In what was highly predictable, Donald Trump won each won all five Atlantic state Republican primaries tonight (Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island). In the meantime, Hillary Clinton won the biggest Democratic prizes of Pennsylvania and Maryland plus Connecticut and Delaware. Bernie Sanders won just one state, tiny Rhode Island. While Trump still has some work to do to seal up the Republican nomination, for Clinton the nomination is clearly hers and Bernie Sanders is done (as he already was before the voting tonight).
Sanders is not quitting the race; he’s vowed to keep campaigning until the last votes are cast on June 7th, but the Vermont Senator is mathematically finished, and it’s not just because of Clinton’s overwhelming advantage among the party “insiders,” otherwise known as super-delegates. Based on the proportional allocation delegate rules in all Democratic nominating contests, Hillary has such as large lead that Bernie would have to win approximately 66% of the votes in the remaining contests to catch up with her among ordinary “pledged” delegates. Short of a recommendation for indictment from the FBI over her email server, that’s simply not going to happen.
CNN dubbed today’s contests “Super Tuesday 4.” In Hollywood, once you get to the fourth installment of a movie franchise, the films are usually bad. If you’re a Republican who feels that Donald Trump would be a terrible choice for the party nomination, tonight’s results are up there with “Lethal Weapon IV,” “Superman IV” or “Batman and Robin” as truly awful fourth entries. Another way to describe it would be “Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue Part IV.”
Trump has now won six consecutive contests with more than 50% of the vote after failing to capture a majority in all of the previous contests. With results still coming in, The Donald has picked up 79 of the 82 available delegates in Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware and 10 more in Rhode Island.
Trump also easily won the state-wide vote (and 17 delegates) in Pennsylvania but the Keystone State has a bizarre process in which the voters cast ballots directly for unknown delegates without really knowing who those delegates support unless the voter had done their research. These 54 directly-elected delegates are free to vote at the convention for whomever they choose but many have signaled they will support whichever candidate won the most votes in their congressional district (likely Trump in all of the 18 districts). I took a look at the list of delegates that Trump listed on his Twitter feed as Trump supporters: 30 of those were elected. Assuming that those 30 stick with their pre-election word (and without knowing how the other 24 are disposed), that puts Trump just about 255 shy of the magic number of 1,237 required to guarantee a first-ballot nomination.
So, if you’re scoring the Republican race based on which candidate will finish with the most votes and delegates, the GOP race is finished as well. However, there is still the possibility of a contested convention, in which Trump falls short of the majority delegates (1,237) needed to secure a first ballot nomination. So the strategy now for Ted Cruz and John Kasich is to hold Trump significantly under 1,237 and create the possibility that the delegates (real human beings and all party activists) will choose a non-Trump candidate on a later ballot. Each state has different rules but in most the delegates are only required to support the candidate to whom they’re pledged by the popular vote on the first convention ballot.
In a signal that both Cruz and Kasich are aware of the obvious, their campaigns announced yesterday that there would be a loose “Stop Trump” coordination, with Kasich pulling all resources and campaign appearances from next Tuesday’s crucial contest in Indiana and Cruz pulling out of Oregon and New Mexico. Indiana is the crucial state; it has 57 delegates up for grabs and another Trump win would likely create a bandwagon effect and make his nomination unstoppable. In the Real Clear Politics average of three polls taken last week, Trump is polling at 39% in Indiana, with Cruz at 33% and Kasich at 19%. Clearly, this is a case where a true three-way race really benefits The Donald. So with Kasich essentially pulling out, Cruz definitely has the potential to mount a comeback win in the Hoosier State.
It’s my opinion that, if Cruz is unsuccessful and Trump wins Indiana, it is over. He’ll be less than 200 delegates from the finish line with 445 still up for grabs, including 51 in New Jersey (a winner take all state and a mortal lock for Trump). A Trump win may very well happen despite Kasich’s pseudo-pullout to clear the field for Cruz. There’s a psychological factor in play that steers people to get on board with the inevitable candidate. If Trump were a normal candidate, this almost certainly occur.
But Trump is not a normal candidate and it will probably be really close in Indiana. If the Texas Senator wins, it will then come down to the final day of voting (June 7th), call it Super Tuesday 5. On that date, Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, New Jersey and (the biggie) California voters go to the ballot box. Trump will not have a mathematical lock on the nomination before June 7th even if he wins every delegate before then but it will be a real contest if he loses Indiana and likely a coronation if he wins it.
Speaking of the Cruz-Kasich “alliance,” the candidates have done an absolutely lousy job of selling it and they’re playing right into Trump’s hands with his “rigged” system claims. He’s using words like “collusion” to describe the deal. The dictionary definition of “collusion” is a “secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.” There’s nothing secret or illegal about this but who needs to use accurate vocabulary in politics? Kasich has been especially weak in selling this strategy. When badgered by reporters about whether he is telling his supporters to vote for Cruz, he’s telling them to still vote for him, weakly trying to make the point that he’s just pulling resources from the state.
What Kasich should say something like this:
“This is the strangest campaign season any of you have ever seen. Donald Trump would be a complete disaster for the Republican party and would hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton. The only way now to prevent this horrific outcome is through a contested convention. And, in this one state, the state of Indiana, if you agree that I’m the best candidate to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, as bizarre as it may seem, the best way to make that happen is to vote for Ted Cruz. Crazy, huh, but that’s where we are. Let’s do this!” Clearly the Ohio Governor can’t bring himself to say those words because it truly is a bizarre situation.
However, if Kasich’s #1 goal is truly to prevent Trump from winning the nomination, he should drop out of the race entirely and immediately. His chief function in the “Never Trump” movement was to siphon off delegates in New York and today’s five northeast contests and he did a really poor job at that. I was a Kasich supporter from the very beginning and, if I could write the script, I would have him as the “white knight” candidate to save the deadlocked Republican convention on the third or fourth ballot. But the simple fact is that the heavy majority of Republican voters don’t care that he beats Hillary Clinton in every poll, they’re just not getting behind him.
The rationale for Kasich to remain in the campaign was that he was best positioned to take on Trump in the north Atlantic states and deny him delegates. Well, that was an abject failure. Kasich failed to even get within 25% of Trump in any of the six states that voted in the last two weeks and, depending on final vote totals, may have earned a measly 10 delegates while Trump has won over 250 and moved ever so closer to clinching the nomination. The plain fact is that, based on the delegate allocation rules of the future contests, the only thing Kasich can now accomplish is to divide the anti-Trump vote and help ensure The Donald’s path to 1,237.
What would be a much better scenario than either Kasich dropping out per se or this weak alliance would be a pre-emptively announced ticket, with Cruz as the Presidential nominee and Kasich as the Vice-Presidential nominee. Now, based on their age and experience, that ticket admittedly looks backward to me but it’s a plain fact that Cruz has run the vastly superior campaign, earned millions more votes and deserves the top spot over the governor. The moderate Kasich is a good counter-weight to the very conservative Cruz and he almost certainly would deliver the critical state of Ohio to the ticket.
I don’t think this going to happen because Kasich truly believes that neither Trump or Cruz will get a majority in a contested convention and, if there’s a deadlock, the natural person to turn to is the last man standing who’s actually still running. A pipe dream perhaps but that’s his strategy.
If this weak “Crasich” deal at least helps Cruz win in Indiana, you might see him make an early VP announcement of either Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina. Either would be an excellent selection: a Rubio pick would double down on a “next generation” ticket against a nearly-70 Hillary and would also sew up most of Rubio’s 173 delegates in a nomination fight. Those delegates would not be legally obligated to go with Cruz but almost certainly would do so.
With former Hewlett Packard CEO Fiorina, Cruz would age-and-gender-balance the ticket and unleash a powerful surrogate who proved to be the best of all the 17 GOP candidates at attacking Clinton. Whichever way he goes, Cruz would be wise to announce his VP pick before the final states vote on June 7th because there’s an excitement and news value that can provide a bump in the final days before those final votes.
And Cruz is going to need every little edge he can get because it really looks like the Trump train cannot be derailed.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig