Monday Reads: The Open Road

Good Afternoon!!

I got a late call to fill in for Dakinikat, who is having some electrical problems. I got back home from Indiana on Saturday night, and I’m still a little tired and disoriented. When I arrived, there were trick or treaters roaming around the neighborhood, and of course I had nothing to offer. Then the time changed at 2AM Sunday–that always throws me for a loop. Anyway, if this post doesn’t make sense, you’ll know why.

I have to admit, though, that I won’t stop travelling by car until I’m forced to. There’s something about driving on the highway, alone with the radio and my thoughts, that I just love. Each time I drive cross country, I’m amazed at the beauty of America. As I was driving on Saturday, I thought to myself that the experience of being alone just watching the scenery go by was enough to make me happy to be alive, despite any problems I’ll have to deal with when I get to my destination.

So, on to politics.

The Republicans are still nuts, and now its presidential candidates are feuding with the party honchos and the TV networks. Apparently they’ve decided they want debates at Fox News, only with people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as hosts.

David Wiegel and Robert Costa at The Washington Post: GOP contenders demand greater control over crucial debates.

Several Republican presidential campaigns began mapping out new demands Sunday for greater control over the format and content of primary debates, which have attracted big audiences and become strategically critical for the 2016 cycle’s expansive field of contenders.

The effort was a response to long-simmering frustrations over the debates, the questions and in some cases the moderators, which boiled over this weekend when advisers from at least 11 campaigns met in the Washington suburbs to deliberate about how to regain sway over the process.

The private gathering became the latest twist in what has been a turbulent season of debates for the GOP, with less-popular candidates — including a sitting senator and governor — furious about being relegated to a little-watched “undercard” debate and the front-runners dismayed by a system they have described as a disastrous brew of bias and arbitrary rules.

In other words, these candidates would rather not have to deal with hard questions about their policies or personal histories.The meeting also exposed a leadership rift that has widened in recent days between the Republican National Committee, which negotiated the debate schedule and formats, and some of the candidates. RNC officials said they would not participate in Sunday’s meeting, but they have been reassuring campaign operatives that they are willing to recalibrate the events.

Shortly before the meeting began, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus announced a staff shake-up within the GOP that appeared intended to calm the unhappiness of the presidential campaigns….

As the meeting got underway, senior strategists from several presidential campaigns revealed in e-mails and text messages that Priebus’s staff shake-up was not enough. One campaign manager, speaking about the private meeting on the condition of anonymity, wrote: “Major question is if the RNC should be involved at all.”

The campaigns reached an early consensus on one issue, according to several operatives in the room: the secure standing of Fox News Channel. Any changes would be applied to debates after next week’s Fox Business Network debate. Among the reasons, according to one operative in the room, was that “people are afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad,” a reference to the network’s chief.

Much more at the link, if you’re interested. Wiegel also published a letter drafted by long-time Republican consultant Ben Ginsburg, who has taken on the role of negotiator for the candidates. The letter includes a list of questions that a network

Will you commit that you will not:

o Ask the candidates to raise their hands to answer a question

o Ask yes/no questions without time to provide a substantive answer

o Have a “lightning round”

o Allow candidate-to-candidate questioning

o Allow props or pledges by the candidates

o Have reaction shots of members of the audience or moderators during debates

o Show an empty podium after a break (describe how far away the bathrooms are)

o Use behind shots of the candidates showing their notes

o Leave microphones on during breaks

o Allow members of the audience to wear political messages (shirts, buttons, signs, etc.). Who enforces?

CNBC reports that

According to Ben Carson’s campaign manager. Barry Bennett, the campaigns all agreed to circulate a questionnaire to the networks hosting the debates asking for details on their planned formats, the moderators and how long the debates will go, among other details.

The campaigns will hold a conference call before each debate to hammer out the details on a case-by-case basis, during which, Bennett said, he expects other issues of contention—like whether to hold an undercard debate and how to get more candidates involved in the main debate—to be ironed out.

All campaigns agreed that they want to limit the debates to two hours, allow each candidate to get 30 seconds for opening and closing statements, have final approval of on-screen graphics and figure out a way for the candidates to get more equal speaking time.

Honestly, these people are so childish. Most of them don’t have enough support to even be included in debates. Meanwhile this process has once again alienated Latino voters. Greg Sargent: Republicans shoot themselves in foot with Latinos, again.

Republicans are pulling out of their only scheduled debate that would be aired on a Spanish-language TV network. So Democrats may respond by holding a second gathering aired on one.

The Spanish-language network Telemundo is in talks with the Democratic National Committee about possibly scheduling a new candidate forum with the Dem presidential candidates, after the Republican National Committeecanceled its debate on NBC News and the NBC-owned Telemundo to protest CNBC’s handling of last week’s gathering, sources familiar with ongoing discussions tell me.

If this comes to fruition, Democrats would effectively be moving into the breach created by the RNC’s decision. It would mean Democrats end up holding two debate-style events on Spanish-language networks, since they are already set to hold a Univision debate in March.

Telemundo had already been in private talks with the DNC about holding a candidate forum, but in the wake of the GOP decision, those efforts will now be escalated, I’m told.

I hear that Jeb Bush wants the Telemundo debate reinstated, but the rest of the loonies apparently don’t mind being seen as anti-immigration goons.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is just beginning to get a ground game organized in New Hampshire, while Hillary Clinton has had one for a long time already. Jennifer Epstein at Bloomberg Politics:

By the numbers, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are in more or less the same position in New Hampshire. They’ve been within a few points of each other in most recent polls, and both have more than 50 paid staffers and about 10 offices in the Granite State.

Behind those numbers, though, are two dramatically different campaigns.

Clinton’s team started early, with senior staff in place as she launched her candidacy in April and a staff of a few dozen paid organizers working on her behalf by the summer. Her first ad buy of $1 million came in August and her campaign has since spent millions of dollars more. She’s made a dozen trips to New Hampshire, including three in October.

Sanders’ campaign says they really haven’t needed an organization so far because they have such enthusiastic volunteers.

Without the same robust structure until the past several weeks, the Sanders operation had been kept afloat by its volunteers. By the time Julia Barnes, the state director, started work, there were already the hundreds of volunteers campaigning on behalf of Sanders, posting signs at their grocery stores, talking to neighbors at waste-transfer stations, selling home-embroidered hats featuring the candidate’s name and donating the profits to the campaign.

“One of the reasons why we’re seeing such success, even having a delay” in launching formal organization efforts well after Clinton, “is we did not—and this is a professional anomaly for me—have to work to manufacture enthusiasm,” Barnes said. “It was already there.”

Enthusiasm can only go so far (and, to be sure, there’s plenty for Clinton, too), argue veterans of President Barack Obama’s New Hampshire primary and general election campaigns, who just happen to be Clinton supporters this time around. Early and sophisticated organization gives her an edge, they say.

I wonder how that is going to work out in South Carolina and Nevada?

A bit more news, links only:

KRGV.com: Texas Case Mulls if Home-school Kids Have to Learn Something. Parents are accused of not teaching their children, because they were waiting to be “raptured.”

Washington Post: Muslim activists alarmed by the FBI’s new game-like counter-terrorism program for kids.

Politico Florida: Florida poll shows Trump in front, with Bush’s help.

Politico: Trump slams Wasserman-Schultz as “crazy” and “highly neurotic.”

TPM: Jeb Swears He’s Tough: ‘I Eat Nails When I Wake Up’ (VIDEO).

The Hill: Rubio’s numbers skyrocket in NH.

Salon: The wingnut myth that refuses to die: The one simple reason why there’s no “liberal media conspiracy.”

Julian Zelizer at CNN: Hillary Clinton: Warrior or peacemaker?

What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and enjoy the rest of your Monday!