Good morning everyone! Happy Monday to you!

Joining today's show are Mike Barnicle, Mark Halperin, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Sen. Tim Kaine, Steve Kornacki, Chuck Todd, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Ribal al-Assad, Bill Neely, Kasie Hunt, Michael Warren, Sara Eisen, Daniel Franklin and it was a Blue Cove Weekend with no Dolphins killed or captured over the last few days. Also, dolphin meat sales slow. Yesterday at the Sunday market in Taiji many vendors had lines of 15-20 people waiting to buy their goods. The dolphin meat table was pretty slow most of the time. 2015-12-13. 11:00am. #tweet4dolphins #dolphinproject
Read more about high mercury levels in Taiji dolphins: http://bit.ly/1P06ec7.

Will Ferrell's George W. Bush returns to 'SNL,' because you miss him.
Saturday Night Live's cold open this weekend featured a surprise guest: Will Ferrell asGeorge W. Bush. He was on the show with a big announcement:
"I'm entering the race for President of the United States of America," he declared.
In a laugh-out-monologue, he went on to explain why he thinks he deserves to be commander-in-chief again.
The field of Republicans out there is so messed up, it makes you miss me," he said.
And so, he went on to poke fun of the republican candidates:
Dr. Ben Carson: "I can barely hear him when he talks. That's not gonna work when you have to go to China... where you have to talk loudly to they can understand."
Carly Fiorina: "She got guts. She got fired from her job... She's not qualified in any ways to be president. In many ways she reminds me of me. But she isn't me; I am me."
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio: "Rubio & Cruz sounds like a Miami law firm. If you've been injured on the job, call Rubio & Cruz. These two guys, the son of immigrants, hate immigrants."
Donald Trump: "Whenever I get in a bad mood, I just picture his big, fat, orange Oompa Loompa face and I just piss my pants."
Jeb Bush: "You gotta admit, it's a pretty good plot twist that I turned out to be the smart one. I wish he would've asked me about the exclamation point at the end of his name. Look, I don't like the taste of broccoli, but it doesn't get any tastier if you call it "Broccoli!".
And so Ferrell's George W. made the case for why he should return to the Oval Office:

"Running the government is kinda like driving a school bus: You don't want a crazy person driving that bus. You want a simple, underachieving, not-very-educated but reliable guy behind that wheel. Someone with a steady hand that will be on time, and get into one or two, but no more than four accidents a year. You already know that someone. That someone is me. I'll see you in the White House."
Fox News Poll: Cruz, Trump ahead in Iowa, Clinton holds caucus leadTed Cruz and Donald Trump are the top two candidates Iowa Republican caucus-goers say are the most qualified to handle the top two issues facing the country -- the economy and national security. 

That gives them front-runner status in a new Fox News poll of Iowa likely caucus-goers. 

The poll, released Sunday, also finds Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by double-digits among Democrats in the Hawkeye State.

CLICK TO READ THE POLL RESULTS

Cruz garners 28 percent support and Trump 26 percent among GOP likely caucus-goers.  Together they command more than half of the total support. Rubio comes in third with 13 percent. Carson, the Iowa front-runner in October, is fourth with 10 percent. Those four compose the clear top tier.

Five percent back Jeb Bush and Rand Paul.  All other candidates come in at two percent or less. 

When the results are narrowed to just those GOP caucus-goers who say they will “definitely” attend, Cruz’s advantage over Trump increases: 32 percent vs. 25 percent.  Trump has a 3-point edge over Cruz among those who say they will “probably” attend. 

“This is Trump’s challenge in Iowa,” says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.  “Those who are definitely going to caucus are less likely to support him, so he needs to motivate people to attend who may not usually do so.”  Anderson conducts the Fox News Poll along with Republican pollster Daron Shaw.

GOP caucus-goers who identify as “very” conservative help propel Cruz in Iowa, as 4 in 10 back him (42 percent).  Trump comes in second with 23 percent and Carson gets 14 percent among this group.

White evangelical Christians are a significant voting bloc in Iowa and they also put Cruz on top, although by a narrower margin.  He gets 31 percent compared to 24 percent for Trump.  Another 14 percent go for Rubio and 10 percent Carson. 

Caucus-goers with a college degree prefer Cruz by 5 points (26 vs. 21 percent), while those without a degree go for Trump by 3 points (32 vs. 29 percent).

Cruz gets his highest support -- 48 percent -- from those who are part of the Tea Party movement -- that’s double Trump’s 24 percent.

Meanwhile, Cruz has more room than Trump to grow his support in Iowa.  Three in 10 caucus-goers say they could “never” support Trump (30 percent), while just 6 percent say the same about Cruz.  Nearly a quarter (23 percent) says they couldn’t back Bush, and roughly one in 10 couldn’t back Christie, Kasich, Paul and Graham.

