Government Executive - Authors - Josh Kraushaar

Trump Goes Back To the Future on Foreign Policy

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:40:05 -0400

Since World War Two, there has been a broad bipartisan consensus that America must play an active role in maintaining a liberal world order. Even if conservative hawks have been more eager to project force and liberal internationalists preferred diplomacy, there was widespread agreement that America had an essential role in protecting the peace and promoting shared interests. That consensus was threatened in recent years: first, by former President Obama’s instinctive opposition to project American power overseas; later, by President Trump’s aggressively isolationist “America First” rhetoric that captured the enthusiasm of a world-weary conservative base.

Trump’s decision to strike Syria in the wake of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical-weapons attack against his citizens suggests a belated return to normality. It’s a consequential moment in Trump’s presidency, since the president’s quick intervention was at odds with much of what he’s said for years about foreign affairs. In 2013, he slammed President Obama for considering military action against Syria. On the campaign trail, he consistently expressed a subtle admiration for authoritarian leaders. He frequently criticized George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq. But in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, he hinted that he was taking a new tack. “If the world changes … well, I do change, and I am flexible, and I’m proud of that flexibility,” Trump said.

Trump’s apparent volte-face also suggests that the more experienced hands in the administration—namely, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster—are gaining clout over those with more heterodox views on foreign policy, such as Stephen Bannon. And Trump’s limited use of force in Syria won the support of our close allies, once-critical hawkish senators such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and even the grudging support of leading Democrats in Congress. Politically speaking, it showed there’s a broad consensus for strong American leadership—even if it’s triggered by a Johnny-come-lately like Trump.

Obama was the opposite of Trump: facile with words, but flaccid with his actions. He gave a stirring national address on the need to hold Syria accountable for using chemical weapons, but never did anything to punish Assad. Just before leaving office, he bragged about breaking the foreign policy establishment (a group he claimed prefers “militarized responses.”) His leading foreign policy adviser, Ben Rhodes, famously dismissed the bipartisan roster of foreign policy experts in Washington as a “blob” for “whining incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Obama’s deep popularity with an increasingly anti-war base reoriented the Democratic Party in his image. The Obama White House staff was filled with ideologically driven loyalists eager to translate the former president’s norm-breaking vision into practice.

It’s ironic that Trump is routinely (and legitimately) faulted for norm breaking while his predecessor’s open contempt for bipartisan foreign policy traditions was largely overlooked. What’s even stranger is that a chastened Trump is the president who is the one bringing America closer to its bipartisan foreign policy roots.

TRAIL MIX

1. Rep. Ann Wagner is stepping down as the National Republican Congressional Committee’s finance chair, the clearest sign that she’s preparing a run against Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. Wagner helped the NRCC raise nearly $36 million in the first three months of the year, an impressive haul considering her statewide ambitions.

If she runs for the Senate, she’d become the party’s top recruit for the 2018 midterms. Wagner represents a suburban St. Louis seat, has a track record of raising the millions necessary to challenge a sitting senator, and would add some needed diversity to the GOP’s Senate caucus. (Of the 52 Republican senators, only five are women.)

McCaskill had the good fortune to run against blundering Republican Todd Akin in her last election; she was headed for defeat if Republicans had nominated a more competent challenger. Missouri has only gotten more conservative since 2012, handing President Trump a 19-point victory in last year’s election. Unlike her red-state Senate colleagues, McCaskill was an enthusiastic surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, giving Republicans plenty of fodder to use against her in the upcoming campaign

2. The Cook Political Report published its annual Partisan Voter Index this week, complete with a must-read analysis by House-race editor David Wasserman. The most important finding: The number of swing districts has consistently shrunk over the past couple of decades. Only 72 of the 435 House seats are rated competitive (PVI of R+5 and D+5), less than half of the number of swing seats (164) in 1997. In the past four years alone, the number of swing seats has declined 20 percent.

But Wasserman wrote that ideological self-sorting—not gerrymandering—was the main culprit for the decreasing competitiveness. People are either choosing to live alongside like-minded people, or are changing their partisan views to conform to the prevailing views of their neighbors. Wasserman found that a whopping 83 percent of the swing-seat decline stems from “the natural geographic sorting of the electorate,” while just 17 percent comes from gerrymandering.

It’s another reminder that line drawing isn’t why Democrats have been unable to win back control of the House for the past three elections. The obstacles for the minority party are real, but the solution to regaining a House majority is to win over more moderate voters—or perhaps rely on Trump’s unpopularity to do the job for them.

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How To Measure Trump’s Performance

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 10:00:00 -0500

For Senate Republicans, these are heady times. Against expectations, they maintained control of their majority and are virtually guaranteed of keeping control of the upper chamber after the 2018 midterms, thanks to a favorable map. With at least 11 Democratic senators in their sights—and only one or two Republicans to defend—they have dreams of a supermajority.

But the optimism of the transition period is soon going to collide with the reality of Trump’s polarizing presidency. The incoming president is alarmingly unpopular even before being sworn in, with just 40 percent of voters viewing him favorably in two new polls. Midterms traditionally run against the party in power, which would make it easier for vulnerable Democrats to argue that they provide a necessary check on his administration. Republicans are facing renewed opposition to repealing President Obama’s health care law, a messy undertaking that is fraught with political risk.

One indicator is worth watching closely for a sign of the GOP’s health in the Trump era: Will ambitious House Republicans, many of whom are in safe seats, look for a promotion to the Senate? Will they bet on voters looking to reward Trump’s first two years with more allies in the Senate, or will they hunker down in the House, fearing a backlash against the president? Any backlash would be fierce, and these members would stand to bear the brunt of it. But in the red states where Trump won big, up-and-coming representatives are apt to run for the Senate whatever the polls say about the president.

“There are three types of [Republican] congressmen: The largest group gets excited to headline a Rotary breakfast in their district; the second group, which is a bit smaller, want to be on Fox News; and the smallest but most important group are the ones who want to be a senator,” said one senior GOP strategist. “They may say they love the House, but the reality is it’s a lot better to be a senator.”

In seven of the 11 states where Democrats are defending Senate seats, GOP representatives would be obvious choices to mount challenges. Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has already met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss a campaign against Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. In Wisconsin, Rep. Sean Duffy is considering a bid; he would provide a populist contrast to liberal Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Democrats are already circulating opposition material against Rep. Pat Meehan, concerned that the suburban Philadelphia congressman could challenge Sen. Bob Casey. Flush with over $2 million in her campaign account, Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri is as prepared as any Republican to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill. Her intentions seemed clear when she stepped down from two House leadership positions after last year’s election.

The list of prospective recruits goes on: Rep. Barbara Comstock, fresh off a hard-fought reelection, would be a compelling opponent against Sen. Tim Kaine in Virginia. Rep. Evan Jenkins is one of several Republicans mulling a challenge to Sen. Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia, the most Trump-friendly state in the country. And several House Republicans from Indiana are eyeing a race against Sen. Joe Donnelly, considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats.

These members’ decisions will tell us a lot about the emerging political landscape. Republicans were able to exceed expectations in 2016 because their coalition of business-friendly conservatives and populist Trump supporters held. In swing Senate races, the GOP candidates ran exceptionally well in the traditionally friendly suburbs while Trump ran up the score in working-class small towns. To the Democrats’ dismay, swing voters didn’t hold congressional Republicans responsible for Trump’s campaign behavior. But that dynamic is bound to change once Trump becomes president.

Next year, Republican challengers have the benefit of a favorable map, but the burden of defending Trump’s record. Tying red-state Democrats to Obama will be tougher now that he’ll have passed from the scene. Repealing Obama’s health care law, as popular as it sounds in red states, could run afoul with enough working-class whites who could end up losing benefits. Meanwhile, Heitkamp and Manchin are strong retail politicians with a long record of winning over voters across the aisle in their small states.

Just look at Montana GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke, viewed as the logical opponent against Sen. Jon Tester in 2018. Despite personal lobbying from McConnell to run for the Senate, he decided to accept Trump’s offer to become secretary of the Interior instead.

For swing-district House Republicans (such as Comstock and Meehan), there will also be cross-pressures from within their party. Their departures would risk ceding their seats to Democrats at a time when the House is more ripe for turnover than the Senate. They’d be running in states that have traditionally backed Democrats, against incumbents who are personally popular. They’d have to be awfully confident that the political mood is still against Democrats, with Trump in charge.

There’s one way for Republicans to hedge their bets on Trump’s political impact. At a time when politicians are viewed so negatively, maybe the tried-and-tested route from the House to the Senate isn’t the smartest strategy. Running as an outsider would be the best way to dodge scrutiny on controversial votes and the taint from Washington.

After all, such a strategy would be consistent with Trump’s own campaign message of draining the swamp.

(Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore)

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Senate GOP Could Check Trump

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 15:44:35 -0500

In working to get his agenda passed through Congress, President-elect Trump faces an inconvenient reality: Republicans will hold just 52 seats in the Senate (assuming they win a December runoff in Louisiana), their narrowest majority in the upper chamber since George W. Bush’s first term. This means individual GOP senators could block or delay President Trump’s appointments and policies.

During the presidential campaign, many GOP senators needed to stay on Trump’s good side to win election. But the political leverage shifts during the next two years. Only eight Republican senators, compared to 25 Democrats, are up for reelection in 2018, a remarkably low level of exposure. Most now have the political space to stand on principle, rather than having to toe the GOP line out of electoral necessity. Trump will need every vote he can muster from a Republican Party that has been notably fractious over the past decade.

The big question, then, is: Will Republicans flaunt their independence in a Trump administration, scuttling unqualified Cabinet picks and rejecting policies they deem ill-advised? Or will they act more like Harry Reid’s Senate Democrats during the Obama administration, largely voting in lockstep to support the president’s agenda, even when his proposals lacked public support?

There are clear signs that Republicans are already feeling their oats. Sen. Rand Paul publicly announced that he wouldn’t support Trump loyalist Rudy Giuliani or hawkish John Bolton as secretary of State, single-handedly scuttling the odds of the two early front-runners for the plum position. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham have been outspoken in their opposition to killing the filibuster even though it would be in their party’s short-term interest to do so. “I’m one of the biggest advocates of the filibuster. It’s the only way to protect the minority, and we’ve been in the minority a lot more than we’ve been in the majority,” Hatch told The Huffington Post.

A significant contingent of Republicans will monitor the Trump administration’s relationship with Moscow to ensure that the party’s muscular foreign policy toward Russia and other unfriendly countries remains intact. Sen. Ted Cruz will keep a sharp eye on Trump’s Supreme Court pick and raise an unholy ruckus if the president fails to nominate a conservative jurist. Paul, who is sure to be a thorn in the administration’s side, will have enormous leverage when the party needs a unified caucus to get legislation passed. Fiscal hawks will take a hard-eyed look at Trump’s big-ticket proposals.

In light of that, Trump’s selection of Elaine Chao as Transportation secretary was a canny political move. His expensive infrastructure plan could run into a wall of GOP opposition. But by picking Mitch McConnell’s wife to head the department responsible for allocating infrastructure funds, Trump would put the majority leader in an uncomfortable position if he cries foul. As Graham put it: “Christmas at the McConnell household sure will be interesting.”

In any event, it’s naive to expect Republicans to automatically do President Trump’s bidding. The political paths to victory for Trump and Senate Republicans were a lot different. Trump set Republican records for support in white working-class areas across the country, particularly in the Midwest. He ran ahead of GOP Senate candidates in these strongholds.

However, in the affluent suburbs, Trump performed poorly. Sen. Pat Toomey ran 6 points ahead of Trump in the Philadelphia suburbs, while Sen. Ron Johnson ran 8 points ahead in the pivotal Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha County. Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, Rep. Tom Price, represented a suburban Atlanta district that gave Mitt Romney 61 percent of the vote in 2012. Trump barely won with just 48 percent.

These affluent, typically Republican voters won’t be looking for trade wars with China or crackdowns on immigration. They’ll be providing Republican senators with the political support to challenge Trump when he diverges from the traditional conservative consensus. Trump will have his own arsenal at his disposal—a bully with a pulpit, a Twitter following of more than 16 million, and his own base of loyal supporters—but he also is saddled with historically high negatives for a president-elect.

Democrats, meanwhile, need to distinguish between when Trump picks unqualified nominees and pursues unpopular legislation and when he simply does things that any conservative-minded president would do. It’s telling that many liberals loathe Mike Pence, a principled social conservative, as much as they dislike Trump. They’re reserving as much anger for school-choice advocates (such as Betsy DeVos) and Obamacare opponents (such as Price) as they are for appointees with checkered histories. If Democrats keep their powder dry for moments when Trump overreaches, they may find they’ll have some alliances of convenience across the aisle.

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How Hillary Clinton Could End Washington's Gridlock

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 09:38:08 -0400

For those only paying attention to the nasty presidential race, it’s easy to conclude the campaign won’t foreshadow an era of good feelings in Washington. But the conventional wisdom that presumes gridlock is the new normal is wrong. If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and faces a closely divided Senate and GOP-controlled House—the most likely outcome—it would be in everyone’s political interest to cooperate and compromise in the president’s crucial first year.

Given her pragmatic instincts and productive working relationships with many top Senate Republicans, Clinton would have a rare opportunity to govern from the center following a general-election campaign in which she’s been reaching out to moderate Republicans. Unlike President Obama, who inherited a Senate supermajority in 2009 and faced a once-in-a-lifetime window to pass through a wave of liberal legislation, Clinton would need to build up her political capital and work with an opposition party that would be trying to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of Donald Trump.

