Jamil Smith:
Even with the #Hillary4Who action at her event, it was likely a relief to many to see the Democratic presidential front-runner finally articulating her formal platform to address and end structural racism. She was there, after all, because she has been pushed by Black Lives Matter and other citizens demanding to know her plans. But she was also there because we’re still trying to fix Ronald Reagan’s mistakes.
Drafted in a haste after the sudden overdose death of NBA draftee Len Bias, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established, among other harsh penalties for drug offenses, the 100-to-1 cocaine disparity. Essentially, you’d get the same time for possessing five grams of crack cocaine as you would for 500 grams of the powdered version of the same drug. While President Obama sought to reduce the disparity to 1-to-1 in his Fair Sentencing Act five years ago, Republicans forced a compromise of 18-to-1. Even with the U.S. Sentencing Commission making retroactive reductions for inmates convicted under the old ratio—thousands of whom were released on Friday—Clinton made clear in her address that the adjusted disparity still reflects bad assumptions about the drug.
WaPo on DebateGate:
Early on, the choice of CNBC as a debate host had seemed like a victory for Priebus's avowed strategy of protecting Republican candidates from a "circus." Priebus, who is presiding over his second presidential cycle as RNC chairman, had claimed that biased moderators from networks like MSNBC would skew their questions and insult Republican voters. "[We're] creating a debate environment that would bring honor to the Republican Party," Priebus told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt this year, "not a debate environment spurred on by nefarious actors like Chris Matthews and others."
Wednesday's aftermath turned CNBC's hosts, including John Harwood and Becky Quick, into figures of conservative infamy. Some progressives were stunned by the backlash's speed. "CNBC is a business network, where the monologue that launched the Tea Party happened," said a flabbergasted Chris Hayes, the host of MSNBC's prime time show All In, in a Friday tweet.
But Carson is not the first presidential candidate to demand more sympathetic moderators, and Priebus is not the first party leader to cut out a network. In 2007, before Fox News could hold any Democratic debates, progressive activists urged that cycle's campaigns to boycott the network. One by one, the candidates agreed to it. In a surprise move, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) joined Nevada's Democratic Party in a statement canceling the debate that Fox News had scheduled for the state.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Philip Bump:
Over that same time period, the media on the whole has shifted. In a world that's centered on the Internet and its always-changing idiosyncrasies, major outlets (including The Washington Post and Fox News) now mix hard reporting with analysis and opinion more than was once the case. The Post produces a lot of articles every day, some percentage of which will anger someone, somewhere -- and perhaps prompt them to write us off as hopelessly partisan in one direction or the other. Things I have written with the goal of being amusing have probably caused readers to view the entire Post -- including our excellent reporting -- with skepticism. I'm part of this shift.
However the cause-and-effect of Republican skepticism about the media works, it's clearly to the benefit of Republican candidates in a way that it isn't for Democrats.
NBC:
Among the complaints Priebus cited: Insufficient focus on the debate's theme of economic and financial issues, uneven screen time for candidates, and "inaccurate or downright offensive" questions. NBC News and CNBC share a parent company and operate independently.
According to Priebus, the RNC will sanction a candidate debate for the same February 26 date, but as of now will only work with National Review, a conservative outlet that was also set to participate in the NBC/Telemundo debate.
"This is a disappointing development," NBC News said in a statement. "However, along with our debate broadcast partners at Telemundo we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party."
Brian Beutler:
There’s no denying that the moderators lost control of the debate at times. But it is impossible to claim that CNBC—the network that employs Rick Santelli, who helped galvanize the Tea Party—is part of the “liberal media.” As for the allegation that the questions were frivolous … judge for yourself. I compiled all 46 questions from Wednesday night from Time's transcript. If you consolidate follow-ups, or double-count single questions asked of multiple candidates, you might come up with a different number, but this is pretty close to every question. Among them, I counted [deep breath] …
… Two questions about the feasibility of Donald Trump’s policy agenda, six questions about taxes, two questions about Marco Rubio’s Senate attendance record, one question about the causes of Bush’s struggles, two questions about Carly Fiorina’s business record, three questions about the recent budget deal, two questions about Social Security, one question about Trump’s business record, one question about pharmaceutical prices, one question about corporate prosecutions, one question about the internet sales tax, one question about Marco Rubio’s financial difficulties, one question (and follow-up) about the Export-Import Bank, one equal-pay question, one question about equal rights, one question about Ben Carson’s business associates, two questions about H1-B visas, one question about the Federal Reserve, one question about federal subsidies, one question about inequality, one question about pot legalization, two questions about gun control, one question about Trump’s moral values, one question about retirement, one question about student loans, one question about gambling, one question about climate change, three questions about Medicare.
These questions were divided among three main hosts—Carl Quintanilla, John Harwood, and Becky Quick—and three subs: Jim Cramer, the aforementioned Santelli, and Sharon Epperson.
Jonathan Cohn:
Lots of people seem to think the dominant storylines about Wednesday night’s Republican primary debate are Marco Rubio’s smooth delivery, Jeb Bush’s weak attempt to knock Rubio off his game, and the supposed incompetence of the CNBC moderators.
If you care about substance, however, the main takeaway was how little candor the candidates showed when talking about policy.
Over and over again, the GOP contenders on stage in Boulder, Colorado, made misleading claims about important economic issues. And when the moderators confronted the candidates with their contradictions or misstatements, the candidates responded by attacking the media -- and fibbing a little more.
It was good politics, for sure. As HuffPost's Natalie Jackson has noted, beating up on reporters is extremely popular with the Republican base. Probably the loudest cheers for the entire night came after Ted Cruz attacked the moderators for setting up a "cage match" and ignoring substance. Frank Luntz, a conservative pollster, tweeted that his focus group gave that statement a 98 rating (out of 100).
Nate Silver:
“You know, I think Jeb Bush is toast,” I told one of my editors after Wednesday night’s debate.
“I kinda do too,” he replied. “I’m just worried because that’s what everyone else seems to think too.”
Yes, we pride ourselves on being skeptical of the conventional wisdom here at FiveThirtyEight. You don’t have to look very far back for examples of it being wrong, such as how it badly overestimated the degree of danger that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in until a week or two ago. But being skeptical is not the same thing as being a contrarian. There are plenty of times when the conventional wisdom is right. This is probably one of those times.
Via
Taegan Goddard:
Peggy Noonan: “He’s not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family.”
“I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.”
Greg Sargent:
Thus, [WaPo fact checker Glenn] Kessler concludes, Clinton never explicitly and publicly blamed the attacks on the video, and the fact that she privately blamed terrorism is not evidence of a deliberate effort to mislead. Nothing presented at the Benghazi hearing changes this.
It’s important to understand that the claim that the hearing is what unmasked Clinton’s “lie” is crucial to the story Rubio is trying to tell, a tale told to the GOP base that Brian Beutler exposes in more detail. The narrative that the media deliberately obscured this on Clinton’s behalf helps discredit media scrutiny of Rubio’s own distortions, and that scrutiny will in turn likely be converted into evidence that Rubio poses a dire threat to Clinton — the liberal media perceives this threat, and thus wants to tear him down. But the highest-profile foundational claim Rubio has thus far offered to support this narrative structure just doesn’t hold up.
Brian Beutler:
The GOP's Grotesque Festival of Lies
The darkest moment of the 2012 campaign for President Obama was the first of his three debates with Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee. Obama was rusty and under-prepared, which contributed to his poor showing that night, but a big reason he lost the plot so badly is that the Mitt Romney he had prepared to debate was a composite of public statements, briefing papers, and other documentation from the past. The Romney who showed up was a shapeshifter adapting to his immediate circumstances.
So when Obama attacked Romney, accurately, for proposing to cut taxes on the affluent so dramatically that the middle class would have to pick up the tab, Romney simply and dishonestly denied this was the case.
Obama pointed out the discrepancy, but by that point the debate might as well have been over. Or at least it had transformed into something other than a debate. The shared premise disappeared, and the vast majority of people watching had no way of knowing who was right and who was wrong and how brazenly Romney had lied.
In the days afterward, Romney struggled badly to defend his tax plan, but by wide acclaim, he outperformed Obama that night.
And so they've learned that lying in a debate is good politics.