From TPM Reader WA …
To Echo what ML wrote, longtime reader going back to the Gore Debacle. My thoughts on the Bernie phenomenon:
I’m at the airport in Oakland, CA waiting to go home to Denver, and just watched a group of middle aged ladies, white, Latino, and Asian all sporting Sanders gear hooting and hollering about to get on a flight to Las Vegas and being excited about going to Nevada to help the Sanders campaign.
From TPM Reader ML …
Long long time reader, don’t email much. But you like to know what’s going on, “on the ground”
I happen to be in Colorado /aspen this week. I have to say, it seems like there have been a flood of sanders ads on tv/cable. Not much in the way of Clinton ads.
Coincidently, there was a story in the aspen times the other day that Clinton was doing well in terms of contributions from aspen donors.
I saw that Nate silver suggested sanders needs to target Colorado on SuperTuesday, and it looks to me like the sanders campaign recognizes that.
Just a view from the field
Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV):
The chances of approving a new nominee are slim, but Nevadans should have a voice in the process. That’s why I encourage the President to use this opportunity to put the will of the people ahead of advancing a liberal agenda on the nation’s highest court. But should he decide to nominate someone to the Supreme Court, who knows, maybe it’ll be a Nevadan.
What does that even mean?
As you’ve seen NBC has a new poll out tonight showing Ted Cruz pulling into a nationwide lead in the GOP primary race. Of course, there is no national primary. But Trump hasn’t been behind nationwide in basically forever. So is this legit?
As you may have heard, South Carolina’s very popular incumbent Governor Nikki Haley has decided to endorse Marco Rubio, coming off his 3rd place Iowa finish and 5th place New Hampshire result. She has made pretty clear that her main investment is in opposition to Donald Trump. And her endorsement of Rubio is pretty devastating for Jeb Bush, whose numbers seem to be flagging in the state even after a pretty solid debate performance and new haircut.
An angry Pope Francis scolds fan who nearly toppled him over a disabled child in a wheelchair. Watch.
Jeb Bush cites tenure as commander-in-chief of Florida as key foreign policy experience.
Orrin Hatch is saying on CNN right now that he feels the need to protect the integrity of the Court by not having a nomination hearing during an election year. It’s fascinating to watch the effort to come up with some sort of plausible rationale for refusing to hold confirmation hearings.
Also, that it’s been decades since there was a Supreme Court nomination during an election year, as opposed to one month before an election year. Which, wow, there hasn’t been an vacancy in an election year. I pity the reporters who have to listen to this stuff with a straight face. There’s probably never been a vacancy after a Justice died at a ranch in Texas. There’s no precedent for replacing him!
TPM Alum Sahil Kapur has an interesting piece up this afternoon on what he calls growing signs of Republican division over Supreme Court tactics. It’s a good piece and you should read it. I think it is right to note that ‘tactics’ is definitely the issue here. There’s little reason to believe that there’s any division on the goal of preventing Barack Obama from choosing Antonin Scalia’s successor. The issue is whether the official position outlined by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is simply too brazen and unvarnished for some Republicans to sign on to – particularly swing state senators up for election in 2016.
For whatever reason, Nevada’s Democratic caucus this Saturday has received scant attention from public polling firms. Until last week, there hadn’t been a publicly released poll of the Dem caucus this year. The one that came out last week, showing a 45-45 tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, was met with considerable skepticism because of who commissioned it: the uberconservative Washington Free Beacon. But today we have new polling from CNN/ORC that shows a similar result: Clinton 48, Sanders 47. Remember, Nevada is the first big test of whether Sanders can demonstrate appeal with a more diverse electorate.