Uhoh:MontanaDemocrataccusedofplagiarismdrops

Uh oh: Montana Democrat accused of plagiarism drops out of Senate race

posted at 7:21 pm on August 7, 2014 by Allahpundit

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It’s rare that an incumbent senator declining to run is bad news for the other party but there’s no way to spin this as happy for the GOP, right? Walsh was down by double digits in a solidly red state when the NYT dropped that plagiarism bomb on him. He was dead in the water. Whoever ends up replacing him as nominee will be stronger — maybe much stronger.

The GOP may need to work for this one now. A little.

“I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. senator,” Walsh said in a statement to supporters. “You deserve someone who will always fight for Montana, and I will.”

The Montana Democratic Party now will choose a replacement for Walsh to appear on the Nov. 4 ballot, along with Republican Rep. Steve Daines and Libertarian Roger Roots.

The party has to select a new Senate candidate at a nominating convention by Aug. 20.

Monday is the deadline to withdraw, which makes me wonder who leaked that oppo research to the Times about Walsh’s plagiarism last month. I think people assumed at the time it was his Republican opponent, Steve Daines, who did it, but the timing made no sense. Daines surely would have waited until the deadline passed and it was too late for Walsh to drop out. More likely it was some Democrat who leaked it knowing that Walsh was a sure loser in November and realizing that they had to act quickly so Walsh could be forced out before the deadline and replaced with someone more formidable.

Speaking of which, the early favorite:

Two Montana Democrats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the party was eyeing Nancy Keenan, a former head of Naral Pro-Choice America, to become the party’s nominee this fall against the Republican nominee, Representative Steve Daines. Ms. Keenan has had conversations about the prospect with state Democrats, but she did not return messages seeking comment…

One Democrat in the state noted that Ms. Keenan had a “national profile and national network” that would help her raise money quickly to give the party at least a chance to make the race competitive. Though Montana is a conservative-leaning state, it leans more libertarian on social issues like abortion.

With Mr. Walsh as the candidate, independent analysts had rated the seat a likely pickup for the Republicans. While Ms. Keenan, if nominated, may not ultimately be able to retain the seat first won by Mr. Baucus in 1978, strategists believe that she would at least draw financial support and not be a drag on the rest of the party’s ticket. With Mr. Daines vacating his House post to run for the Senate, Democrats believe they have a chance to pick up the state’s at-large House seat. A number of contested state legislative contests are also on the ballot.

I know, I know — a NARAL chief as nominee in a red, rural state? It made no sense to me either but apparently Montana’s not quite as anti-abortion as some of its red-state cousins. Besides, as the Times describes it, it sounds like Democrats are focused less on Keenan winning than on her running a solid enough race for them to steal Daines’s vacant House seat down ballot. She’s low-risk and potentially high-reward.

But what about Brian Schweitzer? Former governor, high name recognition, flirted with running against Daines before — he’s a natural replacement, especially since the Dems wouldn’t need to waste time introducing him to voters. Ed had the same instinct when he wrote about Walsh recently although he thought Schweitzer’s comments about having a “gaydar” and wondering if Eric Cantor was guy might have hurt him too much. Eh, I don’t know. Isn’t shooting his mouth off part of Schweitzer’s routine shtick, something Montanans are used to? Democrats can forgive anything if it means having a shot at a seat they had written off on a night when they’re at risk of being swamped. Schweitzer might be more inclined to run now too. Winning this seat would be a fast track to redemption with Democrats nationally, and if he’s semi-serious about primarying Hillary, showing he can beat the GOP in a red state when Republicans are poised to win big elsewhere is a good way to build support. Guess we’ll see.

I have no video to accompany this post so instead here’s Pelosi’s top deputy, House minority whip Steny Hoyer, reassuring an audience of African leaders that he doesn’t whip people. Wait, what?

Update: Oh well.

I respectfully decline to seek the Senate nomination. Many thanks to John Walsh & I'll support whoever the next nominee turns out to be.

— Brian Schweitzer (@brianschweitzer) August 7, 2014

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Uhoh:DemocraticsenatorfromMontanaaccusedof

Uh oh: Democratic senator from Montana accused of plagiarism in Army War College assignment; Update: I had PTSD, says Walsh

posted at 4:41 pm on July 23, 2014 by Allahpundit

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As any writer or academic will tell you, it’s the only crime worse than murder.

The bad news: He’s likely done as a senator. The good news: He’s now eligible to be vice president.

Most strikingly, each of the six recommendations Mr. Walsh laid out at the conclusion of his 14-page paper, titled “The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy,” is taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic.

On Wednesday, a campaign aide for Mr. Walsh did not contest the plagiarism but suggested that it be viewed in the context of the senator’s long career. She said Mr. Walsh was going through a difficult period at the time he wrote the paper, noting that one of the members of his unit from Iraq had committed suicide in 2007, weeks before it was due…

About a third of his paper consists of material either identical to or extremely similar to passages in other sources, such as the Carnegie or Harvard papers, and is presented without attribution. Another third is attributed to sources through footnotes, but uses other authors’ exact — or almost exact — language without quotation marks.

The senator included 96 footnotes in his paper, but many of them only illustrate this troubling pattern. In repeated instances, Mr. Walsh uses the language of others with no quotation marks, but footnotes the source from which the material came. In other cases, the passages appear in his paper with a word or two changed, but are otherwise identical to the authors’ language.

Follow the link up top for more evidence. Walsh says he doesn’t think he committed plagiarism and certainly didn’t do it intentionally, but that won’t hack it:

From War College handbook: “Copying a segment of another’s work word for word, then conveniently ‘forgetting’ to…" (1/2)

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) July 23, 2014

"…include quotation marks, but ‘remembering’ to cite the source" is expressly forbidden. There are repeated examples of this (2/2)

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) July 23, 2014

This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of lying about a credential. Martin notes in his NYT story that Walsh listed SUNY Albany as his undergrad alma mater in the congressional directory when in fact he had graduated from Regents College, an adult-learning school that’s part of the SUNY system. (That’s not the end of his scandals either.) The big question now: What does this mean for November’s midterm outlook?

The answer: It means … nothing. Or barely nothing. Walsh was appointed to the Senate five months ago to fill Max Baucus’s vacancy; it’s not impossible to win as a Democrat in Montana, as both Baucus and Jon Tester can tell you, but it’s difficult as a short-term incumbent in a political climate that’s trending GOP. The rosiest polls for Walsh right now have him trailing Republican Steve Daines by around seven points. The bleakest polls have him down 20 or more. (The RCP average has Daines by 12.5 points.) Walsh’s plagiarism is insurance that that lead will hold, but let’s face it, it was almost certainly going to hold anyway. And if you’re inside the Democratic brain trust and worried about the effect of one candidate’s scandal tarring the party in general, plagiarism’s about as easy as it gets to contain. It’s an idiosyncrasy specific to the individual, not an obvious corruption of normal political business like, say, bribe-taking would be. Frankly, I wonder how much non-academics will even care. It can be deployed by Daines if need be as evidence of his opponent’s character deficiency, but if Daines ends up in a situation where Walsh’s plagiarism scandal is the only thing standing between him and victory, then something’s gone badly, badly wrong this fall for the GOP. The race used to be a lay-up. Now it’s a slam dunk.

Exit question: The NYT says the paper with the (alleged) plagiarism in it was “the final paper required for Mr. Walsh’s master’s degree.” The headline describes it as a “thesis.” His master’s thesis was 14 pages long?

Update: He had PTSD, therefore he couldn’t … use quotation marks?

(AP) – Montana senator says he was being treated for PTSD when he used unattributed work in thesis.

— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) July 23, 2014

There’s no logic to that defense but it serves the purpose of shielding him from criticism. If you fault the guy for plagiarizing sources, you hate veterans. QED.

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Uhoh:DemocraticsenatorfromMontanaaccusedof

Uh oh: Democratic senator from Montana accused of plagiarism in Army War College assignment

posted at 4:41 pm on July 23, 2014 by Allahpundit

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As any writer or academic will tell you, it’s the only crime worse than murder.

The bad news: He’s likely done as a senator. The good news: He’s now eligible to be vice president.

Most strikingly, each of the six recommendations Mr. Walsh laid out at the conclusion of his 14-page paper, titled “The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy,” is taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic.

On Wednesday, a campaign aide for Mr. Walsh did not contest the plagiarism but suggested that it be viewed in the context of the senator’s long career. She said Mr. Walsh was going through a difficult period at the time he wrote the paper, noting that one of the members of his unit from Iraq had committed suicide in 2007, weeks before it was due…

About a third of his paper consists of material either identical to or extremely similar to passages in other sources, such as the Carnegie or Harvard papers, and is presented without attribution. Another third is attributed to sources through footnotes, but uses other authors’ exact — or almost exact — language without quotation marks.

The senator included 96 footnotes in his paper, but many of them only illustrate this troubling pattern. In repeated instances, Mr. Walsh uses the language of others with no quotation marks, but footnotes the source from which the material came. In other cases, the passages appear in his paper with a word or two changed, but are otherwise identical to the authors’ language.

Follow the link up top for more evidence. Walsh says he doesn’t think he committed plagiarism and certainly didn’t do it intentionally, but that won’t hack it:

From War College handbook: “Copying a segment of another’s work word for word, then conveniently ‘forgetting’ to…" (1/2)

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) July 23, 2014

"…include quotation marks, but ‘remembering’ to cite the source" is expressly forbidden. There are repeated examples of this (2/2)

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) July 23, 2014

This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of lying about a credential. Martin notes in his NYT story that Walsh listed SUNY Albany as his undergrad alma mater in the congressional directory when in fact he had graduated from Regents College, an adult-learning school that’s part of the SUNY system. (That’s not the end of his scandals either.) The big question now: What does this mean for November’s midterm outlook?

The answer: It means … nothing. Or barely nothing. Walsh was appointed to the Senate five months ago to fill Max Baucus’s vacancy; it’s not impossible to win as a Democrat in Montana, as both Baucus and Jon Tester can tell you, but it’s difficult as a short-term incumbent in a political climate that’s trending GOP. The rosiest polls for Walsh right now have him trailing Republican Steve Daines by around seven points. The bleakest polls have him down 20 or more. (The RCP average has Daines by 12.5 points.) Walsh’s plagiarism is insurance that that lead will hold, but let’s face it, it was almost certainly going to hold anyway. And if you’re inside the Democratic brain trust and worried about the effect of one candidate’s scandal tarring the party in general, plagiarism’s about as easy as it gets to contain. It’s an idiosyncrasy specific to the individual, not an obvious corruption of normal political business like, say, bribe-taking would be. Frankly, I wonder how much non-academics will even care. It can be deployed by Daines if need be as evidence of his opponent’s character deficiency, but if Daines ends up in a situation where Walsh’s plagiarism scandal is the only thing standing between him and victory, then something’s gone badly, badly wrong this fall for the GOP. The race used to be a lay-up. Now it’s a slam dunk.

Exit question: The NYT says the paper with the (alleged) plagiarism in it was “the final paper required for Mr. Walsh’s master’s degree.” The headline describes it as a “thesis.” His master’s thesis was 14 pages long?

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ChuckSchumer:Whatsaywehavefullyopen

Chuck Schumer: What say we have fully open primaries from now on?

posted at 8:41 pm on July 22, 2014 by Allahpundit

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He doesn’t mean a traditional open primary, where voters can vote in either party’s primary regardless of their own party registration. He doesn’t mean an open primary a la Mississippi either, where Democrats who hadn’t voted in their own party’s primary were eligible to vote in the runoff between Cochran and McDaniel. He means fully open: One primary that includes the candidates from both primaries, with all voters voting. The top two finishers move on to the general election, even if they both happen to belong to the same party. I.e. the Mississippi primary would have included Cochran, McDaniel, and Democrat Travis Childers; assuming Cochran and McDaniel had finished in the top two, as is likely in a state as red as that one, the November ballot would have been a de facto runoff between them with no Democrats on the ballot.

You trust Chuck Schumer to do what’s best for America, don’t you?

But primaries poison the health of that system and warp its natural balance, because the vast majority of Americans don’t typically vote in primaries. Instead, it is the “third of the third” most to the right or most to the left who come out to vote — the 10 percent at each of the two extremes of the political spectrum. Making things worse, in most states, laws prohibit independents — who are not registered with either party and who make up a growing proportion of the electorate — from voting in primaries at all…

We need a national movement to adopt the “top-two” primary (also known as an open primary), in which all voters, regardless of party registration, can vote and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, then enter a runoff. This would prevent a hard-right or hard-left candidate from gaining office with the support of just a sliver of the voters of the vastly diminished primary electorate; to finish in the top two, candidates from either party would have to reach out to the broad middle…

While there are no guarantees, it seems likely that a top-two primary system would encourage more participation in primaries and undo tendencies toward default extremism. It would remove the incentive that pushes our politicians to kowtow to the factions of their party that are most driven by fear and anger. For those of us who are in despair over partisanship and polarization in Congress, reform of the primary system is a start.

This is a solution to a problem posed by ideologues in both parties, he solemnly insists, at a moment when the right has knocked off a couple of senators and the House majority leader and the left is picking its nose, writing folk songs about a presidential non-candidate whom no one seriously believes would threaten Hillary Clinton. But never mind that. Would his plan actually work? If you stick Democrats and Republicans in the same electoral pool in the primaries, would the moderates somehow magically float to the top? According to Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight, the available evidence from California (which adopted top-two primaries in 2010) suggests … it wouldn’t:

Moreover, it doesn’t look like there has been a trend toward moderation in California. The state’s legislature has been quite as polarized as anywhere else. Political scientists Douglas Ahler, Jack Citrin and Gabriel Lenz of the University of California, Berkeley, studied the 2012 top-two primary results and found that moderate candidates didn’t do any better than they would have in a closed, intra-party primary vote. These results held for the U.S. House and state Senate races.

Ahler, Citrin and Lenz found that voters didn’t differentiate between extreme and moderate candidates. Voters may be willing to cast votes for moderate candidates, but they didn’t know who those candidates were. Instead, they relied on a candidate’s party identification. And because most voters (including independents) lean toward one party or another, their votes are reliably partisan.

Another study found that, if anything, California lawmakers having taken more extreme positions since 2012. None of which is surprising, really. For starters, why would a top-two primary necessarily increase turnout? If I believed, as Schumer claims to, that moderates are more likely to win in primaries like that, I’d be *less* likely to vote because I’d assume that the general election would essentially just be a re-run of the primary. Why bother to vote in the latter when I’ll face the same basic choice in the former? Also, what exactly is the strategic argument for voting for a moderate in a top-two primary? If you’re worried about “electability,” that worry will affect your choice of candidate regardless of whether the primary is open or closed. Frankly, if I were voting in a top-two primary in a state where I knew the tea party had a presence, I might be more inclined to support a conservative in the primary than a moderate for fear of a strategic nightmare unfolding if I didn’t. What I mean is, if I knew that the tea-party candidate was likely to get 30 percent of the overall primary vote thanks to solid conservative support, I might be inclined to throw in with them even if I preferred a RINO purely for the sake of ensuring that a Republican ended up in the final two and was on the ballot in November. In a closed primary, which ensures that the GOP will be represented in November, I wouldn’t have that fear. I could vote for the RINO and, if he lost, feel secure knowing that I could still vote for a Republican in the general election anyway.

I don’t see how this helps Democrats much either. Assume a traditional election posture nowadays where there’s a Democrat with solid party support, an establishment Republican with shaky party support, and a tea partier with decent but passionate support. Schumer, I guess, wants some Democrats to abandon their own party’s nominee and vote for the establishment Republican instead, thus ensuring that the choice in November is between a liberal and a centrist. But there’s a gamble involved there: If the Democrat starts off with 40 percent, the establishment Republican starts off with 32 percent, and the tea partier starts off with 28 percent, a 15 percent shift from the Democrat to the establishment Republican results in a top-two of … the establishment Republican and the tea partier, a mighty poor outcome for Dems who are trying to exploit the primary system. And people would realize that, which would mean few Democratic crossovers and a de facto closed primary between the establishment Republican and the tea partier. Which is basically what we have now. I don’t get it.

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Openthread:Sundaymorningtalkingheads

Open thread: Sunday morning talking heads

posted at 8:01 am on June 29, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Tough call this morning for conservatives. Watch a former Democratic president spin his way through questions about his fabulous wealth and his family’s support for the Iraq war or watch a current Democratic president whine his way through questions about Republican objections to his endless executive power grabs? Bill Clinton will be on “Meet the Press” while Obama swings by “This Week.”

If you’re not up for that, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte will be on “Fox News Sunday” to drop a hint or two about the future of immigration reform. Goodlatte’s the guy who was reportedly in tears last year listening to illegals describe their plight; lately he’s been telling people that amnesty’s dead this year. Hmmmm. Also, Peter King will be follow Obama on “This Week” to explain how Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are destroying America. The full line-up is at Politico.

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IsHillaryimploding? postedat8:01pm

Is Hillary imploding?

posted at 8:01 pm on June 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Keep hope alive, says Jonathan Last. Not only has she been gaffe-ing up America’s airwaves — the “dead broke” remark, that gay-marriage meltdown interview with NPR, and some offhanded inanity about how smart the Russian reset was — but it’s all been happening against a backdrop of fiasco for American foreign policy.

How’d you like to be a former Secretary of State running on this record?

Obama — perhaps you’ve heard this? — got bin Laden. But other than that, his foreign policy record is disastrous: Libya, Egypt, Syria, the South China Sea, Crimea, Iraq, Afghanistan. It is difficult to find a spot on the globe that is better off today than when Obama took office. And yet Obama’s foreign policy is the only entry of substance on Hillary Clinton’s resume right now. Which means it will carry double the weight.

For Obama, Putin and Crimea are a mid-size political problem, ranked somewhere above the Keystone pipeline. For Clinton it’s an existential problem because foreign affairs are the only measures for her basic professional competence.

