So now we know two things more (politics)

[drwex]

Super Tuesday produced one surprise to me, and much that was expected. I was disappointed that Sanders did not win MA, which seemed a natural for him. I think he will wisely start looking for a best exit strategy, one that will allow him to have the most influence without opening Clinton to damage. Likely that will mean staying in the race until the math finishes and she has the nomination clinched. Sanders then bows out and throws his support to her. Clinton is a deal-maker and my guess is Sanders can deal for something he cares about, which will likely be something I care about.

Then I will hold my stomach for several months as Clinton careens hard right as far as her focus groups and strategy teams think she can go. Given the likely opposition that's pretty far.

The big surprise (thing 1) seems to be that the Republican electorate has made up its mind for Trump. Although Cruz took two states he's still about as done for as can be. I expected Rubio to do considerably better, but his heft has come from late deciders who have in the past gone for him. This time there was no late-breaking move. Trump's polling among Republican voters has broken the 35-38% ceiling he had been stuck at. He's now polling nearly 50% and his number now exceeds the combined numbers of Rubio and Cruz (thing 2).

That means it's officially too late. Even if one of the two did drop out (still not gonna happen- Cruz will claim he's on a comeback and Rubio will want to wait for Florida to vote) their combined support would no longer overtop Trump. And as we discussed last time we're entering winner-take-all season for Republican primaries, so expect Trump's lead to widen considerably.

So now it comes down to the RNC and what are they going to do. Despite the vocal flailings of "oh woe is us won't someone stop Trump" you see in the media I think the Republican strategists aren't going to go for that. A brokered convention or anything that smacks of stealing the nomination for Trump isn't going to fly. The RNC strategy will become to hunker down and try to contain losses. They'll pour money into purple districts and do everything they can to ensure they hold onto the Senate, expecting it to be a bulwark against President Clinton for four years. Everyone's eyes will be on 2020 and I would not be surprised to see the party making changes to primary rules to make it more difficult for the next populist upstart.

On the Democratic side they're going to have to spend hard to shore up a coalition. Having Trump as the nominee will make a lot of that easier as you can expect the black and Latino vote to fall massively on Clinton's side. The machine just needs to make sure they get to the polls on election day. I haven't done any electoral college counting yet, but Democratic turn-out this year has been low in primaries and that does not bode well for Clinton in purple states, especially if the RNC spends heavily against her. You can bet we'll be seeing ads along the lines of "Vote for Congress Candidate X; he'll take on Hilary".

Comments

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

Apparently Mitch McConnell has been telling senators in purple states that they are coming up with negative ads against Trump to help save those seats. He's assuming Clinton's the winner and now he needs to protect the senate, if he can.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/27/mcconnell-tells-gop-senators-well-drop-trump-like-a-hot-rock/

[drwex]

Fascinating. I'm not sure it'll have any effect, though, if that strategy alienates 50% of the party's normal voters.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it could be a good year for the Libertarians, esp. if they're sane enough to nominate Gov. Gary Johnson. I'll be doing my part for that at the caucuses next week.

Trump may have trouble as he moves into states with closed primaries. He's gotten a lot of support from Democrats and infrequent voters in the open primaries. The closed ones have generally gone to Cruz. Likewise, the Evangelicals have split between them--the ones who regularly attend church vote Cruz, those who don't Trump.

[drwex]

Under the most generous interpretation I've seen there are about 1 million people in the country who identify as capital-L Libertarian. I don't think they've got enough of a broadening to attract little-l libertarians in any significant numbers.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I don't expect the Libertarian label to attract anyone. But if it comes down to Trump vs. Clinton vs. two-term governor with reasonable positions (Gary Johnson) I suspect a lot of the #neverTrump crowd will pick the third option.

[drwex]

Just for s&g how many people do you think "a lot" is? I'm picking a number lower than 1mm nationwide.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Gary Johnson received 1.2 million votes in 2012. I figure the #neverTrump crowd would triple that. More if some big names start a preference cascade. Plus there's going to be some disappointed Bernie supporters looking for a way to stick it to Clinton.

[drwex]

So your prediction is 3.6mm and mine would be about 2.2. I don't think that's enough difference to quibble over, but it'll be fun to see.

[bluegargantua]

I found this article to be an interesting look at the psychological factors behind Trump's rise.

later
Tom

[drwex]

That's fascinating. The authors go to incredible lengths to avoid calling them Nazis but the whole thing reeks of National Socialism. Back when Trump first made headlines attacking Muslims I said I was reminded of Neimoller's famous quote. Jews teach and learn that "it can't happen here" is a lie and I feel that in my bones more and more.

[c1.livejournal.com]

Word on the street is that Carson will be bowing out on Thursday. This will narrow the field somewhat and allow more latitude for the others to turn their guns more toward Trump. I don't think this will matter, because Carson has only ever been a flash in the pan, and his appearances in the debates give new meaning to the expression "wallflower" -- there have never been that many guns pointed at the Carson camp to be redirected at Trump. However, The Donald still has to get out and stump -- most of Super Tuesday's victories were proportional, meaning Cruz still has skin in the game, and even pitiful Rubio can't be counted out just yet.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

Bernie did not expect to win in MA, actually, as it is a stronghold of the DNC. We were 25 or 30 points behind in the polls at the beginning of the year, so the final result (almost a tie, with Clinton getting 46 delegates and Bernie getting 45) was an awesome accomplishment. We expected to win 4 states on Super Tuesday, and we did -- VT, CO, OK and MN. However, I do think we had hoped for a somewhat higher proportional delegate count in some of the states that we lost, particularly TX.

We knew that Super Tuesday would be a good day for Hillary, given the distribution of states that were voting or caucusing that day. We hope to do better over the next two weeks (through March 15th). It will be particularly interesting to see what happens in FL and NY.

[drwex]

Both in Sanders' speeches and in publications (http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2016/02/22/bernie-sanders-path-the-nomination-runs-squarely-through-massachusetts/4OyA7NRcEwUdAO6dSJwmdO/story.html) he was expected to or had MA labeled as a "must win" state.

I agree that proportional allocation (which I wish all states would use and is part of why I oppose both a national primary and a national direct ballot) keeps him in the race, but Clinton has widened her lead. Sooner or later the math is going to be inevitable, at which point I expect him to bow out gracefully.

If Clinton loses NY (her putative home state) or fails to win by a decisive margin that would be quite a blow. Florida would be more of a contest if Sanders had made up more ground with voters of color. He might do better among Latino voters than Black but I still expect Clinton to carry that demographic by a large margin. Likewise, Florida primary voters (particularly Democratic) are often older voters who tend to vote mainline Democrat. I would expect many of them have pleasant memories of Bill Clinton's presidency and her name value among that demographic is likely high.

All of which is to say that no matter how much I'd like Sanders to win, I don't see how he does it at this point.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

I am not saying that we wouldn't have preferred to win in MA. I am saying that, going into Super Tuesday, the campaign expected MA to be very close and to win the 4 states I mentioned -- in other words, we were not surprised by the MA results. I think we did hope/expect to come out of Super Tuesday with closer to 450 delegates than 400.

I am not ready to throw in the towel, but I agree that if it does become clear that Clinton is going to win the nomination, Bernie is very likely to back out gracefully and throw his full support behind Clinton. I think she will do the same if Bernie wins the nomination. The specter of Trump is likely to be a great unifying force for Democrats, liberals, progressives, and perhaps even moderates of any stripe.

[drwex]

Yeah I think we're generally in agreement. My hope is that Sanders will accumulate enough weight that he can make a bargain of some sort with possible future President Clinton. He may get planks in the party platform, or a Cabinet post of some kind but I don't see how he can moderate Clinton's likely dash to the right in the general election.

[wotw]

Given the size and the strength and the recent success rates of the conservative movement, I find it nearly unthinkable that both major parties can nominate substantially left-of-center candidates without a third party arising to fill the void on the right. The interesting question is: What will be the extend of the exodus of Republican officeholders to that new party?

As far as Clinton "careening" to the right, I just don't see it. Many Sanders voters will naturally gravitate to Trump, and she'll have to careen left to get them back --- which is exactly what we saw starting to do in her post-election speech Tuesday night.

[drwex]

Is it your opinion that Trump is "left of center"? I find that an interesting opinion not generally supported by his pronouncements. If you think (as I do) that he's lying (or dissembling) about his pro-life stance then he might be left of center on that issue. He does seem to support enlarging some entitlements, which might place him left on those issues, but he appears to be far right on issues of speech, privacy, immigration, national defense (though he may end up more nuanced here), crime, and individual rights versus corporate rights. Given that mix I'd be hard-pressed to call him left-of-center.

I remain mindful as I wrote a bit ago that Bush I complained about how Bill Clinton was running to the right of him. I can easily see Ms Clinton outflanking Trump on the right in some instances, but I think that's due to her dogmatic aggression, particularly on matters of foreign intervention. Reading the recent NY Times series on how Mrs Clinton tipped the Obama inner-circle balance in favor of intervention in Libya was enlightening. Democratic candidates have, for at least the last few decades, moved their positions majorly to the right in the general campaign versus the primaries; I doubt Ms Clinton will be any exception.

I do not see many Sanders supporters switching to Trump. Those who support Sanders because they're pissed at the establishment are unlikely to believe in the power of a megalomaniac billionaire to right the fiscal wrongs that so irritate us. I expect Clinton to pick up Elizabeth Warren's endorsement (if she hasn't already) and Warren is a darling of this group. Remember this group was trying to draft Warren to run against Clinton before Sanders entered the race. There is a small but vocal contingent of (imo nasty) "Bernie Bros" that I can see switching to Trump but my only response to that is "good riddance."

I've written off and on for the last four years that I think it's time for a third party to emerge. Pre-Trump I thought the likeliest scenario was a split of fiscal conservatives/social liberals from social conservatives/fiscal liberals but now I'm very much afraid that if we see a split we'll end up with an American National Socialist party. See the article Blue linked above.