I was at an event last week in Baltimore with a number of still-faithful O'Malley loyalists. The TV was running ads for the debate, and I was mocking the presentation... a big lingering screen with the names CLINTON SANDERS, and then a super-quick flash with O'MALLEY WEBB CHAFEE after that. It came off just like the obligatory legal disclaimer language sounds... "well, I guess we have to tell people we are letting these other clowns take the stage, too."

The tenor of Team O'Malley remains upbeat, they are keeping in mind the whole cycle with the GOP field from 4 years ago. They are split whether a Biden run would be good for them.

Meanwhile, a Maryland-only poll found MOM with only 4% here in his home state. These things do tend to simply reinforce themselves (people back the leaders), but that's just an eye-popping low number.

And to me, the most intriguing thing about Sanders in this debate is not at all connected to what he actually says. The transcript likely doesn't matter. I think the biggest issue is whether on this stage, and in this setting, he "looks presidential." He's got a ton of images floating around where he looks windswept and unkempt, and that's pretty clearly the kind of guy he has always been - but even liberals want their candidate to fill out a business suit and look the damned part. He can't remain viable if it's only Ben, Jerry, and the rest of the Kucinich voters who remain behind him. That's his house of cards here, more than anything he's very likely to say, I think.

I love Bernie Sanders. I saw him speak in Iowa last year when I was working on a campaign. I think a world where Bernie Sanders can be president is a nice world. I do not live in that world.

I really don't think so. If you're the 20 in a 70-20-10misc split (or 65-35-10) then you're pretty much irrelevant. The difference in those splits are garbage time touchdowns in a 50 point blowout game. And that's exactly what I expect will happen in the large majority of states.

And, just for the record I guess, I believe I've proven that I can set aside my feelings for anyone & objectively assess a contest. I mean, LSU & UGA both appear frequently in my college football polls and generally within the norms of other assessments. I honestly don't believe my intense feelings about Sanders have an impact on what I anticipate. If anything, given my fatalistic nature, I'd tend to overestimate him.

:withstupid:

Did you go see him in Portland a few months back?

I didn't, actually as I was out of town at the time.

To me, HRC has a Nixionioan task of coming off likable and trustworthy.

Since Nixon won 2(3?) elections, she should feel pretty good about that.

Yep. Just think it is harder to convince voters you are likable and trustworthy than being qualified. Harder, but not impossible.

The more I think about it, the more I like the comparison as it applies to 1968. Nixon in 1968 convinced the country to go with the controversial, but capable candidate over the crazy loons in the Dem party.

Sounds like 2016.

It will be good for Clinton if she gets bloodied a bit here. If she wins what appears to be a real fight, that makes her a "winner" and helps with likability. But there needs to be a fight for her to win.

Just so long as she doesn't have blood coming out of her whatever.

Please, she went through menopause 2 decades ago probably.

**Disclaimer** I never want to get into these political threads, but...

No matter what you think of Bernie Sanders, I don't see how anybody is going to win the White House by saying we should be like Denmark.

This, especially because I feel strongly that mre policy should be done on a state level. I live in Massachusetts (and a very liberal town in that state), so it's funny hearing Sanders described as a crazy socialist when much of what he's advocating has already passed at the state level. Things like required health care, a higher minimum wage, tougher gun control laws, higher corporate taxes etc were all passed here before they were a big deal nationally. And on issues like that I can't understand why there need to be exact national standards. Texas and California are bigger than most countries in the world, why not let them try different approaches. Not only can you then let people vote with their feet (or actually vote at the state level) if they feel strongly, but you'd also get a look at different approaches. And if we're being honest there isn't a gun control law that should apply to both Vermont and Baltimore.

Idk if it's the moderators or the candidates but I did feel the Republican debate went much smoother than this one.

Watching the debate now. The one thing that sticks out is the Chafee seems to be out of his league right now.

His response of "It was my first day" was one of the worst answers I've ever heard

Chafee's done. If they do play a clip of him it will be the "It was my first day" line. All Webb did was complain about the debate. O'Malley didn't do much to stand out. Those 3 should just drop out and Biden get in the race. Hillary and Bernie both did fine.

Chafee was only polling a slight bit higher than "Random FOFC guy" going in.

I did enjoy O'Malley's dig at Debbie Wasserman Schultz though. Even if it means he won't be invited to participate in any more debates.

Seriously, how in the world did he think that was a good answer to anything? Webb's my enemy was the due I killed in 'Nam was almost as bad as well - and channeled Walter from the Big Lebowski.

Hillary Clinton seemed to be the only candidate that really did substantial debate prep at times.

In reality, you'd have to think that she's really the only one with anything to lose.

It was definitely a softer and friendlier debate - that's the Democratic advantage with CNN. The audience seemed to have a lot of high-up Democrats.

Chafee was weak - no idea why he wants to run. Webb makes the mistake of telling the voters they should vote for him and he will cheerfully spend the next hour telling you more if they let him. So he's the Democratic version of Kasich. O'Malley is the guy who always one-ups you and tries to make it sound like it was his idea in the first place. Sanders stuck to his message and was effective, and wins easily if you use the criteria of having control over the message from the party. But he doesn't look very presidential - just angry and old. Clinton was strong, but used the "first woman president" line too much. Is that why we should vote for her?

The debate's theme was basically, "what should we do if we could raise an infinite amount of money by taxing rich people?" We hear this every four years, but it seems like every effort to tax rich people invariably ends up socking the rest of us. Oh, well. It's nice to dream.

I don't think the debate changed any minds. But it seemed more intended as a campaign commercial.

I think I've had enough of Chafee, Webb and O'Malley. Though Biden's strategy of bidin' his time is probably the correct one for now. I would like to see a real debate at some point involving Sanders and Clinton. She's smart enough to try and avoid that - I wouldn't be surprised if her people were able to keep it to this kind of friendly event.

What could Biden offer? Sanders and Clinton are going nuclear on the Republicans. Clinton uses every opportunity to tell us they're evil. OK, maybe they are, but that isn't going to get legislation passed. Sanders admits he can't work with them, so his plan is to get people to vote the Republicans out of office. So Biden could make his mark letting them attack and sounding like the guy who could actually get their policies in place (ironic considering his role during the Obama campaign).

I mostly agree with the gentleman from the state up north.

Since I know O'Malley well, I'm sure I paid closer attention to him than the average viewer. I think he reached toward the high end of his possible outcomes from last night, not a home run but perhaps a ground rule double. He benefited from the placement, and managed a good number of two-way or three-way camera shots. He was pretty good, but not great, on guns - an issue where I think he should be focusing more aggressively.

I think it's O'Malley who is the Kasich of this field in the ways that matter -- he's got the "I actually did this stuff" message much better than even HRC. He fails to crush it, but that's really his best angle.

I think he should see a tiny bump in polling, and should feel good that the two fringe candidates all but buried themselves last night. Bernie didn't implode, but I think the fissures are there. Either a botched or non-existent run from Biden would, I think, still offer a path to victory for him, albeit a still tenuous one.

His whole angle is the 2012 cycle with Romney-versus-whomever. Everyone on the list got a shot being the alternative to the front runner, including the people who polled terribly through important periods. That can surely still happen here.

Fun coverage: The real reason Hillary Clinton won the debate: No one else was on her level - Salon.com

I think Biden missed his chance. And every talking head apparently is saying this as well. Especially as Clinton had taken the position of being strongly pro-Obama on most issues.

Who thought it would be a Democratic candidate who first mentioned killing someone?

I have a hard time seeing the Bernie supporters jumping to O'Malley. He doesn't seem like their bag.

Democratic, Republican, whatever - we should have universal healthcare and good educations shouldn't cost money. (Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure what Denmark has, but I imagine it's something like that)

For me, it's pretty clear that there's only one Democrat running for president who is actually qualified to have that job. Which is really bewildering considering the gains Democrats have made in other offices, and in party registration in general. And considering how many people don't like Clinton, and how our society is still in a place where people are making period jokes when a woman happens to be campaigning for a position of power. Where are all the younger rising Democrats who should be making waves right now, promoting a new way of doing business? I kind of get the raw appeal of a guy like Sanders but at the end of the day he's kind of just like a angry liberal redditor yelling about what he would do if he was king of America in a one-party system. Where are the younger competent electable Democrats with realistic plans to promote their party's policy through the top executive branch job? A person like that without Clinton's baggage would destroy any of the top Republicans next year.

To be fair, a lot of them are on Hillary Clinton's team (ie, have backed her). No one really wants to run into that buzzsaw in this election. There is a handful of younger Democratic governors who are interesting (Beshear, Bullock, Hickenlooper, Hassan, etc).

I just saw a link to the Drudge poll about yesterday's debate:

Sanders 54%, Webb 25%, Clinton 9%, O'Malley 7%, Chafee 4%.

So the important question is - is this bot behavior or is there really no poll and it's just random numbers?

I don't know which piece of this "poll" is the silliest - maybe it's the 4% for Chafee.

One narrative I'm seeing, and I tend to agree with it, is... was the moment when Sanders said he knew this wasn't the right move politically but it was time to stop talking about the emails... was that the moment Clinton secured the nomination?

Otherwise, Clinton is so heavily entrenched and endorsed that the only narrative for un-entrenching is the trustworthiness argument. If you rally behind her on it, that issue goes away... until the general. Which gives both sides about nine months to figure out how to use it/defend it.

Is that a good strategy? I think so, under the circumstances. It's not a great hand the Democrats were dealt for 2016, but this is one way to play it that may work and takes full advantage of what will be a longer, more contentious Republican primary.

Webb at 25% is hilarious. I think that even bots wouldn't do that.

I think that they are waiting their turn.

Which I really disagree with. Not to get all hyperbolic, but do you really have what it takes to be President if you are scared of taking on a front-runner in the primary?

It's not being scared; it's being smart. By backing the front runner, you may have a good shot and taking over the campaign apparatus when you want to run. Starting your own campaign team while the best minds are working for the front runner isn't necessarily the best option - and a lot of those best minds will be spending a lot of time digging up stuff on you or trying to destroy you, so may not be people who will jump when it's "your turn".

The whole Clinton dynasty started when Bill wasn't afraid to take on the unbeatable Bush where so many more established names in his party were.

Obama took on the front-runner in his own party when it would have been safer and easier to back Clinton and setup himself up for later.

Do you really think there is going to be any sort of bi-partisan, legislation making coalition that stems from the '16 elections? The Republicans are doubling-down on their strategy of "no compromise ever", so what should Clinton do? Do you think the Dems solution should be "let's move closer to the right to get things done"?

I think both sides are in a protected bubble where they each say the other side has doubled down on its strategy of no compromise ever.

They each repeat it to their followers, and it has become the law of the land. And they firmly believe that the other side is 100% to blame.

However, compromise is not saying, "we're going to do this, and you can either sign it with us or not" when the other side is saying we should do something entirely different. Both sides are guilty of this.

We'll never get anywhere until both sides admit that polarization and identity politics have done incredible damage.

Compromise also isn't just settling for half of what you want, when the other side doesn't doesn't want to do that half.

I don't agree with that equivalence. The GOP has moved farther to the right than the Dems have to the left. The Dems' biggest legislative achievement was modeled on the plan used by the GOP's most recent presidential candidate.



This is probably an agree to disagree point. And there are a lot of political problems where I would agree that the Dems and the GOP are equally to blame. But everything I see demonstrates that polarization is not one of those problems. There, the GOP deserves more blame than the Dems.

dola. Sorry for the chart size

Therefore we have to learn to compromise on what it means to compromise.

We have a long way to go. So the question is whether the declarations of war we're seeing on both sides during the primary are moving us closer to compromise or further away.

That chart is making the rounds lately. And the authors state, in their explanation, that while they feel the Republicans have moved further away from the norm, the Democrats are more entrenched in identity politics.

As researchers of social science, though, they've had to make decisions about what the norm is. And they've decided to move with public consensus. The Republicans haven't moved with the consensus on abortion issues (about where the divide gets wider) and gay rights. So does that lack of movement mean polarization is their fault? After all, we're only 20 years removed from Clinton's DOMA, which had broad bipartisan support.

I don't know the answer. This chart is one way to frame it. I think the Brookings guys are doing the best they can to honestly assess the issue, but their choice of norms is being misused by the Democrats to show something the researchers probably didn't intend.

How long till Trump starts tweeting a body count?

Just gonna leave this here...

The big difference is that the GOP has refused to support anything from Obama even when it moves the ball in their direction. They decided that and GOP support gives the appearance of bipartisanship and that makes Obama stronger. Obama was willing to give on Medicare and Social Security and they still said no.

The Dems have issues where they won't budge, but most will go along with the opposition if they think it advances the ball. A sizable portion, enough to control the House, sees compromise itself as the enemy.

I think the vote of no confidence on Boehner speaks volumes about the actual source of these "compromise" problems.

And I believe according to polling, more voters believe Republicans are responsible for gridlock overall and the last government shutdown. So who really stands to lose when the political arena becomes more polarized?

Bill Clinton actually waited his turn. He was being mentioned for 1998 and he passed. 1992 was actually not a bad time to run to be the party's nominee since there were a good number of Democrats running in the primaries and the big names that were being mentioned (Cuomo, Gore) decided not to run.

Yeah, and there's a difference between running against a prohibitive favorite in the opposition party and one in your own party. Bill Clinton didn't burn any bridges by running where someone running against Hillary may.