Saturday Politics : Unconventional Outsiders

It's Saturday Politics.~~~~~ Dr. Ben Carson's presidential nomination bid is gaining momentum. The latest indication was Thursday's national Monmouth University poll showing the retired neurosurgeon and tea party favorite in second place nationally with 18% support, behind only Donald Trump, with 30% among Republican primary voters. Carson's numbers jumped 13%, compared to Trump who gained 4%. Earlier in the week, a Monmouth University poll showed Carson tied with Trump in Iowa and also surging among evangelicals, a crucial constituency for any Republican primary candidate in the state. A Des Moines Register poll last weekend also showed Carson gaining on Trump in Iowa. His campaign reported raising a solid $6 million in August, a month when fundraising is slow. Both Trump and Carson appear to be drawing from a pool of disaffected conservatives attracted to their outsider credentials and anti- establishment rhetoric. Each regularly attracts huge crowds that eclipse those of their competitors in the Republican primary field. The danger for Trump is that Carson is emerging as the safe harbor for Trump voters who are uncomfortable with The Donald's excess. Trump prevailed in all hypothetical head-to-head matchups with other GOP candidates in the Monmouth poll, except against Carson, who had 55% support to Trump’s 36%. Carson also had the highest favorability rating among all the GOP candidates in the field, with 67% saying they had a favorable view of him while only 26% said they had an unfavorable view of him. The Monmouth poll reported that the next two GOP candidates were Bush and Rubio at 8%. ~~~~~ Meanwhile, things continue to unravel for Hillary Clinton, who could lose Iowa and New Hampshire if Senator Bernie Sanders continues to attract voters with his freewheeling style and attacks on the Democratic Party status quo and on banking. Mainstream media are focused on Donald Trump, and are downplaying Hillary Clinton’s weakness and declining polls. Her support among Iowa’s likely Democratic caucus-goers has dropped to 37%, down 20% since May according to an August 26 Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll. While Hillary's poll numbers decline, Bernie Sanders is up 16 points to 30%, and Vice President Joe Biden, who isn’t even running - yet, is up six points to 14%. The poll has made Clinton’s supporters worry, and well it should. Some in Hillaryland tried to claim that the survey contained good news, in that her favorable rating among Democratic caucus-goers remained at 77%. But Clinton’s favorable rating combined with rapidly failling support suggests to pollsters that Iowa Democrats are moving to Sanders not because they dislike her but because she doesn't excite them, and they like him more. When asked, only 2% of Sanders’s backers said that their decision to support him was because they don’t support Clinton. Is there a Democrat who -- short of an extraordinary event, such as Clinton’s indictment over mishandling classified information on her private email account -- can beat her? Not former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, or former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, or former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee. And probably not Sanders. After Iowa and New Hamoshiee, the primaries will favor Clinton -- South Carolina and Nevada, followed by Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas are all states that Mrs. Clinton carried in 2008. She will probably do so again, except perhaps in Massachusetts, a next-door neighbor to Sanders’s home state. There are also Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Vermont and Virginia, states that then-Senator Barack Obama carried in 2008. Vermont will go for its favorite son, but Clinton stands a better chance than Sanders in the others, if she has the backing of black Democratic leaders who voted for Obama seven years ago and who are Bill Clinton fans. And, Clinton is likely to have the cash that Sanders will lack, even if his fundraising gets a boost from early victories. Then, between March 5 and March 15, Clinton will most likely carry Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Sanders could be competitive in parts of Colorado and Minnesota, if his campaign survives that long. But, Sanders’s overriding problem is simply that there aren’t enough left-wing socialist enclaves for him to beat Clinton and capture the nomination. What about Vice President Joe Biden? He would do better in the blue-collar parts of Missouri and Michigan than Sanders, and maybe Clinton, as well. But once the contest runs through the South, Biden would have to pick up a substantial part of the black vote, and he is not likely to generate the level of support that Obama enjoyed in the South in 2008, or the positive push Bill Clinton will give his wife among black southern voters. ~~~~~ Dear readers, perhaps the best bet for either Carson or Sanders is that in this election, the unconventional and the outsider seems to do better than the conventional and expected. Donald Trump has used this to his great advantage, but if he falters, it could well be another unconventional GOP outsider who benefits -- Ben Carson, or Ted Cruz. And if 'GOP America' is in such a mood, perhaps 'Democrat America' is, too -- and if so, it could be the unconventional outsider Bernie Sanders who benefits -- unless a precipitate Clinton fall finally gives Elizabeth Warren the reason she is waiting for to step in.