The economy and national security are the two most important issues to Iowa GOP caucus-goers.  Who can best handle those?  Trump and Cruz. 

Trump is, by far, seen as the most qualified to handle the economy (41 percent), while Cruz comes in a distant second (17 percent).  No one else makes it into double-digits.

They are also seen as the two most qualified to handle national security -- just in reverse order.  Cruz takes the mantle on security with 30 percent and Trump gets 20 percent.  Another 11 percent pick Rubio. 

Iowa GOPers are looking for a candidate who is a strong leader (25 percent) and honest and trustworthy (22 percent).  Those traits are more important than being a true conservative (18 percent), shaking things up in Washington (14 percent), and defeating the Democrat (11 percent). 

But who can win?  Thirty-two percent say that candidate is Trump.  That’s about twice as many as think Cruz (18 percent) and Rubio (14 percent) can beat Clinton in 2016.

Most GOP caucus-goers are dissatisfied with how things are going in the country (87 percent), and nearly seven in 10 say from their family’s perspective -- it feels like the economy is getting worse (67 percent). 

Democratic Caucus
By a 50-36 percent margin, Clinton leads Sanders among likely Democratic caucus-goers. 

Women go for Clinton by 57-31 percent.  Support among men splits:  42 percent for Sanders vs. 40 percent for Clinton.

The under age 45 crowd backs Sanders by 22 points, while those ages 45+ are more likely to support Clinton by 35. 

"It's still probably the case that Sanders' best chance to make the Democratic nomination process competitive is to win in Iowa and then carry New Hampshire," says Shaw.  "These results suggest Bernie has a lot of work to do." 

Fifty-four percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers are satisfied with the direction of the country, and by a 17-point margin, they say the economy is getter better rather than worse (47-30 percent). 

The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The poll was conducted December 7-10, 2015, by telephone (landline and cellphone) with live interviewers among a random sample of 807 Iowa caucus-goers selected from a statewide voter file.  Results for the 357 likely Democratic caucus-goers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points and for the 450 likely Republican caucus-goers it is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. 

Iowa poll: Ted Cruz leads Donald TrumpAnother poll shows Ted Cruz leading Donald Trump in Iowa.

A Fox News survey released Sunday shows the Texas senator with 28% support in the first state to vote in the presidential nominating process -- ahead of Trump, who is in second place with 26% backing.

Iowa Republicans see Trump as most qualified to handle the economy and Cruz as best qualified on national security, the poll shows.

It comes the day after Cruz was shown with a 10 percentage point lead over Trump in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics survey conducted by Ann Selzer, whose polls are considered the gold standard in the Hawkeye State.

In the Fox News poll, those two are far ahead of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, at 13%, and Ben Carson, at 10%.

There's another gap after that top four to the rest of the pack, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 5% and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina at 2%.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads with 50% support -- ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 36% and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's 5%.

Cruz campaign credits psychological data and analytics for its rising success.
As Cecil Stinemetz walked up to a gray clapboard house in suburban Des Moines last week wearing his “Cruz 2016” cap, a program on his iPhone was determining what kind of person would answer the door.

Would she be a “relaxed leader”? A “temperamental conservative”? Maybe even a “true believer”?

Nope. It turned out that Birdie Harms, a 64-year-old grandmother, part-time real estate agent and longtime Republican, was, by the Ted Cruz campaign’s calculations, a “stoic traditionalist” — a conservative whose top concerns included President Obama’s use of executive orders on immigration.

Which meant that Stinemetz was instructed to talk to her in a tone that was “confident and warm and straight to the point” and ask about her concerns regarding the Obama administration’s positions on immigration, guns and other topics.

The outreach to Harms and others like her is part of a months-long effort by the Cruz campaign to profile and target potential supporters, an approach that campaign officials believe has helped propel the senator from Texas to the top tier among Republican presidential candidates in many states, including Iowa, where he is in first place, according to two recent polls. It’s also a multimillion-dollar bet that such efforts still matter in an age of pop-culture personalities and ­social-media messaging.

Speaking Dec. 10 at the Heritage Foundation, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said the U.S. should consider what troops are necessary to beat Islamic State militants rather than viewing boots on the ground as a display of strength. (Reuters)
So far, the Republican primary season has been dominated by Donald Trump, a businessman who is running a race based almost entirely on his personality and mass-media appeal. The campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has also placed a limited emphasis on the door-knocking tactics of the past, while others, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are hoping that a strong finish in the New Hampshire primary will help them reach voters through free media coverage.

Cruz has largely built his program out of his Houston headquarters, where a team of statisticians and behavioral psychologists who subscribe to the ­burgeoning practice of “psycho­graphic targeting” built their own version of a Myers-Briggs personality test. The test data is supplemented by recent issue surveys, and together they are used to categorize supporters, who then receive specially tailored messages, phone calls and visits. Micro-targeting of voters has been around for well over a decade, but the Cruz operation has deepened the intensity of the effort and the use of psychological data.

Cruz, a critic of excessive government data collection, has been notably aggressive about gathering personal information for his campaign. Some of the data comes from typical sources, such as voters’ consumer habits and Facebook posts. Some is homegrown, such as a new smartphone app that keeps supporters in touch while giving the campaign the ability to scrape their phones for additional contacts.

Another emerging tactic that the campaign has employed is “geo-fencing,” a technique that allows people to send messages to digital devices in narrow areas, such as a city block or a single building.

When the Republican Jewish Coalition was meeting at the Venetian in Las Vegas in May, for instance, the Cruz campaign unleashed a series of Web-based advertisements visible only inside the hotel complex that emphasized Cruz’s devotion to Israel and its security.

Cruz has also applied ­geo-fencing to wooing National Rifle Association members at a recent annual meeting and to similar gatherings elsewhere.

The personality and political scores applied by the campaign are used to tightly tailor outreach to individuals. For example, personalities that have received high scores for “neuroticism” are believed to be generally fearful, so a pro-gun pitch to them would emphasize the use of firearms for personal safety and might include a picture of a burglar breaking in to a home.

Sen. Ted Cruz announces 2016 candidacy
View Photos The Texas Republican is the first major presidential candidate to formally declare a bid.
But those who score high for “openness” or traditional values are more likely to receive a message that promotes hunting as a family activity, perhaps accompanied by an image of a father taking his son duck hunting.

Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, spit chewing tobacco into a soft drink bottle as he explained the campaign’s heavy investment in data and analysis. It’s critical because of changes in the nature of the electorate, popular media, polling and campaign finance law, which make many of the old axioms of campaigning — gathering endorsements, purchasing high-cost broadcast ads — less valuable.

“There is no handbook for this,” the Missouri-based political consultant said of running a presidential campaign in 2016. “The conventional wisdom has been destroyed. What you can do is rely on data.”

To build its data-gathering operation widely, the Cruz campaign hired Cambridge Analytica, a Massachusetts company reportedly owned in part by hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, who has given $11 million to a super PAC supporting Cruz. Cambridge, the U.S. affiliate of London-based behavioral research company SCL Group, has been paid more than $750,000 by the Cruz campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records.

To develop its psychographic models, Cambridge surveyed more than 150,000 households across the country and scored individuals using five basic traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. A top Cambridge official didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Cruz campaign officials said the company developed its correlations in part by using data from Facebook that included subscribers’ likes. That data helped make the Cambridge data particularly powerful, campaign officials said.

The Cruz campaign modified the Cambridge template, renaming some psychological categories and adding subcategories to the list, such as “stoic traditionalist” and “true believer.” The campaign then did its own field surveys in battleground states to develop a more precise predictive model based on issues preferences.

The Cruz algorithm was then applied to what the campaign calls an “enhanced voter file,” which can contain as many as 50,000 data points gathered from voting records, popular websites and consumer information such as magazine subscriptions, car ownership and preferences for food and clothing.

Cambridge, which has staffers embedded in the Cruz for President headquarters in Houston, makes behavioral psychologists available for consultation as ads and scripts are drafted.

An email will be tweaked based on the personality of the recipient. If a respondent were a “stoic traditionalist,” the conversation would be very direct and to the point. If a potential supporter was labeled “temperamental,” the language and approach would change, according to Chris Wilson, the campaign’s director of research and analytics, who has taken a leave from the polling firm he leads, WPA Opinion Research. “The tone would be inspiring and become more and more positive as the conversation progresses,” he said.

The Cruz campaign has also persuaded nearly 34,000 supporters to download the “Cruz Crew” mobile app. Subscribers compete for points and prizes as they reach out to like-minded potential supporters whose names are provided after the subscriber gives the campaign access to contact lists.

Other campaigns also offer apps to supporters, but few are as far-reaching as Cruz’s. Wilson said he didn’t know what the campaign would do with the personal information it gathered after the election. “We will take great care,” he said, “knowing that our supporters provided this data to us for a limited purpose.”

One key purpose of the Cruz campaign’s data focus has been to connect the candidate to evangelical Christian voters, who represent an enormous bloc of caucus-goers in Iowa and are a major factor in other early-voting states. That’s part of the reason Cruz courted this group, starting with his announcement speech at Virginia’s Liberty University in the spring.

In recent months, the Cruz campaign invited Christian activists to join special prayer call-ins and activist coalitions and to attend rallies in Iowa, South Carolina and other early states. The campaign’s personality and issues data was used to determine which pastors to contact for recruitment as county “pastor chairs” for Cruz. So far, Cruz has endorsements from more than 100 pastors in Iowa and more than 300 nationwide, campaign officials said.

Roe said this kind of outreach is part of a plan to mobilize the Cruz base in the same way Obama galvanized his base in 2008 and 2012.

The campaign’s big data operation is not deployed in just voter and supporter outreach. It also is used daily to help make key decisions — where Cruz should travel, what he should say. It has even informed the selection of precinct captains.

Last week, Cruz volunteers in Iowa were calling people identified as extraverts to be precinct captains and take on other leadership roles. Stinemetz went through his call list one evening and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly people signed up.

“I got three precinct captains to sign up just now,” Stinemetz said, after dialing just a handful of potential volunteers. “It’s like they were just waiting for us to call.” Frances Stead Sellers in Washington contributed to this report.
From VOX: Marco Rubio's strategy is utterly baffling
There's something odd about Marco Rubio's presidential campaign: He hasn't been doing all that much, er, campaigning in the early states.

Unlike most recent presidential nomination winners, who have invested serious time and effort into campaigning and building organizations in at least one of either Iowa or New Hampshire, Rubio has taken a positively relaxed approach to both. He doesn't show up very often, doesn't do much campaigning when he is around, and doesn't seem to be building very impressive field operations.

And it's raising eyebrows. James Pindell of the Boston Globe wrote last week that Rubio's New Hampshire surge was "riddled with doubts," and that GOP insiders are bemoaning his "lack of staff" and "activity." National Review's Tim Alberta and Eliana Johnson reported Wednesday that Rubio's "weak ground game" was angering Iowa Republicans. And the New Hampshire Union Leader wrote an editorial headlined, "Marco? Marco? Where's Rubio?"

For a candidate who's so often deemed "The Republican Barack Obama," it sure seems like Rubio has missed some key lessons from the president's historic 2008 campaign. And this isn't good optics for a candidate who's already been criticized (somewhat unfairly) for missing lots of Senate votes, either.

Rubio seems uninterested in campaigning hard or building a ground operation in Iowa and New Hampshire

The conventional wisdom is that a candidate needs to win either Iowa or New Hampshire to win the nomination. In fact, every nominee for decades has done that, except for Bill Clinton in 1992 (an odd year in which the Iowa caucuses effectively "didn't count" because Iowan Tom Harkin was running). Candidates who've tried to "skip" both early states in hopes that a later win will propel then to prominence have failed miserably.

Furthermore, said conventional wisdom continues, the way to win in both Iowa and New Hampshire is to work hard on the ground. The candidate should spend a lot of time there. The campaign should build up a network of local relationships, winning over supporters one by one. And the campaign should focus on organizing, to identify committed voters and make sure they actually turn out to the polls. (Organizing like this helped power Barack Obama to victory in Iowa in 2008.)

Yet Rubio doesn't appear to be focusing on any of this:

  • Though a win in New Hampshire could ensure that Rubio's the only mainstream Republican left standing, he's spent fewer days there this year than any other GOP candidate except Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum, according to WMUR.
  • In Iowa, Rubio has "rarely left the Des Moines area for campaign events," according to Alberta and Johnson.
  • Rubio has just seven paid New Hampshire staffers, according to Pindell — far fewer than Jeb Bush's 20, Donald Trump's 15, and even Carson's 10.
  • And Iowa and New Hampshire politicos have both complained that Rubio's campaign seems uninterested in winning their endorsements. (Unsurprisingly, Rubio hasn't gotten many.)

Now, it's not that Rubio is ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire. Indeed, his operation has spent millions on ads in each state. His team just doesn't appear to be spending time on this nuts-and-bolts campaign activity that so many political professionals think is crucial to actually winning.

Rubio's team has been arguing that campaigning is overrated

If we believe what Rubio's advisers are saying, they aren't using these tactics too much because they genuinely believe their effectiveness is overrated. They're saying that they think ads and media coverage, not field or campaign events, are the keys to victory.

"More people in Iowa see Marco on ‘Fox and Friends’ than see Marco when he is in Iowa," Rubio's campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, told the New York Times. And Alberta and Johnson report that Rubio's team believes "a sprawling operation weighs down a campaign and wastes precious resources that could be spent on TV ads that reach more voters." (Presumably, Rubio isn't making more campaign trips to the early states so he can spend more time raising money that can fund these crucial ads.)

Perhaps Rubio's team is right, and most other campaigns are just wasting their resources by spending big on organizing. But it's a questionable hypothesis. So far this year, ad spending appears to have had little relation to candidates' poll standing. (It has definitely enriched many political consultants, though.)
Ad spending graphic
Another possible explanation is that Rubio's campaign is trying to savvily lower expectations for his performance in both states, because neither is a particularly good fit for him. Iowa has lately tended to elevate evangelical favorites, and New Hampshire has sometimes opted for flinty, independent-thinking outsiders. Perhaps Rubio hopes he'll get a pass for doing poorly in both states because he didn't really try.


But that may be too clever by half. The evidence seems to indicate that if you want to win the nomination, you need to do really well in either Iowa or New Hampshire — otherwise, you quickly vanish from the media spotlight and from voters' thoughts, much like Rudy Giuliani did in 2008. If Rubio hopes to avoid this fate, he should probably get to work.

For Bernie Sanders, it’s New Hampshire or bust.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pauses while speaking at the at New Hampshire Democrats party's annual dinner in Manchester, N.H., Nov. 29, 2015. (Photo by Cheryl Senter/AP)
It looks like it’s New Hampshire or bust for Bernie Sanders, who is counting on a win here to give him the momentum he needs to continue fighting Hillary Clinton into the spring. And that makes the state potentially the most important of the early nominating contests.

On a swing through New Hampshire last weekend, Sanders thrilled crowds of more than a thousand, donned a reindeer hat at a holiday parade, and was introduced by his son, Levi, who lives in Claremont. Fans lined up for hours in Keene, and he packed a giant room at Plymouth State University on a Saturday night, when many students would typically not be taking in a lecture from a septuagenarian.

While the Sanders campaign is hardly writing off Iowa, where the candidate is spending this weekend, and whose Feb. 1 caucuses kick off the presidential contest, his aides are increasingly talking about Iowa as a place they need to make a strong showing or to outperform expectations – not necessarily to win.
In New Hampshire, however, which holds its primary on Feb. 9, there is only one option. “I wake up every morning and tell myself that New Hampshire is a must-win,” Sanders’ New Hampshire state director Julia Barnes told MSNBC. “I think strategically there is a great amount of importance for us to do well here … No one is going to say that it’s not a must-win.”

Sanders may need to win both Iowa and New Hampshire to pose a clear, mortal threat to Clinton. But a win in either state will keep him and his message alive to fight another day.

A win in neither would be the end of the line.

While the two contests that come immediately after – Nevada and South Carolina – are demographically challenging for Sanders, his team is eyeing primaries and caucuses in Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and his native Vermont, all of which occur on March 1, as possible victories.

They are also keeping an eye on Georgia and Texas, where Sanders was the first Democrat to open campaign offices. But a win New Hampshire is crucial to Sanders’ overall strategy. “I think we have an excellent chance to win here in New Hampshire,” Sanders said in Plymouth last weekend. “And if we win here in New Hampshire, and we win in Iowa – I think we’ve got a strong chance to win in Iowa, as well – we have a path toward victory.”

At first, many analysts expected Sanders would focus on Iowa, where Clinton finished third in 2008 and where grassroots voter intensity can carry the day in the intensive caucus format.

Sanders closed in on Clinton there all summer and ran neck-and-neck with her throughout September, but the former secretary of state has since pulled away. With less than two months to go, she’s now leading Sanders by 22 points in the most recent Monmouth University poll.

The story is very different in New Hampshire, next door to his home state of Vermont, where this week’s CNN poll placed Sanders a full 10 percentage points ahead of Clinton. So it’s New Hampshire where he will make his stand.

Sanders’ campaign has invested heavily in the state, employing 70 paid staffers in 15 offices, according to his campaign, which they note is larger than Clinton’s 11 offices.

And while Clinton’s team began airing television advertisements months before Sanders, his campaign has now been outspending hers each of the five weeks they’ve been on the air. He’s spent a total of $3.6 million in the state since early November, when he ran his first ad, compared to Clinton’s $2.4 million for the same period.
After focusing much of his travel on Iowa in summer and early fall – including an entire month when he did not visit New Hampshire once – Sanders is spending more time the Granite State. He made three trips in November, one last week, and plans for around next week’s ABC News debate in Manchester.

Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, is trying to keep expectations in check even as they tout their impressive ground game and the fact that all of the state’s major Democratic elected officials have endorsed her.

“Our approach has been to acknowledge and be realistic about the competitive nature of the primary,” Clinton state director Mike Vlacich told MSNBC. “Neighboring state Democrats haven’t lost the New Hampshire primary.” The only recent case of a next-door stater losing in New Hampshire, he noted, is Vermont’s Howard Dean – who lost the 2004 primary to another New Hampshire neighbor, Massachusetts’ John Kerry.

Clinton’s ties are strong in the state, but tempered. She won the 2008 Democratic primary here, but it was an upset after polls showed her losing in the days before voters headed to the polls. And while New Hampshire saved Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential bid by making him the “Comeback Kid,” he still came in second.

Still, her team has demonstrated they can turn out hundreds of supporters at key Democratic Party events, like last month’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner, which are a sort of dress rehearsal for Election Day. “If it were held today, I think Clinton would have a small advantage by virtue of her organization in the state,” said University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala. “But there’s an awful lot of volatility in that last week before New Hampshire votes.”
Sanders’ campaign is already preparing for that critical week between the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, planning to flood the state with surrogates and celebrity endorsers.

In the last Democratic primary in 2008, 17% of voters said they made a decision on the day they went to the polls, while 31% said they decided in the final week, according to exit polls.

But polling is notoriously difficult in the state, which has a large number of independents who can vote in either party’s primary. And since Sanders is especially strong among those not aligned voters, he risks losing a chunk of supporters who might chose to vote in the more competitive Republican primary.

One factor neither campaign seems particularly worried about is Martin O’Malley, the longshot candidate currently polling at 1% who has staked his hopes to Iowa. “He’s not a factor,” Barnes shrugged.

Instead, she’s focusing on solidifying her candidate’s strength. “There is definitely going to a moment here, there’s no question,” she said.

Derrick Henry's dependability leads to Alabama's success, and the HeismanIf you subscribe to the MVP theory of the Heisman Trophy, it would have been easy to choose any of the finalists as winner. But if that’s the criteria, the voters got it right. Perhaps no one meant more to his team’s success than Derrick Henry.
NCAA Football: Heisman Trophy Presentation
Yeah, Alabama’s running back broke the SEC’s rushing record, held for so long by Herschel Walker. Sure, his formidable combination of size, speed and durability is unmatched. Without question, his Godzilla-through-the-village romps through defenses en route to the end zone contained plenty of Heisman moments.

But Henry’s dependability — just give him the ball, over and over and over — is the biggest reason Alabama is 12-1, the SEC champion, the No. 2-ranked team in the College Football Playoff.

“He did as much for his team as anybody could have done,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said, “or ever has done for any of our teams.”


USA TODAY
Commentary: Henry's talent, touches win Heisman Trophy

Put another way: Without Henry, Alabama’s remarkable run near the top of college football might be over.

As always, the Crimson Tide is very talented. The roster remains loaded with future NFL players. Everything begins, as all of Saban’s teams have, with very good defense. But offensively, this version of the Crimson Tide has tilted away from the passing game and heavily to the run, and the imbalance has been born of necessity.

Senior quarterback Jake Coker is a work in progress. He has at best been inconsistent. It has been a far better option to put the ball in Henry’s hands and let him run behind a good offensive line. He has accounted for 38 percent of the offensive production — piling up 1,986 rushing yards and 23 touchdowns — but that doesn’t begin to describe his impact.

The Tide’s slightly altered formula for success has been to grind to victory by feeding the football to Henry. In the latter stages of games, he has been nearly unstoppable.

Not counting the Tide’s annual November cream puff (this time, it was Charleston Southern; Henry had 68 yards on nine carries), in the last eight games Henry averaged 32.9 carries and 187 yards. He had 27 carries against Arkansas, 32 against Texas A&M, 28 against Tennessee and 38 against LSU. He finished the season with 46 carries against rival Auburn and 44 against Florida in the SEC championship. In the last two possessions against Auburn, he ran the ball on 14 consecutive plays, finishing with a 25-yard touchdown run.


USA TODAY
Alabama's Derrick Henry is big winner at CFB awards with Maxwell Trophy, Doak Walker Award

“Whatever I have to do to help my team win,” Henry said. “ I don’t care how many carries it is. As long as it’s successful and we’ve got the ball, I’m all for it.”

In addition to the Heisman, Henry won the Maxwell Trophy as the player of the year and the Doak Walker Award as the top running back. But he seemed to spend the entire week on college football’s awards circuit deflecting questions about his personal success.

“It’s all about the team, the team, the team, the team,” he said Saturday night, oddly channeling the late Bo Schembechler.

(It wasn’t the only apparently unintentional homage: “Our entire organization is really happy, happy, happy for Derrick Henry,” Saban said, sounding like Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson without the accent.)

Giving credit to teammates is classy, and it’s also correct (see how his production dipped when, say, ‘Bama center Ryan Kelly left the Texas A&M game with concussion-like symptoms and it’s easy to recognize how many moving parts contribute to success). But as long as we’re talking about the team, the team, the team — this team is as successful as it is because of Henry.

“They’re all great team efforts,” Saban said. “But when it came right down to it, he really stepped up and did a great job for our team.”


