GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, February 3, 2016

[0:00:00 Speaker 2] in the news. Welcome in the news for American government in Texas politics. I’m Eric McDaniel

[0:00:11 Speaker 1] and I’m Jim Henson.

[0:00:13 Speaker 2] Well, the dust is finally settled in Iowa, and so we actually have some some winners. Well, I don’t usually come winners and losers, but we’ll call him high scores in that sense. So we take a real quick look at the run down and the Democratic Party. You see, Hillary Clinton received 49.9% the vote. Bernie Sanders received 49.6% of the vote and Martin O Malley 00.6 askew noticed Martin O’Malley has crossed out because Martin Mala, after that, dropped out of the race on DSO. What’s important to see here? So when you say the percent of the vote, it doesn’t mean they win the whole state. That’s the percent of the delegates they received. Now move to the Republican Party. The Republican field, which clearly had much more players. You see, Ted Cruz came out with the plurality with 27.75% followed by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio being Carson Rand Paul wasn’t it in the top five but has just dropped out. So we have breaking news. He just dropped out, followed by Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, who dropped out shortly afterwards. So he dropped out a couple days ago. Chris Christie and Rick Santorum. Eso There are a lot of players here, a lot of things going on, But it’s important. Understand that we talked about this is that just because you received the most votes because they want, they want they want? It’s like it’s a lot more complicated than that, because the delegates are giving up in proportion to the votes. And so we got a little time talking about that kind of kind of. Put this in perspective.

[0:01:46 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean s so we can start with the Democrats and on the Democratic side going into this race. As we said last week, this is the race that for in a lot of people’s eyes, certainly in Hillary Clinton’s eyes never should have been. That is, Bernie Sanders was never really considered, Ah, very powerful competitors, somebody that was going to give Hillary Clinton a real run for her money. And there’s something to that in the sense that if you compare it to the Republican side. Having Sanders in the field by himself means he gets all of the other people that maybe you’re considered an alternative. Might want to go to the left of of the of Hillary Clinton had Elizabeth Warren, the popular and populist kind of senator from Ah, Massachusetts, gotten in the race. Then you probably see Hillary Clinton in a little over 40% and Sanders and Elizabeth Warren splitting that vote. But instead we see this unbelievably close vote. And I think on on election night you really saw the sense from Hillary Clinton that this was a very close race and that they were just glad to be done with it. On Sanders side, You saw, I think Sanders very quickly making the point that you made. Bernie came out immediately and in the race and said, You know, the night of the primary even before the votes were counted and said, It’s a very close race, and what’s happened is, you know, we’ve effectively tied.

[0:03:12 Speaker 2] Yeah, I mean, if you look at the delegate count, which we have up is, you can see it’s 28 21 but the number of delegates needed to actually secure the nomination is 2300. So this is basically saying I have a two point lead in the 1st 4 minutes of a basketball game. It really doesn’t mean that much. Now again, The idea here is that it creates momentum that if you win one stay, it carries over to see your seen in. The winner’s people elected vote for you in other states. But I think it’s very important. We kind of put this in perspective that, you know, 28 delegates when you need more than 2000 means you got a lot more work to do.

[0:03:49 Speaker 1] And in this sense, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders gets something. Each wants out of this for Hillary Clinton, even if it was by 3/10 of a point, she gets to say, Okay, we won. We didn’t lose like we did in 2008 and for Sanders, he’s been very effective at raising lots of money in small amounts. I heed the night of the of the caucus. He was telling, trumpeting to his supporters that their average contribution was 27 $28. They both get that. I think Hillary Clinton, you could see was visibly relieved, given their experience in 2008.

[0:04:24 Speaker 2] Yeah, we talked about, you know, the idea of Hillary waking up in the middle of night in a cold sweat, having flashbacks of 2008. But then we remembered she’s up at two o’clock in Borden received a phone call for those of you don’t know. Look up the Hillary Clinton attack ads on Obama. Early on, it was basically an ad of who’s gonna answer, like, two o’clock in the morning. Uh, she there to answer the phone. I’m not sure you know what I’m gonna bomb to be doing at two oclock in the morning, but she’s up playing basketball. Yes, yes, I

[0:04:55 Speaker 1] know. I think the sense of Clinton’s anxiety about this in her relief, But the sense that this is really not something they want to be dealing with and it brings back bad memories is just palpable. It’s like, you know, flashbacks to the helicopters coming over the trees in Vietnam or something. All right, so let’s talk about the Republicans.

[0:05:12 Speaker 2] So Republicans eso again. Ted Cruz again declared the winner. But if you look at the actual delegate breakdown, you have crews with eight delegates earned Donald Trump with seven. Marco Rubio with seven, Ben Carson with three. Jeb Bush with one rand, Paul with one. But again, Rand Paul is is out. Um, but again there, you need to secure more than 12 1237 votes. Now, look, what’s up coming. You know, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. You actually see several of several more delegates coming forward. But really not a lot, really. Don’t get a big windfall of delegates and really until Super Tuesday, which is in March. And so what you’re seeing is really kind of a slow lead up to this. And, you know, I think what they’re really trying to establish right now is legitimacy. Look, I’m a legitimate candidate and I think people are saying that you know, the fact that Trump didn’t win, I was like, Oh, he’s not legitimate, But I think that’s that may not be ah is clear kind of people making it out.

[0:06:10 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, I think on the Republican side, you’re right. I mean, it’s about legitimacy, but it’s even, You know, there’s a real material thing here is that if you’re one of the people really trying to grain gain traction in this race, particularly if you’re not Donald Trump. It’s really helpful to get some people out of the race at this point. And I think there were a couple of big headlines here. One. Andi. I think this is probably frustrating to both Ted Cruz, who came in first. That, even to Trump is that Marco Rubio really did pretty well in this and one of the things that we saw was that going into the actual caucus day, there was a lot of discussion of the fact that the polling was was moving. It was very hard to pull. The poll average had Trump in first place with Cruz pretty close and second in a lot of the polls within the margin of error, meaning that you know you you couldn’t really count on Trump being for sure in first place and were also seen Rubio’s number slowly rising in a way that was pretty noticeable and accelerated in the last week and we look at the entry poles and at the caucuses the networks do entry polls so that as people are going into the caucus, they ask them questions like, when did you decide who you were gonna vote for? They get demographic information on the voters. And something that was really telling is that when we look at when people decided the vote preferences by when the voter decided showed that Ah, a lot of people that decided in the last few days, probably, you know, mawr than Mawr that almost 1/3 of them were people that chose Rubio. And so the polls were picking that up. Second of that work. Another big chunk of those people that decided at the end also chose Cruz. Very few people went for Trump. If you look at the people that said they had made up their mind earlier, those were mostly Trump voters. So there was some erosion in that I suspect and the undecideds or the people that were thinking about voting for other candidates. Switch to Rubio and Cruz in the last minute resulted in Cruise finishing first and Rubio really being very close to second with Trump, which I think really sort of has put route has put Rubio in that position of being the default. What you want to call it establishment mainstream, non insurgent candidate. All those labels implies slightly different things. The big thing is, you know, the people that are leaders in the party and the people that are the elites in the party are less worried about Rubio than they are Trump and Cruz with Trump. I think he’s kind of a wild card with Cruz. It’s really amazing how many people in Washington, D. C. And inside the business just are very direct and say we don’t like the guy.

[0:08:56 Speaker 2] Yeah, and going on with the idea. We don’t like the guy. We have one of the tactics that true, that Cruz used to get voters out S o. He was using basically what he was using political science and so one of things that he’s been, uh, people point out, I think he’s technologically savvy and he listens to political scientist. Ah, And so he did A Which

[0:09:18 Speaker 1] one of those two things is better.

[0:09:21 Speaker 2] Take Now let’s be salmon, because I said I’ve been putting like I live with one. I’m like, I don’t trust you all, Uh, eso I am one and I live with one, and I work with many of them. Yeah, I don’t trust you all that are I’ve seen how you make decisions. Now what he did was, ah, what experiment have done Get out the vote campaigns where they basically do, say, Look, we know whether not you voted and this is true. There are records about whether or not someone voted. That’s that’s that’s common knowledge. Now we don’t know whom you voted for, but we know whether not you voted and he put out these ads. Rubio did the same thing as well. Rubio just said, Look, you know, we your neighbors, will be voting. We’ll let you know if you have it, but we’ll cruise. There was a little more detail, was like, actually gave everybody voting score, and he had the but also had the voting violation. Eso The idea that you know you didn’t vote will take way. Have your score will make your score public. Here’s a score of your neighbors and we will tell up everybody else about your score. Now, crews come under fire because the scores may not actually be accurate. Either they have inaccurate numbers or they fudge the numbers. And so this voting violation, what grade you have to think Nobody got higher than a C from properly. And so people like okay was It’s actually true or not,

[0:10:40 Speaker 1] right? I mean, if you look at the language of these of these voters, it’s of these mailers that the Crease campaign sent out its classic what political scientists call social pressure techniques. So the it really attempts to make voters feel anxious about what other people are gonna think about them, and the language is very direct. And it looked quasi official and it came out later, and I think they took less hits for it. That the Rubio campaign had also had a template for doing this. They called There’s the Iowa Caucus report card, but it’s the same basic approach, telling people that you know your neighbors are voting or not voting. And you know people are watching you and judging you essentially for whether you’re a good citizen or not. Rubio didn’t take much of a hit, but Cruz really got at least insider kind of press attention that resonated with some criticism that he was being dishonest and misleading, and there’s some other things you would noticed about cruising that response in that respect to right,

[0:11:39 Speaker 2] yes, So one of things that jumped out with cruises earlier this Early in the week he was having a rally. Supporters and a Hillary Clinton supporter asked a question about about Obamacare and repeal of Obamacare. Let’s roll that real quick.

