Delaware Dem

Wednesday Open Thread [3.30.16]

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.”

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Tuesday Open Thread [3.29.16]

David Plouffe:

Ok, you say. We get that Clinton has built a strong delegate lead. But she should be able to close this out with more strength, winning the vast majority of the remaining states. And if she doesn’t, it shows weakness for the general election. Well, […] [a]t this time eight years ago, ]President Obama] too had an all but insurmountable delegate lead.

But in the last 9 contests, we lost 6 of them. Now, we had some issues like Rev Wright we were fighting thru. And Hillary Clinton campaigned admirably. But we predicted those losses long before based on the results we were seeing in the earlier primaries and caucuses.

Even as we were moving towards the nomination, and ultimately the Presidency, we knew we would lose a bunch of states in the latter part of the primary calendar. Some suggested it showed weakness or would hurt us in the general.

History suggests otherwise.

Bernie had an expected good weekend, and some fools decided that it meant he was absolutely going to be the nominee, despite the math, despite the upcoming slate of primaries that all favor Hillary by large margins, despite the history that Plouffe so expertly lays out. Boy, some of you are going to have to eat a lot of crow in May. Do you like Ketchup to go with it?

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Monday Open Thread [3.28.16]

Harry Enten says Sanders overperforms in Caucauses, and he doesn’t gain momentum from his caucus wins, and he is about to run out of caucuses to win.

The problem for the Sanders campaign is that there are only two caucuses left on the Democratic primary calendar. […]

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: How do we know that Sanders’s big wins this week aren’t a sign that something more fundamental about the Democratic race has changed? We don’t, necessarily. But look at the calendar: Sanders also outperformed his delegate targets in Colorado, Kansas and Maine earlier this month, and he still went on to suffer big losses on March 15. And that was after his shocking Michigan victory. Moreover, Sanders greatly underperformed his delegate targets last Tuesday in Arizona, which held a primary and has a more diverse electorate.

Most likely, Sanders will need to find another way to make up ground on Clinton in the delegate race. Wyoming (April 9) and North Dakota (June 7) are the only remaining stateside caucuses. The rest of the stateside races are primaries. Sanders has exceeded his delegate targets in just three stateside primaries. He’s matched them in three and underperformed in 15. Given that Sanders is still so far behind in the delegate count, he needs to outperform his delegate targets by a lot.

How likely is that? Well, he’s behind by about 6 percentage points in Wisconsin, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average. That’s not a huge deficit, and it wouldn’t shock me if Sanders won Wisconsin given that the black population there is below 10 percent. (To match his delegate target in Wisconsin, he needs a net gain of 10 delegates there.) Sanders, though, will likely have more difficulty in later primaries in April, such as Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, where African Americans make up more than 10 percent of the state’s population.

Sanders had a strong week, and this has been a crazy year in politics. But there’s nothing in the recent results to suggest that the overall trajectory of the Democratic race has changed. Clinton was and is a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.

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Saturday Open Thread [3.26.16]

Jonathan Chait on why the GOP Elites hate Trump: “First, they recognize that his deep unpopularity among the general public makes him a historically awful nominee. Second, his egomania, lack of interest in policy, and history of off-the-reservation statements and behavior give them justifiable reasons to doubt he will stay committed to their agenda even if somehow elected. And third, they find his persona repellant.”

“That last factor — the visceral loathing for the man himself that pulsates among his opponents — has become the highest-order question in the Republican race. Other Republican candidates, who began the race defining themselves on their own personal and ideological terms, now define themselves in relation to Trump’s persona.”

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Friday Open Thread [3.25.16]

“A majority of Republican insiders say Donald Trump should not get the GOP presidential nomination if he falls short of winning a majority of delegates – even if Trump amasses more than any of his opponents,” Politico reports. “Roughly six-in-10 Republicans said the party should nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a plurality, rather than the required 1,237-delegate majority necessary to claim the party nomination.” But how can Trump be denied if he has a majority of the delegates?

Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign — and to some extent Gov. John Kasich’s campaign as well — is working hard in every state still choosing delegates. If he’s successful, he will be able to place some of his own loyalists as Trump’s delegates. Cruz will also propose a rule to “unbind” the delegates — to allow them to vote their preference and possibly ignore the outcome of the primaries. Ted Kennedy tried that in 1980 to prevent Carter’s nomination, and I think Reagan tried it in 1976 to prevent Ford’s. Neither worked.
Jonathan Bernstein explains:

The process involves three steps. First, the Republican National Committee will establish a set of proposed rules for the convention. Rules maven Josh Putnam says it’s unlikely that those rules will free the delegates. Then, a week before the gathering, those rules will be handed off to the convention’s rules committee, which is free to change them any way it likes. Once that’s done, the rules go to the full convention, which can accept them as is or amend them in any way it deems appropriate.

If the delegates vote to free themselves, then that’s that: They will vote as they wish, regardless of how they were chosen to vote.

If that happens, Cruz or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney maybe a likely nominee. But this maneuver is like playing with a nuclear bomb that is in the process of detonating. Because, 1) Trump will do something, and it won’t be good 2) his supporters will do whatever Trump tells to do, either to write him in or stay home; and 3) the regular rank and file Republican electorate doesn’t care for that too much.

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