Thursday, May 28, 2015

EVEN WIDELY LOATHED CHRIS CHRISTIE DOES BETTER AGAINST HILLARY THAN SUPPOSEDLY ELECTABLE JEB

Quinnipiac has a new national poll out, and it has bad news for Republicans, particularly Jeb Bush:
In a general election matchup, Clinton gets 46 percent of American voters to 42 percent for Paul and 45 percent of voters to 41 percent for Rubio. She leads other top Republicans:

46 - 37 percent over Christie;

47 - 40 percent over Huckabee;

47 - 37 percent over Bush;

46 - 38 percent over Walker;

48 - 37 percent over Cruz;

50 - 32 percent over Trump.
So despite all the negative press she's getting, Clinton still beats all of these guys -- in fact, she's held or increased her lead over every one of them since the last Quinnipiac poll, in late April. The scandals don't seem to be hurting her.

Notably, Clinton beats Jeb Bush -- the guy whose selling point is supposed to be electability -- by 10 points. (The widely loathed Chris Christie loses only by 9.) What's more, Jeb can't even exploit the long-standing gender gap in American politics -- he doesn't even beat Clinton among male voters, as do Rubio, Walker, and (especially) Paul. (Rand Paul beats Clinton among men by 9 points, but loses to Clinton among women by 16. Dudebro semi-libertrarianism is, unsurprisingly, a guy thing.)

Is Jeb even the Republican front-runner? Among Republicans, this poll has a five-way tie for first:
Leading the pack with 10 percent each are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker....

Rounding out the top 10 for televised debates are U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 7 percent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at 6 percent, Donald Trump at 5 percent, New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie at 4 percent and Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2 percent each.
The numbers among Democrats are more evidence of something I told you a couple of days ago: that Bernie Sanders is the preferred alternative to Clinton, far ahead of Martin O'Malley:
Hillary Clinton dominates among Democratic voters nationwide, with 57 percent, compared to 60 percent April 23. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has 15 percent with Vice President Joseph Biden at 9 percent. No other candidate tops 1 percent with 14 percent undecided.
But please note this: Not only does Clinton still have a commanding lead in the Democratic race, she even beats Sanders 61%-28% among self-described "very liberal" Democrats. And only 9% of Democrats say they "would definitely not support" her (as opposed to 17% of Republicans who say that about Jeb). So Sanders has an uphill climb if he wants the nomination.

Clinton is still winning despite wariness about her:
American voters say 53 - 39 percent that Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, but say 60 - 37 percent that she has strong leadership qualities. Voters are divided 48 - 47 percent over whether Clinton cares about their needs and problems.
The "honest and trustworthy" numbers are awful, but how honest and trustworthy do Americans think most politicians are? We have low standards for this. We generally have to, don't we?

11 comments:

Yastreblyansky said...

In January 2001 Bill Clinton was worse on "Do you generally think Bill Clinton is honest and trustworthy?", 58% no to 39% yes, but his job approval was a phenomenal 65% to 31%. I think pundits misread what voters mean when they answer "no" to the honest-and-trustworthy question.

Victor said...

Hillary may very well stay ahead, because with younger folks, they don't know about all of the bullshit Clinton scandals from the 90's, and many don't care about the BJ Bill got.
And older liberals and moderates, at this point probably have 'Clinton-bashing Fatigue.'
They've been assaulted with bullshit claims for almost a quarter of a century.

As for O'Malley, what happened in Baltimore could sink him.

The reason I love Bernie, is that he is one of the most authentic politicians I think I've ever seen.
He doesn't hide his Socialist tendencies. He even defends them!

Still, I don't think he's got much of a chance. But, if he moves Hillary a bit to the left in the primaries, then I think he'll have served a great purpose.

theHatist said...

Victor-

I think the scandals during the 90s are the only things that the Clintons have going for them.

They certainly not going to score any points by policy: their collaboration with the Republicans to pass NAFTA and gut the American middle class; their collaboration with Republicans to create Too Big To Fail, and thereby being far more culpable for the crash than evil half-wit George W Bush ever was. (after all, he was just perpetuating their mistake); DADT; the supposedly booming economy was almost entirely a bubble, and ushered in our current economy of techbros worth billions from creating businesses that have never, ever earned a penny and show no sign of ever making a profit.

If Hillary gets the nod, I'll vote third party.

Too bad we don't have a "no confidence" vote. If I had any faith that Rand Paul wouldn't be as easily co-opted as Obama, I'd consider voting for him before HRC- at least he's right on foreign policy- or was before he decided to flipflop on Israel.

So, if the Democrats ever want to get any more of my money (why I donate directly to candidates, rather than the Party) or ever get another one of my votes, we have to dump RINO scumbags like HRC. Her husband was bad enough. Obama has been bad enough.

mlbxxxxxx said...

I don't think scandals are going to beat HRC -- unless something really bad comes out like an email where she says she hopes the Libyan rebels kill Chris Stevens in order to please her Lord Baal.

What could, and might, beat Hillary is her apparent inevitability. If she appears to be a shoo-in, critical minority turnout may be depressed due to apathy. Turnout is Clinton's Achilles' heel. Regardless of how "meh" GOP voters are going to feel about their eventual nominee (aka, Jeb), they are going to turnout because they are going to be motivated to stop that she-devil, Hitlery. I don't think we can depend on our voters to have the same single-mindedness and constancy.

Victor said...

theHatist,
While agree with a lot of what you say, if enough people feel like you do, and vote 3rd Party - like the did in 2000 - we might have someone even far worse than W.

And don't let Rand Paul fool you.
He's an imbecile and a bigot.
Sure, he's right on a couple of things, but, you know - stopped clock, and all of that.

theHatist said...

@Victor- "He's an imbecile and a bigot."

Does anyone here actually support their arguments? Do you have any credible sources for this?

Because Obama's racist as all hell- he's deported more people than any other president. He's finally stopped (as far as I know, anyway) sending Feds into states to bust people in the drug war- the single most racist thing America has been involved in since Jim Crow (if it isn't just part of Jim Crow, which is pretty easy to make a case for).

Rand being stupid... Well, at the very least, he's very poorly informed- completely unaware that Obama has shrunk the size of the government, for instance. Makes you wonder why Obama spends so much time giving the conservatives what they want. They never seem to notice him pushing the people who voted for him under the bus at every single given opportunity.

An HRC presidency means more massive giveaways to the banks and lobbyists; I mean, look at her top 10 donors-

Citigroup Inc (Wall Street bank)
Goldman Sachs (Wall Street bank)
DLA Piper (lobbyists)
JPMorgan Chase & Co (Wall Street bank)
EMILY's List
Morgan Stanley (Wall Street bank)
Time Warner (Satan)
Skadden, Arps et al (lobbyists)
Lehman Brothers (Wall Street bank)
Cablevision Systems (Satan)

I can't say Angie's List is evil, but that's probably because I don't know who they are.

An HRC presidency also means more endless war- she's never met a war she didn't love. SHe loves the NSA/CIA/FBI police state Obama's been building with republicans- surveillance that has yet to stop a single terrorist plot, according to the FBI.

In fact, the only thing that HRC is right on is abortion.

Paul is right on foreign policy, the drug wars, the surveillance state- three things that are crippling us with debt and providing us with absolutely nothing but more dead brown people, and more terrorists.

Are you willing to trade the access to birth control for the death of thousands of people around the globe? It's not an easy choice.

Steve M. said...

I'm not going to be lured into this argument, because I've had the same argument with people like you going back to the Nader debacle. I can say I'd rather have four Sotomayor/Kagan-style judges on the Supreme Court rather than four Roberts/Scalias. I can point to Clinton and Obama raising taxes on the wealthy. I can point to every Paul Ryan budget and ask whether you think the passage of such a budget would be no big whoop because you can't imagine how it would affect you personally. I can ask you whether you're ready for a national ban on local fracking bans, or a national right-to-work law, or a national voter Id law, all of which I fully expect from an all-GOP government, and absolutelynot from President Hillary. I can ...

But why bother. You're going to deny any significant difference between Clinton and the Republicans and exaggerate all similarities. And you're going to me that a Congress that can't even pass the USA Freedom Act is just going to let Saint Rand dismantle the national security state all by himself. Dream on.

I'm not going to respond to your response. I'm through now.

mccamj said...

Steve,
Please don't say scandals. I know it's shorthand but the last thing we need is an article on some RWNJ blog citing all the progressives who agree that Hillary has been involved in scandals.

theHatist said...

Steve-

It's foolish to blame Nader for Gore's loss in 2000- maybe 100K Democrats voted for Nader, but 300K voted for Bush, making them 6X more responsible. Hard to feel bad for someone who couldn't beat an coke-addled trustifarian alcoholic whose father bought his way into Yale and Harvard (where he was a cheerleader, for christ's sake), a man whose every attempt to succeed in business was an abject failure.

Why couldn't boring drip Gore beat Bush? Because Gore also was also a trustifarian, who dared not offend the elites by pointing out that their brats might not be worth of the successes their parents bought for them.

You'll also recall that "lesser evil" voting gave us Democrats who fully supported the invasion of Iraq, just like they did NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act. I'm open to anything that works- but "lesser evil" voting has been fucking us since Reagan. It's not working.

"I can ask you whether you're ready for a national ban on local fracking bans, or a national right-to-work law, or a national voter Id law"

You mean all that fracking that Obama is pushing? Hillary's corporate sponsors will not allow her to pass a right-to-work law, as this would like raise wages to the point where people might be able feel some security. The only thing I can maybe see getting passed under HRC is a voter ID law, as this helps the Democrats.

If Democrats stopped voting against their own interests (sound familiar?) and stopped supporting Republican Lite, they might find themselves winning an election every now and then.

But the need to fight dirty, which means they need to clean house.

petrilli said...

Hatist, If Clinton loses, and Republicans get all three branches, things will immediately get worse for this country in ways we all will feel on a daily basis. As someone who also will not vote for her, I am under no illusions of a progressive phoenix rising from the ashes. Nothing of any immediate worth to us will rise from those ashes. But if neoliberalism dies with her candidacy, and that's a big "If", it's a start. Thanks for the post. Its a lonely position to take here, but not totally unappreciated.

theHatist said...

The depressing thing is that I fully understand what Steve is saying.

The Democrat are on a track to adopt all Republican positions, just 8 years later. Look at how they treat unions, which is arguably their very base. Look at how widely accepted that there is some sort of catastrophic problem with the teachers' unions. It's utter nonsense. The only problem with education today is that it is increasingly a for-profit venture.

But rather than stand up to the corporate interests that want to privatize our schooling system, the Democratic establishment shits all over the people they are supposed to represent.