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It’s not just the heavier-than-ever emphasis on the running game that’s different, but also the shift to one running back. In the Nick Saban era, running backs have always shared the load.

“We’ve always had two running backs, and sometimes three, that make a huge contribution,” Saban said. “We alternate guys and try to leave a lot of tread on the tires as the season wears on.”

So it’s been Glen Coffee and Mark Ingram, followed by Ingram and Trent Richardson, followed by Richardson and Eddie Lacy, followed by Lacy and T.J. Yeldon, followed by Yeldon and Henry. That was supposed to be followed by Henry and Kenyan Drake.

But Henry was clearly the workhorse all season. And then Drake broke his right arm Nov. 14 against Mississippi State (he returned to play in the SEC championship game). Henry’s workload only increased.

“It was really unprecedented for me philosophy-wise as a coach to do that,” Saban said. “We were in some tight games and some big games, and we were ahead in the games and we were trying to take the air out of the ball. You can’t have a better guy to do it with than Derrick Henry.”

Whether the formula remains effective isn’t certain. Alabama leans on its defense. But in SEC play, the Tide was not often challenged by dynamic offenses; the league did not feature great quarterback play. This allowed the Crimson Tide’s offense — allowed Henry — to simply grind away, controlling the ball and the clock and ultimately, the SEC.

In the Playoff, ‘Bama figures to face much more potent scoring threats — especially if it advances to the national championship game against Clemson or Oklahoma. If a shootout breaks out, we’ll find out if Coker can beat someone with his arm. The Tide will have to do more than hand it to Henry.

So far, though, feeding the big guy has been more than enough. When he returns to Tuscaloosa with the 25-pound bronze statuette in tow, Henry said the first thing he’ll do in the locker room is thank his teammates.

“It’s not something I could have done without them,” he said.

True enough. But getting to the Playoff is not something Alabama would have done without him.
Heisman Trophy finalists, from left, Alabama's Derrick
The final vote count:

1. Derrick Henry 1,832 
2. Christian McCaffrey 1,539 
3. Deshaun Watson 1,165 
4. Baker Mayfield 334 
5. Keenan Reynolds 180 
6. Leonard Fournette 110

Henry by the numbers

Position: Running back

Vitals: 6-3, 242 pounds

From: Yulee, Fla.

Class: Junior

Stats: 339 carries for 1,986 yards (No. 1 nationally) and 23 touchdowns (No. 1), 152.8 yards a game (No. 2)

Plus, 10 receptions for 97 yards

Heisman-defining moment: Henry made one cut behind the line and sprinted toward the end zone while Auburn defenders seemed to be moving in slow motion. The 25-yard touchdown in the final minute of the Iron Bowl (Nov. 28) was especially notable because it was Henry’s 46th carry and 14th in a row to punctuate a 271-yard performance.

Best game: Henry outshined LSU’s Leonard Fournette in a game (Nov. 7) that gave Alabama the inside track on the Southeastern Conference West title. He had 38 runs for 210 yards and three touchdowns. Two of Henry’s scores came in the third quarter when the Tide took control of the game. The fallout from that game: Fournette skidded out of the lead that he had held for weeks in many Heisman races, and Henry ascended.

Worst game: Henry’s lowest outputs came against lesser teams in easy wins, but Arkansas (Oct. 10) fared the best among SEC defenses. The Razorbacks limited him to 95 yards on 27 carries.

Of note: The last running back to win the Heisman also was from Alabama, Mark Ingram in 2009.

Quotable: “When you meet him in the hole, you better bring everything you’ve got.” — Alabama linebacker Reggie Ragland, who has seen, and felt, Henry’s impact. Contributing: The Associated Press

Paris climate deal: nearly 200 nations sign in end of fossil fuel era. Two decades of talks have come to this: an ambitious agreement to hold states to emissions targets – but already low-lying countries are worried.
Laurent Fabius brings down the gavel
Governments have signalled an end to the fossil fuel era, committing for the first time to a universal agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.

After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.

Government and business leaders said the agreement, which set a new goal to reach net zero emissions in the second half of the century, sent a powerful signal to global markets, hastening the transition away from fossil fuels and to a clean energy economy.

The deal was carefully constructed to carry legal force but without requiring approval by the US Congress - which would have almost certainly rejected it.

After last-minute delays, caused by typos, mistranslations and disagreements over a single verb in the highly complicated legal text, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, brought down a special leaf-shaped gavel to adopt the agreement. The hall erupted in applause and cheers. “It is a small gavel but I think it can do a great job,” Fabius said.

François Hollande, the French president, who had invested enormous capital and diplomatic effort in shepherding the agreement, said countries had a rare chance to make history. “We are at a decisive point in time,” he said.

Fabius said: “It is my deep conviction that we have come up with an ambitious and balanced agreement. Today it is a moment of truth.”

The agreement was equally a victory for the United Nations, which spent four years overcoming political inertia and the deep divisions between rich and poor countries, to put together the ambitious deal. “I used to say: we must, we can, we will,” Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief who guided the talks, tweeted. “Today we can say we did.”

The US president, Barack Obama, hailed the agreement as “a tribute to strong, principled American leadership” and a vital step in ensuring the future of the planet.

“This agreement represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got,” he said, but added that the deal “was not perfect. The problem’s not solved because of this accord.”

Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s climate commissioner, said the agreement had re-affirmed confidence in the UN process.

“This was the last chance [for the UN process],” he added, “and we have taken it.”

Al Gore, the former US vice-president who helped draft the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty, was in the hall. He appeared visibly moved when the agreement was gavelled in and said the accord would have a powerful effect on the economy.

“This universal and ambitious agreement sends a clear signal to governments, businesses, and investors everywhere: the transformation of our global economy from one fuelled by dirty energy to one fuelled by sustainable economic growth is now firmly and inevitably underway,” Gore said in a statement.

Six years after the chaotic ending of the Copenhagen climate summit, the agreement now known as the Paris Agreement for the first time commits rich countries, rising economies and some of the poorest countries to work together to curb emissions.

Rich countries agreed to raise $100bn (£66bn) a year by 2020 to help poor countries transform their economies. The overall agreement is legally binding, but some elements – including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements – are not.

The deal was also hailed for delivering a clear message to business leaders. The International Investors Group on Climate Change, a network managing €13tn of assets, said the decision would help trigger a shift away from fossil fuels and encourage greater investments in renewable energy.

“Investors across Europe will now have the confidence to do much more to address the risks arising from high carbon assets and to seek opportunities linked to the low carbon transition already transforming the world’s energy system and infrastructure,” the group said.

Jennifer Morgan, of the environmental thinktank, the World Resources Institute, said the long term goal was “transformational” and “sends signals into the heart of the markets”.

The deal set a high aspirational goal to limit warming below 2C and strive to keep temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – a far more ambitious target than expected, and a key demand of vulnerable countries.

It incorporates commitments from 187 countries to reduce emissions, which on their own would only hold warming to between 2.7C and 3C.
A climate demonstrator in Paris on Saturday.
But it sets out procedures for review at regular intervals to deepen emissions cuts, with countries aiming to peak global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, and then rapidly scale down in the second half of this century.

Critics said the agreement would still condemn hundreds of million of people living in low-lying coastal areas and small islands, after US negotiators demanded the exclusion of language that could allow the agreement to be used to claim legal liability for climate change. But supporters said the negotiations took a significant step forward in getting countries to act together on a global challenge of immense complexity.

Saturday’s agreement was the product of years of preparation, two weeks of intense negotiations, capped off by three sleepless nights, with Barack Obama and Hollande phoning other leaders to bring them on side with the deal.

Accounts from behind the closed doors of negotiating session described tense exchanges between oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, and a rapidly constituted US- and Europe-backed High Ambition Coalition, which kept up the pressure for a strong temperature goal and regular reviews of emission-cutting plans.

The French hosts also won praise from negotiators for using a mixture of informal huddles, or indabas, and traditional shuttle diplomacy to bring the deal home.

The text commits countries to peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, and to seek a balance between human-caused emissions and removals by carbon sinks.

“This means bringing down greenhouse gas emissions to net zero within a few decades,” said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a climate adviser to the Vatican.

But he added that countries would have to move aggressively, peaking before 2030 and eliminating emissions by 2050 through reforestation and technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

For vulnerable countries, the high ambition of the 1.5C goal was offset by the weakening of the agreement when it came to dealing with irreparable damage of climate change.

“The idea of even discussing loss and damage now or in the future was off limits. The Americans told us it would kill the COP,” said Leisha Beardmore, the chief negotiator for the Seychelles. “They have always been telling us: ‘Don’t even say that’.”

Even so, campaign groups were broadly positive about the outcome. Given intense pressure from oil-producing countries, negotiators managed to craft a text that was far more ambitious than expected.

The universal nature of the agreement was a radical departure from the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that drew sharp divisions between the obligations of wealthy and developing countries but ultimately failed to lower emissions.

Unlike Kyoto, the agreement reached on Saturday depends on political will, with countries setting their own climate action plans.

Rich countries promised that by 2025 they would set a new goal for climate finance “from a floor of $100bn per year”, the figure first pledged at the Copenhagen climate talks six years ago. However, the commitment was offered as a non-binding decision that accompanied the binding text.

All the countries agreed on demands from the US and European Union for five-year reviews of their emissions reductions – an exercise that had been resisted by China.

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