Entries in MassPoliticsProfs by Jerold Duquette

More than anything else, this presidential campaign season has shown that the commercial media’s “bias” is about the “Benjamins,” not about pushing an ideological or partisan political agenda. For the GOP, it will serve as an invaluable lesson about what can happen when you fall for your own B.S.

More than anything else right now President Obama wants to insure that his successor is a Democrat. If the next president is a Republican, everything President Obama was able to achieve via executive order would be undone post-haste, and his most important legislative accomplishments would undoubtedly be scaled back or reversed. The negative consequences of GOP control of both Congress and the White House would be catastrophic.  Until the untimely death of Antonin Scalia, Obama’s 2016 electoral calculations were even simpler.

Speculation about when or if Senator Elizabeth Warren would endorse one of the candidates battling for her party’s nomination has been hot and heavy.  Sanders’ backers, in particular, have been confidently speculating that Warren would eventually side with Bernie.  The truth is that Warren will not endorse until the nomination is a fait accompli.  She will not put her foot on the scale to help the now faltering protest candidacy of Bernie Sanders primarily because she believes in the Democratic Party.  She believes that a strong united Democratic Party is the key to electoral victory and policy accomplishment.

The death of Justice Scalia is bad news for the GOP no matter how you slice it. The only real issue here for Republicans is how they might minimize the damage. The answer is by giving Obama’s nominee a fair hearing and a vote.  In so doing, the GOP would undercut the argument that will otherwise win this election for Hillary Clinton, namely that a Republican president in 2017 would put the entire federal government under the firm control of lunatics willing and able to repeal the 20^th century.

Candidates, campaign operatives, high profile donors and endorsers, media analysts, and reporters all have very strong incentives to base their electoral projections primarily on factors that their target audiences both understand and believe credible. Unfortunately, that means willfully discounting the single most potent and predictive factor in election outcomes, party identity. Of course, if campaigners, pollsters, and media pundits took the role of party leanings more seriously, most of them would be out of a job.

Hate Ted Cruz? Serving him up in an election he will lose to Hillary Clinton would be delicious punishment and would have the additional benefit of helping restore the credibility of the national GOP.  If the alternative is Trump, whose nomination would spell very serious trouble for down ballot Republicans, this seemingly bitter pill might be more palatable to the Republican establishment.

Robert Reich is taking on the “Bernie skeptics.” Sadly, that includes me. Also sadly, Reich’s effort to rebut the conventional wisdom regarding Senator Sanders’ general election viability is all too easily debunked. Reich’s professorial presentation is filled with many logical and reasonable premises and claims. Unfortunately, there are also an alarming number of unsupported claims and flawed or flat out incorrect assumptions about the way voters behave and about how our electoral and policy making institutions are designed and how they function in real life.

The editors of the New York Times, citing recent Gallup data and analysis, have suggested that because more than 40% of Americans in 2015 identified themselves as “independents,” rather than Democrats or Republicans the 2016 presidential election may turn more on candidate-centric factors. They quote Gallup’s analysis as follows: “[T]he lack of strong attachment to the parties could make candidate-specific factors, as opposed to party loyalty, a greater consideration for voters in choosing a president in this year’s election than they have been in past elections.”

This analysis reminds me of the line from the movie “My Cousin Vinny” when the judge denies Vincent’s objection. It is cogent, logical, and reasonable, but wrong.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is, in some ways, like a salesman’s pitch to a prospective car buyer who has come in to the dealership. He is all about making his target demographic comfortable and confident, and keeping them on the lot until they sign on the dotted line. But here’s the thing, salesmanship is not sufficient for getting elected President of the United States. Indeed, the Framers of the Constitution designed the presidential selection process to guarantee that salesmanship (or more precisely its evil twin demagoguery) would not be enough. The two major political parties designed their nomination processes to be similarly resistant to mere “salesmanship” as well.

Likely GOP primary voters presently registering support for fascism, theocracy, and a number of other absurdities, may really be engaging in “tactical partisanship” as members of Team Conservative or Team Republican.  The ubiquity of partisan “talking points” in the Information Age suggests that an instrument once reserved for professional pols and media spokesmen is now a tool of voter mobilization, used by voters themselves. Increasingly, voters are enlisted as political spokesmen and many (judging by internet comment sections, Facebook, and Twitter) are embracing the role.