It’s not over yet, on either side. Bernie Sanders won a few states last night, and he’s raising a ton of money, so he has the resources to continue for some time. Ted Cruz won a couple of states and still has resources, and even Mr. Third Place, Marco Rubio, finally notched a win, and is heading into terrain that may be more favorable for him.
But realistically, the odds are now pretty good that the general election matchup is Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump.
On the Democratic side, a major problem for Bernie Sanders is that, while he is indeed energizing a significant number of mostly young voters, he is not connecting with African-Americans in any major way. He was demolished in South Carolina where the black vote is a large percentage of the Democratic electorate. And last night, the results were similar: where there’s a high black vote, Sanders lost badly. Where there isn’t, he won or didn’t lose by as much. Relatedly, it’s important to note that, for all the excitement (and money) Bernie’s campaign is generating, turnout is actually well below 2008 on the Democratic side (worryingly, the opposite is true for the GOP). At least right now, polling shows him well behind in the big rust belt contests coming up – Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois – plus Florida. If those polls hold up for the next two weeks, things start to look pretty dire. If Sanders can’t start generating higher turnout, and can’t start winning more of the black vote, I don’t see how he can make up the delegate difference.
On the Republican side, last night was a total catastrophe for the anti-Trump forces in the GOP. Trump, of course, had a great night, winning most of the states. But just as importantly, the night gave Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich just enough reason to hold on that none of them is likely to depart the race before March 15. That’s the recipe for a Trump nomination, as I’ve already pointed out.
Things could happen. Clinton and/or Trump could stumble badly; an unexpected surge could occur; some world event could change the race in an unexpected and unpredictable way. But it’s seeming less likely with each passing day.
One more thing. Last night, Trump gave a victory speech/press conference for about half an hour. He was surprisingly poised and coherent. There’s no doubt that he is getting better at this as time goes on. And Chris Christie’s unexpected (to me, anyway) endorsement of Trump has given cover to other mainstream(ish) pols who want to sign on with the apparent frontrunner. Swirling rumors last night of a forthcoming endorsement from Florida Governor Rick Scott – which would be a dagger in Marco Rubio’s heart – turned out to be inaccurate, but one expects that Trumpmentum will bring other endorsements (and maybe eventually Scott) in its wake.
We should all be quite worried about November.
that the longer it takes us to unite behind our nominee the more difficult it makes our mission to defeat Trump in November.
I believe time is our enemy not our friend.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I know you were expressing a sincere sentiment, but if I were feeling the Bern, I would probably read your comment as a statement that Sanders should drop out. He clearly should not — he has a lot of cash, and primaries are healthy.
I am also worried about November. I agree with David, we should all worry about November.
is the kind of campaigns they run from this point forward. Clinton was guilty of characterizing Sanders positions, she has since changed her argument. Sanders has used similar methods recently to attract minority voters, and that didn’t go over all too well with the results over the past week of primaries. I feel they both do better when talking about their vision if elected. I really don’t want half-truths and attacks going forward.
is done. Clinton will now focus on Donald Trump. Sanders can try to damage Clinton, but I don’t think he will. He’s not stupid either.
I am saying that at some point in this primary process cooler heads are going to have to prevail and answer this question.
RESOLVED : Unlike all future Republican contests which are winner take all; ALL Democratic contests are proportional. Given that mathematical certitude and factoring in Clinton’s huge advantage amongst super delegates and clear plurality amongst earned delegates.
Even if Bernie were to WIN all future contests Clinton will still have won enough delegates to win the nomination unless he wins by 60% or more which is highly unlikely.
QUESTION : WHEN does the intra-party primary debate stop being healthy and start being hurtful considering that Sanders has already achieved his stated goal of moving both the party and Clinton to the left ?
Fred Rich LaRiccia
ANSWER: When both sides fail to realize that they need each other, and that Trump is the greater enemy.
The nomination contest in isolation – if conducted in a civil way – is good for the party; PROVIDED that some embedded-on-the-ground organization results for use in the general election.
What I’ve realized watching various news outlets over the last few days is it goes “we’ve talked about the Republicans for a while, now we have to talk about the Democrats”, or the opposite order. If there is no Democratic race, there is no reason to talk about Clinton. It’s all horse race at this point.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, and having Sanders stay in the race keeps the media from full-focus on the GOP fight.
I seem to recall the 2008 primary going on for QUITE awhile after it was pretty clear that Obama was the nominee. Didn’t do any harm, and probably did some good, despite an awful lot of this kind of screeching at the time.
