Your headlines as the Longhorns prepare to ... nemmind (Update)

I'm so old I can remember when OU-Texas was something to look forward to.  Now they're ready to lynch tar and feather fire Charlie Strong in Austin, even as Jeff Davis sulks in a crate somewhere.  Just remember: when Red ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

That's what they call progress in Austin.  Where even the Democrats speculate in real estate, drive up the cost of living, and exercise fiscal austerity during the legislative session.

-- Hillary Clinton lost ten polling points in the past week, four to Bernie Sanders and four to Joe Biden.  The other two went back to the GOP.  This is not a poll you will see bar-graphed on jobsanger.  Still, nothing for her supporters to worry about.  On the bright side, she had a good meeting with the Black Lives Matter activists.

Johnetta Elzie, who focuses on police militarization and violence, attended the meeting. She told Business Insider that while the conversation was frank and productive, Clinton didn't always have direct answers to questions posed by different attendees.

"Hillary is a good listener. But she still has lots of room to grow when it comes to listening to black people actually talk about the issues that are affecting them, vs. how she perceives the issues to affect us," Elzie said.

Really; don't we all (that aren't black, I mean)?  That gets an 'amen' from this atheist.

-- Donald Trump is secretly looking for a way out of the GOP horse race.  But he's probably going to snarl and rant and spend a lot more money before he finds the right reason and takes it.

In unmistakable ways over the last two weeks, whether he has intended to or not, Donald J. Trump has started to articulate a way out of the presidential race: a verbal parachute that makes clear he has contemplated the factors that would cause him to end his bid.

It is a prospect that many in the political establishment have privately considered as the actual voting grows closer.

Go on, read them and see if you're buying. 

While Mr. Trump still leads major national polls and surveys in early voting states, that lead has recently shrunk nationally, and the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed his support eroding in New Hampshire, the first primary state. His recent comments have lent credence to the views of political observers who had long believed the perennially self-promoting real estate mogul would ultimately not allow himself to face the risk of losing.

“Even back in the summer, when he was somewhat defying gravity, somewhat defying conventional wisdom, it seemed to me there would be a moment when reality sets in,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist who is based in California. “He would not leave himself to have his destiny settled by actual voters going to the polls or the caucuses.”

Yes.  He does the firing, not you. 

Stuart Stevens, who was the chief strategist to Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race, also doubts that Mr. Trump will stay in over the long haul. “Trump’s the only person that pre-spun his exit — it’s rather remarkable,” Mr. Stevens said.

He pointed to one of the issues that has nagged the Trump candidacy from the outset — how much he is willing to spend on the race, particularly if his polling numbers start to sag. “I think we would all say this is a more serious endeavor if he was spending $2 million a week out of his own pocket, and I think it’s another sign that he’s not in this to win,” Mr. Stevens said.

No.  It's not about the money and never has been.  It's about Trump's ego.  If he can get someone else elected, that's what he'll do and enjoy it just as much as if it was him getting sworn in.  "The Apprentice", starring Ted Cruz as the President of the United States.

Stuart Stevens: I have HBO, I've watched 'Game Change', and sir, you're no Woody Harrelson in a fat suit Steve Schmidt.  Get out of politics and go back to writing travel books.

That's all the conservative BS I can stand for the weekend.  Now I'm going to enjoy the rest of the Indian summer weather we're having.  Please do the same.

Update: Way to save Charlie's bacon, Horns.

Not Trump and Carson but Rubio and Cruz

Maybe you had not noticed, but the real black neurosurgeon who has been performing a frontal lobotomy on himself all week has drowned out The Donald's rants.  And even the Democrats have gotten more chatter because of their upcoming debate.  Be sure and remind Debbie Wasserman Schultz again about that.

I've worked to limit the outrage and/or snark about stupid things Republicans say every single day (Juanita Jean's always there for you) not because it's so much fun but because it's so time-consuming trying to keep up.  There's not much blogged here about what Stephen Colbert or Trevor Noah or Larry Wilmore say each night because Egberto's on that beat.  The Speaker's race is indeed a hilarious clusterfuck, but in the grand scheme of the local election we have coming up and then the presidential one next year, not all that B a FD to me.  And as you know by now, campaign finance reports and teevee commercials are best left to the geeks, wonks, and consultants who thrive on that.

So with three Hillary Clinton posts this week, and traffic sagging until I returned to the municipal elections yesterday (and with traffic back through the roof), I want to get in a few elbows on the GOP presidential field.

On Labor Day weekend at the AFL-CIO barbecue in Pasadena, somebody asked me if Scott Walker still had a chance to be the nominee.  I told her it was at least possible he could regroup, blow some Koch up his nose and reignite.  Go back and look at the September archives to see that he was carried out feet first two weeks later.  Since then all the rage among conservative pundits and prophets has gone from "who's next to quit" to "ZOMG is it really going to be Trump or Carson".

I'm gonna say that if either one of those two winds up being the Republican nominee, even a ticket of Lawrence Lessig and Jim Webb could beat that.  Like a red-headed stepchild.

So with the tenuous assumption that Republicans are smarter than this -- that's why they're so rich, of course -- somebody else is going to be at the top of the heap when the walls fall and the guns are silenced.  My take today is that it will be either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, and here's why.

By process of elimination, it won't be Bobby Jindal or Lindsey Graham or Chris Christie or George Pataki or James Gilmore or Rick Santorum or Rand Paul.  Mullah Huckabee still has the longest of realistic shots thanks to Kim Davis, but he's being eclipsed on the strength of his own foibles.  Picking a fight with a bag of chips is a dead-ender.

That leaves Jeb!, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and Ted and Marco.  You could scramble these five every possible way except with Bush and Rubio together (two candidates from the same state can run together but it gets problematic in the Electoral College, so discount the possibility of a pair of Floridians to zero), and you'd have a decent enough Republican duo to be a threat to Clinton-Castro or Sanders-Warren.  Since we're dreaming, after all.

But for the purpose of this exercise, let me veer away from my previously stated prediction of the top two and make it Kasich-Rubio (I've suggested previously -- scroll to the bottom -- that Kasich-Condoleeza Rice might just be too tough for the Democrats to beat, and I still believe that).  Rubio would be better as a VP than Rice not because of his Latino appeal but because of his evangelical cross-breeding.  Condi claims to be a libertarian on choice, and that damages her with the brand in this cycle.  The Bible-thumpers love Ted too, of course, and here's where you should disregard the rain-making reporting; Cruz doubled up Rubio in money in the third quarter.  Cruz excites the TeaBagger base with outbursts like "hate slaw!", but he's alienated too many inside players.  He's not going to settle for second place, either.  Ever the gladiator, he will affect the presidential process just like he does the Speaker's race, but in the end he'll content himself with going back to the Senate and taking another shot at Hillary in 2020.  He needs to mend some fences, make a few friends in the process.

If I'm wrong, though, and Cruz is at the top of the ticket, Clinton beats him like a drum.  Even Bernie Sanders beats Ted Cruz, and it wouldn't be all that close.

It goes without blogging but I'll write it anyway: Bush and Fiorina don't have the wherewithal to get it done this time.  Both have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, and Bush has a peculiar "finger-in-the-air" ailment.  Four years ago the GOP exhausted all the certifiably insane options -- Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Santorum -- before settling back on Mitt Romney.  Bush isn't going to be that lucky, no matter how many favors he thinks he can call in.  The base simply will not allow that to happen again.

Kasich (Ohio) and Rubio (Florida) are both from swing states the GOP has to have to win.  Cruz and Fiorina don't help enough electorally.  Condi, like Carly, is also from Cali; that's a non-starter for one but not the other.  Rice is a DC insider/gravitas pick as much as she checks off the right demographic boxes.  And like Dick Cheney, nobody really knows where she came from (born in Alabama, raised in Colorado, much of her adult life associated with Stanford University when she wasn't in Washington).  But I think, again, that she's not extreme enough for the bottom of the ticket when they tap a so-called moderate for president.

Rubio is Tea Party without the tricorn hat.  He's said enough crazy things -- climate change, border walls, etc. -- to earn some street cred.  Ultimately he's just less sour than Cruz, and when it comes to coconuts, that's important.

So the ticket will be some combo of "moderate" and rabid dog, with the assumption that Rice cannot be recruited for V-P.  Kasich-Rubio is my story today and we'll see how long it sticks.

Update: I could be just as wrong as either Ted or Donald.  Or both.  We shall see.

New mayoral poll same as the old one; HERO is winning

The poll finds Adrian Garcia and Sylvester Turner tied for the lead, with a second tier of closely-clustered candidates, including Chris Bell, Bill King and Stephen Costello. Digging deeper into the numbers yields more insight about those candidates with stronger name identification and favorable ratings, along with those candidates whom the voter would even consider supporting. Complete polling results may be found at www.har.com/poll.

Specifically, the Houston Association of Realtors commissioned a DC firm named American Strategies for this poll conducted over three days in the fourth week of September.  It found Turner and Garcia tied with 19%, then Bell and King at 10%, then Costello at 9%, and then Ben Hall with 6%, Marty McVey 1%, and the rest at statistically nothing.  "Undecided" actually won with 25%.  In late June, it was Turner 16, Garcia 12, Bell 8, Hall and King 3, Costello 2, and poor McVey stuck at 1%.  So everybody except McVey has moved a few undecideds into their column (that figure was 53% in the old survey).  Charles has your deep dive; I'll add these impressions.

-- The Republicans in the race strengthened the most over the summer, but still don't appear to be a threat for the runoff.  That is, if you don't consider Adrian Garcia a Republican, which I do.  He is certainly the most conservative Democrat running, and he has significant conservative financial backing.  Most importantly, he's not being scuffed by his terrible record as Harris County sheriff.  Of all the data here, that's the point I most disbelieve.  But hey, if I'm wrong and his incompetence doesn't catch up to him by Election Night, I'll own it.

-- Correspondingly, if it turns out to be Turner and Garcia in the runoff, that should be a pretty easy choice for us lefties in December.  I'm still going to vote for the most progressive candidate in the general, and that's Bell.

-- Undecideds appear to be mostly white conservative women.  Who gets the most help if and when they do decide -- King or Costello?  I suppose the teevee ads they run will get refocused (fewer football and baseball games and more Fox and Friends).

-- HERO stands at 52% in favor.  That is, in a word, awesome.  The haters muster just 37%, and only 10% are undecided.  That lede is essentially buried in both the HAR press release and the Chronicle article, and the newspaper, in its otherwise-tired fundraising analysis, notes that HERO supporters have doubled the money of Hotze and ilk.  More and better on this topic, as usual, from Kuff.

Grand Old Professor Mark Jones is always available to piss on the parade.

... Rice University political scientist Mark Jones cautioned that the poll does not account for non-traditional city voters who may show up at the polls this year to vote on the ordinance, known as HERO.

It also likely under-represents support for Turner, Hall and potentially Garcia, Jones said, as it surveyed lower percentages of African American and Hispanic voters than are expected to turn out in November, given that there are two black candidates and one Hispanic candidate in the top-tier.

Sixty two percent of respondents identified as white, 20 percent as black, 10 percent as Hispanic and 2 percent as Asian.

"This survey would appear to be underestimating African American turnout by at least 10 percent and perhaps a little more," Jones said.

"If there are people who are being driven to turnout by the HERO ordinance or by Adrian Garcia's mobilization of the Hispanic community, they would not be represented," he added.

I cannot wait to see if this conservative jackass is right or wrong.

Updates: Via Mike McGruff, the top seven mayoral candidates will debate on teevee on Friday, October 16 -- that's the weekend before early voting begins the following Monday --  to be telecast by KPRC and Telemundo.  That debate is also sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Houston Baptist University's law school.  Get tickets to the event or live-streaming info and more at the link.

And a second mayoral poll came out today, sponsored by the conservative Houston Realty Business Coalition (they've endorsed Bill King) and it shows...

• Turner with 24%
• King with 18 (LOL)
• Garcia with 14
• Bell with 11
• Costello and Hall with 8
• three percent unsure, four percent someone else.

And as you might have guessed, it also thinks HERO is losing, 31-40 with 13% undecided and 16% declining to answer.

"We're still not sure what the electorate will look like, so polling the electorate has been a little dicey," University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said.

[...]

Rottinghaus said HRBC's poll likely over-represents younger and Republican voters, while under-representing African-Americans. "That's probably why you see King doing better in this poll, because Republicans tend to be more heavily represented."

In other words, it's garbage.

Clinton comes out against the TPP and against Glass-Steagall

Somewhat equivocal, but we expected that.

"As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about (the Pacific Rim trade pact). I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set."

We'll get to Val's bar in a minute.

Hillary Clinton says she doesn’t support reinstating a Depression-era banking law that separated commercial and investment banks because her forthcoming proposal for U.S. financial reform is “more comprehensive.”

Two items, same note: 'I can do better'.  Let's see about that.  First, on the trade bill she formerly supported...

Clinton explained her skepticism by mentioning two of the most common objections to the deal among left-leaning critics: that it's too favorable to pharmaceutical companies, and that it doesn't include language prohibiting other countries from manipulating their currencies to gain a trade advantage.

Thanks, Bernie!

The lack of currency manipulation language is a key concern of the labor movement, whose support could be crucial in next year's Democratic primary elections. Meanwhile, public health groups have raised concerns about language in the TPP that could raise the cost of medicines worldwide.

Obama faces a tough vote on the trade deal next year, and Clinton's comments won't help. They will give political cover to wavering congressional Democrats who want to help Obama but are also feeling grassroots pressure from labor unions and other liberal groups.

Clinton's comments also represent something of a flip-flop. During her time as Obama's secretary of state, from 2009 to 2013, Clinton repeatedly promoted the trade deal. While the final text is different from versions being considered when she was in office, neither of the concerns she's raising today — about benefits to pharmaceutical companies and the lack of language on currency manipulation — have changed since then.

More from HuffPo, and the following from the BBC.

(Sanders) was likely to bring the topic up during the debate and use it against the former Secretary of State, who once called the agreement the "gold standard" for trade negotiations.

By backing away from the TPP, Mrs. Clinton could also be anticipating the arrival of another, more formidable opponent for the Democratic nomination: Joe Biden.

The vice president has made increasingly clear moves toward a presidential bid, and given his current job it would be extremely difficult for him to oppose a key piece of his boss's presidential legacy.

Mr. Biden's campaign would be likely to rely heavily on working-class, union support -- a segment of the Democratic electorate that is firmly opposed to new trade deals. Mrs. Clinton could be digging her trenches now, before the battle commences.

Pretty much a pure political move, designed to appeal to the interests of and/or avoid the criticism of those who would rather be voting for her challengers.  Savvy and craven, a Clinton hallmark.

On Glass-Steagall, the post-Depression law that got banks out of the investment business, created the FDIC, and which was repealed in 1999 by her husband, leading ultimately to the Second Great Depression of 2008...

Who supports it? Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — two of Clinton’s challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination — as well as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who along with Arizona Sen. John McCain, reintroduced legislation to revive Glass-Steagall this year.

“Despite the progress we’ve made since 2008, the biggest banks continue to threaten our economy,” Warren said in a statement introducing the legislation. “The biggest banks are collectively much larger than they were before the crisis, and they continue to engage in dangerous practices that could once again crash our economy.”

Both Sanders and O’Malley have hit Clinton for her close ties to Wall Street.

“Her closeness with big banks on Wall Street is sincere,” O’Malley said in July. “It’s heartfelt, long established and well known.”

Why doesn’t Hillary? “The big banks are not the only thing we have to worry about,” Clinton said in Iowa Tuesday. “I’ve studied this real closely, and what I am proposing is we go after the risk, and if they are too big to manage, that is a risk and they should not continue. If they are so big that they are causing disruptions on the marketplace, that’s a risk.”

Clinton continued, “If you only reinstate Glass-Steagall, you don’t go after all these other institutions in what is called the shadow banking system — hedge funds and other financial entities that have too much power in our economy. I have what I consider to be a more comprehensive approach to what we need to do to rein in these institutions, including the big banks.”

The Democratic frontrunner also took a swipe at her rivals, like O’Malley, who are seeking to tie her to her husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall.

“I’m going to go after what I think are the real problems, not the problems on the past,” Clinton said, “because what I’m interested in is stopping something like this from happening again.”

Reinstatement of Glass-Steagall has bipartisan Senate support, as the bill sponsors Warren and McCain would indicate.  The House is probably a different story.  If a Madam President thinks she can get a more rigorous financial regulation bill through the Congress a year and a half from now -- especially with a Democratic Senate led by Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) -- then the next policy announcement we will hear is that Mrs. Clinton supports full legalization of marijuana, because she's high.

Other than the obvious pandering, we seem to have her moving in the left direction.  Which is, again, the most I believe we could hope for.

Scattershooting more of Hillary's email

Lest anyone think I am a convert from yesterday's post, here's more headlines the front-runner (Clearly! Just ask Ted!) doesn't want to see...

Drip: "Second IT firm agrees to give FBI Clinton server data"

Hillary Clinton hired a Connecticut company to back up her emails on a “cloud” storage system, and her lawyers have agreed to turn whatever it contains over to the FBI, a personal familiar with the situation said Tuesday.

The disclosure came as a Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also asked the firm to turn over to the committee copies of any Clinton emails still in its possession.

There were conflicting accounts as to whether the development could lead to recovery of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.

[...]

The controversy seems sure to come up on Oct. 22, when Clinton is scheduled to testify to a House committee investigating the fatal 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. It was the panel’s chairman who first declared last March that she had “wiped” her server clean based on a letter from Clinton’s attorney.

For chronological perspective, that hearing will be the week after next week's Democratic contenders' debate, and we'll be a few days into early voting here in Houston for the mayor's and city council races.

Drip: "Hillary's #2 at State twice forwarded now-classified email to Clinton Foundation"

According to a new email chain shared with POLITICO by Citizens United, Cheryl Mills — Clinton's former chief of state at State — forwarded State Department background information about Rwanda and the Congo to the Clintons' philanthropic organization. Citizens United, a conservative activist group, obtained the messages via a Freedom of Information act lawsuit.

Former President Bill Clinton was visiting Africa, including Rwanda, around the time that Mills sent the email, which was mostly redacted. Former president Clinton was also considering giving Rwandan President Paul Kagame a plenary role at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the emails.

If you still need to understand why this is something and not nothing...

Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating whether classified information was ever mishandled via Hillary Clinton's private email server. For months, Clinton maintained that she did not have classified information on her homemade email server, until government watchdogs unveiled that she did. After those reports, the campaign maintained that Clinton had not received messages that were "marked" classified at the time.

The State Department has agreed with that assessment, but the intelligence community inspector general does not and has argued many of the emails were indeed classified at the time in 2012.

Beyond the classification issue, Republicans and other transparency groups have questioned whether the foundation’s work, funded in part by foreign donors, ever influenced what happened at the State Department. Or if the foundation received preferential treatment.

Mills sat on the foundation’s board before becoming the department’s No. 2 official and returned to the board after leaving State in 2013. And she appeared to continue to advise the foundation while at State, according to other emails revealed by the Citizens United lawsuit. Republicans say those connections between Mills and the Clinton Foundation raise questions about whether the relationship was too close. 

Bold emphasis in the excerpt is mine.  Mishandling and/or willfully disclosing classified data is a federal crime, under various statutes.  Just ask David Petraeus.  Or Chelsea Manning.  Or Edward Snowden.

Drip: "Employees at company working with Clinton email server expressed concerns"

(T)his past August, a Platte River Networks employee wrote to a coworker that he was, "Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) s**t."

"I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and that we can go public with our statement saying we have backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30days (sic), it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better," the unnamed employee continued.

The email was sent shortly after news emerged that the FBI was looking into the security of the server, and several months after it was revealed that Clinton exclusively used the private account to conduct State Department business.

Now Clinton has to be concerned about whether one of these IT people rats her out to the FBI in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Not to worry, Hillaryians: Bernie Sanders' campaign has a fatal flaw, and it's the candidate himself; he simply has too much integrity to win the White House.

“Bernie Sanders’s failure to become a member of either major political party excludes him from the network of cronyism and backroom deals required under our system to be elected,” said Davis Logsdon, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “Though that failure alone would disqualify Sanders, the fact that he is not beholden to a major corporate interest or investment bank would also make him ineligible.”

Because of his ineligibility, Logsdon said, the Vermont senator would be unable to fund-raise the one billion dollars required under the current system to run for president. “The best source of a billion dollars is billionaires, and Sanders has alienated them,” he said. “Clearly he didn’t think this through.”

Logsdon said that Sanders might persist in his quest for the White House despite his ineligibility but that such an effort would be doomed to fail. “Our political system has been refined over the years specifically to keep people like Bernie Sanders out of the White House,” he said.

“The system works.”