Right to Rise Copies Hubert Humphrey Anti-Nixon Ad

The pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise is attacking Marco Rubio with an ad that is remarkably similar to an attack ad that Hubert Humphrey ran against Nixon in 1968.

Trump and Wallace

Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott report at BuzzFeed:

Segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace’s daughter and two of his former top aides said in interviews this week that candidate Donald Trump is squarely in Wallace’s racist, populist tradition.

“There are a great deal of similarities as it relates to their style and political strategies,” said Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy. “The two of them, they have adopted the notion that fear and hate are the two greatest motivators of voters. Those voters that feel alienated from the government. Those voters tend to make decisions based on an emotional level rather than intellectual.”

“They both understood, my father and Donald Trump, that low-information voters, they tend to feed off of the threats to their livelihood and safety without really considering what that threat really is, or even if it’s real,” she continued. “So daddy and Trump have this magnificent personality, a brave put-ons that the average American wants in a leader.

Sanders: Surge or Premature Peak?

A release from Quinnipiac University:

In a come-from-behind rally, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the choice of 41 percent of Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants, with 40 percent picking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 12 percent backing Vice President Joseph Biden, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to results of a July 2 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe- ack) University showing Clinton at 52 percent, with 33 percent for Sanders and 7 percent for Biden.

Today, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley gets 3 percent of Iowa likely Democratic Caucus participants, with 3 percent undecided.

There is a wide gender gap among Democrats today as Sanders leads Clinton 49 - 28 percent among men, with 16 percent for Biden, while Clinton leads Sanders 49 - 35 percent among women, with 9 percent for Biden.

Sanders and Biden have a higher net favorability rating than Clinton and higher ratings for honesty and empathy. Clinton has the best scores for leadership and temperament to handle an international crisis.

"Sen. Bernie Sanders has become the Eugene McCarthy of 2016," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "He is the candidate of the Democratic left, against his own party's bosses and their prized presidential candidate, Secretary Hillary Clinton.

"Sanders has seized the momentum by offering a message more in line with disproportionately liberal primary and caucus voters."

"But unlike the late Sen. McCarthy, who came on strong just before the 1968 primaries, Sen. Sanders has seized the momentum, five months before voting begins in Iowa. History will eventually tell us whether he has made such a large move too soon," Brown added.

Crime Is Back

In 1992, the Democratic ticket touted its toughness on crime:

MALE NARRATOR: They've sent a strong signal to criminals by supporting the death penalty.
[TEXT: Support the death penalty.]

At Breitbart, Lloyd Green writes:

Murder is up in New York City, New Orleans, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago, just to name a few Deep Blue hot spots.

For Democrats that’s a nightmare. Barack Obama is our President, but he’s their guy, and the cities are their base. Hope and change weren’t supposed to be so bloody, and so dystopic. Yet, sadly they are.

The bad old days have returned, and this surge in death and mayhem guaranties that crime will be a 2016 campaign issue. For the Republicans, the fraying urban landscape is an opportunity in the making. Heck, the GOP and the U.S. have seen this movie before.

In 1968, Richard Nixon rode the riots of Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, Delaware – the heart of what was then New Deal America – to the White House. Nixon, the Republican nominee, defeated a sitting Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, as the Democrats failed to win a third consecutive term in office.

Twenty years later, in 1988, George H.W. Bush rallied from 17 points behind, and beat Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Bush ads railed against weekend furloughs from prison for convicted murderers and rapists, and Dukakis never knew what hit him.

Right now, it looks like Donald Trump and the Republicans are poised to make the most of the latest spasm of violence, and make no mistake, Trump understands the potency of crime as an issue. He’s not just talking about illegal immigration, Trump is addressing street crime and urban life.

...
For the Democrats’ upstairs-downstairs coalition, that’s a hard lesson to absorb. You see, the laws that got tough on crime — laws enacted by President Bill Clinton, and then-Senator Joe Biden back in the day — are now the targets of the Democratic base’s ire. When prospective Democratic nominee Martin O’Malley gets booed for saying that all lives matter, our nation has a problem.

Over the past half century, crime has helped elect two Republicans as president. In 2016, crime may elect a third.