Think about it from the perspective of a Democratic voter: Hillary Clinton was wrong on Monica Lewinsky during the (Bill) Clinton years, wrong on gay marriage and Iraq during the Bush years, and now wrong on Putin and Syria and Egypt and the whole of American foreign policy during the Obama years. What has she ever been right on? And if you’re a Democratic voter, at some point you start to wonder, Can’t we do better?

Do you? Go watch this clip before you answer. My trust in the commentariat’s ability to gauge which gaffes are truly damaging among average voters and which aren’t is down to zero at this point, and yeah, I certainly include myself in “the commentariat.” The ultimate example of this, I think, is Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line during the 2012 campaign. Conservative media blew up over it, me included, to the point where it became a key theme at the GOP convention. Voters didn’t care, though, because most voters aren’t “builders.” They’re wage-earners. You could crap on entrepreneurs all day and they wouldn’t flinch, although it’d probably convince the Chamber of Commerce to pause from its amnesty campaigning for five minutes to write a check to your opponent.

My hunch is that nothing Hillary’s said this week has reduced her chances. It takes a big gaffe to register with average voters, and that gaffe has to reveal some perceived “deeper truth” about the candidate to have legs, I suspect. That’s why Romney’s “47 percent” comment outgrew the punditocracy and actually penetrated the electorate. It seemed to confirm the sense of him as a country-club Republican who looked down on the lower class. There’s potential, I guess, for Hillary’s “dead broke” comment and her stupid whining about how “brutal” American politics is to make her seem “out of touch,” but never forget that she’s got Bill around to give her a shot of blue-collar appeal when needed. If her last name weren’t “Clinton,” you might have something in drawing her as the consummate limousine liberal. As it is, I think it’s a glancing blow, nothing more, especially if the GOP ends up supporting the “out of touch” attack by, er, nominating a guy named Bush. As for the gay-marriage interview, it’s hard for me to believe liberals are going to give her too hard a time over any heresy knowing how difficult it is for a party to win the White House for three consecutive terms. Iraq is the perfect example. Her vote to invade helped Obama pull the upset in 2008, but no one thinks it’ll keep her from the nomination now. She’s clearly the strongest candidate Democrats have in an extremely difficult political climate. They’ll be prudent in deciding how severely to punish her for deviations from orthodoxy.

As for foreign policy, everything Last said is true — it looks like O’s going to toss her the keys to an agenda that’s been completely totaled. But … since when do voters elect presidents based on foreign policy? The only clear example I can think of recently is 2004 and it took 9/11 to make that happen. Even in 2008, when Obama ran as the anti-Bush and the GOP nominated the hawk di tutti hawks, McCain was competitive until the bottom dropped out on Wall Street. Unless Rand Paul shocks everyone in the primaries, the next Republican nominee is likely to run to Hillary’s right on foreign policy, which will set her up nicely to run a “no more Iraqs” campaign. (Repudiating her own vote for war will also rally the left.) That strategy might not work as well as it did in 2008, but barring any major terror attacks on the U.S., it’ll work well enough to neutralize most of the GOP’s foreign-policy criticism, especially if the economy picks up a bit in 2015-16 and gives her something else to talk about. You have two big problems running against her and neither has anything to do with the finer points of foreign policy. One: How do you neutralize Bill’s popularity? She’s going to run on his economic record, not O’s, and he’s going to help her — a lot, I’ll bet — with blue-collar voters. She may be a bad retail politician but he’s an exceptional one, and he’ll be campaigning as much as she will. What do you do about it? (Start by nominating a conspicuously blue-collar yourself, I’d guess.) Two: How do you neutralize the “it’s time for a woman” argument? That argument doesn’t depend on who’s gaffed worst or who was really responsible for security at the Benghazi consulate. My hunch is that the GOP will start this campaign with a single-digit lead among men and Hillary will start with a double-digit lead among women. Either we build heavily on the former or reduce the latter or we lose. Is the “dead broke” thing or Ukraine going to help do that?

Update: Tough but fair.

Does it matter whether Hillary is imploding when the GOP's big idea is a man in a squirrel suit?

— Just Karl (@justkarl) June 18, 2014

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Video:JayRockefeller,RonJohnsonclashovercharge

Video: Jay Rockefeller, Ron Johnson clash over charge that racism is driving opposition to ObamaCare

posted at 11:21 am on May 22, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I’m used to this by now but I can’t tell you how dispiriting I find it knowing that we’re in for four or even eight years of it under President Hillary, to whom all resistance will inevitably be dismissed as vestiges of sexism. (Hillary herself has already begun to feed that beast.) In fact, I think this sort of demagoguery will happen much more frequently under Clinton than it has under Obama. There’s more to be gained from it politically: Electoral returns from racism charges are marginal because Democrats already win 90+ percent of the black vote, but women’s votes are hotly contested. The gender gap has been crucial to Democratic gains over the past eight years; they have every incentive to cry sexism early and often in the interest of making that gap wider. Also, call me naive but I think there are some — some — Dems who recognize how grave the charge of racism is and tend to shy away from it. Inveterate race-baiters like Jim Clyburn, who can find a Reconstruction analogy in the Benghazi hearings, aren’t deterred, but not all Democrats are as quick to take the gloves off. I think they’ll be quicker on the charge of sexism, simply because it doesn’t carry quite the same stigma as an accusation of racism does. (Whether it should is a separate question.) Prepare for lots, lots more of this in years to come.

Two noteworthy details here. One: Rockefeller couldn’t be more casual in lobbing his grenade. He’s not out at a fundraiser with a drink in his hand, mindlessly babbling to some reporter with his guard down. He’s at an actual Senate hearing with a Republican senator sitting right in front of him, and yet it’s bombs away — and not for the first time. Congressional rules of decorum forbid swearing and personal insults, but if you want to charge the other side with racism for questioning Obama’s pet boondoggle, fire away. Two: Unlike most instances where this accusation is made, the target was present and eager to respond. Watch the very beginning and then the last few minutes of the second clip to see Johnson hit back. I would have walked out if I were him, but admittedly, his approach is smarter.

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Video:JayRockfeller,RonJohnsonclashovercharge

Video: Jay Rockfeller, Ron Johnson clash over charge that racism is driving opposition to ObamaCare

posted at 11:21 am on May 22, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I’m used to this by now but I can’t tell you how dispiriting I find it knowing that we’re in for four or even eight years of it under President Hillary, to whom all resistance will inevitably be dismissed as vestiges of sexism. (Hillary herself has already begun to feed that beast.) In fact, I think this sort of demagoguery will happen much more frequently under Clinton than it has under Obama. There’s more to be gained from it politically: Electoral returns from racism charges are marginal because Democrats already win 90+ percent of the black vote, but women’s votes are hotly contested. The gender gap has been crucial to Democratic gains over the past eight years; they have every incentive to cry sexism early and often in the interest of making that gap wider. Also, call me naive but I think there are some — some — Dems who recognize how grave the charge of racism is and tend to shy away from it. Inveterate race-baiters like Jim Clyburn, who can find a Reconstruction analogy in the Benghazi hearings, aren’t deterred, but not all Democrats are as quick to take the gloves off. I think they’ll be quicker on the charge of sexism, simply because it doesn’t carry quite the same stigma as an accusation of racism does. (Whether it should is a separate question.) Prepare for lots, lots more of this in years to come.

Two noteworthy details here. One: Rockefeller couldn’t be more casual in lobbing his grenade. He’s not out at a fundraiser with a drink in his hand, mindlessly babbling to some reporter with his guard down. He’s at an actual Senate hearing with a Republican senator sitting right in front of him, and yet it’s bombs away — and not for the first time. Congressional rules of decorum forbid swearing and personal insults, but if you want to charge the other side with racism for questioning Obama’s pet boondoggle, fire away. Two: Unlike most instances where this accusation is made, the target was present and eager to respond. Watch the very beginning and then the last few minutes of the second clip to see Johnson hit back. I would have walked out if I were him, but admittedly, his approach is smarter.

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JimWebb:I’mnotrulingoutrunningfor

Jim Webb: I’m not ruling out running for president in 2016

posted at 4:01 pm on May 19, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I listened to the clip below, scratched my head, and tried to figure out which Democrats he’d theoretically be peeling away from Hillary in a primary. The answer:

White male southern Dems. Both of them. RT @allahpundit: Which voters would Webb attract in a primary challenge to Hillary?

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 19, 2014

Matt Lewis thinks Webb has promise if he tries to fill the Brian Schweitzer niche, running as a lefty economic populist with roots in red-state culture to appeal to both liberal and centrist Democrats. Case in point:

In the interview, he sounded the sort of populist theme on widening wealth disparity that has drawn cheers from Democratic audiences. “We have a situation in this country where the people at the very top have moved away from everyone else in terms of how they live, how much money they make and in some cases the amount of taxes that they pay,” he said. Concerns about disappearing pensions and looming student-loan debts could be addressed “by the right kind of leadership and the right kind of policies.”