In other words, it gets unhealthy after HRC has 50% + 1 of the pledged delegates.
He never said this. The idea of his campaign being to move Clinton to the left is entirely manufactured by the media.
Thomas Frank has spent the past three decades writing about the loss of working class white voters to the GOP over cultural resentment politics, begging, pleading, and even now demanding that the Democratic party listen to him and address their economic displacement to win them back. The politician that listened wasn’t Hillary Clinton, the wrong messenger for this kind of message. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders who can’t quite shake the radicalism of his rise and make a more direct case to the average voter, though he has done considerably well considering who he is and how he got here. It was Donald Trump.
He realized, why ditch the cultural resentment-it got them in the GOP doorway where they’ve remained captive. But this economic populism thing, hey we could build a majority on dis! And that’s how he just enacted the first hostile takeover of an American political party.
Bernie won’t save us, Hillary won’t save us. Maybe this cycle as the last candidate of decency standing, but what an uninspiring race and dangerous place to be. Ask Jeb! how decency worked out for him? Or Kasich? Or Rubio before he resorted to dick jokes this week. These forces will have a permanent realigning effect on American politics and we are only just beginning to understand them.
Is perhaps the rise of Trump, and to a lesser extent, Sanders, because of the partisan gridlock (spurred by the Republicans) that has enveloped Washington DC? And that has resulted in not a lot being done for many people in this country?
As I get older, eight years is a long time for our country to do virtually nothing! I know that president Obama has done some things, and prefer him over either Mitt Romney or John McCain, but it really feels like nothing is changing, nothing is getting better.
That is why the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency is not that appealing. Her message seems to be “stay the course, be Obama 2.0”, or worse yet, somewhere between Obama and George W. Bush (especially on the foreign policy front).
I have not heard Hillary Clinton telling me how voting for her will make my life better. I have only heard her (and her supporters) say that if I don’t for her, my life will be worse. While that is true, and a choice I will need to make in November, that isn’t a very good message especially for a primary.
It’s Republican gridlock.
They’re the ones who refuse judicial appointments, including SCOTUS. They’re the ones shutting down government. They’re the ones blocking presidential nominees to other posts. How many votes to eliminate Obamacare rather than improve it? Record number of filibusters.
It’s not partisan gridlock. It’s Republican gridlock.
people are disgruntled. Not to mention any of the other procedural nonsense that’s been going on. How does filibustering anything change my life, or votes against Obamacare? I don’t even recall the government shutdowns affecting me.
Even if people cared, how does electing Sec Clinton change any of of this?
You’re knocking down straw men. I didn’t make any of the claims to which you are responding. I merely stated that it isn’t partisan gridlock, it’s Republican gridlock.
commercials? Or not looked at her website? Or listened to her in debates?
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
I think Bernie should stay in until all states have voted. Primaries are a good thing and everyone who wants their voice heard should have the opportunity. However, I think the race needs to change in a big way. No more attacking each other; it should be a team effort aimed at Mr. Trump.
… Trump has more delegates than any other single candidate, but less than the combined count of all the other delegates: that is to say less than 50% of the delegates cast thus far. If he gets that 50% soon, yeah, he’s good. But the three remaining legit candidates just need to keep up with Trump en masse and keep him from getting that clear majority. (I think the magic number is somewhere between 1200 and 1700) If, before the convention, party grandees were to lean on one of the remaining three to drop, then at the convention, party grandees were to lean on one of the remaining to give their delegates to the other then Trump has a problem. I guess the rules stipulate that delegates have to vote the primary results on the first ballot only. If the GOP can survive the first ballot at the convention and get to a second I think Trump is done. But it might be a long shot.
I think the GOP strategy has forked, first to the attack portion of the race and also to a game of delegate attrition in which Trump is denied an overwhelming number of delegates in order to throw open the convention.
Classic collective action problem. The remaining three anti-Trumps (Carson is dropping out for real this time) each have a reason to stay in the race. For Rubio and Kasich it’s delegate rich Florida and Ohio which could gird them for a floor fight.
For Cruz it’s to be the last true conservative standing against Trump to consolidate the anti-Trump vote. But he is far too factional a candidate for the other alternatives to rally around, and isn’t much better from an electability standpoint.
The remaining candidates have have no incentive to work with one another, and at this point, it is probably too late even for that. Trump’s ceiling has now gone up to 40-50% of the GOP and will likely grow now that he is the perceived front runner. If the good doctors vote share is evenly distributed to Trump and Cruz, that benefits Trump more. If Kasich or Rubio’s vote share is transferred to the other, it still prevents either of them combined from beating Trump without either backing Ted or getting him to endorse, and he has no incentive to do so after last night. Not when he’s cleaning the establishment’s clock.
There’s no reason to work together. This is not your ‘classic collective action’ problem. The incentive to stay in the race is the possibility of being on a second ballot at the convention. All they have to do is to get as many delegates as they can and as long as their collective delegate count is greater than 50% of delegates cast, which is where it is right now, there is a strong incentive to stay.
Along with being perceived front runner comes increased attacks and ridicule (go Oliver) and that’ll have affect. And I don’t believe that Trump’s ceiling can go up… it wouldn’t be a ceiling if it could. (Ref. Lincoln, A. ‘all people, some time, etc..’)
Conventional wisdom would say that the attacks already thrown at Trump, along with his own peculiar statements, would have dented his poll numbers. It’s been wrong so far.
…which is, frankly, predictable.
The state of American political culture – and I include elite culture – can be accurately likened to a grade school.
People forget that the fourth grade bully is generally one of the more popular kids. The more he successfully bullies his classmates, the greater his popularity (because most of the kids want to be bullies themselves).
It’s that simple, and the dynamic has been known and documented for millennia.
The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him and (hopefully) kick his ass.
Democrats lose because their institutional culture is too damn passive.
Are you siding with Sparta in this?
🙂
I’m opposing Cleon.
I would also favor a strong offensive, but a Democratic offensive. On immigration for example, the wage pressure argument (immigrants do a job cheaply, pressuring already low-wage workers) is something we should have a good answer on.
To my knowledge, we do not. Maybe SEIU does?
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
I think I’ve cited the Peloponnesian War before and mentioned Athens as the victor. Live and learn. Then forget, and relearn …
A commercial empire bogged down in decades of overextended military occupations and unwinnable proxy wars. One key difference is it was in a bipolar world with just one major power threatening it (Sparta), since Persia had already withdrawn from Greece two generations before. The hubris of Athens can best be described by the Melian dialogue, the threat they issued to a humble neutral island they decimated:
‘the strong do as they will, the weak do as they must’
Persia used Sparta as a proxy at sea.
But, they always said that Greeks made the best slaves.
… insofar as the poll numbers indicate that those who have decided to vote for him are unshakeable, this is true. There has been little dent n the poll numbers. In regards to the raising of this hypothetical ceiling, however… I guess I like to think that there is a difference, as noted, between ‘some of the people all of the time’ and ‘all of the people some of the time’… The very fact that we’re having this rather angsty conversation means that ‘all the people’ won’t fall for Trump even some of the time.
I still think he’s toast when he has to face the entire electorate. He may not get many more votes in the general than are already voting for him in the primary.
Clinton’s win is almost certain. Her trend is clear, the demographics in the cross tabs are clear, a two-person race has fewer surprises, etc. Clinton’s only enemy is herself — if something blows up (emails etc), that’s how she loses.
Trump’s win is far less certain (though it does look likely). He might get the plurality by not the majority, especially if a non-Trump wins some big winner-take-all or winner-take-most states. Carson just dropped out. Trump is bombastic, and could still step on a landmine.
Whereas Clinton has about one low-probability way to lose, Trump has a handful, and they seem to be independent from each other. To me, this means Trump, while probable, isn’t nearly as highly probable as Clinton.
I think what we’ve seen from this race is that Trump persists on a diet rich in landmines and they only make him stronger.
Support for Planned Parenthood, openly advocating war crimes, being tied to support of the KKK, a long and clear record of supporting liberal politicians and liberal causes, and proven deep hypocrisy on immigration issues – just to start. Did any of these make a noticeable dent? I’m not sure they have.
The scary thing is that Trump might be the nominee, thoroughly destroying the Republican party in the process, AND still win the White House.
What does that mean?
All of those people in Congress will run just as they always have.
We’ve seen here in MA how someone like Baker can deviate from the Republican norm.
Assuming Trump wins, and he’s popular (I know, that’s a stretch to envision), maybe some people run as “Trump style Republicans.”
I agree a lot of the current hierarchy will thrown into disarray, including the donor class. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.
The Liberty/Reform/Trumpenprolitariat attack on the local party apparatus failed. Even with Baker backing the worst possible candidates, state worker apparatchiks.
A key thing to remember is that Trump voters are not necessarily Republicans. Many are libertarian, Constitution Party, and plain old fashioned non-voters enticed out of retirement by an entirely new candidate trumpeting ‘a plague on both your houses’. Remember the gnashing of teeth about low turnout? These are the folks who had been staying home.
There was a LOT of anxiety about the impact of these unknown quantities on the downticket SC races. It appears that many just blanked them, not especially interested in these unfamiliar races. The Reform people gambled they would also be motivated to storm the local Bastille, but they guessed wrong.
The landmines that make him stronger (well, really, don’t seem to effect him one way or the other if you look at polling) in the GOP primary may or may not injure him for the general.
…of demographics is destiny. In my opinion that absolves candidates and parties of their responsibilities for creating effective political organizations. It also ignores intangibles such as intensity and enthusiasm (which currently default to Republicans).
Furthermore, sometimes the demographics can be misread or filtered through wishful thinking. In a political environment where racism is an integral (and successful) selling point of Trump’s campaign, the Republican is assured of considerable cross-generation and cross-class support from the white electorate possibly at even greater margins than Romney received in 2012. This begs the issue of black and Latino populations being largely concentrated in Red states, where their votes will be minimized by the Electoral College.
Finally, there is the structural issue of limited self-sustaining Democratic on-the-ground institutionalization as a deliberate choice of Party elites, starting in the Seventies, and continuing to this day. There was an opportunity to address the political demographics, but the moment passed. Had Obama not abandoned his organized grassroots support structure after 2009, I wouldn’t be posting this, but water under the bridge…
A Democrat can win in November, but not if these issues remain unaddressed.
Does Trump win the nomination if he wins 40% of the delegates? What about 45%? 49%? Christie would encourage his delegates to vote Trump, presumably, but I think it’s an open question if anyone else would or if it would matter what they advised delegates. Would Cruz or Rubio side with Trump rather than each other?
If Trump has, say, 43% of the delegates in the convention, I am not sure he gets the nomination.
you have to get 50%+1. So, if he arrives at the convention with 43%, no, he probably won’t be the nominee. The problem is that the rules are such that if he keeps winning pluralities like he’s won so far, he can easily amass a majority of delegates before the convention.
The “problem” is that winning a plurality of voters can get you all of the delegates in a number of states. If Mr. Trump only wins pluralities, he can only get to the convention with a majority of the delegates if he wins pluralities in enough winner-take-all and winner-take-most states.
We were bound for the first ballot. You voted for the candidate you spoke for at the local caucus (by Congressional District), so first ballot was Mitt, Ron, Huck, etc. Then, everybody was released to vote for McCain so he would have a unanimous nomination. This has been the genteel tradition for a long time.
But McCain arrived with more than 50%.
If Trump arrives with 48%, I think the old rules apply so chaos would strike on the second ballot. And since we have very few superdelegates I don’t see a braking mechanism.
I fear that our analysis of the GOP primaries ignores an aspect of statistics worth mentioning — the risks of spending too much time in the fringe of a distribution.
We know that that the GOP primary vote is split among a relatively large number of candidates. There is further evidence that those who vote in GOP primaries are not necessarily representative of the general voting population, never mind the total population.
Because so many candidates are on the ballot, the primary votes we see are those who sit at least one sigma out on the fringe of the GOP primary voter distribution (if we assume a “normal” distribution), and further out than that in the general voting population (if we assume, I think safely, that GOP voters are as a whole more likely to support Mr. Trump than overall voters).
For example, one meme being circulated is that Mr. Trump is a “super teflon candidate” — no attacks on his various blatant weaknesses will work because he has already survived or even been strengthened by such attacks. The issue I have with this analysis is that the data that supports it is his strength in various GOP primaries. I think it is correct to say that the 30-odd percent of the GOP primary voters who support Mr. Trump did not respond negatively to these attacks. I think it is INCORRECT to say that the general voting population will behave the similarly. The fringe voters who support Mr. Trump in the GOP primaries are, in my view, not representative of the general voting population.
It is generally a mistake to extrapolate from samples on the fringes of a normal distribution in order to predict behavior of the general population.
For the most part there are Republican voters and Democrat voters and they vote the same regardless of the candidate.
There is a group of people that are true swing voters.
There are times when voters of one party go all the way over and vote for the candidate of the other party. Typically these are the landslides.
