GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, February 10, 2016

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] in the news.

[0:00:06 Speaker 0] Welcome in the news for American in Texas government. I’m Eric McDaniel

[0:00:10 Speaker 2] and I’m Jim Henson.

[0:00:11 Speaker 0] All right, so we have another week of primary. So yesterday we had the New Hampshire primaries. So gonna go over real quick about the rundown. So if you look at the Democratic side where basically became a two person race after Michael Malik governor mailing dropped out Ah, you see, basically what’s gonna happen to me for? Forget Valentine’s Day this year was beat down Bernie Sanders, 60% Hillary Clinton, about 30 38%. So this is clearly, you know, everybody thought Bernie was gonna win. But do you think is going by this much? Eso It’s a clear win for Bernie now moved to their public inside. What we see is again. It’s still have a lot more individuals involved, but it’s a clear win for Trump, so he has to see the plurality of all, followed by John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson. And be truthful, Let the media coverage is gone. You would forget Fiorina and Carson in the race. Andi, I think you will forget shortly. We were just trying to remember, Um I forgot his name already again. Uh, Hermann K. Harming K. I remember his short period in the 2012 election. Uh,

[0:01:25 Speaker 2] you mean that in a very nice way.

[0:01:26 Speaker 3] In a

[0:01:26 Speaker 0] very nice way. Yes. Uh, is nice. I can be. Now if we move on to base of the breakdown of delegates, we kind of see what’s going on within the race. So see, Bernie came out with Senator Sanders. Came out with As what? 13 then. Now, yes. 34. Hillary Clinton, Former Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton has come with nine with 32. So in terms of these boats, Sanders has a lead. But the problem is, the Democrats have

[0:01:58 Speaker 2] superdelegates, right? And so that you look at the overall delegate count, which we’re not gonna get into at this point. Hillary Clinton’s actually very far ahead. And the superdelegates, in summary, are party leaders that aren’t elected. They are. They basically choose who they are gonna align with, and they tend to be elected officials in the States. Things like this. And we’ll go back and talk about the superdelegates. But I think moving forward, we’re going to see ah, lot of contesting for those superdelegates. As time goes on now, the dynamics in this race have just get more and more interesting, don’t they? I mean, you know, that was a thumping. I mean, that was a serious thumping and that actually over performed. Actually what we thought in the week going in there, the poll average had Sanders I had, I think, depending what you looked at and how you waited the polls ahead by 15 or so. I mean, that is a big margin and certainly very unhappy times at Clinton political headquarters. Now there are a couple of dynamics here now, as we look forward to, to how this race is going to shake out now one of them is race. There’s an expectation that Sanders will cool off and Clinton will do better. As we go into the Southern states for first South Carolina. We have South Carolina and Nevada and Nevada still coming up. But on Super Tuesday, which is March 1st, we’re gonna have a whole batch of states, including several Southern states, including Texas. Now, one of the big expectations here is that Sanders will not do as well among ethnic minority voters that are a big share of Democratic Party votes in the South. So what do you think, Eric? I mean, do you think because Sanders has been doing so well, Clinton has been underperforming? That we’re gonna get minorities, particularly African Americans, taking another look at at Bernie Sanders?

[0:03:54 Speaker 0] I think that that is gonna happen. There’s been quite a bit of a discussion of you looking editorials where elites have really been talking about taking another look at Bernie Sanders exclusively with his record regarding civil rights. I think one the big things is his economic platform is very beneficial to minorities to minorities because it’s like a greater share. Wealthy, want distribution and many arguments. A poor minorities. It’s not just the issue of civil rights to protect my civil rights, but making sure that, you know I’m not economically deprived, and so they’re being hit in kind of in two different ways. I think Hillary Clinton can attach yourself to Bill Clinton, this idea being look, I’m a trumpeter of minority values, you know, Bill Clinton’s known as the first black president. You know, all that stuff you played the saxophone, kissed black babies, things like that. But the problem he also has it probably also run into is the welfare reform, which was highly racialized, that was under the Clinton under Clinton and in many of the sentencing guidelines. So we’re talking about now. It were under during the Clinton administration, so many of so while Bill Clinton able to trumpet his connects with blacks, you can look at some of his policies and say some of them weren’t that good economically. Blacks it very well under Clinton. Um, But there are some things where if you look back in time, we see and main out of work out as well There. There are some dark spots in that case and not using

