the ugly truth and watch them squirm and cry!’, dare I say, ‘trumps’ any real policy consideration no matter what it is. As long as he’s beating up on Mexicans, he’s in. Or really, more like ‘as long as he’s doing whatever the hell he wants to do and saying outrageous non-PC things no matter what they are, he’s in’.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
One would think in a sane world a primary would be more than a test of who has more cash. What Murphy is ignoring is it appears the GoP voters don’t like Jeb at all and that makes Jeb a dead on arrival candidate when his backers buy the nomination. The base was meh on Romney but they didn’t loath him.
Botsplainer
@ThresherK:
Ah. A walking, breathing mediocrity, in so many words.
daddyj
Mama’s Boy. I think that is why moon-faced Jeb can’t get any traction: that is the vibe he emanates.
It probably doesn’t help that Mama is Beautiful Mind Barb, the Mrs. Squeers of American politics.
Applejinx
Because Clinton triangulates, and we’ve already successfully turned Clinton into Sanders Lite and convinced her that’s the new normal. She won’t turn all neoliberal if she thinks that’s legacy poison. It was fine in the 80s but now it’s poison and she’ll avoid it purely on self-interest.
Also,
So you’re saying, Bernie Sanders. Do you realize that if the Republicans do get rid of Trump and run Bush, Bernie not Hillary is the most electable Dem? Hillary won’t get pissed-off Trump voters because she is so utterly not ‘unwavering outsider man who says what he thinks’, but Bernie is literally all of that, to a fault.
I’m pretty sure that if we’re specifically against Bush, either Bernie or Hil could win but Bernie is more electable.
If we’re against Trump, we could probably still win with Bernie and it’d be a hell of a ride, but the prudent thing might be to make Hillary act just like Bernie and then win with her. The important thing is to keep the progressive heat on, not so much to convince Hillary progressive ideas are RIGHT, but that they are POPULAR. She’s going to go for what she thinks America wants. Hil against Bush will act quite differently from Hil against Trump. With Bernie it’d be exactly the same.
That’s why Bernie people would vote Hil if that turns out to be how things lay: we’re creating her. She’s fake, but President is partly a figurehead anyhow, symbolic and representative. We’re making her represent what Bernie represents, and we’re succeeding.
Applejinx
Just as an aside:
Donald Trump can make a TWEET and have establishment politicians blow millions of dollars on frantic advertisements mentioning Trump’s name and saying boo! hiss! We are the establishment and we hate Trump, he’s awful, fuck that guy! They’ll blanket the airwaves with it, they’ll get personal, it’ll be all Trump all the time. boo, hate, grrr!
Trump can TWEET and not only lock up the news cycle but set the tone of questioning and cause the opponents to spend advertising money that only heightens his outsider cred. If it’s not happened to the tune of millions of dollars, it will.
That must be SO god-damned fun. I hereby crown Trump King of Tweets.
Most ultimate tweet possible in all of history? If Bush somehow forces Trump out and prevents him from getting the nomination, and it’s up to Trump to sue, run third party etc…
Trump: “Fuck it. I’m voting Bernie”
Nothing would ever beat that tweet. Five most influential words in human history, if it went down like that. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
NotMax
Wouldn’t be at all surprised if, right now, deep in the bowels of the establishment G.O.P. hierarchy plans are being fomented to concoct a hook, however slim and flimsy, to use as an excuse to expel Trump from the party and remove his name from a significant number of the winner-take-all primaries.
“Who will rid us of this meddlesome political parvenu?”
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: Did you ever get to dive?
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: What do you make of the theory that Trump’s entire candidacy is an epic trolling cooked up by Trump and Bill Clinton? Of course, that’s ridiculous. But sometimes I think it just has to be true!
Fr33d0m
Remember back when it was Jeb! taking so long to say he was in?
It seems to me that one of the first things you prep for as a Bush these days is building a narrative on W’s catastrophic failure of an administration, and failing that, an avoidance strategy. Now I’m fully aware that building that narrative is difficult and avoidance is probably impossible, but if you’re smart enough to be POTUS, then you’re smart enough to know you have a massive black hole in the middle of your campaign, and smart enough to not hire the same foreign policy team, and smart enough not to say what Jebby has said so far.
Really, the smart thing to do was not run, but if your ego is larger than your brain, then there is no hope for you. (defines much of the field over the past and present)
Now I know that Repugnicon’s now largely believe W was a RINO, but a part of them has to cringe at both sides of this horrid theater, I cannot believe it does either Trump or Jeb! much good.
Bobby Thomson
@Anoniminous: McCain had a clue about campaigning. Jeb can’t give a speech without own goaling, and his ads reduced his support in NH. And no other candidate mocked McCain for sport.
Tim C.