[0:11:54 Speaker 0] I want to ask you about your plans for health care. You wanna review Obama here? My wife lost her brother. This stuff, he was a soul. Barbara. Small businessman. I never got a payday. Never got paid vacation days. Never got a holiday. Couldn’t afford health insurance. Finally got health insurance under Obamacare. Got sick. One of the doctors have never been to a doctor for years. Multiple tumors behind his heart, his liver. His word. Sorry, sir, he doesn’t like to do. But he went to hot cotton with Arizona like staffers. Orthopedic Arizona. Send him home to die. My wife is a retired professor from the University of Iowa College in 16. Took care of it last two weeks. Watched him die. He still has nightmares. Weight cries every day. Mark never had What are you going to replace it with? People like Mark.

[0:12:50 Speaker 1] So that clip is long and you don’t really see Cruz pivot in a way that you know, is pretty questionable. But, you know, as we’re talking about trusting Cruz and his trustworthy, it’s funny that it’s almost as if they know this and they’re big banner behind them. You know, that has been one of their mottoes is trust. Ted is if I think it’s almost as a kind of protesting too much element to this. But this really resonated with you and some of the work you’ve done. And

[0:13:19 Speaker 2] if you’re interested so one of things, people point out that really, with fact checkers have really. Point is, that is, that Ted Cruz is kind of attacks on Obama care really are not true. So, for instance, in the debate, he made the statement that Obamacare was the number one job killer. So he actually got the Pants on Fire Award from from PolitiFact. And so what? You’re running running to it with Cruz really, which ran into with Hillary Clinton as well. She may not be that popular months, people within. On top of that is this trustworthiness. So, for instance, in 2008 Hillary Clinton claimed that she was she was somewhere where she was giving a speech somewhere where she’s being attacked like No, that’s not true. You also the email issue. And so we’re running, running into the problem of the same problem that Hillary Clinton’s have with being trusted Ted Cruz running to this as well, where he’s making some of these statements that are factually incorrect. I think we have the same problem with Donald Trump of the problem. I think Donald Trump were like, Well, he’s a cartoon character. Ted Cruz try to paint himself is no, I’m a legal scholar. I know I’m an expert at this, uh and so I think that may become a problem. And in the future, where his opponents will kind of attack his integrity And can you really believe what he say?

[0:14:33 Speaker 1] This becomes really important presidential elections. To the extent that you know, we idealized way that elections work and we want to talk about what people think about in terms of policy and where their ideal points our perceptions of candidates personas are they trust where they are they strong? Uh, how do they make me feel in response? The fear and anxieties really loom large in these presidential elections as well That said. I think, you know, we’re very glad. I think, to be through with Iowa. I was interesting. We get very excited about Iowa. There’s of all this pent up demand, because it’s first and you know, there’s a part of that that’s fair to the extent that we’re finally seen some voting that actually counts. We’re not looking at pundits or polls, or, you know, all those things have their place. But I mean, it’s It’s understandable that when I what happens, everybody gets excited. If you follow this stuff, however, we are done with Iowa. So in the next few weeks, we’ll see three more contests in a way for because the Democrats and the Republicans do Nevada, the Nevada caucuses on different days. So next Tuesday, February 9th is New Hampshire. ESO, by our next next ah broadcast on Wednesday will know what happened in New Hampshire should be interesting things to watch in New Hampshire very quickly. New Hampshire looks very different than Iowa. As we were discussing last week. It’s got, um ah, much less ideologically conservative, more moderate Republican electorate. Fewer fewer evangelicals, so expect to see different people have advantages there. It’s a little bit of more of a hill for Ted Cruz, who finished first in Iowa February 20th will have the the Democratic caucus in Nevada, the South Carolina primary and then, in February 23rd the Nevada Republican caucuses. Then we’re through the period of one state at a time on. Then we enter a much more complex phase of the campaign Super Tuesday, which includes the Texas primary on March 1st. And we’ll be talking a lot about that. I’m sure in the coming weeks.

[0:16:41 Speaker 2] Yeah, so we have a lot to talk about. This a lot going on. But we’ll with you next week, have a good week.

[0:16:57 Speaker 3] Government, 3 10 in 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