NEWS AND OPINION:
“Republican support for Donald Trump just continues to grow with no clear sense of who his constituency really is. This makes it very difficult for his opponents to figure out how to take him on in the upcoming debate,” says Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute which released yet another survey on Monday. Mr. Trump leads the pack with 26 percent of support, Jeb Bush in second place with a distant 12 percent. The billionaire also leads among conservative, moderate and liberal Republicans; plus women, men, tea party members and older voters.
MARIST STAGES A POLL VAULT
“As candidates jostle to make the cut for the first GOP presidential debate this week, the McClatchy-Marist Poll has temporarily suspended polling on primary voter choices out of concern that public polls are being misused to decide who will be in and who will be excluded,” reports Steven Thomma, senior White House correspondent for McClatchy itself.
“The Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducts the national survey, said the debate criteria assume too much precision in polls in drawing a line between candidates just a fraction apart, presume that the national polls being averaged are comparable, and turn the media sponsoring most of the polls from analysts to participants,” Mr. Thomma writes.
Uh-oh.
“It’s a problem when it’s shaping who gets to sit at the table,” says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute, an a veteran analyst who in May wrote a top-10 list of reasons why debate organizers should not use polls for the top 10 debate slots. Fox News, which is co-sponsoring the first officially sanctioned GOP debate in Cleveland on Thursday, is limiting participation in the invaluable prime time event to candidates who rank in the top 10 of an average of five national polls as of 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
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“It’s a bad use of public polls,” Mr. Miringoff notes. “It asks public polls to have a precision that ignores the margin of error. There’s a big distinction made where there’s no statistical difference.”
MOMENT OF TRUTH
“Something happened on the way to a coronation. It was me.”
— Sen. Bernard Sanders, alluding to his White House rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a speech at Southern New Hampshire University.
HOW PROGRESSIVES SEE MR. BIDEN
“Should he decide to run, we’ll be looking forward to hearing more about Vice President Biden’s vision for the future of our country and, in particular, how he plans to address our nation’s income inequality crisis by standing up to the wealthy and powerful interests on Wall Street and elsewhere that dominate our political process,” says Neil Sroka, spokesman for Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee founded by Howard Dean in 2004.
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“A strong primary with a number of seasoned challengers, including Vice President Biden, will only leave the Democratic Party stronger in 2016 and our nation more likely to be led by a president with a proven commitment to addressing the moral crisis of income inequality and the culture of structural racism that’s fundamental and foundational to it,” Mr. Sroka concludes.
REALITY CHECK ON THAT DIRTY ENERGY
Republicans and other critics are not happy with President Obama’s brand new Clean Power Plan, which requires power plants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 32 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030. Scientists are not so keen on it either.
“Here are some facts: The subject is carbon dioxide emissions, not ’carbon pollution.’ Power is a physical quantity, not something that is either clean or dirty. Dirty power has no more meaning than, and just as silly as, clean entropy, or dirty momentum. These terms are political terms used to manipulate emotions and impressions of people who do not or should know better,” says Christopher Essex, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, and an adviser to the Heartland Institute.
“They are distortions of scientific language meant to appear scientific. They are anti-scientific. That they continue to be at the heart of leadership discourse in policy about scientific questions that so many otherwise-educated people have bought into, experiencing primal fear and guilt over, signals something,” the professor advises.
THE CLINTON ITINERARY
Tuesday marks the start of some serious fundraising for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. There are 10 private fundraisers in five states in four days this week, just in case anyone is wondering what she is doing while the Republicans stage the clash of the titans all week. All the events are “conversations with Hillary” style get-togethers with $2,700 ticket prices, including one Park City, Utah — the heart of Mitt Romney country.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S PARTY WEEK
As if hysteria over not one but two GOP presidential debates was not enough. The Republican National Committee is staging a presidential forum of its own on Wednesday, smack in the middle of the organization’s annual meeting. And of course it’s in Cleveland, site of the first officially sanctioned, super-charged, rocket-boosted Fox News debate for the 17 hopefuls on Thursday, of which only 10 will get to attend. In the meantime, the meeting itself gets underway Wednesday at a glitzy hotel in downtown Cleveland, leading off with a major press conference about the Republican Party’s incredible new data base, followed by the “Sirius XM Presidential Candidate Forum” in midafternoon.
“The RNC has yet to confirm participants in that event, though it would not be a surprise to see those looking for extra attention this week on the panel,” notes Henry J. Gomez, chief political reporter for Northeast Ohio Group.
Thursday boasts a lunch with South Carolina Gov. Governor Nikki Haley — a potential vice presidential candidate — followed by one of those pesky but important rules meetings. Friday features a full membership session, and lunch with John Sununu.
POLL DU JOUR
• 87 percent of blacks say they are “satisfied with their lives.”
• 78 percent say they were treated “less fairly” in some places or circumstances in the last 30 days.
• 24 percent felt they were treated less fairly in a store, 20 percent in a restaurant, bar or theater.
• 18 percent felt treated less fairly at their workplace.
• 18 percent felt treated less fairly in dealings with the police.
• 12 percent felt they were treated less fairly in a healthcare situation for themselves, or a family member.
Source: A Gallup poll of 802 “non-Hispanic blacks” conducted June 15-July 10, and released Monday.
• Happy-go-lucky chatter, squawks to jharper@washingtontimes.com.
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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