The Republican and Democratic Establishments

Ok. Look. For a long time I and many Democrats have laughed at the cage match the GOP primary has become. We're at the point where the substantive discussion last night was over whether Ted Cruz is eligible to run for President. Well played Mr. Trump. You have already won. The debate is centered around what you want to talk about.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/analysis-republican-debate-shows-donald-trump-won/story?id=36276687

It certainly shows that the GOP Establishment is seeing it's nightmares walking. It's why I'm a Trump Democrat.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-nightmare-for-gop-establishment.html

But as a Democrat are we too smug? Is the Dem Establishment also in trouble? Isn't this the reason for the Bernie Republicans?

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/01/why-are-republicans-saying-hillary-lied.html

I mean after years of fulminating against the individual mandate they are suddenly for full single payer?

My working theory of this race has been that the GOP is simply in disarray.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-republicans-really-are-in-disarray/

However, what if I'm missing the bigger picture? What if the real story of this race is not just the rebellion against the GOP Establishment but a rebellion against the Establishment in general?

After all isn't a big line for Bernie that 'We are past the time for Establishment politics!'

And yesterday, Greg Sargent made that exact point. Bernie is not just anti Hilary but anti Obama as well though he likes to frame himself as being pro Obama. But back in 2012 he had actually considered primarying Obama.

"Bernie Sanders isn’t just targeting Hillary Clinton. He’s targeting the whole Democratic establishment."

Sanders’ spot describes the two Democratic visions for regulating Wall Street this way:

“One says it’s okay to take millions from big banks and then tell them what to do. My plan: break up the big banks, close the tax loopholes, and make them pay their fair share. Then we can expand health care to all and provide universal college education. Will they like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules when I’m president? You better believe it.”

"Interestingly, the ad doesn’t name Hillary Clinton, with whom Sanders is locked in a very tight battle for both early states. Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs tells Alex Seitz-Wald that the ad is not “directed at Secretary Clinton exclusively.” Briggs adds:

“It’s about people in the Democratic establishment who believe you can take Wall Street’s money and then somehow turn around and rein in the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior. Obviously she is part of the establishment that Wall Street has showered with financial support. Bernie is not. She wants Wall Street and corporate special interests to like her. Bernie does not.”

"If this Democratic establishment is being defined by virtue of having taken money from Wall Street, it would of course include Barack Obama and probably a fair number of Democratic Senators who passed the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform bill. And the Sanders campaign probably is talking about all of those people. The Sanders argument is that nothing we’ve seen during the Obama years — and nothing we’ve heard proposed from the Hillary Clinton campaign — comes close to the sort of far-reaching, deep structural changes to the economy that will be required to seriously combat the soaring inequality and wage stagnation of the moment. The Sanders argument is also that such profound change cannot happen as long as the political establishment is beholden to Wall Street by its contributions."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/01/14/bernie-sanders-isnt-just-targeting-hillary-clinton-hes-targeting-the-whole-democratic-establishment/
Correct. Sanders is basically a repudiation of Obama's accomplishments. He wants blow things up and start over. It's the old dilemma of reform vs. revolution.

Usually reform is preferable unless you believe the current system or framework is irremediable. But when Bernie praises the President's accomplishments and agrees with HRC that we want to grow and build on his achievements, he is contradicting himself.

As Sargent says, it's tough to evaluate the fixation about donations from Wall St.  What was interesting is that while Bernie has made an issue of Hil's donations from banks, etc,  he wasn't able to point to even one case of her vote being other than what she believes.

Then we have his gun record. He clearly has gained by not being tough on gun control.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-nra-helped-bernie-get-elected-to.html

Back to Sargent:

"It’s hard to evaluate this claim. Both Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesiashave argued that the differences between Sanders and Clinton are legitimate policy disputes about how best to regulate Wall Street in the broader public interest, with Sanders more focused on breaking up the big banks because they have too much power, and Clinton more focused on regulating the sort of shadow banking that led to the financial crisis. All of which is to say their differences don’t necessarily flow directly from the fact that one takes Wall Street money and the other doesn’t. As Krugman notes, it’s likely that Wall Street would far prefer a GOP president to either President Bernie Sanders of President Hillary Clinton."

A good point. If you look at donations in this election Democrats are not trusted by Wall St. in general.

Ok so could the Dems be in just as much trouble? Is Bernie going to Trump HRC? I don't think so for a few reasons.

First of all go back to Nate Silver's Party Decides argument. I agree it has usually been true at least in recent years. My only argument has been that this time the GOP is in disarray. Take a big focus of Nate's-party endorsements.

Well looking at the GOP's Establishment endorsements underscores the problem. Jeb has 51, Rubio has 43, Chris Christie has 28, then you have Huckabee who's campaign was never alive with 26-wasted-endorsements. Kasich is next with 20 endorsements.

So how can the party decide when it clearly hasn't made its own decision?

The Democrats on the other hand are very decisive. Indeed, as Nate has said, it's the most decisive party in history-in a non incumbent year.

Hillary has 457 endorsements, Bernie has 2, O'Malley has 1.

So she has 457 herself while five GOP candidates have split 168 endorsements five ways.

Update: Lindsay Graham has just endorsed Jeb Bush which could give the Establishment lane a jolt in the right direction-if you're a Trump Democrat.

http://www.politico.com/livestream_1

It just underscores the lack of strategic vision in the Establishment. Many had been urging Jeb to pull back on his anti Rubio ads as Rubio is seen as the best chance of the Establishment.
Now in two days we've seen George Will go after Rubio even though Will has said that the first priority of conservatives

In addition, while there has been a feeding frenzy that Hillary's lead is suddenly in trouble in truth it's probably way overdone like it had been prior to the first debate.

"The media has suddenly turned so negative on Hillary Clinton’s chances in the democratic primary race, one would think January 2016 was a repeat of June 2015 all over again. The news reports have resumed cherry picking only the polls which suggest the race is tight, while resuming focus on older faux-controversies which were dispensed with some time ago. But the timing of this shift in narrative was inevitable – and the numbers say that Hillary is still going to win by a sizable margin."

"Last summer, when the rambunctious republican primary was making the democratic side look like a snoozefest, and the media decided that it needed to scandalize Hillary for the purpose of ratings, it didn’t just play up phony scandals like her email. It also opted to focus on outlier data and single-state polls in an attempt at making the race appear much closer than it was. But after the Benghazi hearings went Clinton’s way, the media decided that its best course was to play up the narrative that she had made a “comeback” even though she had been winning handily in national polling the entire time."

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/yes-hillary-clinton-is-still-going-to-win-the-democratic-primary/23546/

Right, If you remember like August and September, the Hillary haters were getting more and more elated.

Bernie was leading in NH in some polls by over 20 points. He also led in a few Iowa polls. Then she had a great debate and suddenly all the bedwetting was over.

Now we have seen the Iowa polls tighten a little the last few days. But the character of the race hasn't changed. Nate Silver actually gives her an 66 percent chance with a poll only approach of analysis while with his preferred polls plus approach her chances go up to 82 percent.

Now NH is the one state that everyone assumes Bernie will get-after all, it is next door to Vermont with similar demographics and politics.

And going by a polls only approach his chances are 72 percent to win with her chances at 28 percent.

But if you go by the polls plus approach her chances shoot up to 57 percent while his drop to 43 percent. One thing is clear: if Nate is right-and this is the guy who has gotten like one state wrong in the last two Presidential elections-then it's over for Bernie.

He loses NH he loses everywhere.