Hillary’s saying the same things lately, though, as will any Democrat who ends up in the race. Ostentatious concern about income inequality is a litmus-test issue for Democrats at this point, not something that sets Webb apart from the pack. As for Webb’s advantage with rural Democrats, Hillary’s married to the ultimate red-state Democrat, of course — and more importantly, I think liberals would be rightly suspicious that Webb would govern from the left as president. Remember, this is a guy who was appointed to be Secretary of the Navy by Ronald Reagan. Shortly after Bill Clinton left office, Webb wrote an op-ed noting how happy he was that Clinton was “finally being judged, even by his own party, for the ethical fraudulence that has characterized his entire political career.” Five years later, after Webb emerged as a surprise Democratic challenger to George Allen, the left — including Bill Clinton! — embraced him in the interest of winning a seat in a purple state. He was a good soldier for the party in the Senate, but no one seriously believes that Webb’s a committed liberal in the Elizabeth Warren mode. If forced to triangulate between congressional Democrats and Republicans, there’s every chance he’d be more conservative as president than he was as a senator. And he’s a year older than Hillary. If her age is an issue, his is even more so.

Plus, which prominent Dems realistically would support Webb over Hillary? Who’s going to be the Claire McCaskill of 2016, legitimizing the upstart challenger with a big-name endorsement that instantly makes his candidacy credible? No one’s going to cross her this time. Doing so for a phenomenon like Obama, who was a historic candidate, was one thing. Doing so for an ex-senator, whose chances are dubious, is another. Webb’s better off running as an independent, where he’ll be more free to play up his red-state credentials and to take the sort of pox-on-both-houses attitude towards the Dems and GOP that’ll resonate with voters. Between that and his record of military service, if people can get past his age he’d get a serious look — maybe not enough to win, but enough to cause headaches for the two party nominees. (As a nominal Democrat, he should be more of a threat to steal votes from Hillary than from the GOP, although I’m not sure it’ll work out that way.) Like I said the other day, if we’re destined to have another Bush/Clinton election, it’s only right that there be a Perot in the race too.

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Tags: Bill Clinton, democrat, hillary, male, primary, south, Virginia, webb

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Study: Just seven percent of journalists now identify as Republicans

Study:Justsevenpercentofjournalistsnowidentify

Yikes: Wendy Davis trails Greg Abbott in Texas — among women

Yikes:WendyDavistrailsGregAbbottinTexas

IsHillarytoooldtorun? posted

Is Hillary too old to run?

posted at 6:41 pm on February 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

What better way to spend a slow Friday afternoon than with some uninformed 2016 navel-gazing?

To answer the question: No, she’s not too old. But that’s not the relevant question.

Is Hillary Clinton really a 100 percent lock to run? I think it is a pretty good bet, maybe 70 percent chance or so; but that also means there is an approximately 30 percent chance that she doesn’t throw her hat in the ring. The current political environment certainly argues on behalf of a Clinton run, and it would be very difficult—but not impossible—for anyone to beat her for the nomination. However, these choices can never be considered 100 percent political decisions. Clinton turns 67 this October. At that age, she will likely be making her candidacy decision, and if nominated Clinton would turn 69 two weeks before the 2016 general election, notably the same age Ronald Reagan was when he was first elected in 1980. The choice to run for president is effectively a nine-year commitment: one year to run, another four years if she wins a first term—finishing up that term at age 73—and then, assuming she runs for reelection and wins, serving four more years to end a second term at 77 years of age. None of this is to say that the age issue could successfully be used against her. After all, Reagan won the presidency at the same age. But how many 67-year-olds make nine-year commitments, and what concerns have to be addressed if they do?…

A law school friend of the Clintons’ put it to me this way to me last year: “If Bill and Hillary are healthy, she will run,” a subtle reminder to me that her husband will be 70 by Election Day 2016, having already gone through quadruple cardiac bypass surgery and two heart stents. He looks healthy, as she now does, but it does remind us that these are team efforts, and how they both are doing is relevant to the equation. When the 30 percent guestimate of her chance of passing up a race was run by a former senior Clinton staffer, the response was something to the effect of, “That sounds about right.”

Age won’t hurt her. If anything, it buoys up her core campaign pitch: She’s been around Washington for 25 years, she knows where the bodies are buried, and she’ll advance her agenda more effectively than the political parvenu who beat her in 2008 ever did. Are you an independent who mostly agrees with Democrats but got tired of Obama leading his initiatives into oblivion? Then the Clintons have just the candidate for you. If she can do another two years on the famously grueling presidential campaign trail, she’ll defeat all doubt that she’s physically up to the job.

And even if her health is poorer than we know, she might go for it anyway. A possibility that no one’s considering, including Charlie Cook in the excerpt above: What if she runs resolved (privately, not publicly) to serve only one term? Hillary doesn’t have some long policy wishlist that she’s burning to enact; even now, more than 20 years after the fact and despite her constant presence in the upper tiers of government, the only policy she’s closely associated with is the HillaryCare failure in Bill’s first term. She’s an icon not because of her ideas but because her public life is a sort of album of post-war feminist advances — accomplished lawyer stifled by the traditional trophy-ish role of First Lady runs for office and proves herself the equal of America’s most powerful legislators and diplomats. She won’t be running to kickstart some sort of new liberal revolution, nor do Democrats necessarily want her to. She’ll be running to become the first woman president and Democrats will back her because she’s their best chance to extend the party’s grip on the presidency for four more years, a would-be Bush 41 to Obama’s Reagan. Bill ended George H.W. Bush’s dream of four consecutive presidential terms for Republicans; if Hillary wins in 2016, she may see a lesson in that and decide not to press her luck by trying again in 2020. She wants to be a historical figure and she’s well positioned to do it. Why not do it then quit while you’re on top? Mission accomplished.

Tags: 2016, age, Charlie Cook, democrat, health, Hillary Clinton, President, run

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Kentuckypoll:MitchMcConnellnowtrailsDemocraticchallenger

Kentucky poll: Mitch McConnell now trails Democratic challenger by four points in Senate bid

posted at 4:01 pm on February 7, 2014 by Allahpundit

Each of the five polls taken since December have had the race tight, but this is the first one showing Alison Lundergan Grimes in the lead. Noise or omen?

I know what you’re thinking, but don’t celebrate just yet.

“This is not going to be a coast for Mitch McConnell,” said pollster Jay Leve of Survey USA. “It’s going to be a dogfight. Every vote is going to matter. This election is going to have national consequences. We’re going to see a lot of money from outside interests flow into Kentucky.”…

Sixty percent of likely voters in the Bluegrass Poll disapprove of McConnell’s job performance, matching President Barack Obama’s sixty percent disapproval rating in Kentucky…

Among likely voters, McConnell and Grimes have virtually identical favorability ratings in the poll, 27 percent for McConnell and 26 percent for Grimes.

But McConnell’s 50 percent unfavorability rating is nearly twice Grimes’ 27 percent unfavorability rating.

A 27/50 favorability rating is not the stuff of which reelection is made. That means Matt Bevin’s the obvious choice on electability grounds in the GOP primary, right? He’s doing about as well as McConnell is against Grimes right now, trailing by just five points. One recent poll from Rasmussen even had him outperforming McConnell head to head with the Democrat.

Maybe not. Survey USA has McConnell leading Bevin in the primary by 26 points, 55/29. Why? Because, while McConnell may be toxic to Democrats and independents, he’s still above water within his own party. Among Republicans, his job approval is net positive at 51/41 while his favorable rating is 46/30. Even more interesting, when you ask Kentucky GOPers if McConnell compromises too much, too little, or just the right amount with Democrats, they split 35/20/32, i.e., there’s a clear majority who either approve of his dealmaking or wish he would do more, a mild surprise among a base that nominated Rand Paul four years ago. The knock on him from grassroots righties is that he’s the RINO di tutti RINOs but, if you believe Survey USA, Kentucky Republicans aren’t seeing it.

Bevin’s numbers on the “compromise” question, incidentally, are 19/16/22, but it’s hard to draw firm lessons about him from that given that he’s still unknown to so many voters (when asked whether they view Bevin favorably or unfavorably, fully 64 percent of GOPers either said “neutral” or “no opinion”). Right now, as is always true of a tea-party challenger in the early stages, he’s more “Republican who isn’t the incumbent I dislike” than he is a candidate with discrete views of his own. What happens, though, once voters realize he’s running to McConnell’s right? In theory, the fact that even Republican voters prefer compromise would hurt him; Bevin himself is sufficiently worried about that that he took care to denounce the government shutdown last October (sort of) to put voters at ease. On the other hand, he’s posted photos of himself attending Bircher events, which is … not so compromise-y. He’s trying to find the sweet spot between being conservative enough to get tea partiers psyched to turn out in the primary and swamp the moderates backing McConnell and not so conservative that it’s easy for Grimes to demagogue him if he makes it to the general. Not easy, but Rubio was facing the same problem against Crist four years ago and you know how that turned out.

By the way, keep an eye on the proxy war that’s brewing here between the Clintons and Rand Paul, who’s taken to calling Bill a “sexual predator” lately. Grimes is bringing Bill Clinton to Kentucky to try to seize the electoral middle ground, in the expectation that McConnell and Bevin will spend the next few months tacking right for the primary. McConnell will, at some point, bring in his pal Rand to go to bat for him, whether in the primary or the general. Will Monica Lewinsky be name-checked before November? Fingers crossed.

Tags: bevin, democrat, grimes, Kentucky, mcconnell, primary, republican

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