Very very interesting…. an argument I’ve heard recently is that Rubio’s flirtation with immigration reform will make it impossible for him to gather up Trump’s supporters when…. (and bog help me *if*) Trump collapses. If the current trends hold, Iowa will be as important as it was in 2008 when Huckabee won. (translation: It won’t be important at all) New Hampshire will be when poop gets real. If Trump wins there… even with only about 30% of the vote, that will be when utter chaos begins to reign over all.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: I was there for months until I saw Bush campaign and saw how Republicans responded to Trump’s gaffes. Bush is looking a lot more like Fiorina did in her California race.
Tim C.
@Bobby Thomson: Agreed, remember also at this point in 2008, McCain was still pretty well liked by Republicans. He also had the advantage of being Bush’s most visible primary opponent in 2000 and thus was the least tainted by C Plus Agustus. Neither of those things are true for Jeb.
HRA
The Clinton Super Pac is out to personally destroy the committee today. This is insane. It does not matter to me whether a Congressional committee is made up of Rs or Ds. They still deserve the respect of the office.
OTOH Why is this necessary? I kept reading that HRC was very capable of dealing with it. Is that right or is it wrong?
Bobby Thomson
@Anoniminous: he has a nonzero chance, but I would put it a lot lower than it was.
SFAW
@Applejinx:
That tweet will happen immediately after I become young, good-looking, and with a full head of my own hair.
boatboy_srq
@Applejinx:
Just one more reason tRump, as a largely self-funded candidate, is way more powerful than any ALEC-approved-and-sponsored wingnut: not only do tRump’s campaign dollars go further in normal advertising, but his (essentially free) tweets are cause for Kochistan to pony up millions in advertising expenses. I’m betting Citizens United will get revisited after this cycle, since it allowed tRump to blow past all the Approved Candidates.
boatboy_srq
@SFAW: It’s 2015. Bald is beautiful. ,-)
Betty Cracker
@Tim C.: At this time in 2007, McCain was polling in single digits (Giuliani and the reverse-mortgage guy were both kicking his ass), and he was fully implicated in the C Plus Augustus fail parade as the administration’s tireless neocon spokes-curmudgeon on all the Sunday shows. McCain did have one advantage in 2007 that Jeb lacks in 2015; the media loved him.
Tim C.
@boatboy_srq: Yes. This. Citizen’s united, so far, has not been all that useful to the GOP. Beyond Trump, the biggest effect so far has been the GOP wasting enormous sums of cash and getting far less bang for the buck than they used to. It also has allowed pretty much any billionare who wants one to fund a candidate, regardless of what the RNC or even the Chamber of Commerce thinks is best. Finally, the number of campaign parasites on the right, defined as people who offer no benefit to a campain, but are more than willing to make some scratch of the rubes, has exploded.
Tim C.
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know if I agree fully with that. Absolutely right on the media love fest, but McCain had also carved out in 2007 some daylight between him and Bush. Namely opposing torture, albeit in a weak way. I think the Media allowed McCain essentially to have it both ways. He got the benefit of supporting the Iraq war from the base so he wasn’t in the Paul vortex, but at the same time, the media highlighted his differences. Also, and this may be more important. At this point both parties had interesting and competitive primaries and the level of attention paid to the GOP side was far less than it is this time around.
Hell, we are both in agreement on the big issues though. Jeb = Suck and 2007 =/= 2015.
Elie
@Matt McIrvin:
Carson has been chastised by the Seven Day Adventists in at least a couple of instances for his anti-muslim and other racists views. He may be an Adventist, but he is not representing the Adventist point of view — he is doing his own mix.
Elie
Hoo Ha — Biden just announced (on NPR) that he is NOT a candidate for President …
Tim C.
@Elie: Can we get a sad Trombone noise for all the big media people desperately wanting someone to come in and allow their Hillary hatred to have an avatar in Biden Time!
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: apparently Trump really loves his daughter. So there’s that.
I am much more jaded about Christian fundamentalists. It’s about hate, not morals. As long as Trump says the right slut shaming things about PP he’ll be fine.
Bobby Thomson
@Applejinx: this.
mclaren
@Robert Sneddon:
The Democratic candidates are also telling stories, and the Democratic stories also don’t make sense.
Fund more education and more out-of-work middle class people will get jobs — when the actual problem is that there aren’t enough jobs regardless of education. Have a more assertive foreign policy (Hillary) and terrorist attacks will drop — when the terrorist attacks are being caused by our already assertive foreign policy of drone-bombing wedding parties and murdering children with hellfire missiles. Raise taxes on the rich and economic inequality will vanish — when studies have shown that raising taxes on the rich will only reduce inequality by a percentage point or two, because the actual problem is that the economy of the top 20% is now sealed off from the restof the population by entry barriers like the Ivy Leage colleges, law school tuition, medical school tuition, and the cash requirements for becoming a car dealer or real estate developer.
