I am moderately optimistic about the Democrats' prospects in tomorrow's midterm elections. I think it is likely that they will win back the House of Representatives. I do not expctu change in the senate but they are more likely to loose one or two seats (net) than to win the 2 that they would need to control that chamber. They will also win a lot of important governor's races, take control of various state legislatures and pass some important statewide referenda. But I do not anticipate a true wave elections. I think the story on election even is that both bases are energives and will turn out in large numbers. I think that genuine swing voters will favor the Democrats but not in overwhelming numers like they did in 2006.
POSSIBLE REPORT CARDS.
I will make specific predictions in races below. But I think it's helpful to think of what the narrative will be on Wednesday morning. How will the Democrats gains be judged? There are a lot of moving parts here, with 435 house races, 34 senate races and thousands of state and local elections. But the story will be driven by who controls congress and by what margin. A handful of governor's races will also get national coverage, and they might be thought of as tie breakers for how to grade the night. Here are a few broad scenarios by which the night can be assessed after the votes are counted.
F Scencarios. The Democrats most important goal is to win control of at least one house of congress. That means the party will have subpoena power and the ability to introduce legislation and provide meaningful insight of the Trump administration. If the Democrats don't win either the House or Senate tomorrow, they deserve an F grade. (And the country will be F'd in our own way for the next 24 months.)
D Scenarios. If the Democrats win one house but underperform in the other, then they have done the bare minimum to stay relevant to government. The most likely D scenario is a gain of 25 seats, giving them a razor-thin margin in the House, but they lose several of their senate seats and don't pick up any GOP seats. So about 221 in the house and 46 or 47 in the Senate. Awful, but not technically a complete failure.
C Scenarios. If the Dems win at least 30 seats and don't lose more than one senate seat (net), they will get a gentleman's C. (C+ if they do well in the governor's race.)
B Scenarios. A lot of the advanced analytics types have the most likely outcome for the Dems being about +37 in the House and -1 in the senate. I think that's a solid B. (B+ if they hold even in the senate.)
A Scenarios. So what makes a wave? The biggest recent was the 2010 Tea Party election when the Dems lost 63 seats. But they started that year with 256. The GOP only has 241 at the moment. So +48 would match that end result. I think anything over 40 would be a wave and it probably means picking up at least one senate seat. So let's call this 235 in the House and a 50/50 Senate.
A+ Scenario: This is easy-the House by more than a handful of seats and the Senate. But to really earn the +, we'd have to see some really awful Republicans lose. It's not an A+night if Ted Cruz is re-elected. Beating Steve King or Dan Rohrbacher would be nice cherries on top too. Stace Abrams winning in Georgia would also be a profound outcome for the party
SENATE FORECAST
The good people at 538.com have crunched the numbers and the most likely outcome is the Dems losing one seat, net. I tend to agree with that but my individual forecasts are a little more gut and gumption than arithmatic. There are 11 races that I think will determine the senate, and this is my non-scientific expectation of how they will go.
A. One Likely Loss. The Dems will lose North Dakota. It's not a done deal, but I think they can only win in a wave.
B. Two True Toss-ups. The Dems will split Missouri and Florida. Nate Silver's numbers have them both leaning Dem but I think that's a tough two-fer. Nelson in Florida has better numbers, so if I had to guess that's the one we keep. But I will never, ever trust Florida in an election. So let's call it a split.
C. Three Lean Democrats. The Dems will take 2 out of 3 among Indiana, Arizona and Nevada. If it's a wave, they will sweep all three but I'm not that confident. I think the Dems best chance here is Indiana but that's far from guaranteed. And they could win either race out west but my gut is saying split.
D. Long Shots. The first three outcomes would put the Dems down one seat, for a 52-48 senate. That's my best and official bet. But there are at least three states that could provide upsets: The Dems could lose Montana, but I don't think they will. They could put an upset in Tennessee but I think they will come about 3 points shy there. Texas is hard for me to judge because I so badly want Ted Cruz to lose. I think the party ID fundamentals help him but I think that will be a 2 point race.
The Dems can pull an inside straight and win the senate. I think the most likely path to that is keeping MO, FL and IN, picking up both NV & AZ and then winning a substantial upset in TN or TX. The odds of drawing anside straight are about 12 to one. That sounds about right. Official Prediction: Dems lose one seat (net).
Note-Mississippi is almost certainly going to require a run-off election. But I think the Dems will have a tough time winning that, especially if the seat is decisive for control of the senate or even to force Pence to break a 50/50 tie. For tonight's purposes, I'm counting MS as an L. But we'll take that one up again on Wednesday.
HOUSE FORECAST
I'm a shade pessimistic relative to FiveThirtyEight and the other serious forecasters. I think Trump's people will show up because they think the economy is proof that they were right about him. They also like the fact that he's a dick and many of them are more than a little afraid of immigrants. I don't see the wave happening. But there should be enough suburban moderate districts that went Republican last time because the voters wanted a Republican House to be a check on President Hillary Clinton. Official prediction: Dems gain 33 seats.
GOVERNORS FORECAST
The Democrats will take back a lot of governor's mansions that they nevers hould have lost. Illinois is the most obvious. Michigan will also follow suit. So should Wisconsin, which will be an especially sweet result. I think Florida looks good. I also think the Democrats will win the Kansas race but Kansas has broken my heart before. Georgia and Ohio are going to be very close. Just like the MO and FL senate races, I expect a split but I'm not sure which way. If the Dems win both, then this is a wave election.
Official Prediction: Dems gain 8 states. (But Republicans lose 7 becaue they will win AK, which currently has an independent governor.)
THE AIRING OF THE GRIEVEANCES, GREAT AND SMALL.
These are the 10 results that I want the most and the percentage of likelihood I assign for each.
1. A Democratic House (75%)
2. Ted Cruz losing to Beo O'Rourke (22%)
3. Stacey Abrams winning the GA governor's race. (48%)
4. Kris Kloubach losing the Kansas governor's race. (52%)
5. Steve King losing Iowa 4th (30%)
6. Devin Nunes losing his seat in California 22nd. (10%)
7. Restoration of felony voting rights in Florida (61%)
8. Andrew Gillum winning FL governor's race. (55%)
9. Scott Walker losing WI governor's race. (70%)
10. Claire McCaskill winning MO senate race.(49%)
There you have it, folks. Nothing especially bold or daring. I think the Dems will get the most important job done, but I don't think they will run up the score. The nation is still divided, but we have more to be pissed off about this time. Hopefully that nets a few senate upsets and we're having a party 24 hours from now.
So tonight is probably the night that Trump goes from front-runner to all but certain nominee. I do not think it will be possible for another candidate to get a delegate majority but after today, even if Trump romps, it will still be possible to deny him an outright majority of delegates.
He is heavily favored to win 10 of the 12 GOP contests being held today and he also leads in Minnesota by a closer margin. Ted Cruz is likely to win Texas but probably won't do well in other places.
Here are the most important things to watch for tonight.
1. Can Rubio salvage a win? There are at least two states where he has a more than theoretical chance of winning-Minnesota and Virginia. If he wins both we can expect an avalanche of endorsements running towards him the rest of this week. If he gets a split, he at least avoids the talking point that he can't win anywhere. If he loses everywhere than he is probably doomed.
2. Can Rubio get 20% in Texas? Texas' delegates are awarded proportionally unless the winner exceeds 50% of the vote. I don't think Cruz will get to that number. In order get a share of the delegates a candidate must receive at least 20% of the vote. If Rubio doesn't hit that number, than Trump and Cruz will split all 155 of those delegates. That's 31 delegates that Rubio could lose by a very close margin. He can not let that happen.
3. Can Rubio keep it close in Georgia? Trump broke out the heavy guns in Georgia yesterday: Bill France the head of NASCAR. Most recent polls have Trump with a big lead but with Rubio pulling head of Cruz in second place. If he has a prayer of being the nominee, this is a state where he will close well.
4. Can Bernie win anywhere other than Vermont? Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma and Massachusetts should all be competitive for the Democrats tonight. Hillary will roll to big victories everywhere else.
5. Will Kasich show any signs of live? He should compete in Vermont and Massachusetts. I don't think he will win either but his path to the nomination involves denying Trump a majority, winning some big northern states and then hoping to be the consensus grown up choice at the convention.
6. Can Trump get to 50.1% in Alabama? If so he wins all 50 delegates there. That's when the math really starts to look bad for the Field.
Official Predictions for Super Tuesday.
GOP: Trump wins everywhere except TX (Cruz) and MN (Rubio)
DEM: Clinton wins everywhere except VT, OK & CO
Vermont: Sanders 84%, Clinton 15%
Oklahoma: Sanders 52%, Clinton 48%
Colorado: Sanders 51%, Clinton 48%
Minnesota: Clinton 53%, Sanders 47%
Massachusetts: Clinton 54%, Sanders 46%
I am guilty of two political sins this election season. First, I underestimated Trump's chance of being the nominee. Once the field of candidates was more or less set, Nate Silver said that the GOP field was four roughly equal quadrants: one each for Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and the fourth for everybody else. I was even more heavily slanted toward the conventional candidates. I only left about 10% chance for anyone other than Bush, Rubio or Walker. I didn't make Trump the favorite until after New Hampshire.
Donald Trump has swallowed more than 3/4 of the field's chances, with only Rubio still sanding among the conventional candidates. The exact numbers at the moment are 80% for Trump, 16% for Rubio, 2% each for John Kasich and Ted Cruz. (Here I will pause for one brief moment of celebration: we have almost certainly been spared the specter of Ted Cruz becoming President of the United States.)
I am about not enthused for a Hillary Clinton presidency. I happen to prefer her over Bernie Sanders in about the same proportion that I prefer beige to taupe. I'm not going to go out and flip a police car over to prove it. But there is one thing I can get enthused about, and that is preventing a fascist president. And that, it seems, will be our national task for the next eight months.
Schadenfreude Turns to Anxiety.
I am not alone in underestimating Trump's chance of being the nominee. That sin is easily forgiven. What I''m more troubled by is that I have enjoyed the process too much. I think that Donald Trump is the natural product of a right-wing media that for seven years peddled and incessant flow of lies about Barack Obama, undocumented workers and a slew of nontroversies best embodied by their shameful exploitation of the attacks on the outpost Benghazi. Trump also used some brilliant jujitsu to point out that Citizens United corrupted our political system. Moreover, he promised to strengthen popular and necessary pieces of the social safety net, especially Social Security and Medicare.
It was fun to watch someone trounce the hollow patriotism and phony "conservative values" of Walker, Bush, Rubio, Chrsistie and Cruz. Those sentiments were always a phony shell game and it was nice to have an actual WWE Hall of Famer tear down that facade. I was also glad that Trump brought a streak of populism to the Republican race. At the last debate Cruz and Rubio were still attacking him for supporting an individual mandate. He defended his position as not wanting people to die in the streets and they called that socialism. That mentality has been dominant in politics because of the false narrative that this is a "conservative" country that hates government and loves the free market even to the detriment of our own well being. No we are not. We are a rich country that is skeptical of political philosophies. We like winners and we like the little guy. The trick is to win by convincing the little guy that you're on his side.
But the time for enjoying the train wreck that has been the 2016 GOP nomination has to be cleared off the tracks even before the bodies get cold. In 72 hours, Donald Trump is going to have the silly half of this process sewn up. As the calendar turns to the general election, we can't mix words: Donald Trump is not merely a demagogue. He is a fascist.
Fascism is a big charge. I do not lob it around lightly. I rest this assertion on his below statements, all of which have been well documented. I provide links to each one because I recognize the gravity of my accusation.
- Characterizing immigrants from Mexico as "rapists". Source.
- Promising to bring back "waterboarding and worse" of terrorists because "they deserve it". Source.
- Promising to murder the relatives of suspected terrorists. Source.
- Declaring that he will ban all Muslims from entering the country. Source.
This isn't just nuts. It's a call to fascism. And we have to do whatever it takes to prevent him from winning the White House.
But Can it Happen?
Let's put it this way: all of the reasons why it can't happen are the same reasons we all thought he couldn't be the nominee. In the past two weeks, as a Trump nomination became more and more likely, the predictions market for who will win the general election barely budge. Now that Trump is about to be the presumptive nominee, we need to look at a few specific things that will determine the shape of the general election.
A. His opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Bernie can not be the Democratic nominee without substantial report from black voters. Yesterday's result in South Carolina shows that he has not made that sale. His campaign schedule this week proves that he is not trying to anymore. He might win heavily white states like Minnesota, Vermont, West Virginia and Oklahoma. He will keep winning delegates throughout the spring. But he will not be the nominee.
This leaves Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump has obvious lines of attack against her. First he will claim that she is in the pocket of all the Wall Street banks that have given her so much money over recent years. Hillary foolishly avoided releasing the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. She will not have that luxury in the fall because Trump will call her a fraud. She needs to release them early and get it over with. More importantly Trump will attack her on free-trade, immigration and the Muslim world. Hillary can and should win all of those arguments on the substance but Donald is very capable of winning on style by just flat-out insulting her.
Hillary is also perceived as too ambitious and insufficiently honest. Those are traits that can kill a politician, especially against an opponent who can claim with a straight face to be making a personal sacrifice by running and when the public often confuses the lack of a filter for truthfulness.
I have written repeatedly that I think the predictions markets underestimate the Democrats' chances of winning the next election. In the past 2 weeks the probability of a Trump-Clinton match-up nearly doubled from 41% to 78%. And the prediction markets have barely budged. The Democrats were a 61% chance of winning then and they are a 63% favorite now. That's right, the prospects of a Trump nomination have reaped all of a 2% jump for the Democrats.
This means that the betting public thinks Trump can beat Hillary. One scenario is equally horrible and plausible. We know that Hillary is a lousy presidential candidate. If she wasn't the Democratic race would be Bernie taking on Vice-President Obama. And we know that Donald is a good candidate, because he's already gobbled up a deep field of Republicans that were more likely to win than him.
So we will get into September and October with the race too close to call. What if, in the middle of October two young men with Arab last names decide to shoot up a movie theater. Or a high school cafeteria. Or the parking lot of a major college football stadium right after a game. Does anyone doubt that people will bend towards the candidate promising to do something rash in response?
B. His Party and its Appratchicks.
This is a fun mental concept. Can you imagine Bernie Sanders giving a full-throated endorsement of Hillary at the Democratic convention? It's easy. But what about Rubio or Cruz or Kasich endorsing Trump? It's a little trickier, isn't it?
Sometime in March the GOP race will effectively be over. Kasich and Rubio have already said they will drop out if they do not win the race in their home states on March 15th, they will drop out. Cruz is likely to win his home state of Texas on March 1st, but it's hard to imagine him winning anywhere else. So as the candidates drop out, what will they do? I can't imagine Lindsay Graham endorsing Trump. Jeb Bush is hard to imagine also. But Rubio and Cruz have a future to worry about and they will be left with a choice-be loyal to the party and hope to win in four years or repudiate him and hope to say "I told you so" next time around.
Then there is the pundit class. Does George Will hate Hillary Clinton enough to debase himself by banging the drum for Donald Trump? What about Charles Krauthamer? I don't think these guys have much influence over rank and file voters but they too will have to choose between a unified front and their need to oppose fascism.
C. Third Party Candidates?
I think if Trump has the nomination sewn up by April 1st, someone will emerge to run as a third party candidate from the right. This person will not win, but they can give intelligent Republicans an excuse to not vote for Hillary Clinton. But if the election is close, I don't think that candidate will get more than a blip on election night. If however Hillary runs up a good lead, and current events don't jolt the race dramatically, this candidate might attract enough voters to throw all of the swing states to the Democrats and also some not-so contested states, like Missouri, Indiana and even Montana. Even Texas might be contested by Hillary. And the GOP could lose in the Electoral College by a 2 to 1 margin.
Then the Republicans will lick their wounds and try to get used to having lost the popular vote in six out of seven general elections. A few months later, the 2020 field will begin to ooze into a loose, murky condition. And the conventional wisdom will be that they screwed up by not nominating a true conservative.
Two significant news stories have transpired since I wrote yesterday's post about the state of the race. The first is the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scali and the other is the descent of the Republican debate in South Carolina into WWE levels of chaos at times.
I. The Death of Scalia: Which Poison with the GOP Pick?.
The sudden passing of Justice Scalia will change the composition of the court. The most likely outcome is that President Obama will name a replacement, that replacement will get confirmed and he or she will take the bench sometime this summer. But of course the Republican party is taking another approach. They claim that the vacancy should be filled not by the current president but by the next one. I may be overestimating them, but I think this is a bluff. Let's consider both scenarios.
A. Obama Names the Next Justice.
Barack Obama will nominate a judge in the next few weeks. He will do so knowing that the senate is controlled by the Republicans and that the Republicans are trying to run out the clock on the last year of his presidency. So he will have to pick someone that is mainstream. He will be tempted to choose someone who Republicans will look silly for attempting to block.
The first name to become a focus of speculation is Judge Sri Srinivasan. He would be an interesting tactical choice for President Obama. First, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee. Secondly he was confirmed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by the Senate in 2012 by a vote of 97-0. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were both among the senators who voted for him. Lastly, he would be the first Indian justice on the Supreme Court. Another similarly situated contender is Judge Jane Kelley. She was a classmate of the President at Harvard Law School and was unanimously voted to the 8th circuit judge, 96-0 to 2013. Jane Kelly is also an Iowan which could make the decision to not hearings thorny for the Judiciary chair, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for obvious reasons.
So Barack Obama will soon have the ability to put forth a centrist judge with impeccable credentials who very recently sailed through the Senate on unanimous confirmation votes. This candidate might be a minority or female. There will be enormous pressure on the Republicans to at least hold hearings. (If only because the media loves these hearings and so do senators. There's no better way to get face time on the nightly news.) If the hearings fail to produce any bomb shells from the nominee's past, then it will be hard for the senate to vote them down without looking like partisan hacks. But that might be a price they are willing to pay.
B. The GOP Obstructs the Nominee.
The GOP will see things quite differently. Their presidential candidates all agreed that no vote should take place on the very principled reason that the President is in his last year and they do not like him. The moderator of last night's debate had to correct Ted Cruz' false claim that it had been 80 years since a Supreme Court Justice was confirmed in an election year. (Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in February, 1988.) Mitch McConnell the senate majority leader quickly said that no vote should be held this year.
Liberals on social media erupted in derision. This morning's Sunday news shows were filled with Democrats mocking the idea and warning about a 15 or 16 month vacancy on the court. But the Republicans are probably just bluffing. Unlike a lot of Democrats they know that the best way to start a negotiation is by being completely unreasonable and obstinate. That way when they eventually do what they pretty much had to do anyway, they look like they are being magnanimous.
If the Republicans are serious about obstructing this nomination than they will put the issue right at the heart of the campaign. The Democratic nominee will have a brown and or female face to point to and say "See, the Republicans just want to obstruct. They can not be reasoned with. And oh yeah, their real goal is to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Do you want that?"
This is a political loser for them. It will all but guarantee a democratic win and might just cost them the senate. Then 11 months from now President Clinton, Sanders or Warren can appoint almost anyone and get it through the Senate.
So my prediction is this: Obama nominates a candidate the first week of March. The GOP huffs and puffs about holding hearings, but they will give in on that when the politics of this become clearer. They will still try to slow walk it and maybe get to the August recess without a vote but when the Supreme Court begins its new term in October, there will be nine judges on it and William Kennedy's reign as the 2nd most important person on Earth will officially be over.
II. WWE Winter Slam.
Last night's Republican debate in Greenville, SC was a half dozen men mostly screaming at each other with one nearly silent black guy off to the side and one obnoxious accent from Queens dominating the proceedings. This was a much more fitting to tribute to Antonin Scalia than the moment of silence they held to open the night's events.
The most significant line of attack was, of course from Donald Trump. He openly accused George W. Bush of lying about WMD in Iraq and of failing to keep America safe on 9/11. These are not controversial thoughts in most places, but the room was packed with Rubio and Bush supporters who loudly booed him. This of course gave him the best chance to do his Bobby the Brain Hennan act and insult the crowd for being a bunch of dullards in the pocket of his rivals.
I think his real motivation was to boost up Jeb Bush as the expense of Ted Cruz. Trump knows he's going to win SC and he wants to run up the score on the most likely 2nd place finisher. As for Cruz he got baited into speaking Spanish by Marco Rubio in the one moment that suggested maybe Rubio learned something from his disaster in New Hampshire. (For the rest of the night Rubio kept repeating his stupid scripted talking points. I am not optimistic about his future this year.)
John Kasich might be the biggest beneficiary of it all. He stayed above the fray and coolly pointed out how silly the others were. Jeb couldn't help but take some offense at things said about his family. That will earn him some sympathy but not much in the way of actual votes.
The predictions markets didn't move that much. Trump and Rubio each gained 2 points, which came at the expense of Cruz who lost 4. Kasich went from 2 to 3 percent, which was offset by Bush sliding from 12 to 11 percent.
Updated Two-Step Predict Wise Market.
(Election Column reflects the party's chance of winning the election. The "President" column multiplies their shot at the nomination by their party's chance of winning the general election.)
The lower half of the chart lists the probabilities of the general election match-ups. (From Clinton vs. Trump, which is 41% chance to Sanders vs. Kasich, which is 200 to 1 shot at the moment.)
Only three presidents have been elected without benefit of having won the New Hampshire primary: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. So the only three presidents to pull of this feat are the last three presidents. It looks very likely that that streak will run to four now that the 2016 New Hampshire Primaries were won by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
I. The Big Picture: Hillary is More Likely Than Not to be the Next President.
Bernie beat Hillary lost by 22 points. That is an ass-whopping and coming off of their virtual tie in Iowa, there is much reason for Sanders to be encouraged. The next states to vote for the Democrats are Nevada, which should be very close and South Carolina, which Hillary is expected to win comfortably. The early states are likely to result in two ties and two blowouts in opposite directions.
Hillary is likely to survive that. The predictions market at predictwise.com gives here an 82% chance of being the nominee. And they give the Democratic nominee a 61% chance of winning the general election. If you multiply those possibilities, she has a 50.002% chance of being the next elected president of the United States.
I like her chances even better than that. The theory of my 2016 posts has been that the prediction markets are underestimating the Democrats' prospects. Instead of being a 60% favorite, I think the Democratic nominee should be more like a 2 to 1 favorite at about 66%. I think the market is about right on her being the nominee, so .82 *. 67 is right about 55 percent. But a lot has to happen before then and we have two very interesting races unfolding for the weeks and months ahead.
So here's some fun with math. Here are the probabilities of each candidate becoming president, based solely on the two prediction markets on predictwise.com:
Clinton 51%, Trump 22%, Sanders 10%, Rubio 9% Cruz 6%, Bush 5%, Kasich 1%.
And here are the most likely candidate match-ups for the general election:
Match-up
Probability
Clinton
Sanders
Trump vs.....
39.0%
8.0%
Rubio vs....
18.3%
3.7%
Cruz vs....
13.3%
2.7%
Bush
10.0%
2.0%
Kasich
1.7%
0.3%
II. The GOP State of the Race.
Trump dominated New Hampshire. Before the primary I was not sure if he could get over 30% of the vote. He blew that away with 35.3%. He more than doubled his nearest competitor, John Kasich. Kasich had a great night too, but only got 16% of the vote in a state that he campaigned in almost full time. Ted Cruz also had reason to be happy with a third place finish.
Perhaps the most significant result is that Jeb Bush beat out Marco Rubio for 4th place by just over 1,000 votes. I don't think Jeb would have dropped out if he finished 5th, but the 5th place finish cemented the image of Rubio coming off the rails because of his terrible debate performance.
South Carolina will decide a lot for the Republicans. Trump is very likely to win and that will mean that his appeal is not just a quirk of New Hampshire. Cruz seems like a lock to finish second, but if Rubio somehow passes him, then the narrative will be that he overcame his New Hampshire slip up. He will then head into Nevada and Super Tuesday with some momentum.
But Jeb Bush is the most interesting story. He did terribly in Iowa and middling in New Hampshire. Between the two states he has received less than nine percent of the votes. But he is doubling-down on this effort and has recruited his brother George W. Bush to record commercials and campaign for him. This is a classic short-term decision based on W's inexplicably high approval ratings among South Carolina Republican voters. So they seem to think he can be of help in the SC primary. But who is really persuaded by learning that a candidate is supported by his sibling? And if Bush somehow does well enough in SC to continue his campaign and be nominated, those commercials will just be used against him by the Democrats. So yes, a Bush has once again committed to a strategy without contemplating an exit strategy.
III. My Updated Forecast.
I remain bullish on Rubio, relative to the predictions market. But I think this has now become a pretty close race between Trump, Cruz and Rubio. Kasich is also in better shape because I think he benefits from Rubio's stumble. I give Bush a 5% chance mostly because he has the resources to compete.
This chart lists some relevant numbers for the Republican race. The IA&NH column reflects the share of each candidate's votes among the remaining candidates. (Votes for Paul, Huckabee, etc are not included in the math.) The Predictwise column is their current marketshare to be the nominee. The last two columns refer to my personal forecast. The yellow column reflects where it was before New Hampshire and the orange is my current forecast.
After a three month break from blogging about the Republican race I updated my forecast last night just as the GOP debate was getting underway. Nothing in the debate has caused me to adjust that latest prediction. Rubio had a bad night but I don't think it will do any long term damage to him. He remains the favorite to be nominated.
The New Hampshire dynamic is sort of odd. Everyone knows the winner will be Donald Trump. The most intriguing questions are what percentage of the vote he will get, who the other top candidates from Iowa will do and who will emerge as the establishment alternative to all three of them. The most likely outcome is that Trump will win, and the 2nd through 7th spot will be a jumbled mix of establishment types, Rubio and Cruz. Probably four or five of those six candidates will be bunched within a few points of each other. So I'm going to focus on a range of possibilities. What we know:
1. Trump will finish first. If he doesn't, then his campaign is in free fall and he will quit by Wednesday.
2. Gilmore will finish 9th.
3. Fiorina will finish 8th. If she somehow sneaks up to 7th, then Ben Carson really crashed hard.
4. Carson will finish 7th. It's more and more obvious that he's not serious about winning and he's not qualified and he's not always lucid. He will stick around for SC, if only to spite Ted Cruz for his dirty Iowa tricks.
What I'm Pretty Sure of:
1. Rubio and Cruz will be in the middle of the pack. If either of them comes 2nd, they will rightly declare victory. Short of that, the goal is to beat the other one> I give Rubio the inside track there. I think he's good for 3rd place at least and Cruz will probably not do better than 4th.
2. Kasich might finish 2nd, and that would change the race. If Kasich finishes second, there are definitely four viable candidates heading to South Carolina. If he narrowly beats out Rubio for 2nd, then the conventional wisdom will be that the debate put him over the top.
3. Jeb will be in the middle of the pack but won't drop out. He could finish as bad as sixth place so he can craft anything higher than that as a semi-victory. I think he presses on to SC now matter what and take the triple bank shot of hoping that his family name, quasi-southern background and the support of Lindsey Graham are enough to make him a contender there.
What We'll Learn on Tuesday Night.
1. Christie is probably toast. If he finishes 5th or 6th, he will probably drop out. He finished 8th in Iowa and doesn't seem likely to do well in SC. But if he's top four in NH, he will try to soldier on as the establishment alternative.
2. Will Carson benefit from a Cruz backlash? If he finishes higher than 7th it probably means that Cruz cratered and a lot of that will be blamed on the stunt that Cruz pulled in Iowa.
3. How big will Trump's win be? Anything over 30% is big news. It means there is a very really swath of the party that buys his message and that he can compete anywhere that's not too heavily evangelical.
So my official predictions are this: Trump wins with 31%. Kasich and Rubio in a virtual tie (but with slightly more votes for Kasich than Rubio) for second at 16% ahead of Cruz in 4th and Bush in 5th. Christie gets about 7% for sixth place and he bows out by Thursday. Carson gets around 5% of dead enders, Fiorina 3% and Gilmore (rounding up) gets 1%.
Oh yeah, the Democrats.
Bernie will win. I'll put my official prediction at 56-44. If it's much bigger than that, there will be panic in Clintonville.
Scoreboard.
In some ways, vote share is a bigger deal tomorrow night than the order in which the candidates finish. Both winners are all but certain. Here are the numbers to watch for:
1. Can Trump get over 30%
2. Can Rubio get close to 20%
3. Can Bernie approach 60%
Whoever hits the number above with the most to spare will be the biggest story of the night. Other important numbers:
1. Whoever finishes last among Kasich, Christie and Bush is toast. If that person is Christie, he'll drop out. Bush will stick around for SC and Kasich probably will try to hang on for Super Tuesday though.
2. Any candidate who fails to break double digits tomorrow night is in trouble.
3. Cruz can treat 4th as a victory if he gets there.
4. Hillary will need to spin her defeat someway. I remember Carville's line from 1992 was that Clinton won the Primary if you didn't count the counties that share a border with Paul Tsongas' home state of Massachusetts. Someone is juking the expected stats to come up with a new version of that silver lining.
The GOP Field: 14 Candidates Who Would Never Do This
On Friday November 13, 2015 a series of coordinated, sophisticated terrorist attacks were conducted in Paris. One hundred and thirty people were killed. The Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the act. In the week since the attack there have been several raids in France and Belgium and an uptick in the military strikes against ISIL, Including France deploying its only aircraft carrier to drop bombs on Raqqa, Syria, the city which has been ISIL's de facto capital.
The domestic conversation has focused mostly on the issue of whether or not to accept refugees from this crisis, with every single Republican presidential candidate saying no to Muslim refugees. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz have somehow been even worse, saying that they would only allow Christian refugees. President Obama has been overseas all week and has been very consistent that he will not change the process for screening and accepting refugees. At least one Governor, Mike Pence (R-IN) has turned away refugees from him state and about 30 other governors, mostly Republican have said they will do the say.
This post is meant to record my impressions of the tack and my expectations for what will happen next. I will organize the topics roughly from most to least important. And I can remove all suspense by telling you that I don't know how to fix the biggest issues here.
I. Climate Change.
This mess was created by the decision of the Bush administration to depose Sadaam Hussein in 2003 and a drought in Sryria. That drought forced many farmers to abandon their land and head to Syria's cities. The tension in those cities contributed to unrest that coincided with the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011. This conflict eventually turned into a full-fledged Civil War. The chaos created by that Civil War and the ongoing problems in Iraq created a situation that allowed ISIL to thrive.
If you're reading this and anticipating push back from some obnoxious relative at Thanskgiving: bookmark this link. They won't read it, but they at least you will know you tried.
In the days since the attacks, the most pressing issue has been the fate of the more than three million refugees created by the war in Syria. In addition to the aforementioned Governors, Poland and other EU nations have also backed off from commitments to receive refugees.
A lot of these decisions are based on two related fears, which are rooted in very different degrees of reality. The immediate fear was that the attackers in Paris were people who came to Europe as refugees from the Syrian conflict. So far all of the identified attackers were French or Belgian nationals. A Syrian passport found at the soccer stadium may have been a forgery planted by ISIL to spread fear of refugees.
The bigger fear is that somewhere among the more than three million people currently crowding refugee camps in Syria, Turkey and Jordan are people trained by ISIS to penetrate the western world and carry out more atrocities. This despite the fact that our screening process for refugees is thorough and exhaustive, taking a minimum of 18 months.
But I don't want to dismiss these concerns out of hand. ISIL is proving to be a lot more savvy with the ways of the world than Al Qaeda ever was. That is probably generational to an extent but it also reflects the influence of ISIL members who were raised in the West. They know how to produce slick videos and how to use social media in ways that earlier incantations of Jihadism never would have thought of. So maybe they can infiltrate the refugee camps. And maybe some of the people displaced by the war are sympathetic to ISIL because they think the real cause of their trouble is President Asaad or the Iraqi government or the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
We have been accepting refugees from war torn countries for a very long time. One of our greatest shames, after slavery, was the decision to not allow more Jewish refugees in from Nazi Germany. And the refugees we have accepted in recent years have committed virtually zero acts of terror here. The only recorded instances of people being granted asylum here and then committing wars are two Iraqis who tried to buy arms to send back to Iraq and the Tsarnaev brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombing. The Iraqis are in prison for their crime. One Tsarnaev is dead, and his brother is on death row.
The mature thing to say now is that the risk is minimal and we can accept it because the alternative is much worse. ISIL hates these refugees because they consider them traitors for having fled their territory for life elsewhere. Even more importantly, ISIL needs as many people as it can keep under its thumb. It needs soldiers, and workers and most of all, tax payers. ISIL would love for the people of Syria and Iraq to believe there is no hope in fleeing. They want those people to accept life in their caliphate and have made it a state goal to destroy the "grey zone" where Muslims can mix with and live among people of other faiths. We live in that grey zone and we should be very proud of that. ISIL will use any reticence by Western governments to accept Arab refugees as a propaganda talking point. And they hope that attacks like the one in Paris will make Westerners less likely to accept and live among Muslims. Our fear makes us look weak to ISIL and cruel to the people they terrorize.
If we are better than that, we will accept all the refugees we have pledge to, and tens of thousands more. Bu the politics of that is going to be sticky. More on that later.
III. A Word About Empathy
One of the most common topics of discussion on social media this week was the disparity in interest between this attack and an earlier attack by ISIL in Beirut, Lebanon. The Beirut attacks killed 43 people and although the media did cover these stories, the public reaction was much more muted. The common explanation was that this was rooted in racism. But that's a bit simplistic, considering that ISIL recently bombed a Russian airliner, killing more than 200 mostly European people.
The real issues is empathy. Every Westerner has either been to Paris, planned to go to Paris eventually or dreamed about it as some vague future goal. It is one of the great cities of Earth and it has been romanticized in more movies and books than just about any other. When Americans hear about a rock concert in Paris being shot to hell on a Friday night, we all think, "That could have been me, if I had saved a little more money for that vacation I've been meaning to take."
For as long as I have been aware of the larger world, Beirut has been synonymous with war and deprivation. Of course there are Americans who have been there, or who have family there, but for the rest of us, Beirut is not a place we dream to see one day. When a hotel blows up there, we rest easy because we know we would not have been there at any time and we're virtually certain that no one we know was there either. The same goes for a flight from Egypt to Moscow. I have been to Egypt and I am something of a Russophile. But the odds of my being on that flight are practically zero. The very human instinct of empathy just does not kick into gear the same way when we know that we and our loved ones were never at risk of being hurt.
On the Friday after the Paris attacks another Islamist group took 270 hostages at a hotel in Mali, eventually killing 27 of them. The press covered it. And two days later no one in the West is talking about it. I guess they didn't grow up dreaming of Honeymooning in Bamako.
IV. Allow Me to Upset Everyone.
Two broad camps have emerged with very different opinions of the role of Islam in all of this. The left-wing group claims that this has "nothing to do with Islam" so often that the phrase has become a sardonic hashtag for new Atheists and other critics of Islamism. On the right, Islam itself is presumed to be inherently violent. Every single Republican candidate for president has said he or she would refuse to accept any Muslim refugees from Iraq and Syria. Donald Trump has expressed support for monitoring mosques and for requiring Muslims to register as such with the government.
Neither of these opinions are serious. The former is at least well-intended, but that's not a good enough reason to justify it's naivete. For simplicity's sake, I will discuss these two camps as Reactionary and Apologist.
The Reactionary view of Islam is extremely harmful to our national security. Donald Trump's polling numbers have improved since the attacks in Paris, because a lot of people are afraid of similar attacks happening here and he has been most willing to say outrageous things that give the fleeting feeling of comfort. Jeb Bush seemed to toy with the idea of being a grown-up on this situation by half-heartedly denouncing some of the more outrageous statements of the Xenophobes. And then he backtracked to clarify that we should only accept Christian refugees. This made me think of those idiotic Facebook Memes of George W. Bush asking "Miss Me Yet?" As president? Of course not. But as the figure head of one of our political parties? We apparently could do a lot worse. And we are.
Even Marco Rubio, the great establishment hope, has said some truly stupid things this week, desperately flailing to look "tough" on this issue, without giving a moment's thought to how his comments will be received in Muslim-majority nations. He has proven himself to be every bit as much of a demagogue as Ted Cruzy. I will remind everyone of that next summer when the media tries to tell us that Rubio is the serious choice for conservatives. There is no serious choice for Republicans in 2016. The base is over run with the phobias that Fox News has been slinging for the past seven years. They are stuck with 14 childish options. And that is a shame.
But the Apologists are not helping either. Lots of liberals rushed this week to say that ISIL does not "represent" Islam. Indeed they are not representative of mainstream Islam. They are a fringe movement, and a good analogy can be made to the standing of the KKK in Christianity 75 years ago. But here's the thing about a fringe: it is part of the rug.
In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris a lot of Apologists spread a modernized translation of a verse of the Koran translated as:“Whoever kills an innocent life, it is as if he has killed all of humanity. And whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved all of humanity” –Quran 5:32
A noble sentiment. But the Apologist crowd ignores the very next verse: Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment, -Quran 5:33.
The Reactionaries seem to delight in the brutality of that second verse. But since most of the Reactionaries identify as Jewish or Christian, they would do well to read the Old Testament passages on stoning rape victims (Deutoronomy 22:28-29) or mandating the death penalty for people who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14). My point is not that the Quran is especially violent. It is a product of its time, and taken literally, it can have very bad consequences. And Islam's biggest problem is that too many Muslims are fundamentalists.
It's become a canard of the right that moderate Muslims do not denounce terrorism. In fact, they do. By wide margins, and loudly. What they do not do, is state publicly that the Quran is imperfect or subject to liberal interpretations. Opinion polling on these issues is inherently suspect because a lot of people probably answer affirmatively to questions such as "Do you agree with the punishments for adultery as prescribed in the Quran or the Haddiths" because they either don't know what that punishment is or because they feel obligated to answer that way, but would never actually support those punishments being carried out in reality. (For the record the Quran calls for lashing in the case of extra-marital sex. Several Haddiths, statements of the Prophet Mohammed, call for Stoning. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajm.)
Other statistics are more troubling. Substantial minorities believe that Honor Killings, the killing of women by male relatives when she is found to have dishonored her family are permissible, at least under some circumstances. This is true even in moderate, democratic countries like Turkey (32%) and Indonesia (18%). (Source: Pew Survey)
This is relevant because ISIL bases its governance on a literal reading of the Quran. Countless scholars have shredded their views on this point, but the fact remains that Theology is never a settled science. And ISIL is pretty meticulous in justifying its policies by pointing to specific passages of the Quran or to specific Haddiths. There are Jews who believe that the Old Testament should be taken literally. But they are few in number. Fundamentalist Christians believe silly things like that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that Evolution by Natural Selection is a myth inspired by Satan. Happily, the Enlightenment tamed the worst of these movements by making, for example, the burning of people for owning a Bible written in English a capital offense. (But let's remember that Sir Thomas Moore did just that when he was the attorney general of England less than 500 years ago. And Pope John Paul II made him the patron saint of Politicians less than 20 years ago.)
I've never heard anyone claim that the KKK represents mainstream Christianity. I've also never heard anyone seriously deny that it was a Christian movement. Islam is not uniquely violent. But it is uniquely fertile ground for violence justified by fundamentalism. That is one of the great challenges of the 21st century. And while we must be careful not to demonize the 23% of the Earth that practices that religion, we also should not ignore this very real problem. Pretending that ISIL does not justify its violence by pointing to sacred Islamic texts is a delusion. And we have to face this problem with the full force of our reason.
V. What Is to be Done?
Now the hard part. Every single candidate for President has said that we need to step our efforts against ISIL. When pressed for specifics they usually say this means more airstrikes, especially against ISIL's de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. France reacted to the attacks by dropping 20 bombs on Raqqa and some thought this was a sign of things to come. But not much has happened in the week since, which makes those missions look like they were mostly done for show. Only a few candidates have called for large numbers of American troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria. And for good reason.
If we send in thousands of American troops, we could route the military forces of ISIL. Most of their soldiers will probably blend back into civil society. And we would suffer some heavy casualties and spend a lot of money. And the biggest question is, what will replace ISIL. Russia and Iran pushing to ensure that President Asaad be allowed to remain in power after all. That seems tempting but is probably a bad idea considering that this conflict arose as a reaction to his barbarity, including the use of chemical weapons. He is not an acceptable player on the world stage. The normally staid Economist suggested this week that the West increase its military strikes and even called for an army of Turkish, Saudi and Gulf Arab soldiers to govern what's left of Syria.
I'm not sure that this would be much of an improvement over ISIL. Saudia Arabia recently sentence a poet to be crucified for having renounced Islam. Last year they beheaded a man for the crime of sorcery. So how a Saudi-led military coalition would be an improvement over the present bunch of fanatics is very much in dispute.
We all know this conflict is not worth World War Three but some politicians are willing to call for actions that would lead to just that. Hillary Clinton and some of the Republicans have called for a no-fly zone to prevent Asaad from terrorizing his people. But no one has yet pressed them on whether this would include a commitment to shoot down Russian fighter jets. Marco Rubio wrote an even more reckless Op-ed which basically calls for a repeat of the mistakes we made in Iraq. That's incredibly foolish but seems predicated on a common, very false presumption that there exists some force in the region which will take power and rule peaceably if only we rallied to its side. That force does not exist and any politician that bases its policies on that fairy tale is being dishonest.
