GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, February 24, 2016

In the news.

Welcome to In The News for American and Texas government. I am Eric McDaniel. And I’m Jim Henson.

Well, this week we’re going to talk quite a bit about the primaries. That seems to be the big thing coming with with

Super Tuesday less than a week away, Rexy going to see a lot of things shake out

and we’re seeing some momentum being being put forward. Really, if we look at the Republican

primaries, specifically South Carolina and in the end in Nevada, we see that Donald Trump is gaining

a big head of steam. And so he’s he’s he’s moving

the hair as a flap in. And, you know, hey, we may be moving towards

the nomination. So if you look at the real quick results from this, this is from

Nevada. So this is basically it was what was came out yesterday as Donald Trump received forty

five point nine percent the vote, which is pretty good. I mean, considering that there are five people actually

running to fight to get close to half the vote is pretty important. You have Marco Rubio coming in second, which

is sort of become an emerging trend where Marco Rubio slightly ahead of Ted Cruz in the same thing in South Carolina.

I think you have Ben Carson and John Case coming in last, in case that I think is kind of important. This case, it kept

saying, I’m the moderate, I’m the nice guy. He’s saying that. But people

have questioned whether he is the nice guy. But Big Carson is still hanging in there, even though Big Carson has

done poorly throughout. Ben Carson. I guess one article about that

saying about, you know, it’s you know, you’re near the end when Ben Carson keeps saying it’s not near the end.

It was a great story last week about Ben Carson. Right. I think right before South Carolina, the

Cruz campaign eliciting this this meeting with Ben Carson. They’re supposed to be top secret. They had it

in like a janitor’s closet or something. And they couldn’t quite they couldn’t quite come to terms. Because

Carson was still mad about the high jinks at the Cruz campaign and pulled in Iowa.

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. And that’s that’s becoming a recurring theme. That’s that is hurting. I’d be hurting

Ted Cruz. Is that Ted Cruz is actually being painted the same way that Peter Beinart painted

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton when they ran in the 90s of basically doing underhanded tricks will do

whatever it takes to win, even if it meant destroying the party. Ted Cruz fired his

one of his top staff members over the right as communications director. I think that, you know, that

this this argument that Cruz is inherently a liar, underhanded,

nasty, has been telegraphed by the Carson campaign as well as the Trump and the Rubio

campaigns. It’s become something of a problem for the Cruz campaign in the last week. You

mentioned Donald Trump having a head of steam. He was definitely feeling it after South Carolina. Let’s let’s

listen to his victory speech in South Carolina. You know, I was watching upstairs

and it was really amazing to be watching what I was watching and some of the pundits and I, you

know, overall fair, but not too much. But a number of the pundits said, well,

if a couple of the other candidates dropped out. If you add their scores together,

it’s going to equal Trump.

These geniuses, the geniuses, they don’t understand that as people drop out.

I’m going to get a lot of those votes also. You know, just just add them together.

So I think we’re going to do very, very well. I’m going to I’m

going to say something right now, which some people may be upset with, but Donald Trump is right.

Donald Trump may be the number two option for a lot of people. And we’re not really capturing

that. And so. You know, my brain may explode, but he’s right.

Yeah, my brain may explode, but now there is something to that. And the big headline

there and we didn’t have this in the in the excerpt we played was also the night at soccer in South Carolina

was also the night that Jeb Bush dropped out. So let’s hear from Jeb Bush.

I congratulate my competitors that are remaining on the island on their success

for a race that has been hard fought, just as the contest for the presidency should

be, because it is a tough job in this campaign. Have stood my ground, refusing to bend

to the political winds, we put forward detailed, innovative conservative plans

to address the mounting challenges that we face, because despite what you might have heard,

ideas matter. Policy matters. You may not have been, but

those winds blew him down. I think pretty clearly that that’s a campaign that just never got

any traction. We’ve talked about it here before and really is interesting in the sense that it

it signals really the end not just of the Bush dynasty, quote unquote. I

think as people keep saying, but of a certain brand of politics in the Republican

Party, you look at where John Cusack is case, it keeps saying that he is the voice

of reason, the moderate voice, Eric was just saying, but he’s really not getting any traction.

The person who’s trying to be the quote unquote, establishment candidate, Marco Rubio, has always

been somebody who came from the right. So he’s really positioning himself from the right and extending to the

middle. Unlike people like Bush Kasit, who really started center right

and tried to extend over. So Bush out, Donald

Trump just looking very dominant in the Republican race at this point as we go into Super Tuesday. Before we

move in to talk a little bit about what’s coming up, we should also then talk about what happened with the Democrats. So

the Democrats have a caucus in Nevada after a rough few weeks. That turned out to be a very good

night for Hillary Clinton. Good in the sense that she won. So she edged

Bernie Clinton fifty two point six to forty seven point three. I shouldn’t say

that’s an edge. That’s a pretty good margin given a two person race. Nonetheless,

Hillary Clinton comes out of Nevada adding 20 delegates. Sanders adds

fifteen. This race still looks close, but as we head into

Super Tuesday, looks pretty good for Hillary Clinton. The way

the dynamic of that race has shifted, though, has now seen both candidates really turning

towards minority voters. You know, I’m looking at you, Eric McCain. Oh, yes. Yes.

That’s that’s not a psychological issue. We actually said we’re going to talk about

courting of the black vote. So this is become an amazing

effort to where you’re seeing both candidates really trying to get up. And you actually do

see, you know, some splintering within within amongst African-Americans, but they’re

actively going after the black vote. So we have a clip and show you their activities over the past week

regarding their attempts to get the black vote. New polling out of South Carolina

does not appear to bode well for Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 21 points.

That margin is even greater among black Democratic voters. And nationally, Hillary Clinton is drawing

a significant portion of her support from younger black voters. According the latest NBC News

poll, 64 percent of black Democratic voters under 30 backed Clinton, while just

a quarter support standards. African-American voters will play a significant role both

in the South Carolina Democratic primary and the states that follow on Super Tuesday and beyond. And today’s

schedules for both candidates reflect that, starting with Hillary Clinton, who began her day meeting with

the National Urban League here in New York, and prominent civil rights leaders like Reverend Al Sharpton and ACP

President Cornell Brooks. Afterwards, she headed uptown to Harlem to Langston Hughes Auditorium,

located on Malcolm X Boulevard to give a speech, unquote, breaking down barriers for African-Americans.

Bernie Sanders began his day at a prayer breakfast in South Carolina with, according to our times, actor Danny

Glover and former Enderle ACP president Ben Jealous. We’ve both endorsed Sanders. After

which, Sanders held a town hall meeting at the University of South Carolina, where he was introduced by Erica Garner.

The daughter of Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer.

Now, the officers were charged. Today, the Sanders campaign announced a massive TV ad buy with

a two minute ad featuring Garner’s endorsement airing and every broadcast market in South

Carolina tomorrow, as well as on national cable, morning shows and B.E.T. All right. So as you

see, Hillary Clinton was in New York and she went up to Harlem, began her Uptown Funk on.

So I said funk. All right. So this is no

time to recruit black voters. I mean, I think one of the things that’s helping her is

that she has a history. Black voters. Bernie Sanders, as I’ve said, know, comes from Vermont. And, you know, we

Googled this before, before class has 1.2 percent black.

So it was one of the whitest states in America. So Maine, Vermont

and New Hampshire are considered the kind of three whitest states in America. And the problem

of Bernie Sanders is. You know, does he know how

is he able to relate to African-Americans? They point out that he went to a prayer breakfast, but one of the problems is

Barrio is kind of not so open about, you know, religion. I want to push religion back. But the

problem is black people are extremely open to religion. All right. So, for instance, rappers who

you know, when the Grammy for, you know, back that booty. Up first, want to thank our lord

and savior, Jesus Christ for winning the Grammy. So this right here shows you that religion permeates everything

within black community. So Bardy may have to get up there, say a few, a man’s hallelujahs

to try to recruit people in because he’s not doing so well. And

while part of the issue is that a lot of black voters, based on the polling, don’t really know who Bernie Sanders

is to begin with. Right. So there may be a little room to grow, but it does seem like he’s got an uphill battle.

And if we look at approval numbers and we look at polling overall,

Hillary Clinton is running very strong among black voters. So we want to now transition and look at

the University of Texas Texas Tribune poll, which we just released yesterday. This is polling in Texas

only. And we did polling and we did a survey on

the both of these these presidential races in Texas on the Democratic side. We found Hillary Clinton

among likely voters, leading Bernie Sanders by 10 points. If you look at the

overall sample there, which you’re going to see, is that Clinton had a bigger lead among all voters and

we don’t reduce it of about 17 points. And what this really looks like

is that we were in the we were collecting this data at really the sweet spot for Bernie Sanders

in Texas. We were in the field between his win in New Hampshire, but before he

lost in South Carolina, that probably helped Bernie Sanders to some degree. Or Nevada.

Right. Nevada. So if we then look at the breakdown among

racial and ethnic groups in Texas, we see in Texas what we’ve been talking about,

Hillary Clinton doing very well among black voters compared to Sanders and pretty

well with Latino voters in Texas, both of which

worked very well for her to stay, particularly with a large population of Latino voters.

And if we look at that ten point number in that seventeen point number, what

it really points to is, as Darren Sean I were talking about yesterday, it points

to how important Latino vote is in Texas. The more Latinos turn out, the better off Clinton is

going to be, the larger that gap will be for her. Come Super Tuesday next week.

We also polled on the Republican race, not surprisingly, Ted Cruz

leading the pack among likely voters by about eight points, 37

was still on the ballot. At this point. It’s all on the trial ballot, you know, pulled single figures validating

his effort to get out. Still doing poorly in Texas. A couple of things

to point out there. One, if we look at the breakdown among conservatives in Texas.

Ted Cruz doing best, very well among people who identify as

extremely conservative. He’s got more than half of those voters. Trump kind of picking the pockets

of all of the other groups relatively relatively evenly.

Much as he’s done in the in the rest of the country. And you know, Eric, I think what’s really interesting about this

is the fact that for all the advantages that Cruz is enjoying in Texas,

you know, he’s pulled well here all along. He’s very well-liked among a very conservative

electorate. For all the ways that Texas tries to pose itself is much different

than the rest of the country. Donald Trump looks a lot in Texas. His numbers look a lot

in Texas like he does in the rest of the country’s polling. Twenty five thirty four between twenty five. Thirty five

percent. And he’s pulling evenly from lots of groups. And this is, you know, in some

ways it’s moderately good news for Ted Cruz because he is ahead. But if you

go back a year ago, I think the crux of the Cruz strategy was to really crank in Texas

and Trump, just like he’s confounded everyone else’s strategy is confounded that strategy in Texas.

Yeah. I mean, we joke about Donald Trump. And one of things of the Mitt is he’s found he’s been able to touch

on something that others have not. And so while it’s easy to make fun of them because of some of the statements he makes, but these

he’s been able to tap into something. You know, I think Bernie Sanders is hoping to do that on the Democratic side. It doesn’t

look like it’s working as well. But Donald Trump has clearly tapped into something which is resonating

throughout the nation and even in Texas, which would you consider to be Cruz country? And to me,

we should, you know, seriously look at what is he saying? What is he tapping into? You know, some may

say what he’s tapping to is bad. Some may say it’s good, but he’s tapping into something. And part of campaigns

is tapping into tapping into something and getting the people behind you because they believe

that you are in touch with their interests. Yeah, I think when we

ask people in the poll, what is it that’s kind of informing your your choice of candidate?

You gave him a list of reasons for the Trump voters, the economy and shaking

politics as usual. Were the top responses. Now, one of the interesting things about

about those results that we got was that shaking things up was

not uniform across the board. Really, one of the you know, the other competing top responses

was a candidate that can win in November. But there are a lot of Republicans in Texas

that think both Cruz and Trump can win in November as well as shake things

up. So that really informed a lot of voter choices. Yeah, shaking things up is always

problematic in my mind because lots of you shake things up. You may actually make things worse.

So one of the reasons you may have problems in Congress is

because you while you do have two parties in Congress, it seems like you have splintering within the Republican

Party. So let’s look at more like parliament. And so obviously you have instead of, you know, it being

three or four issues that separate the parties, you now have multiple issues that separate the parties, which mean you can’t get

anything done. The Democratic Party, I think they can resolve

this kind of Sanders Mrs. Clinton thing, especially if Clinton win does very well on

Super Tuesday. It can be resolved very quickly. They can start to heal the wounds or the Republican Party. This

may drag off for some for some time. And, you know, you may run to the problem where, you know, you make

you make fatal blows. And so the idea is whoever wins the

people, the members of the party is going to be have a very bad taste in their mouth about it. Yeah, we saw that in some of the in

some of the polling in Texas. We asked people what their views were of

how competent a president each candidate would make on the Democratic side. There was general agreement,

even even if you supported the other candidate, that both candidates, you know,

had had relatively positive assessments all over the board in the Democratic field

or in the Republican field. Lots of Republicans who would not, you know, did not have a very positive

expectation of other candidates in the field, including some of the leaders. So

early voting still going on in Texas. So for the rest of the week, don’t forget to vote. We

have a slight correction from last week or the week before on the Democratic side. They just,

you know, relatively quietly ended the Texas two step process that we talked about last week.

So rather than caucuses in the evening, voting in the day Democratic primary this year, simplified

back to simply going and voting in the primary. You know, I would argue

simplified in part to help Hillary Clinton, who didn’t do as well in the caucuses last time.

Yeah. And they’re also. So they are giving out cards or information in terms of attending

the county and state conventions. That’s what’s going on. So,

you know, I was confused about the caucus going. They were handing out information about. Right. About

attending these things. So. Yeah. So right now, what it is looking like is,

you know, make sure you got to vote. I did it yesterday. You get a chance to early voting. Yes. I haven’t done my

early voting. My wife and I go together. OK. It’s like a thing. Oh, that’s so sweet and romantic.

Remember, there are voting stations here on campus. So if you want to vote and you register in Travis County,

you can vote here on campus. So, again, we you actually exercise

your right to vote. Clearly express, you know, who you believe is best, represent

the party that you align with, but also the direction of the nation you would like to go. I mean, menacingly

agree, but it’s very important to actually show up and to be part of this dialog.

So that’s all we have for this week. So next week, we will talk about the results of Super Tuesday.

And so we look forward to seeing you next week. Have a good week. So long.

The government 310 in the News podcast is hosted by doctors Jim Hansen and Eric McDaniel

and is produced by the Liberal Arts US Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College

of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.