Monday Musings on 2016: Clinton, Carson Rising
Hillary rising – the big story of the week is the clear rejuvenation of the Clinton campaign. Epic GOP missteps on Benghazi, strong debate and hearing performances, far more aggressive free media (SNL, Maddow etc), Biden deciding not to run has made this a remarkable few weeks for Hillary Clinton. Her public performances are far stronger, the bunker mentality has been shed, and her poll numbers are rising and Sanders falling. She is in a very commanding position now in the Democratic primary.
Things to watch now: how will her new strength translate into Iowa and New Hampshire, and whether her standing improves in the general election matchups against the GOP field.
Carson appears to be making a move – Two new polls out this week have Ben Carson moving ahead of Trump in Iowa. Trump and Carson still dominate the field, with Cruz, Rubio and Bush placing in 3/4/5 in different orders in different polls. What is remarkable however is that in almost every GOP poll, Trump, Carson, Cruz – outsiders/extremists/radicals/whatever we call them – are getting 60% between with no sign of any of them losing ground. While the national media continues to spend a lot of time on Bush and Rubio, there just isn’t a lot of evidence that either of them have a real shot today. Things may change but the more mainstream GOPers continue to struggle to get out of single digits.
The big question of 2016 remains whether any of these candidates can unite a highly fractured and contentious GOP next year. Sure is hard to see at this point.
And I think Donald Trump is right - the views of Carson's fringey church deserve far more attention than they've gotten to date.
The debate debate – NDN continues to make our case that the DNC must do more to close the gap with the far superior RNC debate schedule. I appeared in a Time magazine piece on the debate debate, and published a new analysis that finds evidence the entire GOP field is benefitting from all the early attention their more aggressive debate schedule has provided. The 2nd Democratic debate is scheduled for Sat November 14th in Iowa.
The Republicans gather for their third debate this Wednesday on CNBC, and be sure to read our new report on how recent Democratic Presidents have outperformed their GOP counterparts as background. And note that this will be the 3rd GOP debate during the week in primetime. The DNC only has 2 weekday primetime debates scheduled this entire Presidential cycle.