Just consider: For the first time since 2008, an insurgent wave of primaries against moderate members of Congress never transpired. Clinton has warm relationships with many Senate Republicans, and has pledged to improve relationships with Congress on the campaign trail. To maintain power, Clinton would need to cater to the interests of her party’s most conservative members in Congress. Republicans and Democrats even demonstrated a rare bit of bipartisanship to pass a short-term spending bill covering funding for the Zika virus and the Flint water crisis, averting a government shutdown.

Here’s why a Clinton presidency could lead to an era of good feelings in Washington:

1. This year’s congressional primaries suggest the influence of the Republican Party’s uncompromising conservative wing is waning. It’s the paradox of this election: In the year when Trump engineered a hostile takeover of the GOP, establishment-minded Republicans cruised to victory in their own primaries. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who received a high-profile challenge from a Trump acolyte, won with a whopping 84 percent of the vote. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose approval with the base is low back home, still won by a 12-point margin against a tea-party-aligned opponent. Business-friendly groups spent money to defeat Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a key leader in the House Freedom Caucus, helping elect a moderate who supported spending to help his district’s agricultural interests. The only congressional Republicans to lose primaries were ones challenged from the center or ones threatened by redistricting. Very few candidates tried to run on Trump’s coattails, even when he appeared to be in a competitive presidential campaign.

For all the talk that Trump could lead the party into ruin, it’s more likely that he co-opted the disruptive energy of the tea-party movement and will later leave it for dead. He’s winning over the same voters who railed against President Obama’s government spending even though he opposes reforming entitlements. The party’s conservative factions will have a hard time calling for pure principle after embracing a nominee who is as RINO as they come. Meanwhile, the conservative movement’s icon, Ted Cruz, is now a wounded politician without a natural home, hated by the establishment and mistrusted by many of his old fans for waiting so long to endorse Trump. He was pressured to do so out of fear he could face his own primary from a more-moderate challenger, Rep. Michael McCaul.

So if Clinton wins, she’ll find a chastened, more pragmatic opposition with a bit less fear of its right flank than before. If she makes a serious attempt to win back some blue-collar whites with an agenda designed to promote their economic interests (funding a wave of technical schools, as an example), she could find some willing partners across the aisle desperately looking for a way to engage Trump’s constituency without catering to its bigotry.

2. If Clinton wants to hold the Senate in 2018, she’ll need to focus on the interests of red-state Democrats. For all the talk that Clinton will be held hostage to the Democrats’ left-wing, Elizabeth Warren-led faction, the political reality is that she’ll lose the Senate if she veers too far to the left and doesn’t promote an agenda acceptable to red-state voters in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and West Virginia. In 2018, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, and Joe Donnelly will be up for reelection in states that Trump will likely carry by comfortable margins. All will face very challenging reelections, and will need a politically healthy Clinton to have a chance at winning.

Unlike Obama, who moved the country leftward at the expense of his allies in Congress, Clinton’s record suggests she will be more eager to build relationships in Congress and rebuild the bench of the Democratic Party. That starts with the 2018 midterm elections.

3. Control of the Senate could hang in the balance in Clinton’s first year. If Clinton wins the presidency and the Senate is divided 50-50—a very possible outcome—Republicans would have an early chance to deliver a blow to Democrats thanks to a special election for Tim Kaine’s Senate seat. In all likelihood, the race would be held in November 2017, giving Clinton an early battleground-state referendum of her first year in office. In an evenly divided Senate, the race would be awfully consequential and receive national attention.

Virginia has a long track record (with one notable exception, in 2013) of voting for the out party in its statewide elections held the year after the presidential race. To reverse this tendency, Clinton will need to show she’s capable of ending the gridlock that has defined Washington. And as Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and Terry McAuliffe can attest, playing to Bernie Sanders’s left-wing base isn’t the ticket to winning the affluent swing voters in exurban Washington who are crucial to carrying the Old Dominion.

4. Incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is a (liberal) pragmatist, while outgoing Leader Harry Reid is a bomb-thrower. Schumer is no pushover, but he understands that Democrats won’t hold control of the Senate if they rely only on the fickle Obama coalition of nonwhites and millennials. (In midterms, that formula has been a disaster.) As head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2006, Schumer specifically recruited Democrats in red states who didn’t all hold the same views as the national party. He publicly broke with the Obama White House on the Iran nuclear deal, earning the administration’s wrath. He led support for the 9/11 lawsuit bill, putting its political popularity ahead of serious objections from the diplomatic community and the White House. (Reid was the lone Senate vote in favor of upholding Obama’s veto.)

Reid, by contrast, has loyally done the administration’s bidding even when it cost him his gavel as majority leader after the 2014 midterms. His steady stream of personal insults against Republicans has played a role in the poisonous relationship between the two parties in the upper chamber. He fashions himself as a savvy tactician, but his vaunted political machine is struggling to put away Trump and GOP Senate candidate Joe Heck in his home state.

5. Obama is an ideologue, while Clinton cares more about the political bottom line. In the past when I’ve written that Obama’s ideological blinders and resistance to compromise have played a key role in Washington gridlock, it reliably generates heated blowback from the president’s supporters.

A Clinton presidency would offer an important test of the thesis: Which side is more responsible for the gridlock? Many political incentives would be in place for cooperation. Clinton wouldn’t be in strong political position to offer a laundry list of liberal policies in her first year. Republicans badly need to show that they’re capable of governing. If Republicans refuse to compromise no matter the circumstances, it would prove that they’re beyond saving. But don’t be surprised if we enter a surprising new era of cooperation with new leaders in charge come 2017.

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Clinton Wins Debate, But Did She Win Over Voters?

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 10:18:36 -0400

Hillary Clinton demonstrated a command of policy on Monday night, and a cool confidence that she was more prepared than Donald Trump to be commander in chief. By the end of the first presidential debate, Trump looked peeved and distracted. He didn’t get in a clever one-liner to defang Clinton’s criticisms. The media’s focus groups of undecided voters (on CNN and FOX) rated Clinton as the clear debate winner.

But when it comes to the political impact of the first debate, don’t expect the fundamentals of this competitive race to change much. Trump, despite his cavalier attitude beforehand, demonstrated a seriousness that was lacking throughout the Republican primary. He didn’t resort to immature insults, relying instead on prepared talking points. Most importantly, while he struggled to advance many of his arguments, his overall criticism of the administration’s handling of ISIS and the Iran deal, along with his references to racial unrest and rising crime, have the potential to win over undecided voters. Voters may credit Clinton with her knowledge of specifics, but many are closer to Trump on instinct.

At a time when Americans want change, he came close to passing the admittedly low threshold of looking like an acceptable commander in chief. At the same time, he missed many opportunities to hit Clinton on her biggest political vulnerabilities—the Benghazi scandal, her personal email server, her support for sanctuary cities, and her close ties to Wall Street firms.

Polls later this week will determine whether Clinton received a bounce from her performance. But given the fundamentals of the race—voters believe the country is on the wrong track, and are looking for a credible alternative—Trump can probably leave Long Island feeling he escaped the bout without suffering a decisive blow.

Clinton put Trump on the defensive about his taxes, while avoiding similar questions about the security of her email server. As a candidate who needs to energize her party’s African-American base, she landed punches against Trump over his support for the “birther” movement. And her most effective line of the night was one that underscored her readiness for the job. “You criticize me for preparing for this debate,” she said. “And, yes, I did. Do you know what else I prepared for? I also prepared to be president.”

But the debate also served as a reminder that many of the issues in this election favor Republicans. Trump got off to a solid start by demonstrating his populist credentials on trade, forcing Clinton to defend her flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. His repeated argument that the Obama administration’s premature withdrawal from Iraq allowed ISIS to metastasize is bound to ring true to many voters. Clinton’s defense of the Iran deal was well-prepared, but Trump’s argument that the U.S. paid $150 billion to a terror-supporting state is tough to counter.

If a more articulate Republican had been on the stage last night, he would have been able to more effectively prosecute these glaring Democratic vulnerabilities. But Trump scored points by simply bringing the issues up. It was also his first one-on-one debate, and he’s apt to be more formidable in the next two if he’s able to keep his cool even as he zeroes in on Clinton’s weaknesses.

In a normal political environment, Clinton would be well on her way to the presidency. She still is the favorite in this race. But the same people who dismissed Trump on Monday for demonstrating a more refined version of his candidacy so far are overlooking why his plain-spoken message resonated in the first place.

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Bill Clinton Tries to Humanize His Wife With a Political Love Story

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 09:57:45 -0400

PHILADELPHIA—History was made here Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton breaking the proverbial glass ceiling to become the first woman presidential nominee in American history. But it was Bill Clinton’s closing convention speech that stole the show.

He made the kind of case for Hillary Clinton that only he could, offering a self-deprecating reminiscence of their courtship in college, her work as an aspiring civil rights activist, and her devotion as a mother. His goal was to portray his wife as an agent of change even though she’s as established and experienced as any politician in Washington.

The big question was whether Hillary Clinton, whose favorability ratings are at dismal levels, could be humanized by one 45-minute speech from her husband. And would the sanitized, PG-rated story of the Clinton marriage really persuade undecided voters, especially those familiar with Bill Clinton’s publicized adulteries?

Bill Clinton’s argument relied on professional accomplishments from her distant past. “She did more positive change-making before she was 30 than most do in a lifetime in office,” he said. He dwelled on her college years and early career, while glancing over her decades in public life as a secretary of State, senator, and first lady. At a time when voters can’t stop thinking about tomorrow, making the case for Clinton’s early years instead of her recent record in public office only underscored how retro her candidacy is.

Clinton also dared his listeners to choose which version of reality they believed—the fairy-tale marriage that he outlined, or the story of a corrupt, incompetent secretary of State that Republicans told at their convention. “How does this square with what you heard at the Republican National Convention? One is real. The other is made up,” he said. The truth is that neither reflects reality.

I expected Bill Clinton to make a stronger case for Hillary Clinton’s record in political life, beyond the rushed and scattershot examples he offered. The speech was more notable for what he didn’t say than what he did. He didn’t talk about how she would govern. He barely mentioned her credentials on national security. He didn’t defend her from the GOP’s strident attacks about her support for regime change in Libya and handling of the Benghazi attacks.

That wasn’t his goal Tuesday night. Unlike his effective 2012 convention speech making the case for President Obama’s record, he took a more personal touch for his wife. He figured it would more effective to speak to Hillary Clinton’s character, while Obama—her boss—vouches for her record when he speaks at the convention Wednesday.

But if voters are going to buy the virtuous gloss Bill Clinton put on his wife, they will have to overlook charges of financial chicanery at the Clinton Foundation, as well as the scandal over her private email server and her many evasions in defending it. As always, relying on a Clinton to make the case for character will be a dicey proposition.

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On Convention’s First Night, Bernie Sanders and His Supporters Upstage Clinton

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 10:00:54 -0400

PHILADELPHIA—Hillary Clinton was greeted as an interloper at her own convention, at least judged by the chilly reception she received on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Amid a hacking scandal that exposed the Democratic National Committee’s bias towards Clinton during the primaries, Bernie Sanders delegates were in no mood to support their presumptive nominee. They booed in loud disapproval any time her name was mentioned at the outset of the convention’s festivities.

What followed was surreal. Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a liberal lion of the House when he served, was booed lustily when he arrived on stage. Rep Marcia Fudge, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, pleaded with the delegates for respect and not to shout her down. Even the pastor offering the opening invocation was drowned out when she mentioned Clinton’s name.

Welcome to the Democratic National Convention, which is shaping up to be as tumultuous as the GOP counterpart in Cleveland—pitting angry, vocal Sanders delegates numbering in the hundreds against the more-subdued establishment forces wondering what hit them. As the night wore on, Clinton’s supporters grew more energized, but scattered boos from Sanders’s allies continued. The party dispatched comedian Sarah Silverman, a Sanders supporter, to try to humorously defuse the tension. “Can I say something? To the Bernie-or-bust people, you’re being ridiculous.” During Elizabeth Warren’s speech lambasting Donald Trump, several dozen of Sanders’s boosters saved their ire for the progressive senator, shouting: “We trusted you.”

Sanders made a valiant effort to unify the fractured party, arriving to roaring applause and thousands waving blue “Bernie“ placards. He could barely start his own speech, being overwhelmed by the volume of his supporters. “Let me thank the 13 million Americans who voted for the American revolution, giving us the 1,846 pledged delegates here tonight.… I look forward to your votes in the roll call tomorrow night!” he began. He made several references to his own revolution before he even mentioned Hillary Clinton. It’s quite possible he received a louder, more rapturous reception than the Democratic presidential nominee will on Thursday.

But after a lengthy windup, Sanders finally offered a gracious endorsement. “Any objective observer will conclude that—based on her ideas and her leadership—Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States.” As he continued to mention Clinton’s accomplishments, the Bernie die-hards continued to murmur their ire.

There was much that Hillary Clinton could be thankful for tonight. First lady Michelle Obama gave a stirring case for Clinton’s candidacy, while also picking apart Donald Trump with carefully-crafted warnings. “When we go the polls this November, that’s what we’re deciding—not Republican or Democrat … but who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of our lives,” the first lady said. “There’s only one person I trust with that responsibility: our friend Hillary Clinton.”

The first lady landed a few more blows against Trump. On his grim view of America’s current predicament, she rebutted: “Don’t ever let anyone tell you this country isn’t great. It’s the greatest country on Earth.” And she not-so-subtly questioned whether he had the temperament to be in control of the nation’s nuclear codes. “When you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips … you need to be steady and well informed and measured.”

For this to be a successful convention for Clinton, she needs to hope that the loud and significant progressive members of her party got their anger out of their system on Monday. With President Obama, former President Clinton, and newly-minted running mate Tim Kaine, there’s good reason to believe the best is yet to come for the Democratic nominee. But not if Bernie Sanders’s die-hards have anything to say about it.

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For Trump, It’s Not Morning In America Anymore

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 10:12:55 -0400

CLEVELAND—Donald Trump’s closing speech at the Republican convention was one of the most pessimistic pieces of political rhetoric in recent history. Most candidates, even in times of turmoil, try to make the case that hope is on the way. Trump’s speech, by contrast, offered a litany of bad news so dismal that voters must conclude that any change is necessary—no matter what the consequences.

Trump constantly complained about the nation’s ills but failed to prove why Americans should entrust him to be commander in chief. He closely stuck to his prepared remarks in delivering his address—the longest in modern television history—but it lacked the Trumpian charm that often wins applause for his populist outbursts.

The speech suggests that Trump and his advisers are misreading the national polls showing the public’s deep dissatisfaction over the direction of the country. They seem to think that he can win simply by positioning himself as the candidate against the status quo.

Trump’s goal should have been to outline what he’ll actually do in the White House—especially since a long parade of Republican speakers had already laid out the case against Hillary Clinton. Instead, he chose to wallow in voters’ misery, listing all the Obama administration’s failures on foreign policy, crime, trade, and immigration (just to name a few), while offering few specifics about his own policies. Even his self-described “plan of action” contained mostly rehashed attacks against his Democratic opponent.

“Nobody knows the system better than me, and that’s why only I can fix it,” Trump said. “Things have to change—and they have to change now!” he intoned later. “We are going to defeat the barbarians of ISIS,” he proclaimed. But outside of his can-do bluster, there wasn’t even a hint of how he would do these things—never mind that can-do optimism defines most successful presidential campaigns.

Take Trump’s lines on foreign policy. He hit many familiar notes about the country’s growing weakness under President Obama. But in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, he struck a decidedly out-of-the-GOP-mainstream view by rejecting America’s role as a protector of global security. He expressed discontent with America’s unequivocal commitment to the NATO alliance and suggested that the U.S was morally unable to tell other countries how to conduct their own affairs.

He only briefly alluded to these points in his speech Thursday, leaving a lot of questions about how radically he would reorient America’s foreign policy. He rejected the “failed policy … of regime change” to attack Clinton, not mentioning that such interventionism was a staple of George W. Bush’s foreign policy as well.

This was also a speech betting that voters are worried about a rise in crime, reflected by his repeated references to being the law-and-order candidate. “The first task of our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities,” Trump said.

He overlooked the fact that America is a much safer and stable country than it was when he was in his early 20s, when the country was wracked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, riots in scores of cities, and protests against the Vietnam War on college campuses.

Trump is betting that the level of fear and anxiety now is comparable to those turbulent times, even as the country’s crime rate remains historically low and race relations are much better than they were in the 1960s.

He also railed against illegal immigration to an extent rarely heard at Republican conventions, implying that lax border security was responsible for a crime wave. Trump mentioned his famous wall only in passing, but his rhetoric was as charged as ever.

He denounced the “barbarians” of ISIS but offered no ideas on how to stamp them out. He also bemoaned the recent spate of police shootings, but again offered no prescriptions, other than showcasing his respect for law enforcement and bashing President Obama’s handling of race relations.

Trump needed to win over GOP-friendly constituencies that have stubbornly opposed his candidacy—in particular, college-educated whites and Republican-leaning women. It was hard to see how his speech accomplished that.

It’s not morning in America anymore, at least if this Republican candidate reflected the views of the broader public. Clinton will face her own challenge next week at the Democratic convention, needing to defend the status quo at a time when the public thinks the country is on the wrong track.

But Trump failed to make the case that he can provide the kind of leadership to “make America great again.”

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Cruz Roils GOP Convention With Last Stand Against Trump

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 08:49:20 -0400

CLEVELAND—It was sabotage night at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday.

Trump’s rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, used his prime-time speaking opportunity to deliver a conservative stemwinder distinguished by his refusal to endorse the GOP presidential nominee on stage. “Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution!” Cruz inveighed.

The Trump family, sitting in the VIP box, stared stonily at the podium. They’d avoided applauding for Cruz throughout his speech. Boos starting circulating throughout the arena. One woman sitting in the club level started screaming repeatedly: “You say it!! You say his name!” at the top of her lungs. Minutes later, she was escorted out of the arena. Cruz smiled at the pro-Trump New York delegation, standing in front of the podium, acknowledging their anger.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” said Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, his mouth agape as he witnessed the chaos on the floor. Cruz was making his pitch for the 2020 Republican nomination right in front of his hated rival. Unlike Trump’s other 15 presidential opponents, Cruz (as he has done throughout his career) refused to go along with the flow, putting his ambition ahead of any forced solidarity with Trump. This time, his obstinacy may be remembered more vividly than his numerous nihilistic clashes with congressional leadership. Cruz is the last man standing against the Trump juggernaut.

Then, in a scene reminiscent from a World Wide Wrestling event, Trump walked into the arena as the boos towards Cruz cascaded through the arena. It was a real-life representation of the two wings of the Republican Party clashing at this convention—the Trump wing and the Cruz wing. Cruz left the stage, making a new series of enemies, as Donald Trump’s son, Eric, prepared to make the case for his dad.

As if on cue, the Jumbotron began flickering. Eric Trump delivered his speech with the scoreboard lights flashing and dimming across the arena. His line about the infrastructure at home crumbling could have been a reference to the electricity at the Quicken Loans Arena. Donald Trump sat in the VIP box without much of an expression. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, standing in the back of the box, slowly paced around as the chaos unfolded in front of him. Eric Trump’s speech, a heartfelt tribute to his father, was overshadowed by events out of his control. After Eric finished, his father stood up, whispered to Ivanka, “I’m leaving,” and exited with minimal fanfare.

Newt Gingrich, who has taken on the role as Donald Trump’s “explainer,” then tried to calm the roiling hall with a deft improvisation. “Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution,” he said. “… So, to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of the United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket.”

But this night will not be remembered for Gingrich’s plea for party unity, nor for the nomination of Mike Pence as vice president. Pence delivered a compelling defense of conservatism, laying out the case against liberalism in the Obama era with hard-hitting one-liners. He delivered a workmanlike speech, making the strongest case for Trump of anyone outside of the nominee’s own family.

But Pence was overshadowed by Cruz. It was textbook Ted Cruz. Either history will reward him as the lone Republican willing to challenge a nominee taking the Republican Party in a disastrous direction, or it will be the latest episode of a Republican who is willing to put his own ambitions ahead of his party.

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Republicans Slam Clinton, But Don’t Make the Case for Trump

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 10:05:14 -0400

CLEVELAND—When Pat Smith offered emotional testimony about how the government failed to protect her son during the Benghazi attacks, Donald Trump was calling into Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show to preview his speech at the convention. As Smith powerfully recounted Hillary Clinton’s unresponsiveness to her family’s plight, Trump attacked John Kasich, Ohio’s GOP governor hosting the convention in absentia.

This was “make America safe again” night at the Republican National Convention. But just as Trump has refused to cede control of his scattershot presidential campaign, his constant need for attention overshadowed some of the most compelling programming at his own convention. While the presidential nominee traditionally appears on the final night, Trump briefly emerged tonight to roaring applause to introduce his wife, Melania.

The convention’s schedule focused on Benghazi, illegal immigration, national security, and indictments of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. “Are you safer than you were eight years ago? Is our military stronger? Is America still respected?” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Michael McCaul said. In a well-received speech, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke intoned: “We simply cannot be great if we do not feel safe in our homes, on our streets, and in our communities.”

Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City on 9/11, was the star of the first night’s proceedings. He landed several scathing jabs at President Obama, compared his unifying rhetoric as a Senate candidate with the polarized reality of today. “What happened to ‘There’s no black America, there’s no white America, there’s America’?” Giuliani asked, mockingly. He was one of the few speakers to unequivocally defend Trump. “I am sick and tired of the defamation of Trump by the media and the Clinton campaign,” Giuliani exclaimed. He ridiculed Obama for refusing to call Islamic terrorism by its name.

But the sober indictments of Obama and Hillary Clinton were sprinkled with celebrity testimonials to Trump by ‘80s sitcom icon Scott Baio, soap opera regular Antonio Sabato Jr., and Duck Dynasty scion Willie Robertson.

Giuliani, former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn, and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas gave the most substantive speeches on national security, even though their hawkish views were at odds with the candidate who claims prescience for opposing the Iraq war. And all were overshadowed by Melania Trump’s closing remarks about—who else—Donald Trump.

The biggest challenge Republicans faced entering the convention was convincing a skeptical public that Trump can be presidential. In most polls, voters believe Trump is better equipped than Clinton to handle the economy and fight terrorism—the two most pressing issues facing the country. But overwhelming those small advantages is the fact that large majorities doubt he is prepared to be commander in chief.

The night’s proceedings made the case against Clinton, but did little to bolster Trump’s credentials.

Melania helped him the most in this regard, speaking to his love for America, loyalty to family and friends, and tenacity in business: “He will do it better than anyone else can, and it won’t even be close.” But the generic endorsement from his obviously biased wife won’t do much to alleviate the real concern voters have over his readiness for the presidency. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s family and friends offered numerous examples to bolster their case for his character. Melania’s argument amounted to: Trust me.

Even though Trump’s allies successfully squelched internal opposition at the convention, he still faced widespread skepticism from anti-Trump forces throughout the night. Most of the Utah delegation sat silently as speakers won enthusiastic applause throughout the arena. “The only way he’ll win over any Utah Republicans is by proving he’s not an authoritarian autocrat,” said Utah Republican delegate Casey Voeks, a small business owner. “Show me you’re not an autocrat!”

That’s the case that Clinton and her allies will be making in Philadelphia next week—that Trump is too unstable to trust with the country’s nuclear codes and too bullying to unite a divided country. He has three more days to convince the opposition that their attacks won’t stick.

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Why Gingrich Is Right for Trump

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 10:04:53 -0400

Now that Donald Trump is becoming more dependent on outside counsel for advice, he appears to be slowly morphing into a more conventional presidential candidate. And as he mulls over his options for a running mate, he’s being urged to pick Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the most boring, check-the-box finalist. Pence would indeed be the safe choice for Trump, offering an olive branch to shunned conservatives and raising the likelihood of a respectable loss.

But if Trump actually wants to win the election, he’d be best-served thinking outside of the box. In that respect, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would be the go-for-the-fences political choice—even though many establishment-minded Republicans view him as a manic, unpredictable talking head with an ego the size of Cleveland’s cavernous and now-demolished Municipal Stadium. What Trump needs, however, is a running mate who can translate his bluster into high-minded rhetoric. Just as Bill Clinton did for President Obama at the 2012 convention, Gingrich would be masterful as Trump’s secretary of “explaining stuff.” And his history fighting the Clintons gives him the credibility and political standing that others lack.

Pence, by contrast, doesn’t excel in any individual area. He’s in his first term as Indiana’s governor, but suffers from mediocre approval ratings and is at risk of losing his reelection bid. He boasts close relationships with evangelicals, but lost some standing with them after failing to pass religious-freedom legislation. He offered a lukewarm endorsement to Ted Cruz before the Indiana primary, a sign that he wouldn’t be the most effective or steadfast surrogate for Trump. At best, Pence is a respected, well-liked executive with ties to Washington who could unite all factions of the Republican Party. At worst, Pence will be a cipher because anti-Trump diehards aren’t about to change their minds.

The best choice for Trump would a nonwhite female officeholder from a swing state. But Trump’s campaign manager has shunned such advice as identity politics, and the most promising contenders already took themselves out of the running. So prospects such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez started out as personae non grata.

Since Trump is only looking at a narrow range of contenders, Gingrich offers a great deal of upside. He brings the Washington experience that Trump says he values, with the unpredictability that matches Trump’s personality. His penchant for contrarianism might be a headache for a more traditional candidate, but for Trump his presence on the ticket could add gravitas. In many ways, he is exactly what Trump needs right now. The mood of the country should favor the party out of power, but Trump is widely considered unsuitable for the presidency and he needs someone to shore up his weaknesses.

Gingrich’s detractors point to his low favorability ratings after he exited the Republican primary in 2012. But that was right after he was subjected to nonstop attack ads from the Romney camp without having the resources to fight back. Four years later, he’ll be in greater control of his own image. If he makes inclusive comments as he did about African-Americans’ perspective of policing, he’ll have a chance to turn around his own image and soften Trump’s rough edges. But if he rambles on about futurism instead of staying on message, he would risk being dismissed as a flake.

It’s not as if Gingrich’s rivals for the ticket are more popular. Pence’s job approval was a mediocre 42 percent in the NBC/Marist poll conducted before the state’s May primary, with 41 percent disapproving. (One rumored reason for his interest in the Trump ticket is the fear that he’d lose his reelection bid.) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is in worse shape. A recent Fairleigh Dickinson poll showed his job approval at 26 percent, with disapproval at 62 percent—even worse than Trump’s dismal numbers. Gingrich, being out of politics for several years, has a much more malleable public image.

The other unconventional option for Trump is picking a total political outsider, likely from the military. Former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn would give Trump some of the foreign policy credibility that his campaign badly lacks. But as a registered Democrat, Flynn’s positions on most domestic issues are unknown. In a bumbling interview on ABC’s This Week, he sounded supportive of abortion rights and gay marriage—nonstarters for much of the GOP base. Unlike elected officials, he’s barely been vetted, making his selection highly risky. It would be the equivalent of John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin in 2008.

Under normal circumstances, Gingrich wouldn’t be a go-to guy. At 73, he doesn’t fit the traditional profile of an up-and-coming political prospect. But this isn’t a normal election. Given Trump’s need for a Washington veteran and a creative communicator to offset his weaknesses, Gingrich would be the smartest selection for a highly unconventional candidate.

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Why Hillary Clinton Should Worry About Brexit

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:08:24 -0400

The outcome of the presidential election will hinge on whether disaffected voters believe it is a choice between two candidates or—like Brexit—a referendum on the direction of the country. Hillary Clinton holds advantages over Trump in nearly every way candidates are usually measured: She’s qualified for the job, she’s running a better campaign, and she has the temperament to be commander in chief. But if anxious voters want to take out their deep-seated dissatisfaction on a feckless and feather-nesting establishment—consequences be damned—Clinton should be running scared.

If there’s a parallel between the British vote to withdraw from the European Union and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it’s the disconnect between the elite and the people they represent. The vast majority of the British political establishment, mainstream media institutions, and transnational business class sneered at people who wanted to break from Brussels—an attitude disconnected from the sentiments of a majority of the public. Likewise, Trump’s heterodox views on immigration, globalism, assimilation, and trade are entirely at odds with the professional class in both parties, but they resonate with an ascendant populist constituency that has taken hold in 2016.

The demographic breakdown of the Brexit vote was remarkably similar to the contours of the presidential race. Older voters overwhelmingly supported withdrawing from the EU; they also make up Trump’s base of support. The working-class towns outside of London were the strongest bastions of Brexit. Likewise, Trump is still running competitively against Clinton because of overwhelming backing from blue-collar whites. The notion of “two Americas” (popularized by John Edwards, of all people) has never been more relevant.

The voters’ desire to give the proverbial middle finger to the governing class is why Trump—despite his gaffes, ignorance of policy, and erratic temperament—can’t be counted out. Focus groups show that even many Trump supporters have concerns about his ability to serve effectively as president. But they don’t care. On paper, a candidate running on Trump’s issues who understood the importance of putting together a professional political operation would be a potent candidate. But Trump’s unwillingness to take the job of running for president seriously remains a huge vulnerability. His decision in recent days to promote his golf course in Scotland instead of hammering home his own nationalistic campaign message was one of many political opportunities he has missed since locking down the Republican nomination.

Make no mistake: Politically speaking, Clinton is just about the worst possible Democratic nominee to run in these volatile, antiestablishment times. She hobnobs with the global elite, maintains close relationships with Wall Street honchos, has trouble connecting with working-class voters, and carries an air of entitlement. Polls show that voters don’t trust her and don’t much like her. She’s offering a status quo message to an electorate that thinks the country is headed off the tracks.

Trump made an effective anti-elitist case against Clinton in a speech last week. He charged that insiders like Clinton “wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money.” It’s a stinging indictment that goes after her biggest weakness. His problem is that he’s unable to sustain the argument on his own without a teleprompter.

TRAIL MIX:

1. The Florida Senate race has become a case study in Politics 101: Candidates still matter, even if it’s harder for them to distance themselves from their party these days. Sen. Marco Rubio’s entrance in the race alone significantly improved the GOP’s chances of holding the battleground Senate seat. But overlooked in much of the Rubio coverage was the record of his leading challenger—Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy. Needless to say, he’s not one of the party’s strongest recruits this cycle.

Miami’s CBS affiliate aired a devastating two-part series on Murphy this week, portraying the 33-year-old candidate as an empty suit without any qualifications to be a senator. It reported that he lied about working as a certified public accountant and being a small business owner, while exaggerating other parts of his résumé. It’s hard to imagine a more damaging investigative report on a prominent statewide candidate.

While it’s fashionable to insist that congressional candidates won’t be able win many crossover votes, there are plenty of exceptions to the rule—especially in the Senate. In 2010, GOP Senate candidates Ken Buck (Colorado) and Sharron Angle (Nevada) were so weak that they weren’t able to take advantage of the favorable environment for their party. In 2012, Democrats Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly were able to win Senate races in Republican-friendly states that Mitt Romney carried against not-ready-for-prime-time opponents. If Rubio were facing top-caliber competition, this race would be a toss-up. But he holds a distinctive advantage given his competition.

2. There’s a lot of talk that the politics of gun control fundamentally changed after the Orlando terrorist attack. Don’t bet on it. Here’s one sign: More Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018 broke with their party on one of four gun-related votes this week (Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Jon Tester of Montana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia) than did Republicans on the ballot this year (Mark Kirk of Illinois, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania). Many swing-state senators in tough races, like Ohio’s Rob Portman and Arizona’s John McCain, held the line against increased regulations on firearms.

It’s possible these Republicans are making a political miscalculation by siding with the National Rifle Association. But when vulnerable Democrats are also agreeing with the gun lobby, it shows that gun control isn’t quite the slam-dunk political issue Democrats want it to be.

3. The Pew Research Center uncovered a sobering statistic about the state of our political polarization: Only 8 percent of Democrats and 9 percent of Republicans are married to a spouse of a different party. AsThe Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reported, this is only a slightly higher proportion of people than are married to someone of a different race, according to a separate 2015 Pew survey.

That’s not all: More than half (55 percent) of Democrats say the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” while 49 percent of Republicans say the same about Democrats. Nearly half of respondents said discussing politics with someone they disagree with is “stressful and frustrating.” This is the state of American politics in 2016.

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Obama Floats Above the Malaise in His Job Approval Ratings

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 25 May 2016 10:13:13 -0400

On paper, 2016 has been a fairly tumultuous year for President Obama. The president’s senior foreign policy strategist, Ben Rhodes, admitted to spinning misleading narratives to sell a controversial nuclear deal with Iran. The economy continues to sputter along, with quarterly GDP growth advancing at its lowest level in two years. Obama’s own FBI director, James Comey, is sounding the alarm over a spike in violent crime in most of the largest U.S. cities. Most recently, the president issued a controversial directive requiring public schools to let transgender students choose the bathroom that fits their gender identity, sidestepping public debate or any congressional role in the decision.

Yet as the general-election campaign begins, Obama enjoys his highest approval rating in the past two years—49 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics average—while the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton continues to post historically awful favorability numbers. Obama is finishing his final year in office with Bernie Sanders-like concessions to the Left, while Clinton is moving to the middle and not getting any credit for it.

It’s one of the most under-examined paradoxes in our politics today. Even as most voters think the country is headed on the wrong track, Obama is floating above it all. The Teflon that insulated Trump from his myriad critics during the primary has protected Obama from the ups-and-downs of political life. Loyalty from his core base of millennials, African-Americans, and true-blue progressives has prevented his approval rating from falling below the low 40s—even at his presidency’s lowest moments.

It isn’t as if Obama has hit a political sweet spot by pulling the country to the left, in the way Ronald Reagan used his conservative vision to push the Republican Party to the right. After all, Obama’s party has suffered landslide losses in the past two midterm elections, and the two parties are running evenly on the generic congressional ballot. If Republicans had settled on a less-divisive candidate, instead of the most disliked nominee in history, it’s likely they’d start with a sizable advantage over Clinton.

A more concerning reason for Obama’s resiliency is that personality is more important than policy in today’s rapid-fire political environment—and the same factors that contribute to America’s celebrity culture are seeping into our politics. Consider: Obama’s approval ratings on the economy (42 percent) and foreign policy (47 percent) were underwater in last week’s CBS/New York Times poll, yet a majority approved of his overall performance. And how else do you explain Clinton’s favorability rating being around 15 points lower than Obama’s, even though she defends his policies? New college graduates are struggling to find jobs and race relations have worsened, but most disaffected Democratic voters are not blaming the president. Usually the outgoing president’s job approval sets the tone for the next presidential election. But it’s Clinton, not Obama, who’s bearing the brunt of voter dissatisfaction.

Obama’s mastery of media is a telltale reason that he’s been insulated from the grim mood of the public. The rapid changes in how voters consume news is having a major impact on their political outlook. Just a decade ago, most voters would pick up a daily newspaper, scan the headlines, and rely on a shared set of facts. Now in our micro-targeted media world, Americans are reading a more opinionated journalism that confirms their preexisting biases. Viral videos are more likely to resonate in one’s social-media feed than straight news reporting about the president’s foreign policy. As this month’s dustup over Facebook’s news algorithms has demonstrated, social media feeds are a more consequential gatekeeper of information than The New York Times.

That means when Obama’s top foreign policy adviser brags about the “echo chamber” he created in selling the Iran deal, he’s also benefiting from a changed media ecosystem in which Americans get the news they want, not all the news that’s fit to print. So even when Ben Rhodes boasts that he misled the public on the nature of the Iranian regime, the uproar was largely confined to insider or partisan circles, barely registering in the news feeds of those sympathetic to the president. It means that even though a plurality of voters oppose the president’s position on transgender bathroom access (46 percent to 41 percent in the CBS/NYTpoll), it’s the skeptics that end up receiving public mockery. It means that Comey’s worries about rising crime are relegated to the back pages, overshadowed by instances of excessive police violence.

No wonder we’re facing an election in which two sets of voters are operating under two versions of reality. Candidates who can build up a reservoir of loyalty from their supporters can withstand the damaging developments that badly wound lesser rivals. Obama and Trump have proven their Teflon while Clinton lost hers long ago. In her race against Trump, she must prove herself as sturdy as a cast-iron skillet.

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With Vote for Trump, Indiana Spurns its Conservative Roots

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 04 May 2016 10:18:33 -0400

Indiana has long been home base for conservatives. Mike Pence was one of the brightest conservative stars in the House before becoming Indiana’s governor. The last two presidents of the antitax Club for Growth represented the state in Congress. In 2012, antiestablishment conservatives scored one of their most consequential (if pyrrhic) victories when they ousted moderate GOP Sen. Richard Lugar from office. But on Tuesday, the Hoosier State offered an uncomfortable reality for principled conservatives: Their movement is in decline.

With a sweeping win that knocked Ted Cruz out of the race, Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. And with that, he proved that a candidate doesn’t have to adhere to conservative principles to win.

Trump was on pace to win an outright majority of the Indiana vote—in a region, the Midwest, where he struggled to top 40 percent in any previous contest. Exit polls showed him losing the most conservative voters to Cruz—but dominating among everyone else. He carried the upscale Indianapolis suburbs, where his populist message once seemed anathema, and won most counties in the state’s socially conservative northeast. He was in line to win all of the state’s delegates, putting him in position to clinch the nomination before the Cleveland convention.

Adding insult to injury for conservatives, a Cruz acolyte (Rep. Marlin Stutzman) lost badly to the party favorite (Rep. Todd Young) in the GOP Senate primary. Most of the same voters who cast ballots for Trump also backed the establishment choice for Senate. It underscored how Trump’s base of support is noticeably different than the tea-party-fueled insurgency that dominated Republican politics for the last six years. Trump may not be winning establishment Republican operatives in Washington, but he’s winning over Republican voters who typically back the most mainstream candidate in primaries.

In the weeklong run-up to the Indiana primary, Cruz employed every tactic to woo conservatives to his side—and it wasn’t enough to come close. He relentlessly attacked Trump for his position on the North Carolina law restricting bathroom usage for transgendered individuals. He tapped Carly Fiorina as a running mate to rally women behind his candidacy. His allies successfully pressured Gov. Mike Pence to endorse his campaign. And Trump even embarrassed himself on Election Day, offering a cockamamie conspiracy theory that Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. None of it mattered.

All signs are that most Republicans will be rallying around the Trump flag, however reluctantly, now that he’s clinched the nomination. With his victory in Indiana, he proved that the stop-Trump-at-all-costs movement makes up only a small (albeit influential) faction of the party.

Anti-Trump stalwarts had already begun to show cracks in their armor. In his endorsement of Cruz last week, Pence spent as much time praising Trump’s message as he did complimenting Cruz. Marco Rubio has called on the party to unite in Cleveland, even if that means embracing Trump. Cruz himself refused to rule out voting for Trump, even as the billionaire lobbed scathing insults about his family.

Tonight’s Indiana results confirmed that the tea-party movement that roiled Republican politics from 2009 to 2014 was as much about fighting against the party’s establishment as it was about reducing the scope of government. Indiana was the tea-party heartland in 2010. Six years later, it’s Trump country.

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The Lesser of Three Evils

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 15:00:00 -0400

Reality-check time: Donald Trump’s resounding victory in his home state of New York didn’t significantly alter his prospects for winning the necessary delegates before the Cleveland convention. He won 89 out of 95 delegates in his home state, not many more than expected. He’s still on pace to finish short of 1,237 delegates—and will need a surprising victory in Indiana or a resounding finish in California to alter that trajectory.