The yet to be answered questions are:
1. Will swing voters go Trump’s way? There is some evidence (“Republican” turnout being high in the primaries due to independents, changes in registration from Dem). I would be skeptical that women are going Trump’s way, but I’ve seen them at his rallys (on TV) and in the newspapers.
2. Will Republicans vote for the Democratic nominee? While prominent Republicans are grumbling, I can’t see large numbers of Republicans crossing over to vote for Hillary Clinton. Other Dem candidates maybe (Webb, for example), but not Clinton.
The Democrat ticket will already have all the African American votes and most of the Hispanic. Maybe they can improve turnout of the latter group, but the turnout of the first was pretty high in 2012. Assuming no game changing events, this could be a vote counting exercise. If Trump does have appeal with swing voters, then more states come into play.
Or non-regular voters, in a way I didn’t expect and we shouldn’t underestimate.
I am not saying Trump will win. I am saying attacking him for being an extremist is clearly not the way to win, since it hasn’t worked any other time it’s been tried. The GOP primary base he attracted is fundamentally different than the base in prior years. It apparently loves social security, medicare, entitlement programs, and hates Muslims and Mexicans.
It apparently doesn’t actually give a shit about abortion or gay marriage, and Trump will play the media into calling his reversals on those subjects ‘moderations’. He is playing 3 dimensional chess while both parties and the media are looking at a checkerboard. Anyone who underestimates him can ask Jeb Bush and Chris Christie how that worked out, soon to be joined by Marco, Ted, and John.
It isn’t that I disagree with this analysis, exactly, as much as that I wonder if it is perhaps overly complicating the situation. Maybe Mr. Trump is playing 3-d chess while the rest of the world plays checkers. I remember thinking Mr. Obama was doing that early in his administration. As it turns out, Mr. Obama not doing five-cushion bank shot combinations of three balls — he was, instead, simply acting like the moderate Republican he is and handing the GOP early victories rather than using them as bargaining chips. Mr. Obama’s actual strategy was far simpler than my fantasy wanted it to be — mostly because my fantasy “Barack Obama” would fight harder longer.
My contention is that the “primary base” he is attracting are people who are, frankly, just like him. I suspect that people find his comments about women truly offensive also find Carly Fiorina at best neutral and perhaps simply don’t care what one GOP clown says about another.
That’s my point about the “fringe” element — we may be talking about a population that has already been filtered to remove people who reject racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and plain boorishness in a candidate. If you find sexism and xenophobia repulsive, are you going to anywhere NEAR a GOP primary?
I think there’s therefore at least some likelihood that Mr. Trump’s teflon coating my prove very thin indeed in the general electorate.
Trump has been baffling the pundits, has been able to switch positions on policies and even when called on it he explains it away. His weakness is viewed as race and gender bias. If anyone can pull it off I can see him doing it.
He might have the nomination sewed up soon. What if he goes “Sarah Palin” like Mcain did and he picks a Black women for his running mate?
227 million VAP in 2014.
A little under 55% turnout in 2012.
I wonder if he is indeed drawing new voters.
I read an analysis today that says to win Ohio he’s got take Romney’s white working class win there from 57:41 to about 61:39. It would seem that he does need new voters to get that. We’ll have to see the polls. I’m of the opinion (no facts, just a hunch), that if you aren’t voting now, you’re probably not going to be voting in the future unless you’re totally inspired (an effect I think Obama had). Clinton could see percentage drops in parts of the Obama vote.
http://www.people-press.org/2014/10/31/the-party-of-nonvoters-2/
…This is the party that simultaneously beats the war drum and praises the military while wearing ‘purple heart bandages’ in 2004 and elevating a draft dodging coward over a true soldier that same year. 12 years ago.
Everything they say is posturing in the face of misunderstanding. Everything they do has the opposite affect from what they say it will do. Everything.
When, in fact, has the GOP ever been consistent? And when have they ever payed any price for continued inconsistency?
You are overestimating him by thinking there is a logical process behind this that he has understood and can manipulate. He is no more in control of the ride than you are. That’s the danger. He hasn’t outfoxed any of the other candidates. He just bellows out of his monster ego and the GOP base has responded purely out of their even more monstrous rage and spite. That’s why the other candidates can’t get at him: their long practice at massaging the anger of the electorate has escaped them. Did you think the GOP would go down any other way?
…on the oft-asserted notion that many Trump voters are also first-time voters? I feel like I’ve only heard a lot of anecdotes. Plus, the two primaries operate basically in isolation from each other. I don’t think there is much to extrapolate about the general election by comparing primaries.