ISIL has styled itself as a Caliphate, which is a necessary component of the Quanic End Times. Al Qaeda did not got so far as declaring that status for themselves. They lacked the geographic region or blood ties to the Prophet Mohammed to make such a claim plausible. ISIL feels otherwise. The most hopeful sign is that ISIL has not expanded it territorial control in many months, and has recently lost some land, including the city of Sinjar, Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the leader of ISIL, the proclaimed successor to Mohammed. Killing him will be a big blow to their claims of Quranic legitimacy, so a targeted strike that takes him out may do some good. But realistically, ISIL will not fold just because their leader dies. They may point to the Quran as their inspiration now, but they've had enough earthly success to just fold up after a setback like that.
And if they do fold, if their members do slip back into civilian life, the issue will not go away. If we procure peace in this region, it will be tenuous at best. The scare of the civil war and the effects of the drought will not go away no matter what military and political solution the world comes up with. An all out effort will cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Nine months later we'll begin reading about some new shitty acronym and the pundits will rush to declare them worse than, or nothing compared to ISIL. This cycle is reality for the present and the names are more likely to change than the underlying facts.
-Perspective
It just may be time for us to admit that we have to live with this situation for now. The Kurds have performed admirably and they deserve our support. But we have to remember that their demand will be recognition of a Kurdish state when this war is over. They will probably deserve that but the consequences for Turkey, Iran and what ever is left of Syria and Iraq will be enormous. The West is in no position to make that promise now.
We lose about 30,000 Americans every year to gun violence. A majority of that is lost to suicides. But about 12,000 are murders and a substantial number are accidental deaths. We have made the collective decision to live with those numbers because the alternative, surrendering the right to bear arms is too great. In the more than 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, only 71 Americans have died in domestic terror attacks. But we seem willing to spend any price to combat this threat, including more than 5,000 members of the armed forces, well over a trillion dollars in military expenditures and significant curtailment of our civil liberties.
Barack Obama has made this observation many times, usually in the context of calling for more gun control laws. Maybe the first grown-up to make it in the context of calling for a deescalation of the War on Terror should be the next President of the United States. More likely we will be choosing between two watered down versions of more of the same.
VI. Politics.
It may seem in poor taste to discuss that subject in the aftermath of a large slaughter of civilians, but for the past year this blog has focused mostly on the 2016 Presidential election and I want to indulge in some speculation about what this means for the candidate.
The short-term reaction has been very clear. Donald Trump jumped up in the polls, mostly at the expense of Ben Carson. Ted Cruz has also seen a bump, defying the expectation that Marco Rubio was about to begin consolidating the establishment vote. The base seems to think that Cruz is built for this fight a little better than Rubio. The Democrats continue to coalesce around Hillary Clinton. Bernie might win New Hampshire but he has not built a serious national operation and O'Malley remains stuck in very distant third place.
Trump continues to double-down on nativism and fears of terrorism. Today he claimed to have watched "thousands" of Arabs in Jersey City celebrate the 9/11 attacks. No evidence of these celebrations exist, but he says he saw it "with his own two eyes", albeit on television. Carson has also been a profile in cowardice, comparing refugees to rabid dogs. John Kasich, another semi-serious candidate has stooped to calling for the creation of a department of the federal government to promote "Judeo-Christian values". Even Rand Paul has said some stupid things about the need for more military action. Apparently he realized that Paris obviated his flirtations with defense sanity.
This is ugly. And the first caucus is only ten weeks away. If Carson's support continues to slip, Iowa is anyone's game. But Cruz might be best positioned to win there. Trump seems destined to win New Hampshire now and Rubio will need a win in SC or NV to stay relevant. By March 1st, this will probably be a three way race, and I can see any of the three winning.
As for the general election, the Democrats have to be worried. Another major attack, even in Europe, will hurt their credibility, fairly or not. Next fall Hillary will need to distinguish herself from President Obama and she might be tempted to run to the right. But that's not a great way to beat any of the likely Republican nominees, any of whom will be willing to say things far crazier than what she might say. She admirably resisted the temptation to say "radical Islam" during the recent Democratic debate. I hope she keeps her senses about her, because as bad as the politics of trying to out crazy the Republicans on this issue are, it's an even worse method for governing. And the world of 2017 can not afford a President Trump, a President Cruz or a President Rubio. That much is clear.
Last night the GOP held its fourth debate of the 2016 cycle. Only eight candidates made the main stage, while four were relegated to the kiddie table and three candidates failed to qualify for either event. The pared down cast improved the show by allowing the plausible candidates to have more time. Almost immediately I notice that the most sense was coming from the far ends of the stage, from the two candidates clinging for dear life to their right to be on that stage at all. So for this review of the state of the GOP race, I will evaluate the candidates by how they were paired up on stage.
1. The Outliers (Kasich and Paul). Here is a sentence I never expected to write: I thought Rand Paul was the best candidate in that debate. He obviously has decided that his only hope for relevance is to reignite some love for his watered down Libertarianism by shitting on the ridiculous neconservative fantasies that pass for policies among the serious candidate. He also corrected Trump on a very stupid factual mistake related to free trade.
From the other end of the stage, John Kasich came thundering to the defense of reason and in opposition to the truly insane, unsustainable tax policies of his competitors. He was impolite and sensible, so not surprisingly he was booed by the crowd and roundly panned by the right wing media figures today. At one time I thought Kasich might become the establishment candidate that the base could put up with if they became convinced that he was their best shot at carrying Ohio and taking the White House. That seems very unlikely now.
Neither Kasich nor Paul will be the Republican nominee next year. Paul has apparently decided to speak up for his ideological preferences and Kasich for pragmatism. Paul will probably benefit from this choice and get a modest bump. But Kasich is officially doomed. If he keeps u this rationale nonsense he just might play his way out of what should be a very strong chance at becoming the Vice-Presidential nominee.
2. The Lamestream (Jeb! and Fiorina).
Sixty days ago I'm sure that both Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina believed they were likely to become the nominee and probably thought they would more likely than not become the 45th President of the United States. It is quite obvious that this will not happen. Jeb is a terrible candidate who managed to finish dead last in microphone time for yet another debate. When he did speak he was boring and way off-message. He doubled-down on the invasion of Iraq for the 947th time and that did him no favors.
Someday Carly Fiorina will be an amusing piece of presidential campaign trivia. She vaulter herself from the kiddie table to the primetime debate with a well-rehearsed shtick as the anti-Hillary. The base took a good look at her in this fall but she did not complete the sale. She is playing out the string.
In some alternate reality, these candidates are not stuck in the 5th and 6th spot. But I don't see either of them moving up, barring a profound implosion by a couple of the heavyweights.
3. The Finalists (Rubio and Cruz).
Rubio and Cruz have run the most intelligent campaigns in this cycle. They still have not come close to closing the polling gap with the nominal front-runners, but they have built steadily and they have not alienated anyone. The establishment and the donor class are ready and even eager to support Rubio. Cruz does very well among evangelicals and working class Trump voters. He is well positioned to take the votes from Cruz and or Trump should they fall from grace.
Six months from now, this race will probably be whittled down to these two men. Both are intelligent, ambitious and willing to fight. One of them is a sociopath. But my money is on the other guy, even if he sometimes uses the wrong credit card in Las Vegas.
4. The Cincinnati Bengals (Trump and Carson).
The weirdest part of the geometry in Milwaukee was that the center-most podiums felt the least relevant to the process. Dr. Carson and Mr. Trump dominate the national and state-level polling. They typically combine for a bare majority of the responses while every other candidate in the field is delighted to be at or near 10 percent. But nearly everyone expects an implosion for them once real voting happens.
Dr. Carson did not even try to look prepared. Most of his answers were the rambling word salads of a very bright man talking about a subject he knows nothing about. Imagine a Supreme Court justice holding forth on quantum physics. It almost sounds serious, but when you parse it out, there's just nothing there.
Trump was his usual self but that really is beginning to wear a little bit thin. Which does not mean he will slide in the polls. A certain kind of voter just loves his shtick. But part of his appeal is the arrogant confidence that will be destroyed by coming in third in Iowa or New Hampshire. If he has a setback like that, he'll probably leave the field with a lot of huffing and puffing about how great he did very early next year.
The Cincinnati Bengals have been one of the better teams in the AFC over the past half-decade. Since Marvin Lewis became their head coach they have won 55% o their games and made the playoffs six times. But they lost their first playoff game all six times. This year they are undefeated at 8-0 but no one can quite take them seriously given their track record And that's how you have to feel about the candidacy of Trump and Carson. They are crushing the competition but it's hard to shake the doubts that they will fold when the campaign begins in earnest.
The Updated Forecast
There is not a lot of movement in this one. Rubio inches up slightly and Cruz improves his odds form 8 to 1 to about 6 to 1. Carson, Trump and Bush slip slightly and I've officially given up on Fiorina's chances. If she was going to win the nomination she would have built on the momentum she had coming out of the first debate. She has not.
There are 4 candidates who will have the option of going beyond the early states. But I think Trump and or Carson may tire of this game by then. I am hoping we get a middle stage of the primaries with Rubio and Cruz having to deal with Trump on a stage that only has three podiums. But eventually this will come down to a fight between the establishment choice of Rubio against the Tea Party's favorite Cruz. That will be tough emotional waters for me because I loathe Ted Cruz. But I fear Marco Rubio.
In my previous post on the GOP field I created a new taxonomy for the candidates. This taxonomy included four categories: Outsiders, Serious, Niche and Charity. My thesis was that the traditional "tiers" model could not accurately capture the dynamics of the 2016 GOP primary. The Outsider candidates (Trump, Carson and Fiorina) were dominating the polling but nearly everyone still believe the nominee would be a more conventional candidate. Two weeks and one debate later, the polling number of the Outsider candidates remain strong but I'm still skeptical of their chance to be nominated.
At the start of this process I thought there were three candidates (Walker, Rubio and Bush) who had roughly equal chances at being the nominee. Since then Walker has dropped out and Bush has imploded. I now believe that Marco Rubio is a better than even money bet to win the nomination. The bookmakers at Paddy Power agree that he's the heavy favorite but not by as much as I do. (The have him as a 2.37 to 1 shot, which translates into a 30% chance of being the nominee. I have him at 52%.)
Before I write about my updated handicap, I want to look at the recent polls for this nomination process. In the earlier post, I added up the Real Clear politics averages of the candidates in each of my categories. There has been almost no movement among these groups in this time. The Outsiders are a majority, the Serious Candidates are fighting over 1/4 of the voters and the rest of the field is right around 10 percent. Whoever gets the nomination will get them by convincing undecided voters or persuading votes away from the Outsider candidates.
Category
Oct. 18
Nov. 1st
Outsiders
54.3
54.8
Serious
26
25.4
Niche
10
8
Charity
1.1
1.6
II. Individual Candidates
Two big themes emerged in the post-debate coverage. The first was that Marco Rubio crushed Jeb Bush in a head to head confrontation over his voting record. The second was that the candidates complained about the toughness of the questions. The questions were pretty tough, but no more than than during the first two debates on Fox News and CNN. What was different this time was that the moderators did a terrible job of controlling the candidates. We saw a lot of interruptions and cross-talk, which of course is how CNBC sounds during most of its broadcast day. It made for bad television and gave the GOP an excuse to whine about the event. I think this whining may bounce back on them as they came out of the hulabaloo looking like a bunch of men who promise to thrash ISIS but are incapable of withstanding CNBC.
We also saw another predictable theme with regards to the front-runner. After each of the first three Republican debates, the punditry has been quick to declare a setback for Donald Trump. After the first two, his numbers slipped slightly for about a week and then rebounded. I expect that pattern to repeat this time. But I think Trump did fine. The moderators for this debate, unlike their predecessors at other networks, didn't give him an excessive amount of questions and he faded into the background a little. But he didn't need to dominate the conversation. He just needed to be himself. And he was, especially during a rousing final speech about how he saved us all from the event being 30 minutes longer than it was. (If future generations are reading this blog post on a recovered Internet cache, just trust me on this. The front runner got rousing applause by bragging about keeping the event short.)
But they were right about Jeb Bush. He got crushed. I have come to the conclusion that he is a lousy candidate and that people just don't like him. The conventional wisdom at the start of this process was that Jeb would have to work hard to overcome the stigma of his name. I didn't really buy that because the Republican base never really blamed Bush for all the horrific things his presidency led to. I thought Jeb could bill himself as the smarter, wonkier version of his older brother. But he's not even getting that chance. People don't like him, which probably explains why he lost his first crack at becoming Governor of Florida. He still has a lot of institutional support, so I'm not completely writing him off. But it is hard to imagine the narrative he would corral to get back into this race. When John McCain was faltering in the polls we all knew he had an extremely remarkable biography to fall back on. Jeb's biography is remarkable but not for reasons that could ever make him credible as a plucky outsider. He is no maverick and he probably needs to get used to living with the fact that his idiot brother achieved a pinnacle that he will never reach.
In my original forecast, I gave Bush, Rubio and Walker a combined 89% of being the nominee. I know have Rubio at 52, Bush at 3 and Walker has left the race. I gave Trump a 2% chance and Carson and Fiorina none at all. Today I have them with a combined 31% chance. So they have gained nearly all of the probability lost by my three original front-runners.
The only other significant movement has been the emergence of Ted Cruz. Given just 1% in my first forecast, I now have him at a solid 12%. He has played the game well. His fund raising is strong and he has positioned himself to pick up a lot of Trump/Carson voters should one or both of them implode sometime between now and Super Tuesday.
Here's the Updated Forecast:
Candidate
Pre 1st debate
Post 1st Debate
Pre 2nd Debate
Pre 3rd Debate
Post 3rd Debate
Change
Trump
2
1
8
12
18
6
Bush
34
31
24
17
3
-14
Walker
32
29
22
--
--
--
Rubio
23
28
26
46
53
7
Huckabee
3
3
1
1
1
0
Santorum
1
1
1
1
1
0
Paul
2
1
1
0
0
0
Cruz
1
1
2
10
12
2
Kasich
1
2
6
3
2
-1
Carson
0
0
3
5
7
2
Christie
0
0
0
0
0
0
Jindal
0
0
0
0
0
0
Fiorina
0
2
3
2
1
-1
Graham
0
0
0
0
0
0
Perry
0
0
--
--
--
Pataki
0
0
0
0
0
0
Gilmore
0
0
0
0
0
0
The Field
1
1
3
3
2
-1
III. Process and Very Premature Delgate Math
The first delegates will be determined four months from tonight in Iowa. The field has been pretty stable up until now but I'm sure we will see a flurry of changes as that date draws near. Some of the minor players might drop out, although it's hard to say who. Christie and Paul should throw the towel in but they both seem too stubborn to do so. I think Paul finds value in espousing his vaguely libertarian ideals in these forums. All of the field seems to enjoy the attention. Even absurd long shots like Jindal and Pataki have access to national microphones that will be gone forever once they drop out.
Jeb is too well-heeled and connected to drop out soon. He probably believes that he can weather this storm and that most people will eventually come to their senses on Trump and Carson. But he also seems weary of the process. He might drop out before Iowa, but only if he thinks the nomination is going to be won by someone he respects. I think that's a short list. Kasich for sure and presumably Rubio too. The most likely outcome is that he hangs around through the early states and hopes to swoop up some delegates on Super Tuesday.
Individual Contests.
1. IOWA: MOST LIKELY WINNER; BEN CARSON.
Iowa seems likely to be won by either Trump or Carson. I think Carson might benefit from the same dynamic that helped Obama in 2008. Iowans are nice people and I know that Iowa takes some pride in the role it played in electing the first black president. I think that pride has rubbed off on the Republicans there and unless Carson says something disqualifying or the competition succeeds in portraying him as a fraudster for selling snake oil supplelments and then lying about it, he will be in a strong position there.
Rubio and Cruz should battle for third place but this contest has previously been won by two of our long shot candidates-Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. I think some odd ball like that will get a surprising third place or a very strong 4th. That person will be able to survive New Hampshire.
2. NEW HAMPSHIRE MOST LIKELY WINNER; DONALD TRUMP:
Trump is dominating the polls here. NH has a long history of shunning the Iowa winner so it might be in Trump's best interest to lose close in IA, then sweep up in NH. In fact, that seems likely. Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Christie will all be vying or 2nd place. If Kasich doesn't get that, he'll probably drop out and wait for his phone to ring in July. If Christie finishes lower than 4th, he will probably drop out too.
3. SOUTH CAROLINA: MOST LIKELY WINNER: DONALD TRUMP
South Carolina votes on February 20th, Nevada on February 23rd. I think the field will split after NH with most candidates focusing on one of these states and ignoring the others. Rubio and Cruz will try for NV, Trump, Carson and Bush for SC. The hangers on will each take a shot somewhere but they won't have much chance of medaling in either place.
The most interesting scenario is if Trump manages to wins South Carolina. His outer boro obnoxiosness should not play in the south, but I think it will play to this crowd. He is currently leading the polls there by 13 points and I think he will win there next February. That will begin to push Carson to the margins.