The haphazard scheduling of the calendar will likely create a false sense of momentum for both of the GOP front-runners. Trump will enter May with a hot streak if he sweeps the five Northeastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island) holding primaries Tuesday. That doesn’t mean he’ll be closer to clinching. In May, as the calendar heads west, Ted Cruz is well-positioned to win four of the five next contests. The only way the race will tip in one candidate’s favor is if there’s a true upset—for example, Trump losing Maryland or Cruz losing Indiana.

Cruz has failed to expand his appeal beyond his core base of conservative and evangelical supporters. His distant third-place finish in New York and expected weak showings throughout the Northeast underscore his campaign’s limitations. He’s not picking up Hill endorsements. But Trump also needs to show that he can win the majority of GOP voters in a state outside his comfort zone. His 60 percent showing in New York was the first time he’s won a majority in any state. That’s an important accomplishment, but it’s tempered by: a) his home-state advantage, b) few of New York’s registered voters are Republicans; c) the anti-Trump opposition held its fire because of the prohibitive cost of New York City advertising.

It’s worth paying close attention to the results from the Pennsylvania primary. Since 54 of the state’s 71 delegates are unpledged, it’s not likely to make a notable difference in the delegate count. But Trump could at least show he’s broadened his appeal by performing respectably in the moderate, affluent Philadelphia suburbs. Pennsylvania may also underscore John Kasich’s limitations. On paper, he holds the potential to do well in the western part of the state (he was raised in a Pittsburgh suburb) and in eastern regions (his centrist message is pitch-perfect for suburban Philadelphia voters). But his campaign’s lack of money and scattershot scheduling means his best-case scenario is a distant second.

Our back-of-the-envelope estimate has Trump with 1,160 delegates going into Cleveland, 77 short of the magic number. The problem for the anti-Trump forces is that his two GOP competitors are limping to the finish line as well. If the stalemate holds, the chances of an outside candidate emerging at the convention grow ever greater.

TRAIL MIX

1. In a story detailing the Republican National Committee’s fundraising challenges in a Trump-dominated universe, New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin revealed that the RNC is planning to create a fund that is specifically intended for Senate races—so donors looking to support down-ballot Republicans can do so without seeming to support Trump. One problem: The National Republican Senatorial Committee is the typical vehicle for such fundraising. That creates the potential for serious intraparty conflict.

Asked about the RNC’s newfound engagement in Senate races, a senior NRSC official told National Journal: “This is the first I’ve heard of anything like this. Nobody has talked with me about this.” Expect more intraparty conflict like this to come, especially if Trump emerges as the party’s standard bearer.

2. Chatter about Elizabeth Warren becoming Hillary Clinton’s running mate hit fever pitch last week. But if Clinton still needs to placate her party’s progressive, pro-Sanders wing even after clinching the nomination, it would be a sign of weakness as she moves into the general election. She’s got a golden opportunity to use her selection to win over the center, given that Republicans are most likely to nominate either Cruz or Trump. Picking Warren would be the equivalent of Cruz selecting Trump to unify the GOP’s antiestablishment wing.

The Clinton running mate recruit to watch? Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a swing-state Catholic who is well-respected on both sides of the aisle. It doesn’t hurt that he was a finalist to be Obama’s running mate in 2008 as well. Clinton could use a Hispanic or African-American running mate, but the pickings are surprisingly slim in her party. HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Labor Secretary Tom Perez are the most-mentioned names, but none have the resume for the second-highest office in the country.

3. The major takeaway from this month’s NBC/Wall Street Journal pollwas that Trump, Clinton, and Cruz would be the three most disliked candidates to emerge as their party’s nominee in the history of polling. But there were some other nuggets from the poll that illustrated the polarization in American politics.

First, the number of Americans believing the country is headed in the wrong direction hit 70 percent—the highest level since August 2014. The country is deeply divided on President Obama’s performance: 49 percent approve, 48 percent disapprove. Most of those who disapprove are strongly against him. But only 13 percent of respondents feel “very positively” towards Clinton, while Obama’s very-positive score is more than twice that (28 percent).

Second, despite the Republican party’s battered brand, both parties are close to parity on a generic presidential ballot. Forty-six percent of registered voters said they’d prefer to see a Democrat as the next president, while 45 percent said they’d vote for a Republican. But over one-third of Republican voters said they couldn’t support either Trump (38 percent) or Cruz (35 percent). Only 21 percent of Democrats said they couldn’t support Clinton.

Finally, the poll confirmed that the identity of the GOP nominee will go a long way in determining the competitiveness of the general election. Against Trump, Clinton leads by 11 percentage points, 50-39. Against Cruz, she leads by only two points, 46-44. And against Kasich, Clinton trails by a double-digit margin, 51-39. (In a hypothetical matchup, Paul Ryan would lead Clinton by 1 point—a sign that Cruz is not significantly less electable than the establishment’s favored son.) Clinton looks like the weakest Democratic nominee since Michael Dukakis in 1988. The main question for Republicans is whether they’ll put a cupcake in the ring with her.

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Scott Walker, Not Paul Ryan, Could Be the GOP's Cleveland Surprise

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 09:36:00 -0400

The buzz surrounding Paul Ryan as a GOP presidential nominee hit a fever pitch this week, after Politico’s Mike Allen floatedthe possibility of the House speaker emerging at a contested convention. But in reality, the Republican more likely to prevail in such a scenario is another Wisconsinite: Gov. Scott Walker.

Ryan brings several undeniable assets to the convention as a possible sleeper nominee: He’s well-known nationally, has the ability to quickly raise funds for a general election, comes from a working-class background, and has ties to both the establishment and the conservative grassroots. But for all his talents, Ryan has several major vulnerabilities as a compromise nominee.

For better or worse, he’s an outspoken advocate of the elite Republican agenda of entitlement reform, free trade, and tax-code overhauls that many Donald Trump supporters have rejected throughout the primary process. Turning to a respected Hill insider like Ryan will hardly placate the Trump supporters; it’s more likely to infuriate them. And if you take Ryan at his word, he doesn’t even want to be president. “I think you need to run for president if you’re going to be president, and I’m not running for president,” Ryan told talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Monday.

Walker, by contrast, openly harbors national ambitions. As Politico’s Scott Bland reported, the governor has continued to raise money and travel through the 527 organization used for his presidential campaign. He’s maintained a busy schedule outside of Wisconsin, raising money for the party and recruiting future gubernatorial prospects as vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Walker was painstakingly careful not to criticize Trump in his endorsement of Ted Cruz. It was a notable omission, since Walker’s original niche in the GOP field was as the candidate who could unite the blue-collar and white-collar wings of the party. He had used his cultural connections to win over blue-collar Republicans while touting executive experience and a record of busting government unions to win over upscale Republicans. His now-forgotten “shopping at Kohl’s” shtick on the campaign trail was a direct appeal to many working-class voters who have now sided with Trump.

With Trump suggesting that an outcome denying him the nomination is a usurpation of democracy, it’s also much easier to sell the broader public on nominating a Republican who participated in the presidential nominating process. Walker was a declared candidate for several months—and a perceived front runner—before dropping out in September 2015. It’s hard to see him turning down an opportunity to be nominated at a convention, given his long-standing interest in running for president.

Indeed, Walker conveniently predicted last week that an open convention would nominate a candidate who’s currently not running. When he dropped out of the race, he urged the party to coalesce behind a non-Trump alternative—a prescient call that few of his rivals heeded. It’s plausible that if his campaign had been better managed, and if he had demonstrated a better grasp of foreign affairs, he’d have been able to live up to his potential as the executive with working-class appeal.

After Trump’s decisive defeat in Wisconsin, it’s difficult to see how any Republican can clinch the nomination before Cleveland. Trump needs to win an outright majority of the vote in his home state of New York, sweep the Northeastern states in April, win Indiana’s pivotal May 3 primary, and finish strong in delegate-rich California. Cruz needs to demonstrate that his Wisconsin momentum translates into the Northeast, his most difficult region. John Kasich, who has no shot at winning a majority of delegates, simply needs to win somewhere outside of his home state to enter the convention with some momentum. The likelihood of stalemate has never been higher.

Cruz is currently lauding the breadth of his GOP support—getting Jeb Bush and talk show host Mark Levin backing the same candidate is one of his new favorite talking points—but he may soon find his newfound allies will become fair-weather friends if he can’t comfortably cobble together a majority of delegates at a convention. Even some of the uncommitted delegates whom Cruz’s campaign helped elect have said they’d consider other candidates after a first ballot.

But for another candidate to take advantage of convention chaos, it would take an outsider who would be an acceptable second choice for both Cruz and Trump supporters. Ryan is too much of a Washington insider. Mitt Romney is too close to the establishment. Marco Rubio is disliked by too many Trump supporters. Walker, who performed the feat of campaigning for Cruz while avoiding criticism of Trump, is one of the few Republicans left who fits the bill. Don’t be shocked if the candidate who played kingmaker in the Wisconsin primary could end up becoming king in Cleveland.

(Image via Flickr user Michael Vadon)

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Why Cruz Would Be Better for the GOP

Josh Kraushaar — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 10:45:55 -0400

This week, I wrote about the looming disaster that a Trump nomination would create for House and Senate Republicans, but I didn’t address the other elephant in the room: Ted Cruz. The conventional wisdom suggests that Cruz is only slightly more electable than Trump—with some party leaders viewing him as even more toxic than the front-runner. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham famously said picking between Trump and Cruz is like choosing between being “shot or poisoned” (even though now he says he’s on the “Ted train.”). But the reality is that Cruz, while a traditionally weak candidate, has a shot to win a presidential election against Hillary Clinton and would give leaders a fighting chance to hold their congressional majorities.

It’s easy to forget that most of the big-picture fundamentals favor Republicans in 2016. Most voters believe the country is headed on the wrong track, Clinton’s favorability numbers have been poor for many months, and there’s a natural desire for change after seven years of one party in power. Even as the Republican Party’s brand has been dismal, the generic congressional ballot has shown that GOP candidates do as well as the Democratic alternatives. This, despite the chaotic clown show that has defined the Republican presidential primary.

If Cruz somehow wins the nomination and presidential election, it won’t be because of his charm, ideological positioning, or ability to attract new Republican voters. It will be because the Republican base united behind him, swing voters couldn’t get behind Hillary Clinton, and the public continued to believe that the country was badly off track. This week’s gruesome terror attacks in Brussels won’t help matters for a Democratic Party whose base doesn’t view national security as a top-tier issue.

At the very least, Cruz wouldn’t be a drag on the party. He’d turn out the Republican base, try to use Clinton’s negatives to drive undecideds his way, and make a credible play for some Hispanic voters. For battleground Senate races, a Cruz candidacy means that Cuban-Americans would show up in south Florida, conservatives would rally behind him in the Milwaukee suburbs, and evangelical voters would be enthused in Missouri. That base-ginning alone isn’t enough for him to win the presidency—or even hold the party’s tenuous Senate majority—but it should keep enough vulnerable GOP Senate candidates within reach of winning their own reelections. And given the GOP’s partisan advantage in enough congressional districts, it’s unlikely that Cruz would cost Paul Ryan his speakership (unlike Trump).

Cruz’s main challenge, however, is winning the nomination without alienating Trump supporters. If Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination, odds are he’ll run kicking and screaming out of Cleveland and will lambaste the party’s eventual nominee. That underscores how damaging Trump’s candidacy has been to the Republican Party. There’s a good chance that the party will be irrevocably divided no matter who emerges from the convention. And if that’s the case, party officials will be looking to Cruz merely to hold down the damages.

TRAIL MIX

1. Sign of the times: A vulnerable freshman House Republican said he wouldn’t rule out voting for Clinton, if Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s surprising comments are a sign of Trump’s toxicity with Cuban-American voters, who traditionally vote Republican. A majority of voters in Curbelo’s district are Hispanic, and the redrawn seat he’s running for in 2016 is more Democratic than his current one. His statement comes less than two weeks after the Florida presidential primary, in which Trump lost the Cuban-American vote by 46 points to Marco Rubio.

Needless to say, if Trump can’t win over Cuban-American Republicans in Florida, it’s almost impossible for him to win Florida and its 29 electoral votes in a general election.

2. One of Trump’s favorite talking points on the campaign trail is his ability to compete in Rust Belt swing states that Republicans haven’t won for decades. His ability to rally low-propensity, blue-collar voters in the primary has even convinced some experts that he’d be able toredraw the electoral map. But there’s no evidence that Trump is any more competitive in the Rust Belt (or his home state of New York) than any other Republican.

Let’s look at the polling. This month’s Keystone poll of Pennsylvania voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 13 points (46-33 percent), a larger margin than her 10-point lead over Ted Cruz. A whopping 65 percent of Pennsylvanians view Trump unfavorably, with 56 percent holding deeply unfavorable views of him. Last month’s Marquette Law survey of Wisconsin voters showed Clinton leading Trump by 10 points, even as she trailed Ted Cruz by 1 point. The only encouraging Rust Belt poll for Trump was out of Ohio, where Quinnipiac found him leading Clinton by 2 in February but suffered from a dismal 35/59 favorability rating.

As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reported, Trump would have to improve on Mitt Romney’s margin of victory with blue-collar whites by double-digits in most Rust Belt states to have a shot at winning them—all while not losing any support from college-educated white voters. And for every voter that Trump may win over in Youngstown, Ohio or Macomb County, Michigan, he’d lose even more support among suburbanites in the Philadelphia suburbs and Columbus. Put simply, expecting Trump to run more competitively than Romney in the Midwest relies on fuzzy math.

3. A tale of two presidential insurgents, by the numbers: Trump has won 37.11 percent of the Republican primary and caucus votes so far (5,776,992 votes). Bernie Sanders has won 41.07 percent of the Democratic votes (6,447,450 votes). This, according to the indispensable Green Papers website, one of the top resources for tracking the nomination.

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Cruz and Kasich Are Playing Right Into Trump's Hands

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 10:02:39 -0400

Even as Donald Trump’s strong performance Tuesday night was a serious setback to the anti-Trump movement, the biggest obstacles to stopping Trump are his own Republican rivals. Instead of working together and denying Trump delegates, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have pursued self-destructive, self-interested strategies that seemed designed more to one-up each other than take on the front-runner in the race.

According to The Cook Political Report’s delegate scorecard, despite Trump’s successful night last Tuesday, he is now (slightly) off track to securing the 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch before the convention. And, according to the delegate math, Cruz and Kasich have no path to winning a majority. If both Cruz and Kasich are looking to deny Trump his necessary delegates (and press their luck with a contested convention), they should be coordinating to their advantage. Kasich would cede most of the Western states, with more-conservative electorates, to Cruz. Cruz, whose social conservatism doesn’t sell well above the Mason-Dixon line, would allow Kasich free rein in the Northeast battlegrounds.

Instead, we’re seeing Trump’s opponents employ strategies that mainly help Trump. Cruz spent valuable time in the campaign’s last week in Florida and Ohio, seeking to deny Marco Rubio and Kasich victories in their home states. (It had no impact: Kasich won comfortably; Rubio lost badly.) That time would have been much better spent in Missouri, where Cruz lost by less than 2,000 votes, or in Illinois, where Cruz could have secured more delegates with a stronger showing.

Meanwhile, Kasich is spending valuable time and campaign cash on ads in Utah, a state where Cruz is well-positioned to win big on Tuesday. But while Cruz would win all the state’s delegates with an outright majority, falling short of the 50 percent mark means Trump takes home 20 additional delegates. Kasich’s resources would be much better utilized in preparing for the round of Northeastern primaries on April 26, when Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island Republicans head to the polls. Kasich is well positioned to consolidate support with the region’s many suburbanites, and he has specific appeal in the Pittsburgh area; he grew up in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania (the son of a mailman, as his stump speech goes).

But instead of thinking strategically, Kasich and Cruz are behaving as if they have a logical shot at winning a majority of delegates. Cruz naively believes that, if the race were a one-on-one battle with him and Trump, he’d prevail. These assumptions are delusional. Cruz would likely lose badly to Trump head-to-head in the Northeastern battlegrounds, where his brand of conservatism is as disliked as Trump’s populist spiel. And Kasich is mathematically eliminated from winning a majority of delegates; it’s near-impossible for him to even come close to Trump.

Their path to victory lies in denying Trump enough delegates to have a majority entering the convention. The math shows such an outcome is very possible. The question is whether Trump’s rivals have the strategic discipline to pull of the task.

TRAIL MIX

1) The biggest fear among Republican operatives is that, if Trump wins the GOP nomination, around one-quarter of GOP voters will stay home and not cast ballots for downballot Republican candidates—a significantly greater number than those who would be drawn to the polls by Trump’s candidacy. It’s a much bigger concern than the prospect that a lopsided Hillary Clinton victory over Trump would carry downballot Democratic coattails. If close to one-quarter of rank-and-file Republicans don’t even show up to vote, not only is control of the Senate endangered, but fairly safe GOP-held seats in Missouri, Indiana, and Arizona could suddenly come into play. And control of the House, which until recently looked gerrymandered beyond Democratic control, would also be in play. Democrats would need to net 30 House seats to win back a majority. That’s exactly how many seats the party won in the 2006 wave, one that many Republicans didn’t see coming until it was too late to do anything.

That’s precisely why some party leaders believe having a third-party conservative candidate is something of a necessity with Trump as the nominee. Even if a split Republican Party costs them the presidency, getting enough GOP voters to the polls will be crucial with the Senate and the House both potentially in play.

2) For a third-party conservative candidate to have any chance of success beyond being a spoiler, he/she needs to bring three skills to the table: a) high name identification, since such a candidate can’t spend valuable time getting voters to know him or her; b) personal wealth and/or access to top donors; and c) ability to straddle the ideologically wide divide of Trump critics, from the establishment center to grassroots conservatives convinced Trump is a fraud. That’s hard for nearly anyone to accomplish under normal circumstances.

Many names have been floated, including Mitt Romney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn — all of whom have flaws as a third-party alternative. (Romney’s too establishment, Perry is too conservative, and Coburn is too unknown.) But the Republican who best fits the bill is House Speaker Paul Ryan. This week, Ryan furiously denied any interest in pursuing a candidacy at the convention. But he had been equally adamant that he would never run for speaker. If Republicans get to the unlikely point where none of the actual candidates could muster a majority, Ryan would be the only contender who’d have a shot at bridging the divide.

3) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be the most interesting politician to watch in the next few weeks, in the run-up to his state’s critical April 5 primary. He’s one of the few Republicans not to be damaged in the Trump tornado, since he dropped out of the race early and presciently warned that others should follow his lead to stop Trump. Walker has a chance to demonstrate his clout by rallying his state’s voters against Trump and endorsing a favored challenger. If he decides to endorse, Walker’s dilemma will be the same as other anti-Trump Republicans — deciding which alternative to rally behind. While Cruz looks like the strongest anti-Trump challenger nationally, he has limited appeal in Wisconsin, where only 37 percent of GOP voters are evangelical and fewer than one-third define themselves as very conservative. Kasich could well be the more natural alternative to anti-Trump Republicans.

And if Walker wants to run for president again in 2020, alienating Trump’s supporters would cause him problems down the road. Walker is one of the shrinking number of Republicans with appeal among the establishment and blue-collar populists. That didn’t do him any good in a race that Trump took over from the beginning. Whether he spends his remaining political capital to stop Trump in his home state or saves it for the future will go a long way in showing where the nomination is headed.

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Trump's Very Super Tuesday

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:05:07 -0400

PALM BEACH, Fla.— If it wasn’t already clear, last night’s results underscored that Donald Trump is a Teflon candidate who draws strength from the kind of controversy that would end most normal campaigns. The frenzied protests last weekend that led to Trump cancelling a Chicago rally only helped Trump build on his support from a disaffected Republican electorate. His clashes with the media are winning him support from conservative voters who never trusted the press in the first place. His aversion to facts and details are irrelevant to Republicans who want strength and bluster from their standard-bearer.

Indeed, Trump went a long way in securing the Republican nomination Tuesday night, slowly expanding his support within the Republican party even as GOP resistance against him is intensifying. He won 46 percent of the vote in Marco Rubio’s home state of Florida, despite anti-Trump outside groups saturating the airwaves there with over $10 million in scathing anti-Trump attack ads. He nearly hit 40 percent in Illinois, winning comfortably in the affluent Chicagoland suburbs where his rivals’ message seemed a better fit. Even his lone loss in Ohio was something of a moral victory: He tallied 36 percent of the vote in a state where Ohio Gov. John Kasich scores sky-high approval ratings.

For Trump, the name of the game is still winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested convention, a task that remains challenging. He needs to win about 55 percent of the remaining delegates to hit the magic 1,237 number; my Cook Political Report colleague Dave Wasserman calculated he won about 67 percent of available delegates last night. But equally important, he shattered the notion of widespread GOP voter resistance, demonstrating a geographic and ideological breadth of support that will make him tough to beat in many of the remaining states, even with a consolidated field.

In Florida, Trump won an outright majority of the vote in affluent Palm Beach and Broward Counties, adjacent to Rubio’s home base in Miami-Dade. This, in a closed primary limited to registered Republicans. Two nights before the primary, Trump packed over 6,000 fans into an amphitheater in Boca Raton, wowing his supporters when Air Force Trump arrived in the skies above. The crowd was filled with self-described moderate Republicans, many of whom backed Obama in 2008 but long since turned against the president. Trump was their new avatar of hope and change, a politician of strength to counter Obama’s weakness.

“He’s saying what a lot of Americans have been thinking for a long time,” said Carol Fisher, a former Jeb Bush supporter from Delray Beach who said she usually backs the “establishment” candidates by default. “The more I heard him, the more I realized I agreed exactly with what he was saying.”

Despite the heated protests against Trump that forced the businessman to cancel his Chicago rally, he performed better in Illinois than he did in neighboring Michigan. In Obama’s home state, Trump won 40 percent of the wealthiest Illinois voters, received 31 percent of the vote from college graduates, and swept 41 percent of the moderate GOP vote. The Chicago suburbs that looked like a haven for Rubio and Kasich turned into Trump country.

There are signs that Trump would have rocked Ohio too if Kasich wasn’t in the race. Even in a loss, he consistently carried around 35 percent of the vote in the Cleveland and Cincinnati suburbs, a healthy total given Kasich’s home field advantage. Exit polls showed Trump beating Ted Cruz in a one-on-one matchup, 44 to 39 percent, a clear sign that Cruz is hardly a frontrunner if the field is narrowed to just two Republicans. In fact, the anti-Trump Republicans probably need a strengthened Kasich to dent Trump’s support in many remaining Midwestern and Northeastern states, where Cruz is a non-factor.

Outside of Ohio, the main silver linings for the anti-Trump movement came in Missouri, where Ted Cruz rallied evangelical support to come within 2,000 votes of Trump and in North Carolina, where Cruz’s strong showing in the suburbs demonstrated conservative resistance to the frontrunner. His weakness with Republican women is also a glaring red flag going forward, as he only won their vote in two of the five states (Florida and Illinois). A powerful ad featuring women reading lewd Trump quotes probably made a small impact, and is all but certain to be revived by Democrats if Trump is the GOP nominee.

But at this point, the only candidate that can realistically win the nomination outright is Trump. Circle two dates on the calendar to determine if he’s on a path to doing so: April 5, when Gov. Scott Walker will become the face of the anti-Trump movement in Wisconsin and April 26, when five Northeastern states head to the polls. If Trump can pair his Southern dominance with a Midwestern near-sweep in three weeks, he will be hard to stop. These races will offer a test of whether Cruz can expand his support outside his comfort zone and whether Kasich can parlay his home-state victory into momentum along the I-95 corridor and in the Rust Belt.

The math to a delegate majority is still challenging for Trump, but he demonstrated he’s capable of growing his support even in the face of growing resistance from rank-and-file members in his own party . Between 30 and 40 percent of Republican voters said they’d consider voting for a third-party candidate if Trump is the nominee, according to exit polls. But unless Cruz or Kasich can tally some actual victories in the coming month, the Trump train is looking harder to stop.

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The Odds of a Contested Convention Have Never Been Higher

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 10:15:48 -0500

Donald Trump’s not-so-magic number in the Republican primaries is 34 percent. That’s the average share of the vote Trump has received in the first 19 contests. He won one-third of the vote in the four early races, 34 percent on Super Tuesday, and a disappointing 33 percent average in the smaller-state races held this weekend. At a time when candidates usually increase their support, Trump’s is stunted.

This has been the story of the Republican race: Trump, with the help of endless news-media coverage, was able to consolidate and lock down his blue-collar base quicker than his rivals, who spent months fighting among themselves. Only now are Republican candidates and outside groups training their fire at Trump, and it’s clearly paying off.

The biggest beneficiary of the Trump ceiling is Ted Cruz, who is the second choice of many Trump supporters and has been picking up momentum since his better-than-expected Super Tuesday. He won the most delegates over the weekend, crushing the competition in Kansas and Maine, nearly tripping up Trump in Louisiana and holding him to 36 percent in Kentucky. Cruz is now within striking distance of Trump in the delegate count, much closer to the top than Marco Rubio is to second place.

Rubio, meanwhile, performed poorly and didn’t even hit the 10 percent delegate threshold in Maine. Three factors contributed to his collapse: a) his lackluster debate performance in Detroit, where he effectively laid out Trump’s baggage but didn’t make an effective case for himself; b) Mitt Romney’s speech in which he urged conservative voters to back any of Trump’s rivals and swung some late votes from Rubio to Cruz—at least in Louisiana, where Rubio did much better in early voting than on Election Day; c) conservative talk-radio hosts Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and (to a lesser extent) Rush Limbaugh roughing up Rubio as he became the de facto establishment candidate.

The third factor may be the most consequential, with Hannity slamming Rubio as a traitor on his popular TV show and syndicated radio show—a turnaround prompted by a New York Times story suggesting that Fox hosts changed their views on immigration reform after being privately lobbied by Rubio as he pushed the Gang of Eight bill. At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Hannity didn’t interview Rubio, as he did the other presidential candidates. Instead, that honor went to CNN reporter Dana Bash, a card-carrying member of the mainstream media that grassroots conservatives despise.

But despite Cruz’s ascendancy and Rubio’s collapse, the likelihood of a contested convention has never been higher. Rubio is pouring all his resources and energy into his home state of Florida and its 99 winner-take-all delegates, a last-ditch effort to get his campaign back on track. He is being aided by the anti-Trump group Our Principles PAC, which is saturating Florida’s expensive TV markets with scathing Trump oppo. A poll conducted by the group shows Rubio within five points of Trump, holding him to 35 percent. Meanwhile, Cruz’s strongest states (those with high evangelical populations and those holding caucuses) are behind him, and he has struggled north of the Mason-Dixon Line, where most of the remaining primaries are.

Cruz’s campaign is planning to make a late play for Florida to knock Rubio out of the race and create a one-on-one- showdown with Trump. But if Trump loses Florida, it’s hard to see how anyone gets a majority of delegates after this weekend’s results. Still, Cruz is in very good position now. If there’s a contested convention, Cruz may be the most unusual of consensus candidates—one who is loathed by the establishment but viewed as the only Republican who can keep the party from splitting apart.

TRAIL MIX:

1. Even with anti-Trump Republicans resigned to pushing for a contested convention, the leading super PAC attacking Trump is focusing its efforts on Florida and Illinois but isn’t currently planning to spend money in John Kasich’s home state of Ohio. Thanks to big money from GOP super-donor Paul Singer, the Our Principles PAC is now well-funded enough that it can compete outside of Rubio’s must-win Florida base, but has decided to expand the map by airing attack ads in the expensive Chicago suburbs instead of trying to shore up Kasich’s standing in another must-win state.

“We have to be strategic, and can’t be everywhere,” the group’s strategist, Katie Packer Gage, told National Journal. “Other groups are there. There will be ample messages hitting Trump in Ohio.”

So while Mitt Romney urged anti-Trump Republicans to vote strategically—Kasich in Ohio, Rubio in Florida, Cruz in more-conservative states—the sentiment within Our Principles PAC is largely pro-Rubio. On Friday, Gage tweeted that the only people who thought John Kasich did well in the debate were Democrats—a point that undermines the Ohio governor in his home state. Also making things more difficult: Polls currently show Kasich with better odds of holding off Trump in Ohio than Rubio prevailing in Florida.

By opening up a third front in delegate-rich Illinois, the anti-Trump forces are making a risky bet. On paper, Rubio is an appealing candidate to the deep swath of center-right Republican voters in the Chicago suburbs. With enough resources behind him, the Florida senator could rebound with wins in Florida and Illinois, which would all but block Trump’s path to a majority. But if Rubio continues to underachieve and Kasich comes just short in Ohio, those resources may have better been spent locking down delegates in Ohio instead of opening new offensives.

2. If no GOP candidate gets the 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination, Kasich’s play for the nomination isn’t all that far-fetched. Consider: He’s the only Republican left who hasn’t slammed Trump, his supporters overlap with Trump’s blue-collar base, he’s the most-electable Republican against Hillary Clinton, and he has a home-court advantage with the convention in Cleveland. In addition, his resume as big-state governor and congressional leader may not be a political asset, but should lend him credibility among the delegates in a possible floor fight.

He’d probably need to experience some luck: winning Ohio, and hoping Trump flatlines and Rubio doesn’t win Florida. Under that scenario, he could rack up delegates at the back end of the process and emerge with late momentum. Conservative Republicans would cry foul if Kasich emerged as a compromise pick, but a Kasich-Cruz ticket could satisfy both wings of the party.

3. Food for thought: What if George Wallace had won the Democratic nomination in 1972 with the Watergate scandal hitting its peak during the election? That’s usually a scenario of interest only to political daydreamers, but it isn’t too far from what’s happening now—a toxic Trump engaging in a hostile takeover of the party, with legal worries for Hillary Clinton worsening. (Bryan Pagliano, who set up Clinton’s email server and was granted immunity from the feds, is doing a passable imitation of Alexander Butterfield.)

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Will Rubio's Assault on Trump Pay Off Tuesday?

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 10:13:48 -0500

If Marco Rubio’s dominant debate performance, relentless mocking of Donald Trump’s appearance, and increased scrutiny of Trump’s business record don’t give the senator from Florida momentum on Super Tuesday, it’s hard to see how he wins the GOP nomination. Absent fresh polling, there are signs that Rubio is making inroads on the longstanding front-runner now that he’s gone full bore against him.

Rubio’s attacks on Trump have made this seem like a two-person race, even though Sen. Ted Cruz will be very much alive on Super Tuesday. Rubio may not have dented Trump’s hardened support, but it’s likely he’s picked off some Cruz backers. Glenn Beck and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, two top Cruz surrogates, praised Rubio’s debate performance. If other Cruz supporters feel that Rubio gives the GOP the best shot to stop Trump, expect some movement in Rubio’s direction.

Rubio is also hitting Trump where it hurts the most: the mythology of his business acumen. After raising questions about Trump University at the debate, media scrutiny followed. Trump ended up addressing the issue for six minutes at an Arkansas rally Saturday. Rubio is also drawing a sharp contrast between his earned success compared to the fortune that Trump inherited. By calling Trump a fraud and casting the race as a David-versus-Goliath fight for the future of conservatism, he’s galvanizing supporters and drawing new Republicans to the fight. The crowds at his events Saturday in Arkansas and Georgia were among the largest of his campaign.

There are some clear risks with Rubio’s newfound aggression. He’s stooping to Trump’s level (albeit good-naturedly), making it seem like the two candidates are engaged in a schoolyard brawl and not a presidential campaign. In turn, Trump has gone nuclear against Rubio, and enlisted one of the GOP’s best communicators (Chris Christie) to his side. But within the party establishment, both GOP moderates and conservatives were itching for someone to challenge Trump effectively, and Rubio has stepped up like a boxer with nothing to lose.

Without new polling, media coverage often feels like it’s flying blind—and there’s been next-to-none done since the debate. If anyone other than Trump had fared as poorly at the debate as he did, his political career would be on life support. On Super Tuesday, Rubio will need to translate momentum into a win somewhere, with Virginia’s primary and Minnesota’s caucuses giving him the best opportunity for his first victory. Voters in the 13 states with primaries and caucuses will determine if Trump still has his Teflon armor, or whether Rubio’s last-minute barrage is changing the trajectory of the race.

TRAIL MIX

1. Hillary Clinton all but locked up the Democratic nomination Saturday night, winning a commanding 74 percent of the vote in South Carolina—thanks to her dominant performance with African-Americans. Making up a majority of the Democratic electorate in the state, they gave Clinton a whopping 87 percent of their votes. If that degree of support carries over to the Super Tuesday states in the South, Clinton will have comfortable victories across the board.

The biggest test for Bernie Sanders was whether he could expand his appeal with progressive whites and millennials to break the Clinton firewall with minorities. Iowa and New Hampshire feature two of the most homogeneous Democratic electorates in the country, and never answered the crucial question. But with Sanders struggling to connect with nonwhite voters in Nevada and South Carolina, it’s hard to see how he can forge a path to victory—even if he rebounds from Saturday’s humiliation.

By endorsing Trump, a self-interested Christie is betting that he can be politically relevant again by becoming the highest-ranking politician to sign on with the rogue candidate. But if his goal is to serve as attorney general in a future GOP president’s cabinet, he probably did himself more harm than good.

2. Christie is essentially betting that the odds of Trump winning the presidency are greater than Rubio winning the GOP’s nomination. Even if Trump is favored to win the GOP nomination, his chances of defeating Clinton are still long (as I outlined in my column last week). But if Rubio prevails, polls suggest he’d start out as a favorite in a general election against Clinton. If Rubio comes from behind to win the nomination, Christie’s endorsement of Trump foreclosed any opportunity to serve in a new administration.

Indeed, with many top Republicans outraged over Christie’s surprise Trump endorsement, it’s hard to see Christie having a political future after he leaves office unless Trump is inaugurated in January.

3. Rep. Chris Collins of New York became the first member of Congress to endorse Trump this week, and his own decision is as surprising as the fact that Trump finally received any Capitol Hill support. By backing Trump, Collins, a former Jeb Bush supporter, powerfully disproved the maxim that nearly every Bush backer is planning to support Rubio.

Equally significant is the district he represents, an upstate New York seat in the Buffalo area that has bled manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades. Rust Belt areas like this one are Trump strongholds, with working-class voters intensely opposed to free trade, and Rubio and Cruz will have a difficult time cutting into the billionaire businessman’s support. If Collins, a prized congressional recruit, feels comfortable backing Trump in a somewhat-competitive seat (it voted 55 percent for Romney in 2012), expect more endorsements from lawmakers if Trump continues to rack up delegates. It’s also a sign that “blue” states with blue-collar constituencies, particularly New York, will be favorable to Trump on the back end of the primary calendar.

4. If Bush never ran for the presidency, would Donald Trump even be a formidable candidate? It’s possible that the candidate running as the antithesis of Trump may have done more to boost the New Yorker’s candidacy than anyone else. Consider: a) Bush’s entrance in the race prevented any other mainstream alternatives from getting attention for months; b) his Right to Rise super PAC nuked the most-electable alternative in Rubio with millions in attack ads while spending much less against Trump; c) his candidacy defined the two poles of the Republican Party, and gave Trump plenty of fodder to showcase himself as aggressively anti-Bush and become an antiestablishment icon; d) Trump may not even have gotten in the race if it weren’t for Bush creating the prospect of a dynastic coronation.

What’s amazing is that Bush didn’t have enough self-awareness to understand that the party, after three straight antiestablishment elections for Republicans, would not have the appetite for another Bush in office. If Trump wins the GOP nomination, that misjudgment will have wide-ranging ramifications for his party in the years to come.

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Chaos Wins Republican Primary in New Hampshire

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 09:54:20 -0500

Donald Trump’s resounding victory in New Hampshire not only cemented the businessman’s standing as a front-running GOP candidate. The crowded undercard battle for second place was as consequential, ensuring a long, protracted fight for the Republican nomination that could well be decided at the Cleveland convention.

Trump exceeded the already high expectations he faced in the state, winning with 34 percent of the vote. He will recover some of the momentum he lost after finishing a disappointing second in Iowa. Despite a lighter schedule in New Hampshire and vulgar closing rally Monday night, he’ll again have proven that the normal rules of politics don’t apply in such an antiestablishment year. He won nearly 30 percent of women voters, 30 percent of college graduates, and 29 percent of voters whose families made over $100,000 a year. He broadened support past his base and, if that holds past New Hampshire, he’ll be a formidable candidate to the end.

“We are going to make America great again!” Trump said as he began his victory speech. “New Hampshire, we’re not going to forget you. You started it.”

The equally significant takeaway is that, contrary to the indications from Iowa, the so-called establishment lane will be crowded until South Carolina—and potentially even longer. That’s a nightmare scenario for party leaders looking for the most electable nominee to emerge from the scrum.

Marco Rubio looked as if he had secured that role with an impressive third-place finish in Iowa, but his debate stumble knocked him all the way down to an embarrassing fifth place in New Hampshire. He’s barely above the 10 percent threshold necessary to win a delegate out of the Granite State. His campaign was so focused on message discipline even after his debate repetitions that it underestimated New Hampshire voters’ appreciation for unvarnished authenticity. Instead of joking about his gaffe, he doubled down on his message. That cost him badly in the final stretch of the primary.

Rubio is also canceling a scheduled appearance in South Carolina Wednesday to vote on North Korea sanctions legislation. It’s a sign that his own campaign recognized that missing Senate votes only played into his biggest vulnerability—the idea that he doesn’t have the experience to be president.

The results also ensure that Jeb Bush and John Kasich will remain in the race for the long haul. With a strong second-place finish, Kasich will now be motivated to stick around until (at least) Ohio’s winner-take-all primary on March 15. Because the race is heading south, the underfunded, out-organized underdog doesn’t expect many opportunities to win delegates before then. But mark the March 8 Michigan primary as a test of his staying power.

Bush didn’t have nearly as good a showing as Kasich, finishing with just 11 percent of the vote—despite his campaign and allied super PAC spending about $35 million in the state. But by finishing ahead of his protégé-turned-nemesis Rubio, Bush is likely to soldier onto South Carolina, where he’s backed by Sen. Lindsey Graham and where his brother, George W. Bush, is expected to campaign on his behalf. Between his campaign and super PAC, he will also have the financial resources to continue attacking his establishment-lane rivals, preventing them from getting too much momentum.

It’s the emerging Rubio-Bush clash that promises to be a massive headache for pragmatic-minded party leaders. Bush barely stayed in the top rung. If not for Rubio’s costly gaffe, his showing would have been seen as disappointing. Now the enmity between the two campaigns is even more pitched.

Ted Cruz is in the best shape going forward of all the Republican candidates. He finished in third place even though he barely spent any money in New Hampshire. He’s well organized and well funded heading into South Carolina, where he will be engaged in a brutal battle with Trump. If he can beat Trump, he’ll be very well-positioned in the Deep South states that predominate on Super Tuesday. “Washington liberals may find South Carolina far less hospitable environs,” Cruz said in his postelection speech, in a jibe at his more-moderate rivals.

Chris Christie, meanwhile, announced he was returning home to New Jersey instead of heading to campaign in South Carolina—a clear sign that the end of his campaign is near. If he drops out, it will be the ultimate insult to Rubio, whose campaign was wounded by a challenger who did nothing for his own candidacy in the process. It was the ultimate murder-suicide.

The overall post-New Hampshire winner is chaos. If the anti-Trump, anti-Cruz forces in the party can’t rally behind a favored alternative before Super Tuesday, it’s increasingly likely that no one will be able to secure a majority of delegates at the end of the process.

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Iowa Results Mean a Three-Way GOP Race

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 10:10:05 -0500

DES MOINES, Iowa—After the hype, endless media attention, and dominance in the polls, Donald Trump is leaving Iowa with a whimper. The billionaire businessman barely hung on to second place, behind Ted Cruz and narrowly ahead of a surging Marco Rubio. What happened? Why did all the experts misdiagnose the Trump effect?

From my reporting in the final week of the campaign, the signs of Trump fatigue were all over. A rally in Council Bluffs on Sunday hardly filled the middle school gymnasium, and drew out-of-state gawkers, memorabilia seekers, and Iowa voters who were there just to see the spectacle. His leading surrogate, Sarah Palin, was received with silence in introducing him Monday in Cedar Rapids. Empty seats continued at his events. He notably declined to predict victory on Monday’s morning shows.

It was clear that the public’s obsession with polls had obscured central realities about the trajectory of the race. Cruz had a well-organized machine that was far more valuable than the hype manufactured by Trump. Rubio’s aspirational message caught on late, as his crowds got bigger and his support inched upwards. Trump’s supporters were ideologically all over the map, and many of his college-educated backers defected to Rubio at the last minute. (Entrance polls showed Rubio was seen as the most electable Republican, contrary to all the media polls showing Trump with that advantage.)

Even with Trump’s defeat, this is now a true three-candidate race. Cruz has cemented his standing as the candidate backed by the conservative grassroots—which should hold him in good stead for a long while. His organization was the best in the state. He’s now hoping to beat expectations, and more importantly, focus his attention on South Carolina, where evangelicals play an even larger role in the state’s politics than in Iowa.

“Tonight is a victory for the grassroots and for courageous conservatives across Iowa,” Cruz declared in his victory speech. “Iowa has sent notice that the GOP nominee will not be chosen by the media. It will not be chosen by the Washington establishment. It will not be chosen by the lobbyists.”

Rubio couldn’t have asked for a much better result, either. Expect Rubio to use his strong finish to consolidate support in the center-right lane in New Hampshire. His quick reaction to the results sounded like a victory speech. His 23 percent tally far outdistanced his numbers in the polls, which put him at roughly 15 percent. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich barely registered in Iowa even though the first two spent ample time here in the final week. (In an Urbandale precinct once considered a Bush stronghold, Rubio won 152 votes and Bush got 8.) And if Trump continues to be a major presence, he’s poised to hurt Cruz a little more than Rubio in the states to come—in particular, in South Carolina.

Indeed, Trump will still be a major player despite his disappointing showing. The biggest question is whether his collapse in Iowa will significantly deflate his numbers elsewhere. There’s reason to believe that Trump could lose New Hampshire, where he currently holds a commanding lead. As Rubio consolidates support, Trump loses some of his.

But Trump still has a floor of disaffected working-class voters who won’t be going away. In Southern states, those voters overlap significantly with Cruz supporters. Against his instincts, he gave a gracious, brief concession speech, showing he can learn from past mistakes. There was no Howard Dean-scream moment here. Trump still has opportunities to put victories on the board, but in the short term he’s Rubio’s best strategic friend.

Monday night was also a small victory for the much-maligned establishment wing of the Republican Party, despite Cruz’s clear victory. Rubio boosters couldn’t have asked for a better outcome than Trump crumbling, Rubio far exceeding expectations, and Bernie Sanders coming out the Democratic caucuses with a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton. Republicans are embarked on a long and contentious nomination fight, but the odds of the Democrats facing a messy ideological battle for months is much likelier after Monday night’s results.

But the GOP result wasn’t due to the party establishment’s own efforts. The anti-Trump elements within the Republican Party talked a big game, but proclaimed helplessness. They argued that attack ads against a Teflon Trump were pointless, and would backfire. But when Cruz’s campaign and a separate super PAC run by former Mitt Romney adviser Katie Packer went on air in the race’s final week, his numbers tumbled. That’s not a coincidence.

So, buckle up. We’re all but guaranteed a fascinating nominating battle within both parties for at least a couple months. And after Monday night, we won’t just be bombarded with all-Trump, all-the-time. We’ll be hearing a lot more about Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio too.

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Democrats’ Biggest Vulnerability In 2016: National Security

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 14:00:00 -0500

The disconnect between President Obama and the American public on the urgency of the ISIS threat is a problem for his party in 2016, especially for Hillary Clinton.

Democrats are at risk of politically marginalizing themselves on national security in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, catering to a base that seems disconnected from the growing anxiety that the public feels over the threat from Islamic terrorism. During a month when a horrific terrorist attack killed 130 in Paris and a homegrown, ISIS-inspired attack killed 14 in San Bernardino, California, the Democratic Party’s major focus has been on climate change and gun control.

The signs of a president in denial over the threat of terrorism keep piling up. Obama belatedly addressed the public’s fears in his Oval Office address on Sunday evening, but he offered no new policies to deal with crisis. That it took four days for the president to unequivocally call the San Bernardino attacks “terrorism” underscored how his own instincts are at odds with the American public’s. The decision to give a nationally televised speech without outlining a change of course suggested that administration officials were worried about declining poll numbers and that he was trying to limit the political damage. And for an administration that likes to narrowly tailor Obama’s message to his most enthusiastic supporters, scheduling a prime-time speech for many millions to see (it was his first Oval Office address since 2010) was a concession that he’s not persuading the larger public.

Put simply, the president’s credibility was on the line. Last month in Turkey, Obama testily brushed back repeated questioning from reporters that he underestimated the threat that ISIS posed. Only a day before the ISIS attacks in Paris, Obama confidently proclaimed that the terrorist group was “contained.” In the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting, Obama told CBS News that “our homeland has never been more protected by more effective intelligence and law-enforcement professionals at every level than they are now.”

When the president’s assurances are being contradicted by events around him, even his own party’s rank-and-file become restive. Democratic voters, mostly supportive of the president, are expressing real concerns about the administration’s handling of terrorism. A 43-percent plurality of Democratic voters believe the U.S. and its allies are “losing” the war against ISIS, according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted just before the San Bernardino attack. A whopping 75 percent of Democrats said it’s likely there will be another major terrorist attack on American soil, and 23 percent disapprove of President Obama’s handling of terrorism.

This is unusual. In the wake of traumatic events, even unpopular presidents tend to find success by calling for national unity. After the Oklahoma City bombings in April 1995, President Clinton’s job approval ratings rose above 50 percent for the first time in nearly a year, according to Gallup’s tracking poll. George W. Bush’s approval reached 90 percent right after the Sept. 11 attacks. These moments were both short-lived, but proved that the public rallies behind a president after frightening tragedies.

But instead of acting as a commander in chief, Obama has become a polarizer in chief. Immediately after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, both of which provided him an opportunity to reset his antiterrorism policies, he instead chose to find “wedge” issues that he could use to attack Republicans. After he was hounded by the press over downplaying the ISIS threat, he nimbly switched the subject to the GOP’s heartlessness on the question of taking in Syrian refugees, a counterpunch that drew substantial press coverage. In the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, he downplayed the terrorist connections and amplified his call for additional gun control. Following the president’s lead, Senate Democrats then tried to put Republicans on the defensive over their fidelity to gun rights by voting to ban people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns. Agree or disagree with those policies, but both were a deliberate distraction from the urgent issue at hand—how to combat ISIS, at home and abroad.

These tactics are consistent with the White House’s view on how Democrats should campaign to win elections: mobilize Obama’s liberal coalition, and highlight the GOP’s most extreme voices to win over persuadable voters. Given Donald Trump’s increasingly inflammatory pronouncements, it’s easy to understand the savvy—and cynical—strategy behind the Democrats’ approach. (Trump’s latest scheme, which calls for the United States to bar Muslims from entering the country, is an example of how polarization can fuel even-more-extreme polarization.)

But in this instance, the problem is that a majority of voters view Obama’s intransigence on ISIS as an extreme position. If the public doesn’t trust the president to keep the country safe, no amount of political jujitsu can hide that fundamental vulnerability. Core Democratic issues such as immigration, gun control, and climate change will be secondary to national security if voters remain insecure heading into 2016.

All this has put Hillary Clinton in a political pickle. She needs to energize the president’s dovish base, which gives her little leeway to give voice to the public’s newfound hawkishness. Ideally, she’d be able to stand lockstep with the president’s policies, touting his leadership in a time of crisis. Instead, she is trying to carefully balance her support for the president while subtly expressing areas of disagreement.

On ABC’s This Week, she said she believed there were “additional” unnamed steps to take against the terrorist group beyond what the administration is doing. AtSunday’s Saban Forum, she said the need for “action is urgent” against ISIS, specifically calling on Silicon Valley firms to do their part to disrupt the terrorist group’s online communications. At the same time, she ruled out deploying American troops to fight the terrorist group and, like Obama, argued that labeling the threat as “radical Islam” would only inflame the problem.

The big question now is how long Clinton will be content to ride Obama’s coattails. Most Democrats are fully committed to the president’s base-first strategy and don’t see any benefit in Clinton distancing herself from a president whom she loyally served for four years. But on an issue that could define the election, she risks being defined by the base—at a time when even some of the president’s former supporters are beginning to question his approach.

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Does Hillary Clinton Have a Problem With Male Voters?

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 11:00:00 -0400

When Hillary Clinton entered the presidential race, she expected to win overwhelming support among women in her bid to become the first female president. Instead, she’s finding out that an unprecedented level of resistance to her candidacy among men is undermining the conventional wisdom that she’d be the strongest Democratic nominee in the general election.

Put another way: Clinton is now nearly as unpopular with men as Donald Trump is with women. That’s saying something.

The latest round of polling for Clinton is brutal. This week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey in Iowashows her favorability rating with men at a mere 27 percent, while two-thirds view her unfavorably. Her minus-39 net favorability with men is 28 points worse than Vice President Joe Biden and 27 points behind Sen. Bernie Sanders. The story is the same in New Hampshire, where the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll found both Sanders and Biden with net-positive ratings, while Clinton’s approval is deeply underwater, stuck at 30 percent.

The swing-state polling is a mirror image of her national numbers. Last week, Quinnipiac found Clinton’s negative ratings with white men at a stunning 72 percent—significantly worse than the Democratic Party’s already-serious struggles with that demographic group. Meanwhile, she’s not performing at nearly a strong-enough level with women to counteract the problem. Only 49 percent of women viewed her favorably in the poll, with 47 percent holding negative views. For all the self-inflicted problems that Republicans have in reaching out to a diversifying country, Hillary Clinton’s favorability with white men is worse than Jeb Bush’s with Hispanics, Ben Carson’s with African-Americans, and Carly Fiorina’s with women in the same survey.

Indeed, in poll after poll, both Biden and Sanders run much more competitively against Republican challengers, almost entirely because they don’t turn off half of the electorate.

If Clinton is looking to narrow the gaping gender gap, she isn’t showing it. Instead, her campaign looks to be doing the opposite—rallying her liberal base and trying to lock down supporters that once seemed squarely in her camp. She sat down for an interview last week with Girls creator Lena Dunham, where she underscored her feminist bona fides. She’s appeared on television shows with a sizable female audience, including Ellen, in hopes of making her look more relatable. Her call for robust gun control in the wake of the Oregon school shooting isn’t going to make her any friends with Democratic gun owners, who are disproportionately male. The early diagnosis from the campaign is that she’s underachieving with women—her natural base—and that’s the most crucial short-term fix, not the dismal showing with men.

Part of her back-to-the-base strategy is to counter momentum from Sanders, who is shaping up as a serious threat against Clinton, at least in the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses. Sanders’ biggest weakness is on guns—he’s opposed various gun-control measures during his congressional career—and Clinton is now advocating for stricter regulations to draw a sharp contrast. Even among Democrats, Clinton lags behind Sanders with men, but she holds significant advantages with women. As the only woman in a primary field of men, it’s logical to play to your primary strength.

But at some point, her campaign will have to grapple with why her support has cratered so badly among men. Did the campaign’s initial plan to play up Clinton’s soft, grandmotherly persona backfire at a time of mounting global turmoil? Is it a consequence of the campaign’s unabashedly liberal turn on social issues, particularly on abortion rights, immigration, and gun control? Or is it simply a product of her overall low approval numbers, dampened by the ongoing developments about her handling of classified email at the State Department?

Make no mistake: Biden is leaning into the presidential race directly because of these electability issues. He expressed little interest in the race until Clinton’s numbers started to tank. Look at his recent campaign-style schedule; he’s already demonstrating that he’s able to unify disparate elements within the Democratic Party—backslapping union rank-and-file in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, holding an event about combating sexual assault weeks later, and giving a well-received keynote address to the Human Rights Campaign last weekend. Among the general electorate, Biden fares better than Clinton with both women and men. He’ll subtly make the case that nominating Clinton is too much of a risk to take in such a consequential election—an argument that seems to be receiving a fair hearing at the White House.

It’s awfully ironic that some of the Democratic Party’s sharpest strategists, who once saw Clinton as uniquely capable of mobilizing the Democratic base because of her groundbreaking biography, are now hedging their bets—by looking at the 72-year-old Biden as a more-credible candidate capable of stopping the party’s problems with men.

(Image via a katz / Shutterstock.com )

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