Each new presidential candidate will supposed save us, and Hillary (the leading candidate) is a multi-millionaire, but Democratic voters are suppose to cough up more cash for these corporate-funded Democratic millionaire candidates. The level of grift perpetrated on Democratic voters by rich insiders like Debbie Wasserman Schulz is epochal, and despite all the dollars getting sucked up from middle class Democrats, the Republican continue to dominate 70% of the state elective offices. And yet the grift continues to work, because each election gets announced by Democratic party leaders as a “make or break” struggle that will destroy the country if Democrats lose.
mclaren
@Mustang Bobby:
Everyone agrees that Jeb! is going down the toilet. The argument right now is over the exact way in which he’s circling the bowl.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, come on! Then whose job is it?
DWS is starting to sound like Sergeant Schulz on HOGAN’S HEROES — “I know NOTHING! I see NOTHING!
The buck has to stop somewhere in the Democratic party. If not with Debbie Schulz, then who?
The Other Chuck
@Betty Cracker:
On the contrary, it’s precisely her job. There are precisely zero national at-large candidates, so state races are all there is, and if she can only specialize in one large state (NY) then she needs to delegate or step down. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. The jobs of holding the party together at the federal level go to Pelosi and Reid.
J R in WV
I’m glad Joe Biden chose not to run (so far). I like him personally (not that I’ve ever met the man) but not that much politically, as I’m not a financier type person.
But he seems like a good guy personally, and once he’s out of politics he can hang with the kids and grandkids, he can travel with his attractive and personable wife, and not worry about what the nation should do next.
Also, too, I don’t think he was going to be a lock to win the nomination, and if nominated, he is not a lock to beat the R’s candidate, whichever loon that is.
Applejinx
@SFAW: Want some nightmare fuel?
Trump, refused the Republican nom, tweets “Fuck it. I’m voting Bernie.”
Except… the Democrats are running Hillary and Bernie’s thrown his weight behind her as always planned, after totally reinventing her campaign for her. Now Trump comes along and says, write in Bernie! Screw all these establishment people!
D:
Pretty sure we’d still do okay, but the OPTIMAL scenario would be Trump kicking over his toys and going home that way, with Bernie as the Democratic nominee. If it becomes say Hillary vs Jeb, we have a very real problem because we’re completely dependent on continuing to believe that Hil can learn new tricks. Otherwise we’re only justifying the realities that have caused so many people to turn to Bernie or Trump or Carson, total outsiders.
A random Bernie endorsement from a sulking, quitting Trump under such circumstances, especially one trying to get both R and D voters to write him in, would be absolute fucking chaos. In that gamed-out scenario we’d be better off just running Bernie. I honestly don’t think Trump gives a shit about either of the Clintons to the tune of orchestrating a massive prank just to support them. I’m going to blame his run on narcissism, not on Bill Clinton, and if he does bail he’s at least as likely to endorse Bernie as Hil, just to sow chaos and make a giant HYUUGE fuck-you.
He sure ain’t endorsing a R. Either he is the nominee or he’s gonna be fucking with somebody as hard as possible, perhaps fucking with EVERYBODY as hard as possible. Consider the ‘fuck it, I’m voting Bernie’ scenario in that light. That would be truly an epic fuck-you to pretty much all of America, as well as the one most outrageous tweet that would ever be made.
Betty Cracker
@mclaren & @The Other Chuck: The DNC chair oversees formulation of national party policy and rules and coordinates distribution of national party resources with the state party organizations. It is not his or her job to build state party organizations from the ground up.
Aleta
Jeb can’t stop defending 9/11 because whipping up fear — “we’re under grave threats again” — and “was the place secure” “were we doing the job of protecting” in Benghazi”– is the theme he’s been assigned. It’s worked well in the past, and I wouldn’t underestimate it this time either, including against HRC. Fear is a despicable means of control. It’s the chosen method at all levels in the US now, and I find that …terrifying.
Fred Fnord
@Another Holocene Human: Well, sure. Patrick Murphy is a moderate Republican, so he was able to appeal to a lot of Republicans, and he was pretending to be a Democrat and was therefore able to appeal to Democrats. Some races, that really does work out well.
Of course, it moves the country to the right a little more every time it happens. But to a lot of people, including quite a few here, that’s a feature, not a bug. A lot of the Democratic party is trying like hell to get Democratic policies to look exactly like Republican policies of 20 years ago, before demographics destroy the Republican party and make it harder to move right.
Looking an awful lot like they’ll succeed, too. Not that the point isn’t moot, given that anyone likely to take the presidency won’t do anything significant about global warming, so in 50 years we’ll all be the same anyway.
Bitter Scribe
@raven: This is interesting. Exclamation Point and I went to the same prep school, and in fact, I did the math and he must have been a senior when I was a first-year student. I say “must have” because I have no memory of him. Not that I would. Seniors and first-year boys had no more interaction at that place than I imagine they do at most high schools.
But there was a Mike Murphy in my class. I was sure for a long time that it was the same guy because he was exactly the same kind of obnoxious, insufferable asshole when I knew him. But now I see this guy is about six years too young to be the same person. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved.