Wednesday Open Thread [3.30.16]

WISCONSIN—0ptimus–Trump 31, Kasich 29, Cruz 27
NEW YORK—0ptimus–Trump 50, Kasich 24, Cruz 16
NATIONAL—PPP–Trump 42, Cruz 32, Kasich 22
NATIONAL—PPP–Clinton 54, Sanders 36
NATIONAL—NBC/SurveyMonkey–Trump 48, Cruz 27, Kasich 18
NATIONAL—NBC/SurveyMonkey–Clinton 49, Sanders 43
NATIONAL—McLaughlin–Clinton 50, Sanders 38
NATIONAL—McLaughlin–Trump 45, Cruz 28, Kasich 16

Two big stories from the Supreme Court today indicate that the reality of 4/4 decisions is affecting outcomes. First was a decision in the case that many feared could mean the end of public unions. And if Scalia were alive, public sector unions would be gone today.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it was unable to resolve a major challenge to organized labor, and the result was a defeat for a group of California teachers who claim their free speech rights are violated when they are forced to pay dues to the state’s teachers union.

The court said it was split 4 to 4 on the issue, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. It was the most important case yet in which the eight-member court was unable to reach a decision…

When the court is evenly split, it affirms the decision of the appeals court that considered it. In this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said it was bound by the Abood [which favored the unions] decision and turned down the challenge.

The next big case involves Obamacare v. the Nuns. The Court issued an order to the plaintiffs in the Zubik v. Burwell case. The Plaintiffs are objecting to the accommodation established by the White House for businesses who seek a religious exemption from the Obamacare mandate to cover contraceptive care. The Court seems to be evenly split on this case as well, and issued an order to buy it some time. From Tierney Sneed:

At last week’s oral arguments, the court, and particularly the male justices in its conservative bloc, struggled when grappling with the question of how female employees of religious nonprofits would receive contraceptive coverage if the accommodation was not allowed to stand.

Now the court has requested the challengers provide briefs outlining other options. The briefs, due April 12, should address “whether and how contraceptive coverage may be obtained by petitioners’ employees through petitioners’ insurance companies, but in a way that does not require any involvement of petitioners beyond their own decision to provide health insurance without contraceptive coverage to their employees,” the court said.

Annie Karni at Politico has a piece summarizing both the Clinton and Sanders campaign plans for the upcoming primary in New York. Clinton plans on copying the Cuomo strategy and county wins, while Sanders is looking to copy the Teachout strategy. Andrew Cuomo and Zehphyr Teachout were rivals in the latest Democratic primary for Governor. Cuomo won 63 to 33. So Sanders plans on copying the Teachout model. Hmmmm….

Sanders’ allies said the goal for the primary is to eat into Clinton’s delegate take by winning at least 40 percent of the vote — a percentage they cite as a “credibility threshold.”

Bernie, it is almost April. You have passed any credibility threshold there is. You are not Dennis Kucinich. You are a finalist for the Democratic nomination. But you are in second place, and trailing by enough delegates where it is imperative that you win every contest going forward by large margins. We are talking 60% plus. If you just aim for 40%, that means you will have lost the New York primary, and you would have allowed Hillary to gain back the delegate lead of 315 before your wonderful sweep of the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii.

John Harwood:

The closer Donald J. Trump draws to winning the Republican presidential nomination over opposition from party leaders, the more his detractors ask: How can this happen?

There’s no singular answer.

One part of the explanation lies in the modern evolution of presidential competition, another in the special talents of Mr. Trump, and a third in the contours of the 21st-century Republican Party… As the nation grows more ethnically diverse, Republicans remain overwhelmingly white. Nine of every 10 votes Mitt Romney received in 2012, exit polls showed, came from whites. Nearly half came from whites without college degrees, the Americans feeling most aggrieved by recent economic and cultural trends. Mr. Trump has topped the Republican field by making himself their champion. Within the more diverse Democratic base, there’s no single constituency of a comparable size to lift an iconoclast to the nomination

David Byler with different Trump November scenarios:

Right now most analysts seem to think the real estate tycoon has a demographic problem. The thought process typically runs something like this: Trump might be able to turn out and win working-class whites at greater rates than past GOP nominees, but his less than sensitive rhetoric on race and immigration, his populist positions on taxes and trade and his general bombast would likely cause other large groups (e.g. Latinos, blacks, college-educated whites) to vote against him at higher than usual rates.

This analysis seems right to me, but it’s still early, and there are some voices of dissent here. So rather than trying to predict what will happen in November, I thought it would be more productive to look at some different scenarios to get an idea of just what would have to happen in order for Trump to win. Specifically, I generated four general election scenarios using the RCP Demographic Calculator (the third of which is interactive – it lets you play out your own customized scenario) to give readers a sense of how difficult it would be for Trump to put together a winning coalition under various conditions.

When you sit on the beach in Delaware, and you look out at the ocean, you think you are looking at Europe, aren’t you? Nope.

You are likely looking at South America!

Jonah Goldberg: “If Trump misses the mark by, say, 150 delegates, that would be significantly more than the delegate totals of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina combined. It’s one thing to deny the trophy to the guy who finished a few yards shy of the finish line. It’s another if he misses it by a mile. The bigger the shortfall, the easier it is to persuade delegates that they are not defying the popular will by denying Trump, particularly given the widespread conviction that Trump would be crushed in a general election (with the GOP being torn apart in the process).”

“Cruz would be the most likely victor in a floor fight, but that isn’t assured. The longer the balloting goes, the more likely it is that the bitter and bleary-eyed delegates will opt to order off-menu. That’s what Kasich is allegedly counting on. But Kasich is widely disliked, and it might be a good deal easier to find a unifying candidacy in, say, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, or Mike Pence.”

Washington Post: “We looked up every convention in which no one had a majority on the first vote since 1872. And in the majority of those, the person who had the most votes on the first ballot did not end up as the party’s nominee.”

Nate Silver:

If you’re a Sanders supporter, you might look at the map and see some states — Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Montana and so forth — that look pretty good for Sanders, a lot like the ones that gave Sanders landslide wins earlier in the campaign. But those states have relatively few delegates. Instead, about 65 percent of the remaining delegates are in California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland — all states where Sanders trails Clinton in the polls and sometimes trails her by a lot.

To reach a pledged delegate majority, Sanders will have to win most of the delegates from those big states. A major loss in any of them could be fatal to his chances. He could afford to lose one or two of them narrowly, but then he’d need to make up ground elsewhere — he’d probably have to win California by double digits, for example.

Sanders will also need to gain ground on Clinton in a series of medium-sized states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Mexico. Demographics suggest that these states could be close, but close won’t be enough for Sanders. He’ll need to win several of them easily.

None of this is all that likely. Frankly, none of it is at all likely. If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones, Clinton will probably gain further ground on Sanders. If they vote as state-by-state polling suggests they will, Clinton could roughly double her current advantage over Sanders and wind up winning the nomination by 400 to 500 pledged delegates.

But things can change, and polls can be wrong — and so it’s worth doing the math to see what winning 988 more delegates would look like for Sanders. Call it a path-of-least-implausibility. If you think Sanders can meet or exceed these targets, then you can say with a straight face that you think he’ll win the nomination. If you think they’re too good to be true, then you can’t. Here’s the Bernie-miracle path I came up with….