Bama Blowout?: Latest Fox News Poll Shows Doug Jones With Commanding 10-Point Lead Over Moore

With voting set to get underway in the controversial Alabama Senate race in about 24 hours, the latest Fox News Poll of likely voters shows a commanding 10-point lead for Democrat Doug Jones.  The poll was conducted among likely Alabama voters on Thursday through Sunday using traditional polling techniques, including a list-based probability sample with both landlines and cellphones.

Of course, as with all the "fake polls" that inaccurately predicted Hillary"s sweeping victory last fall, one key variable in determining the accuracy of polling data is predicting who will show up to vote tomorrow...a task which even Fox admits is "impossible to know." 

This race’s uniqueness is significant.  It is impossible to know who will show up to vote in a special election to fill a seat in the middle of a term in an off-year.  And it’s December, a time when people expect to be going to the shopping mall, not the voting booth.

That said, there are numerous red flags which don"t bode well of Moore"s chances including strong support among Independents for Jones as well as waning support from evangelical Christians.

The small subgroup of independents breaks for Jones by 29 points.

 

Support for Moore among white evangelical Christians is down 8 points since last month: it was 73 percent in November and stands at 65 percent now.

 

And his advantage among men has dropped from 12 points last month to just 3 points now.  In addition, Republican men (41 percent) are less likely than GOP women (50 percent) or Democratic men (53 percent) to be “extremely” interested in the race.

 

“Moore might prevail if only the people who typically vote in Alabama elections turn out Tuesday, which is often what happens in special elections,” says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican counterpart Daron Shaw.

 

“But this appears to be a special, special election with blacks and young voters animated by a caustic Republican candidate and the chance of winning a statewide election with national implications, and at the same time some Republicans and many moderates are turned off by Moore, too.”

All that said, this latest Fox News poll deviates substantially from the Real Clear Politics average which includes a series of polls that show a commanding lead for Moore...the exact opposite of what Fox News found.

Meanwhile, offering up the latest evidence of how critical the establishment parties consider this race to be, CNN pointed out this morning that former President Obama recorded a robocall for Jones over the weekend saying "This one’s serious. You can’t sit it out."

"This one"s serious," Obama says in the call. "You can"t sit it out."

 

Two Democratic officials familiar with the Alabama race tell CNN that Obama recorded the phone message in recent days, at the very time Trump stepped up his own involvement in the campaign with a recorded message. Obama does not mention Moore by name.

 

"Doug Jones is a fighter for equality, for progress," Obama says. "Doug will be our champion for justice. So get out and vote, Alabama."

 

Obama"s message to voters -- intended to specifically reach black voters whose turnout is critical for Democratic candidate Jones -- comes on the eve of a special election that has drawn extraordinary national attention and divided the Republican Party over whether sexual allegations against Moore make him unfit for office.

Of course, only time will tell if this is just another fake poll or if Republicans made a serious blunder in their decision to support a high controversial candidate who was doomed from the moment sexual assault allegations against him first surfaced last month.

"Democrats Badly Need Barack Obama" In 2018; Party Insiders Long For Former Leader's Return

"Help us Barack Obama, you’re our only hope," is the call from The Left.

As Democrats’ struggle to find a new champion to lead them in next year’s battle to wrestle back control of the Senate and possibly the House - otherwise known as the 2018 midterms - party insiders are quietly hoping that the former president will step up and play a leading role in stumping for embattled Democratic candidates across the country, according to the Hill.

Since leaving the White House, the former president has been reticent about his plans for the future, though he has occasionally broken his silence to lob a critical tweet or two at his successor. Recently, one of Obama’s tweets, which depicted him smiling at three ethnically mixed toddlers above the message that read “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” became the most popular tweet of all time. 

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

The party’s enthusiasm for its former leader is at odds with the president’s desire to remain on the sidelines and allow the next generation of party talent to takeover. Though judging by Democrats’ performance since the beginning of the Trump era, it appears they have a pretty shallow bench.

Here"s the Hill:

“Democrats are already nostalgic for Obama as they battle against President Trump’s agenda. When he talks, they listen, as evidenced this week by a tweet from Obama about Charlottesville that became the most popular in the history of the platform.

The tricky question now facing the party is how much should it rely on the former president to boost candidates’ profile in 2018.

 “Some Democrats are pushing for Obama to have a more elevated role, but the president  has made clear he is wary of sliding back into the role of party leader, which could preve nt new leaders from emerging.”

But given the party’s waning popularity – recent polls show Democrats are even less popular with the American public than Republicans – it doesn’t look like they have much choice. Without their greatest political asset, the party will likely be doomed to another embarrassing defeat.  

“Democrats badly need Barack Obama,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “He offers such a vivid contrast to Trump in behavior and temperament.”  

“He always sounded reasonable and acted responsibly even if you disagreed with him,” Bannon continued. “None of the potential Democratic presidential candidates have the visibility or credibility to be effective.”

Another strategist said it’s “unconscionable” how little Obama has done to help the Democrats since President Trump’s upset victory in November.

“Brent Budowsky, a former Democratic aide and columnist for The Hill, said Obama “should play a far more aggressive role, starting today, to win back the House and Senate in 2018.”

“America faces an enormous political crisis and it is unconscionable how little Obama and other former top officials have done to help Democrats since Trump began his ugly abuses of power.”

Still, others argue that it wouldn"t be wise to push Obama into the role of Trump’s “sparring partner,” and that when campaigning begins, the former president should play an important but "understated" role to help give the next round of party leaders some room to develop.

“Democratic strategist Christy Setzer agreed, saying while the Democratic nostalgia is “deep and real,” it isn’t wise to have Obama become Trump’s sparring partner.

“For Democrats, never has the contrast been stronger between what we just gave up and what we have now,” Setzer said.

But she added that for potential 2020 candidates like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) or Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to truly move into the political spotlight, “Obama has to remain in the shadows.”

While Democrats may be in a different place a year from now, she added, ‘right now, we’re still trying to figure out who the next leaders of the party are. Until that’s more clear, Obama can’t be as prominent.’”

To be sure, Obama has already been involved in fundraising for the party, and is expected to begin campaigning in the fall, according to the Hill. The broader question is, should the Democrats fail to find a new champion by the midterms, will desperate Dems turn to Michelle Obama, who already polls higher than many of the party’s other most prominent figures?

Obama Returns To Political Spotlight With Speech On Gerrymandering

After six months of vacationing at some of the most lavish resorts on earth, including Richard Branson"s own private island in the British Virgin Islands, Obama, as it was foretold by Eric Holder many months ago, is apparently ready to make his valiant return to the political spotlight.  His return will come in the form of a speech to be delivered on behalf of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which just happens to be chaired by Holder.  More from the Washington Post:

Obama’s appearance Thursday before a few dozen people at a closed-door event in the District on behalf of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) highlights the balance he is trying to strike as his party seeks to regain its footing at both the state and national levels. Obama does not want to cast “a long shadow,” in the words of Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, but he remains a central figure for a party that has yet to settle on a single strategy to combat President Trump.

Perez said in an interview Sunday that while some Democrats have urged Obama recently, “You’ve got to get out front on issue X or issue Y,” the former president wants instead to “build the bench” for the party. Democrats suffered a greater loss of power during Obama’s tenure than under any other two-term president since World War II.

“Because tomorrow’s president is today’s state senator. And he knows that very personally,” said Perez, referring to Obama’s experience as a state senator in Illinois. “When you lose 900 state legislative seats, those are people who could have been the next governors and senators and Cabinet positions, and that is something that he’s very committed to.”

Of course, after overseeing the loss of over 1,000 Democrat legislative seats during his presidency, it"s no wonder that Obama feels some obligation to help Democrats regain an edge by any means necessary.  Per Fox News, here is a recap of how many democrat-held seats were lost under Obama"s reign:

The Democratic Party suffered huge losses at every level during Obama’s West Wing tenure.

The grand total: a net loss of 1,042 state and federal Democratic posts, including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships and the presidency.

Democratic U.S. Senate seats fell from 55 to 46. Their share of the House plummeted from 256 seats to 194. Republicans still control both chambers going into the next session.

Democratic governerships also became a rarity during this eight-year period, slipping from 28 to 16.

The Obama years, which saw the rise of the Tea Party as well as a new movement form around Trump that is still being defined, coincided with a loss of 958 state legislative seats for Democrats.

Not surprisingly, Obama and Holder plan to attack their redistricting efforts by alleging racism as the primary motivator of current district maps.

But Democrats now see cause for optimism, in part because of several recent legal victories. In May the Supreme Court struck down two North Carolina congressional districts as unconstitutional, finding that lawmakers used race as the dominant factor when crafting their lines. The court has made similar rulings regarding Alabama and Virginia, and has agreed to take up a case regarding gerrymandering in the coming year.

In 2011, when state legislators and governors were drawing districts in many states, Republicans have 22 states in which they held the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers, while Democrats controlled 11. The situation has grown even bleaker for Democrats, since they have just six such trifectas now to the GOP’s 25.

“Restoring fairness to our democracy by advocating for fairer, more inclusive district maps around the country is a priority for President Obama,” Lewis said.

One senior Obama adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly, said the former president will be “supporting efforts that tackle the inequities of our current political system,” although he would only weigh in publicly on political questions sparingly.

Of course, we"re certain that district maps in California and New York have been drawn in a completely "fair" manner and will not draw any criticism in Obama"s speech.

The Real Reason Hillary Lost: Black People Just Don't Like Her

Back in September 2016 we noted that unprecedented black voter turnout was a huge component of Obama"s victories in both 2008 and 2012.  After running in the low-to-mid 50% range for decades, black voter participation surged to over 60% for Obama in 2008 and 2012, the highest levels ever recorded.

As we noted then, the key question for Hillary in 2016 was whether she should expect the same level of unprecedented black voter turnout that Obama was able to garner in his two elections?  Now, courtesy of new 2016 voter data published today by the U.S. Census Bureau, we now know definitively that the answer to that question is a resounding "NO".

After surging to 62% in 2012, an all-time record high, Black voter turnout once again dipped back to its historical range in 2016 with only 56% of Black voters turning up to support Hillary.  Just doing some simple math, there are roughly 245 million voting age people in the United States and just over 13% of them, or 32.5 million, are Black.  Therefore, a 6% decline in turnout equates to roughly 2 million votes, the overwhelming majority of which would have undoubtedly gone to Hillary.

Of course, despite the "Russian Hacking" blame game still being played by Clinton, as we noted back in September she and her team were acutely aware of their small "enthusiasm" issue among African American voters.

 And, at least according to the president of the Democratic African-American Women Caucus, this math has the Clinton campaign in "full panic mode."  Per Politico:

"Hillary Clinton"s campaign is in panic mode. Full panic mode," said Leslie Wimes, a South Florida-based president of the Democratic African-American Women Caucus.

"They have a big problem because they thought Obama and Michelle saying, "Hey, go vote for Hillary" would do it. But it"s not enough," Wimes said, explaining that too much of the black vote in Florida is anti-Trump, rather than pro-Clinton. "In the end, we don"t vote against somebody. We vote for somebody."

Meanwhile, the lack of excitement is "worrying" Henry Crespo, president of the Miami-based Florida Democratic Black Caucus, who said that “No one is writing songs for Hillary. Obama had will.i.am. Hillary has nobody.”

That said, it wasn"t just Black voters who decided not to show up for Hillary...Female voters stayed home too...

...as did Obama"s trusty millennials...

Yeah, but Russia.

Obama Blames Russia For Hacking, Slams "Domestic Propagandists" For Rise Of "Fake News"

As of this moment, president Obama is on his way to Hawaii, having just concluded his final press conference for 2016, and one of the last in his tenure as president. What did we learn in the rambling speech that lasted nearly two hours and saw one of the White House reporters faint? Not much that wasn"t already insinuated, if not proven, repeatedly: Obama stuck to the script, and said Russia "in fact" had "hacked into the DNC," but that the actual voting process was not compromised. The White House was just trying to "let people know" what was going on, and the media interpreted the reasons.

While Obama took questions about Syria, China and Trump"s transition team, Obama mostly spoke about Russia and the allegations by US intelligence agencies that Moscow had hacked the US election. Obama said that his administration allowed the public "to make an assessment" by letting people know that "the Russians were responsible for hacking" the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, adding that the intelligence community did its job "without political influence."

Citing alleged cyber security threats to the US, Obama said he had "told Putin to cut out the hacking" and indicated there would be consequences. which however he would not disclose.

"Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you," he said, adding that Washington"s response to Moscow"s alleged interference is being done "in a thoughtful, methodical way." "Some of it we do publicly, some of it we will do in a way that they know but not everybody will," Obama told reporters, adding that "the message will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized."

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"It"s not like Putin is going around the world publicly saying, "Look what we did, wasn"t that clever" – he denies it," Obama said.

When meeting with Russia"s President Putin in China in September, Obama said he confronted him directlyon the matter. The US leader told Moscow "to cut it out," and apparently since then Washington "didn"t see further tampering with the election process."

By then, however, WikiLeaks had already published the DNC documents. In October they began publishing the emails of Clinton"s campaign chair John Podesta, and the media "wrote about it every day," Obama said.

Obama also told journalists that Hillary Clinton had a "disadvantage" in the presidential campaign because of "how the US media covered her."

“I don’t think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling,” he said, calling the leaks "an obsession" of the press.

"It"s worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance... came to be dominated by a bunch of these leaks," Obama told reporters, accusing the “divided, partisan, dysfunctional political process" for making the US vulnerable to "potential manipulations that were not particularly sophisticated."

"This was not some elaborate complicated espionage scheme," Obama said, again accusing Moscow of having hacked into the Democratic party emails, both Clinton"s and Podesta"s, that contained "pretty routine stuff" such as John Podesta"s risotto recipe. What Obama failed to note is that the Podesta email hack provided an unvarnished, unfiltered and unique glimpse into the Washington corruption and cronyism at the very top levels, something the ordinary public could only dream of getting access to prior to the "Russian hack."

Also, despite insisting Russia was responsible for making the DNC and Podesta documents public, Obama repeated several times that the actual election was not tampered with.

“My principal goal leading up to the election was making sure the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with the actual process of voting. And we accomplished that,” Obama said.

“I can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with the voting process that was the concern,” he said later, answering another question. "The votes that were cast were counted, and counted appropriately.”

Incidentally, Obama did not miss the opportunity to take the low road, and mock Russia, saying "They"re a small country, they"re a weak country, they don"t produce anything that anybody wants to buy."

.@POTUS on Russia: "They"re a small country, they"re a weak country, they don"t produce anything that anybody wants to buy." pic.twitter.com/mHL1H5LC1T

— POLITICO (@politico) December 16, 2016

US cyber security faces a "constant challenge," the president said, adding that Washington has been warning other countries against cyberattacks. The US has been working on creating international norms in the field of cyber security, but along with defensive capabilities Washington also has "some offensive capabilities," he warned.

Attributing a cyber attack to a particular government can be difficult, and is “not always provable in court,” he cautioned.

* * *

Separately, in a tangential discussion about a topic dear to much of the "alternative media", Obama shifted attention to the local media, and blamed talk radio and other "domestic propagandists" for the rise of "fake news," including fictional news items published by state-sponsored actors.

"If fake news that"s being released by some foreign government is almost identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news venues, then it"s not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect. It doesn"t seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff folks are hearing from domestic propagandists," Obama said.

"To the extent that our political dialogue is such that everything is under suspicion, everybody"s corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are, you know full of malevolent actors, and if that"s the story that is being put out there, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument, with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they"re going to believe it."

As they should, especially if it"s true.

Obama continued, lamenting that "our political dialogue is such that everything is under suspicion, everybody"s corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons," and said "our vulnerability to Russia --or any other foreign power-- is directly related to how divided, partisan, dysfunctional our political process is."

"So if we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then we better think about how to make sure that our political process, our political dialogue is stronger than it"s been."

In other words, please stop criticizing the government as you are responsible for generating further partisan divisions, especially if the line of attack is similar to something the "propaganda" Russian press may put out.

While we would be the first to agree with this statement - if it were accurate - we can"t help but think to last week"s passage of the "Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016", whose ultimate purpose is to enforce a crackdown on any media - foreign and domestic - that the administration views as hostile.

Which is why we found Obama"s parting statement, that "the Russians can"t weaken us, but Putin can weaken us if we buy into notions that it is ok to intimidate the press", particularly ironic.