[0:05:18 Speaker 2] a pun. Okay, I’m gonna go there. But I do want to comment on how great it is that you worked in both trumpet and saxophone in that answer Now I think. But I think the trumpet thing does get to something a little bit serious. Is that you know, I think there’s an essence in which there’s a way which everybody has been assuming that Clinton kinda has thes ethnic and racial minorities come locked up. But once you really look at how similar their positions really are, particularly on economic issues, that may or may not be the case. And in some ways that almost it almost suggests there hints at what Sanders has been saying about Clinton that she is sort of air apparent rather than having earned what she gets now. Another dynamic that’s been interesting in the race leading up to the voting in New Hampshire was that late last week and over the weekend there was a lot of media coverage and noise in the lines, I think, over how surrogates for Hillary Clinton, in particular, Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state who has been a Clinton surrogate, and Gloria Steinem of one of the iconic feminist in the country were talking about how young women ought to be aligned with Hillary Clinton. So let’s go ahead and we have a clip of Madeleine Albright. Let’s play that and we’ll talk about a little bit.

[0:06:34 Speaker 3] We can all we can tell our story about how we climb the ladder, and a lot of you younger women don’t think you have to. It’s been done, it’s not done, and you have to help. Hillary Clinton will always be there for you. And just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other

[0:06:56 Speaker 2] now. There are a lot of things one can say about that. Obviously, it raised two things. A question of gender and the fact that there’s been a fight over over women voters. Obviously this age issue, Ah, and and Hillary Clinton’s response to that. I mean, she could have doubles over in laughter. Psycho, you didn’t. In a way, that’s very funny, but it really brought up a fairly serious issue about the Presumptions of the Clinton campaign, particularly when it comes to young women.

[0:07:25 Speaker 0] Yeah, this is This is an important thing. Received singing kind of a generation divided metal. Albright’s statement. Look, my generation fought for a lot of things, and they’re still there. Still fight going on and you see the same thing going with black politics of where you see the individual were connected, toothy civil rights movement based on making very starting arm. It’s like, Look, we fought for these things. No, you’re taking what are work for granted. There’s still more work to be done. You’re benefiting from our gains, but not realizing. You know, there are a lot of losses, and I think that still has more work to be done. And the problem is when you play identity politics, things can always go wrong. I could think of you know, somebody running for the Congress and Florida saying, If you don’t vote for Christians, you’re legislating sin. You make these strong statements. It’s really easy to mobilize but also mobilize your support, but also mobilize your opposition.

[0:08:17 Speaker 2] Yeah, I really suspect in this that the Clinton campaign was seen something in the polling that they didn’t like because they deployed Madeleine Albright and this was clearly now what the point was was to try toe shore up Hillary Clinton standing among women and particularly young women. And it did, I think, backfire on them a bit and brought attention to the fact that there was there. There is a big generational difference now. Hillary Clinton has enjoyed an advantage among women. If we look at numbers in Texas from the November UT Texas Tribune poll, we see that Hillary Clinton did have about seven or eight point edge over Bernie Sanders among women, but that’s not not huge. It’s significant, but it’s not huge, and I suspect once you start looking at where young women are, about 11% of women in that poll were undecided. We expect that women tend to register more undecided preferences at this stage of the game, but I think we also have to look at that. 11% undecided, probably also also assume that a lot of those voters are younger women. So it’s a really it’s a real interesting issue that I get is gonna continue to unfold. Okay, so maybe now we should move and drill down into the Republicans. I literally but drill down into that race, which has also gotten interesting, but in in different kind of ways, the field is still crowded. The expectation going into New Hampshire was that there would be some clearing out of the field that some of those medium candidates, when you look at at how everybody everybody ran Ah, you’re John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio might clear out that some of those guys might drop and that there would become a Clear Mawr relatively mainstream contender. That hasn’t happened. John Kasich came in second in case She is a very interesting figure,

[0:10:11 Speaker 0] and so he is the governor of Ohio, and actually he is the most experience of all the candidates. And one of things that’s been pointing out is when voters went to the New Hampshire polls. Those who really focus on experience were more likely to vote for Kasich than the others. Now he’s also been painted as kind of the Donald Trump of the establishment. He’s, but he’s been a bit testy personality. What personality? Waas eso he’s been been tested with media Also test with the party. I think at one point he made a statement about lobbyists that if I get on the bus, we’re gonna run you over. What, The bus? Uh, so he’s He’s very dynamic individual neck in that case, but this is This has also made some statements regarding basically economic distribution, protecting the poor things of that nature. It’s in many ways he’s big, somewhat anti establishment, so that he’s criticized apart and maybe going to get the party. But he is a clear establishment figure. He served in Congress for six terms. He was governor. He worked on Wall Street in many ways. He is an establishment candidate. But he has taken some slight anti establishment stance from time to time,

[0:11:18 Speaker 2] and he also speaks the conventional wisdom in the sense that when he was governor and when he was in Congress, she represented Ohio very important state in the general election like another. Another interesting thing that we look and think about where Kasich is and how Casey came in second. Ah, the other person we were really watching going into this race was Marco Rubio, who had had a better than expected showing going into coming out in Iowa and then going into New Hampshire. Rubio then had a very bad debate. You know, lots of jokes about being him being a robot or an android or some of their artificial being because he kept repeating himself. Ah, in that debate, interesting thing about the chess game of politics in the way that these dynamics work to switch metaphors. The person who really called Rubio out in that debate was Chris Christie. Chris Christie’s we saw finished with less than 10% is probably done. Christie had had banked a lot on doing well in New Hampshire. He did terribly, but he may well be best remembered for having really stymied Rubio’s progress in New Hampshire, so that if we look and we go back and we look at the delegate count, then UM, it’s still, you know, pretty pretty mixed up in Pretty muddy Trump leads with the total delegates with 17 followed by Cruz with 10. Rubio has seven. Still a contender, it would seem, but really feels like he’s lost his momentum as we head into South Carolina

[0:12:49 Speaker 0] and I mean, you got several fights going on with the have the Rubio Christie fight, which looks like it’s over with because Christie’s out and we’ll see. But he may have created a Maura wound for Rubio, which basically mean Rubio will fade out as time goes on. So I guess in many ways, if I’m not gonna win you in winning either. Ah, but he also had the fight, which wean Ted Cruz and Ben Carson so big Carson is like, for all intensive purposes, Ben Carson will be out of the race soon. Ted Cruz, which was getting a lot of momentum, has been attacked for what Ben Carson referred to as is Washington Washington values. So we think of Ted Cruz talking about Donald Trump’s New York values. Ah, Ben Carson, who is really tired of being kind of anti establishment, is tied. Cruise into the establishing with that statement particular in terms of this kind of his tricks o R. Statements he made about Carson dropping out of the race, which Carson says harm him when he was running in Iowa. So Ted Cruz said No, no, something that CNN said Seeing Interstate, We did nothing like that. We didn’t do it at all. And so what was going on now is he’s attacking Cruz, really among the idea of trustworthiness and that he’s just another Washington insider will do whatever it takes to win. In many ways, the way you see people painting Hillary Clinton is way people kind of coming after coming out Protect Cruise.

[0:14:07 Speaker 2] So that race will now move into Nevada in North Carolina. All the primaries will then go really get hotter. Come Super Tuesday. As we’ve said, there’s been another interesting story in the news that we’ve been wanting to talk about, have been able to fit him from the campaigns, and that’s what’s going on in Flint, Michigan.

[0:14:26 Speaker 0] Yes, the Flint, Michigan. Crisis is is a pretty big deal. It’s been going on for more than a year. What kind of help? You understand what’s going on. We have a real quick clip from CBS that explain the kind of technical aspects of this

[0:14:38 Speaker 4] lead in drinking water should not exceed 15 parts per 1,000,000,000. In Flint, more than half of the home sampled had over 1000 ppb. The highest reading was 13,200 more than twice what the e. P. A. Considers toxic waste.

[0:14:54 Speaker 0] So you see, this is a very really big issue. And Flint, you’re seeing a lot of congressional hearings, things like that. So let’s just go for the timeline. The reason why this, because it’s a big issue, is because kind of, ah, slow response to this. So in April 2014 Flints, which is its water supply from Detroit to the Flint River they made as a cost saving measure. Flint, much like Detroit, was was bankrupt. That state had taken over this taking over the city, try to get its funds together. The problem using the Flint River is the Flint River is actually highly corrosive. So there was a GM plant had been dumping a lot of chemicals into it and really nice about the seventies or eighties of the E P. A. Start enforcing things in the Flint River. It was it was highly corrosive. Now, while it’s going down, it’s still highly corrosive. And so there are some concerns about switching to the Flint River now. What made this even worse is they switch the Flint River without treating the water on. So there’s a process that almost all water is treated. Even the water come from Detroit is treated. They skip this step, and this is what really caused. All this problem cause all these problems. So, basically, as soon as the watches coming in, people are complaining about the smell. More foul odor. In fact, the GM plant that was in fluent stopped using municipal water cause it said it was corroding the parts. So that’s got the first warning you have Pediatrician’s coming out saying, Have you seen higher levels off lead and Children? Ah, the E p. A. On Michigan officials test the water, But there’s some controversy over Hobbit tested, and eventually there is a presser from the University from Virginia Tech who did a study and find that you know the water from Flint was 19 times more corrosive than the Detroit water. This is basically everything exploded on October 1st. You have the city officials urging residents to stop drinking the water before behalf that a boil advisory sailors bacteria. But you can’t boil them, let out, Um, and so you see them saying, Look, we’re not gonna do that. We’re gonna switch to the Detroit water. But the problem was, the water was so corrosive that even they said the Detroit water in the lead was still leeching out. So let us still in the water soon. Now you got to basically redo the entire water system in Flint, which is billions of dollars and could take a decade to complete eso. January 5th. Governor Snyder declares a state of emergency basting. Look, we can’t use the water in Flint on. This has been really the big argument. You knew this was a problem a long time ago. Why did take you someone to act? Hey asked for federal aid. That’s when President Obama declares a state of emergency and FEMA steps in. So again, this is really important talking about the relationship between state and federal government. Also local and state government is that, uh, an order for President Obama to declare a state of emergency in Flint. The the governor had to request make a request to the president, and so is not the president. All of a sudden say office didn’t step in? He had to wait for the request when the request came through. That’s when he that’s why he did it. Then last week, you had a congressional hearing to find out who was at fault. And here’s some of the outcome of that congressional here.

[0:18:02 Speaker 1] Today’s often heated hearing was about the people who were not there as much as it was about the people who were there. Chairman Chaffetz kicked off today’s session with strong words for Flynn’s former emergency manager, Darnell Earley, who declined to testify.

[0:18:19 Speaker 4] We’re calling on the U. S. Marshals toe hunt him down

[0:18:22 Speaker 1] and give him that’s give him that subpoena early is not the only person the committee wants to hear from. Democrats have urged leadership to invite Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to testify to.

[0:18:34 Speaker 4] Can anybody tell me why the governor of

[0:18:36 Speaker 1] Michigan is not here today because he’s hiding. That’s what’s happening

[0:18:43 Speaker 2] because he’s hiding. I’m sorry. Couldn’t help. Do

[0:18:46 Speaker 0] you know? I mean, it was basically like everybody wanted shop Republicans sub with the e p a. The Democrats shattered at the Republican establishment was based on God’s everybody’s fault and in fact, the Democrats actually having a hearing today. They invited the governor of you said No, I’m actually working on the budget trying to fix the problem. No, Darnell Earley pretty had had really the worst excuse. He was. He’s now in Detroit. Is that what I’m working on? Fixing Detroit was like, You know, how about how about you stop fixing things? You may want to stop that, so we just see this kind of thing. But this is a really important issue wide part of his idea of the environment protected environment but also the relation between state local federal, the ideas The state governments are protected by the Constitution from federal government intervention. Local governments only protect so much as the by the state Constitution in terms of what could be done. And so in Michigan, the state can take over a city if its finances are failing. You see this in Texas, where the state is taking over school district and to the degree to which localities have powers to protect yourself from the state is limited by the state Constitution. Much like the state’s ability to control what happens with the to control their interacts with the federal government is dictated by the U. S. Constitution. What you’re seeing here is really federalism being played out and really the trickiness off this in terms of the degree to which the federal government in step in to handle of the street between the state and local government, as well as the degree to which the federal govern can handle a crisis at

[0:20:14 Speaker 2] the local level. Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s these two overlays that really intersect. There’s the politics of federalism, which have been so pronounced in terms of the relationships between locals, federal and state government in the last few years. Um, and then there’s also this issue of how oh, the nation is really responding to some infrastructure issues that become more and more pressing within this kind of tangle of institutional and political factors. We see it here. There’s been an ongoing methane gas leak in Southern California. The Porter Ranch area, which seems to be addressed very slowly as you know, hundreds of pounds of methane or leaking into the environment every day. Then we’ve seen it, even in Texas, where, ah, couple of years ago, year and 1/2 or so ago the city of Denton passed, or a city ordinance banning fracking in the city limits. That was ultimately overturned in the Texas Legislature with a law that not only overturn that ban but was gonna make it much more difficult for such bands to be passed by other municipalities. And that was very much driven by the oil and gas industry nationally, not wanting to see Denton set an example that would be followed around the country. So everything kind of converged in that case in Texas as well.

[0:21:37 Speaker 0] Yeah, so what’s gonna happen is you get a lot more stories about environmental pollution coming coming through effort Flint. They’re a lot more stories about lead in water and the need to basically show up the American infrastructure into some degree on CRUCE regulations on on various manufacturers in terms of the pollutants they’re putting into the water. But That’s for another time. We’re going to sign off now, remember, is a lot going on the news, so please keep yourself aware of it. Next week will keep you up to date on what’s happened with the with the latest in terms of primary way. Have a couple weeks before that. But I haven’t enjoy your Valentine’s Day and have a good week.

[0:22:25 Speaker 5] Government 3 10 and The news podcast is hosted by doctors Jim Henson and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin