Delaware Liberal

It isn't about "swing voters" and soccer moms. It isn't about how many electoral votes Florida has and getting to 270. And it isn't about what Wolf Blitzer thinks. Those kinds of calculations are ancient history. That's the Polish Calvary lined up against the mechanized Wehrmacht at Krojanty. If you want to know how a transparent fraud like Trump can make it to the White House, look at what he did to Jeb Bush and ask yourself if the same things can work against Hillary Clinton. This is from Rolling Stone. As you read substitute "Clinton" for "Bush"

Matt Yglesias says that, no matter what happens, the Republican Party is headed to disaster.

The bottom line is that the Republican Party is now on track for a major disaster. One possibility is that Trump will eek out a narrow victory against a divided field in the face of dogged opposition from his own party's elite. Far too many anti-Trump things have been said at this point to take them all back, and the divisions inside the party will hurt Trump badly in the general election. For Democrats, this is fun to watch. But more than fun to watch, it's a key reason why Democrats, though they should avoid complacency about Trump, can also confidently view him as a weaker-than-average nominee. Presidential candidates who run at the head of a united party have no guarantee of victory, but candidates who run without the wholehearted support of their party's prominent leaders and mid-ranking professional staffers tend to lose. But the alternative is also disastrous. If the Republicans running against Trump actually did cooperate with some explicit or implicit alternative in mind, then they could assemble an anti-Trump majority and hand the nomination to their champion. But instead they are all running independent, entirely uncoordinated campaigns and simply hoping to work out the nomination via a chaotic convention floor fight of the sort we haven't seen for two generations. Nobody knows who or what would emerge from that, but one guarantee is that it would leave Trump and his supporters enraged and demoralized at what they will see as an underhanded theft of a nomination they earned.

Every knee will bend. From Bill Kristol and Ben du Pont to Lacey Lafferty and David Duke. They will welcome "Trump the Liberator" and the very suggestion that they were ever anything other than Trump die-hards will be scornfully ridiculed. I will allow the Rude Pundit to explain

Matt Yglesias says that after Super Tuesday, only a Democrat can stop Trump.

Donald Trump's ongoing evisceration of the Republican Party establishment has earned him a reputation in some circles as a Teflon-coated magician, a politician whose mind meld with the American people is so strong it makes him immune to attack. He's not. [...] The fact is that Trump has triumphed in Republican Party primaries because the Republican Party is incapable of mounting effective resistance to him, not because effective resistance is impossible. Their strategies have failed because highlighting his real weaknesses would put them on ground that is too uncomfortable given the ideological rigidity of the GOP structure and the biases of rank-and-file Republicans. But the plain, obvious truth is that Trump is running a racist campaign based on an unimpressive record in business and bad public policy ideas. Yet the pathologies of the Republican Party make it impossible for them to mount this argument in an effective way. That's why to stop Trump, his opponent is going to have to be a Democrat — realistically, Hillary Clinton though in principle Bernie Sanders or someone one would work.

Go read the whole thing. Yglesias lists all the reasons Trump is a horrible candidate that will be beaten. Should we underestimate him? No. Should we be complacent? No. But Trump is not some unstoppable juggernaut. He is the most flawed Presidential candidate ever to (presumptively) garner a major party's nomination in all history.

Breaking: Don Peterson has filed to run against Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf in the Democratic Primary. Here is his press release:

Don Peterson, a progressive social activist from Rehoboth Beach, filed paperwork today to challenge Speaker of the House Pete Schwartzkopf in the Democratic primary. [...] “I am running for State Representative in the 14th District because I believe it’s time for a change. It’s time for a new, more progressive voice in Dover, for someone who has the time and energy to focus on the people of this District – all of them. I want to work to close the income inequality gap, reform our broken criminal justice system, strengthen the social safety net for those of us most in need, and provide open, transparent and responsive government.” Recognizing the issues facing residents of Sussex County, Peterson is concerned about the lack of quality permanent jobs in the district and services available to meet the needs of our aging population. "Although we live in a relatively affluent area, there are under-served communities nearby that lack safe, secure and affordable housing, and even drinkable water. Social programs are underfunded, and a surprising level of racism still exists. These are important issues that we must not ignore," he said. Peterson believes his strong background in government budget and finance, his experience as a leadership and organizational coach, his lifelong commitment to social justice, and the knowledge he’s gleaned from his years of political and community activism in eastern Sussex County prepare him to deal with the range of challenging issues facing Delaware.

Pete's moves seeking an early endorsement of both his own 14th RD and the 20th RD now make sense, as he expected to be primaried. And the resignations of most of the [progressive members] of the 14th RD board now make sense, as they are likely to support Don. [Update: commenters below have indicated that most of the board did not resign, but most of the progressive members did].

It is amazing to me, and ironic, that Sanders is now in the Hillary role from 2008, relying exclusively and explicitly on the white vote to win hand picked states rather than campaigning everywhere, while Hillary is now in the Obama role from 2016, running up an insurmountable delegate lead due to large wipe-outs in more diverse states. Look, I know Bernie's supporters do not want to hear this, but this race for the nomination is over. To quote Tim Russert from 2008, we now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be and no one can dispute it: Hillary Clinton. Hillary is now running a general election campaign, removing her focus from Sanders and directing it to Trump. Her campaign will not attack Sanders or demand he drop out. Nor should he drop out. The race should continue, so that he accumulates delegates to have a voice at the convention and in the party platform, and to keep his supporters engaged. And even he knows that, since last night he said his campaign was about more than the Presidency.