The Republican National Committee has launched a website to inform the public about what happens in the event of contested GOP convention, the Washington Examiner reported. The website, ConventionFacts.gop, lists party rules regarding the delegates required for a candidate to be nominated to lead the GOP’s 2016 convention, as well as the process if no candidate initially meets the requirement.
Josh Marshall says there is Hell to Pay:
I certainly knew that election night was not the end of the delegation selection process in most states – especially in caucus states. But I confess I did not realize how many states do not allow a candidate any direct control over who ‘their’ delegates even are. So Donald Trump could win all the delegates in a particular state but have party functionaries pick the actual people who will serve as ‘Trump’s’ delegates. So they’re bound on the first ballot but actually there to support Cruz or Kasich or some other unicorn candidate.
Now, shame on Donald Trump – supposedly great leader and organizational genius – for apparently not knowing about this until last week. Sure, I wasn’t up on all the rules either. But I’m not running a presidential campaign!
I think many people imagine a raucous and wild scene where the Trump delegates walk out of the hall after the convention gives Mitt Romney or maybe Jeb Bush’s son ‘P.’ the nomination. But in fact there may be no Trump supporters there to walk out. Now, obviously there will be some. But maybe not that many. And the ‘Trump delegates’ who agree to vote for someone else on the second ballot may not be former Trump supporters. They may be Cruz supporters or just party regulars. In fact, Trump delegates who aren’t genuine Trump supporters will likely be diehard anti-Trumpers because someone else will have had to have worked really hard to get them there and they won’t have left anything to chance.
Don’t get me wrong. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy or a nicer party. But this is no way to run things. […] Of course, there’s another explosive element in the mix. You’re not just talking about taking this away from anyone. Trump’s constituency is the part of the electorate which Republican politicians have been marinating in grievance and betrayal politics for decades. It’s a tangible confirmation of every betrayal, wrong and loss since Santa was killed in the first battle of the War on Christmas. Only it’s not coming from Al Sharpton or Hollywood elites or limousine liberals or Feminazis. It will be coming from their supposed protectors, their party.
It won’t go down well. There will be hell to pay.
Obama’s message to the rest of the world was clear. The Republican Party’s mistake does not speak for the United States of America. The President’s message to US voters was also clear. Donald Trump represents a danger to the American people because his ignorance jeopardizes global security.
What do the statements you mentioned tell us? They tell us that the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally.
It came up on the sidelines, and I’ve said before people pay attention to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world, and even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand the president of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world and has to put in place the kinds of policies that lead not only to our security and prosperity, but has an impact on everybody else’s security and prosperity.
Our alliance with Japan and the Republic of Korea is one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of our presence in the Asia-Pacific region. It is unwritten the peace and prosperity of that region. It has been an enormous boon to American commerce and American influence, and it has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear installation and conflict between countries that in the past and throughout history have been engaged in hugely destructive conflicts and controversies, so you don’t mess with that. It is an investment that rests on the sacrifices that our men and women made back in World War II when they were fighting throughout the Pacific. It is because of their sacrifices and the wisdom that American foreign policymakers have showed after World War II that we have been able to avoid catastrophe in those regions, and we don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is.
Atrios laments what some might call “hippie punching.”
I’m struck by how everything The Left does is wrong. Not just in terms of policy, but tactics. Running a third party candidate is wrong (I actually agree with this generally!), running in a major party primary is wrong, protesting is wrong, protesting the wrong way is wrong, not protesting is wrong, having a journal of important Lefty ideas is wrong, not catering to the feefees of Real Americans is wrong, proposing legislation is wrong, objecting to racism and sexism is wrong. There’s a longer list, I’m sure, but self-styled “moderates” chastise Lefties no matter what they do. Given that The Left might be represented by about 5 people in Congress (I made that number up, it’s probably not even that large), it’s pretty silly.
Kevin Drum responds:
I dunno. I’m pretty sure we all feel this way. I’m a more moderate liberal than Atrios, but as near as I can tell I’m also wrong about pretty much everything. Hillary is a liar, Glass-Steagall did too cause the economic collapse, nobody votes for a squish, it’s all just privilege, Bernie is going to lead a revolution and his numbers add up just fine, I’m a shill for big corporations, Obama is a total sellout, etc….
That’s life. In politics, you’re always wrong according to everyone who’s not you—and the more extreme you get, the wronger you are. That’s the price of being in the arena…
And no matter how wronger we all are, we will all come together in the end and vote for the Democratic nominee.
Or Else. LOL.
Harry Enten on why Trump may not do well in Wisconsin: “Republicans in Wisconsin have a lot to be happy about, while Trump has drawn much of his support from voters disaffected with the GOP. Republicans run state government and have enacted conservative legislation (which led to the unsuccessful attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker). Walker and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is from Wisconsin, both have favorable ratings above 75 percent among the state’s Republicans. Walker, whom Trump has gone after recently, has an 80 percent job approval rating among likely Republican primary voters.”
John Fund: “To all outward appearances, Trump seems to be engaged in a form of self-sabotaging behavior in which people both move toward a goal and then from deep within do things to defeat themselves.”
“Even Trump’s friends are wondering what’s going on.”
New York Times: “At a moment when a more traditional front-runner might have sought to smooth over divisions within his party and turn his attention to the general election, Mr. Trump has only intensified his slash-and-burn, no-apologies approach to the campaign.”
“Republicans who once worried that Mr. Trump might gain overwhelming momentum in the primaries are now becoming preoccupied with a different grim prospect: that Mr. Trump might become a kind of zombie candidate — damaged beyond the point of repair, but too late for any of his rivals to stop him.”
John Cassidy at The New Yorker analyzes Donald Trump’s very bad week:
If Donald Trump were a normal political candidate, he would be in serious trouble at the moment. Over the past few days, he has said and done things that have raised more doubts about his temperament, judgment, and command of policy issues. Some of the Republicans trying to prevent him from becoming the Party’s Presidential nominee believe that they’re finally making progress. Are they right? […]
[H]e is still in a strong strategic position and remains the firm favorite, even as cracks are showing. Predictwise, a Web site that combines data from polls and betting markets, estimates that the probability of him getting the nomination is sixty-six per cent. But it’s worth noting that that number has dropped over the past week or so, from eighty per cent.
Since the Never Trump movement formed, its strategy has been to narrow the Republican field, unite the anti-Trump forces, and keep up the pressure on Trump to see if he self-destructs. It would be an exaggeration to say that this has already happened, but his enemies have reasons to be encouraged.
Having such a bad week matters more now than ever because Wisconsin’s primary is just days off. Wisconsin is one of a handful of states left on the calendar where Trump could take the lion’s share of delegates if he wins statewide. And, to get to the 1,237 delegates he needs to formally clinch the party’s nomination before the national convention in July, he needs strong showings in states such as Wisconsin.
A new Democracy Corps poll shows that while Donald Trump runs the table with working-class white voters, he would still get clobbered in November against Hillary Clinton.
Trump leads among working-class whites by a 59% to 34% margin but trails Clinton by 13 points among all voters, 53% to 40%.
Key finding from pollster Stan Greenberg: “Married women are supporting Donald Trump by a slim 3-point margin. Unmarried women are supporting Hillary Clinton by a vast 52-point margin. This 55 point ‘marriage gap’ is the largest we have seen and indicates that unmarried women will play a pivotal role in 2016.”
Ryan Cooper at The Week examines the battle for the House and urges Democrats to reject conservative positions:
[C]entrist Blue Dog Democrats in swing districts, instead of demanding more spending to fix the recession and create jobs before the election,demanded austerity instead. As a result, virtually all of them lost their seats in the 2010 GOP wave.
Now, things are much improved today, but there is still obviously at least some economic slack remaining. Therefore, one obvious top priority of any Democratic president with a workable congressional majority would be a big new spending program, perhaps on infrastructure, or perhaps on paid leave or some other social benefit, to create prosperity and thus protect the majority. Running against austerity paid dividends for the Liberal Party in Canada.
But because the Democratic Party has failed to understand its own self-interest, or consistently field candidates for winnable races, even if Trump hands them a congressional majority they might not be able to keep it.
David Daley at Salon points out that even with an anti-Trump wave election, congressional districts are still rigged against massive Democratic gains:
There is a significant segment of the D.C. journalism elite that believes it is unsophisticated to talk about gerrymandering and redistricting as the reason why the GOP has such a hammer-lock on the House. They believe that both sides do it, that it’s the way politics has been played for centuries, or they subscribe to the “Big Sort” theory — our districts are more homogenous because similar-minded people choose to live around each other, especially Democrats in urban areas.
And for years, both sides did do it. However, what’s missing from The New York Times piece and from too much of the discussion around who controls Congress is a real understanding of how sophisticated the GOP redistricting operation was in 2010 and 2011 — and how it has made our politics more extreme both in the House and in many state legislatures. It was different, perhaps historically so, thanks to driven GOP strategists determined to take full advantage of redistricting, new mapping and demographic technologies that made it easier than ever to craft unbeatable GOP majorities, and the wave of post-Citizens United dark money which helped fund it. They called it REDMAP, for Redistricting Majority Project, and did it ever live up to its name.
It will be difficult and the Dems will have to run the table of all toss up and lean Republican competitive seats, while defending all of theirs, but it is possible in a wave election for things to break that way.
Gallup: “Forty-six percent of Americans now identify politically as Democrats or say they lean Democratic, while 40% identify as Republican or lean Republican. As recently as October, the parties had equal levels of support.”