4. NEVADA: TOO CLOSE TO CALL
Nevada could be won by Rubio, Cruz or Trump. If Carson has pulled the upset in SC, then this race could pull him back into the lead ahead of Super Tuesday. There has only been one published poll of this race in he last 90 days. Trump led comfortably but I suspect some of the lower-tier candidates will try to ramp up a presence there in December and January.
DISCLAIMER: The picture beyond these early states is very murky. I'm going to go through the rest of the states in order to create a record of my predictions, but the truth is, if Kasich or Bush pulls an upset in NH, the rest of my predictions will look foolish. The underlying premise of everything else is that Trump, Carson, Rubio and Cruz all come out of the first 4 contests with at least some delegate and one or more strong performances in an early state.
5. SUPER TUESDAY: 12 States Voting on March 1st, 2016.
Twelve states vote on March 1st. The states are from all over the map but more than 2/3 of the available delegates come from Southern states. (And that's with counting Oklahoma as a Midwestern state, although its politics are a lot more like the former Confederate states than the great plains.)
Southern: 408 delegates from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia
Western: 57 delegates from Alaska, Wyoming
Northeastern: 58 delegates from Massachusetts, Vermont
Midwestern: 81 delegates from Minnesota, Oklahoma,
By this point, Trump will either have burned out, dropped out in a fit of pique or gained national credibility. I suspect the latter is most likely but Cruz and Rubio will be well-positioned to get a lot of delegates in the Southern and Western States.
I suspect after these contests that Rubio, Trump and Cruz will all have enough delegates to seem like plausible candidates. Carson also could be viable then. Bush, Kasich and Fiorina will have needed one or two big upsets to still be around. Santorum, Huckabee and Jindal will be playing out the string but why not hang around for 4 more days
6. MARCH 5th: Old Home Saturday. Caucuses in Maine, Kansas and Kentucky. Primary in LA.
By now we will be playing for pride. Every contest before March 15th must award its delegates proportionally. Jindal and Paul will be hoping for home state wins to corral some delegates. That will be the last we hear from them. And it's hard to imagine Maine and Kansas resolving much.
7. MARCH 8th; The Last Proportional States; Idaho, Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi.
Cruz could win Idaho and Mississippi, Trump should win Michigan and Rubio will probably compete in all Four States.
8. MARCH 15th: The Field Will Thin.
With apologies to Puerto Rico (March 13th), the nomination very well may be decided on the first day of Winner Takes All Contests. Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Florida and North Carolina all go to the polls. If Rubio holds home court in Florida, those 99 delegates will probably get him at or near the lead in the delegate count. Trump will need to win Ohio and Illinois, Cruz will be banking on wins in NC and MO. If Rubio wins any of those other states, he will have the delegate lead.
If Kasich has hung on to this point, he could throw the math off by winning Ohio's 66 delegates. But this seems increasingly unlikely. He may stay in the race at that point only if he thinks he can keep Trump from getting those delegates.
I know I've been discounting Carson through all of these predictions. I guess I just don't see him having the wherewithal for a long political fight. I know Cruz and Rubio have that. Unless one of them is shut out on March 15th, they will soldier on to the next contests. Trump will probably be neck and neck with Rubio for the most delegates, and ready to go scorched earth on the young Senators.
9. The Rest of the Races:
March 22nd: I think Rubio will win UT because he is far and away the most polite candidate of the three left standing. Arizona could be a sprawling three way race.
April 5th: Wisconsin. This will be 2 weeks where Scott Walker wishes he didn't give up so easily. 42 delegates to either Trump or Rubio
April 19th: New York. If Trump is still running, he wins. If not, it's Rubio's. Cruz could be on life support after this race.
April 26th: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. So THIS is where the establishment has stashed the sane states. That's 172 delegates and I think Rubio does well in all of those states. Cruz will probably have to concentrate in MD and PA. If he wins those 2, then the race is still too close to call.
The Delagate Math So Far:
I don't know the exact mechanics for distributing delegates int he proportional states. But I just tried some very crude back of the envelop math on how the delegate counts will look after April 26th. What I have is a very competitive three way race. Here's the very inaccurate projection:
Trump 694
Rubio 534
Cruz 520
Carson 58
Paul 21
Jindal 15
Bush 3
Huckabee 2
Santorum 1
I have Kasich at 0 but that is likely to be off by a lot if he does better than expected in the early states and is able to win all 66 delegates by squeaking out a win in his home state of Ohio. He may have an incentive to stay in if the math is this close, because those 66 delegates might be the difference between getting the needed majority and not. And the VP Slot is not too much to ask in that scenario.
10. What the Heck: Why Stop Being Wrong Now?.
I was going to write some boring paragraph about the rest of the races being too early to call but let's face it, this blog is just for fun and almost certain to be wrong. So no half-measures tonight. Here's how the rest of the races will go, with the winner's haul of delegates in parenthesis.
May 3rd
Indiana Rubio (57)
May 10th: This could be Cruz' last stand. He will need a win that day but I don't think he'll get one.)
Nebraska Turmp (36)
West Virginia Trump (34)
May 17th Oregon Rubio (28)
June 7th Each of the 3 candidates could get a win here but only 2 of them can win more than one race. If Trump and Rubio both go all in for California, Cruz would be wise to concentrate on the other states and hope to finish the day in 2nd place. More likely they will all fight for CA and Rubio will win.
California Rubio (172)
Montana Cruz (27)
New Jersey Trump (52)
New Mexico Rubio (24)
South Dakota Trump (29)
June 14th:
District of Columbia Rubio (19)
The Dates to be Determined.
Obviously the timing and spread of these contests will affect who wins where. But I'm assuming none of these will go before March 16th and I'm taking my best guess at who will win.
North Dakota Cruz (28)
Colorado Rubio (37)
Washington Rubio (44)
America Samoa Rubio (9)
Guam: Cruz (9)
N. Marianas Trump (9)
Virgin Islands Trump (9)
10. Final Delegate Math (A Political Nerd's Dream Come True)
Rubio: 933 37.8%
Trump: 853 34.5%
Cruz: 584 23.6%
Others: 100 4.1%
A brokered convention is too good to be true. If the math begins to shape up this way the party would put enormous pressure on Cruz to drop out and let Rubio vanquish Trump mano e mano. But Cruz has big ambitions and he won't come cheap. He also probably prefers Trump to Rubio if only because he's more likely to inherit Trumps supporters in 2020 should he not stick Trump in the back. So next July in Cleveland might be the first brokered convention of my lifetime, but I know there are powerful forces dedicated to preventing that. I'll try to update my Math as we get past the early states and have real voting data to work with.
IV. FINAL THOUGHTS
We could get through the four February contests with eight candidates who still believe they can be the nominee. The early states are not important because of the delegates they allocate. They are important because the media ignores and the donors stop supporting the candidates who do poorly there. This year's Republican field is twice the size of a typical nominating process which means that the votes will be distributed across many more candidates than usual. In 2012 John Huntsman dropped out after only getting 17 percent in New Hampshire. Any candidate other than Trump would be delighted with that number this time around. I can foresee five or even six candidates vying for double digits there, and a couple other candidates might do well in Iowa and/or South Carolina. Even little Bobby Jindal has reason for optimism this week after an Iowa poll put him at a whopping six percent.
Iowa's most likely outcome is Carson first, Trump second and Cruz third. If Huckabee and Jindal break double digits there, they will soldier on to South Carolina. Trump, Carson, Rubio and Cruz will all set their sites on winning new Hampshire. Kasich, Bush Christie and Paul will all be hoping to edge out the others to finish a strong fifth. That's ten candidates who will choose between SC and NV to get one more respectable finish. Lindsay Graham will have to choose between accepting reality or hoping to play spoiler with a 4th place finish in his home state.
Then it will come down to personality. I can see Kasich getting discouraged, maybe Huckabee and Christie too. Bush might succumb to reality if he hasn't yet medaled. Pataki and Santorum (barring another Iowa miracle for him) will pack it up. But the other seven will probably move on to Super Tuesday if only for lack of something better to do. And only when the race moves to winner take all contests will we know who the real contenders are. Trump, Rubio and Cruz will almost certainly still be standing. Carson could be out by then, but he also could be the front-runner. Bush, and Crhistie will probably be gone by then. Paul, Jindal and Kasich might be tempted to try to steal their home state contests to influence the process in the summer. Or they might clear the field to prevent the Trumptacolypse.
