Look Upon Trump's Works, Ye Republicans, And Despair

Do it? Reince, I'm not a Republican Serial Killer like Zodiac Boy over there. Do you seriously think I'd explain my genius yuuuuge master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I had my people do it thirty-five minutes ago. It'll be great. - Donald Trump

So last night Trump body-slammed victory out of the Indiana Primary, essentially driving Ted Cruz to suspend his campaign (i.e., drop out but keep his name on active ballots) and pretty much guaranteeing Trump wins the convention on the first ballot.*

Kasich, being late as always, suspended his campaign this afternoon. Trump is officially the last Republican candidate standing.

That screaming sound you hear in the distance is either coming from RNC headquarters or coming from 7 billion people across the planet.

Either way, it's not pretty.

The whole day has been watching the accelerated meltdown of whatever parts of the Far Right Noise Machine hadn't sold its soul to the Con Artist Supreme. The websites have been filled with reports about party leaders and pundits denouncing this dark day and declaring the party "dead." There's been several posting pictures of themselves re-registering their voter ID to drop out of the party altogether. Or even setting them on fire (uh, guys, with the voter suppression laws YOU YOURSELVES are passing, you might not wanna do that...) There are pundits coming out now arguing that the Republican Party leadership - effectively unaware and tone-deaf to their actual voting base - deserved getting the rug pulled out from underneath them. Per Rod Dreher:

Overall, though, True Conservatism™ — aggressive foreign policy, aggressive pro-corporate policy, and Christian-ish social conservatism — has been shown by Trump to have been hollow. It is interesting to contemplate what this will mean for the DC infrastructure of Conservatism, Inc. What will the activist groups do now that they are shown to be much less effective than we previously thought? Trump’s victory is not a good thing, but if it means the end of this mentality... then Trump’s victory is not the worst thing...

Prince Rebus Reince Priebus is doing what he can to keep the party on the same page, trying to spin this Trump victory as a good thing for the GOP:

"...You know, I didn't, but I don't think that’s necessarily bad. You know what? I think something different and something new is probably good for our party," he replied. "And look, I don't think anyone predicted what happened. So look, we're here. We're going to get behind the presumptive nominee..."

"...As I've said before, the candidates join us. We don't join the candidates. And so our party platform is clear. The things we believe in are clear. We don't change what we believe in as a party. We have a nomination process, and someone is going to get chosen. I believe Donald Trump will ultimately get chosen, and he's going to join the party," Priebus said.

And history tells us more often than not the party members will come crawling back to support even the candidates they loathe all because their alternatives (vote Democrat? VOTE HILLARY? Ewwww...) are beyond their limits.

However, this time it's different. Previous Presidential campaigns never had a candidate so unliked before as the nominee. Trump can well be the one that truly breaks a national party apart into factions - Trump and #NeverTrump - where enough party members flee in shame/disgust/frustration to cause an impact in turnout.

Based on 2012, Mitt Romney had at least 93 percent Republican support at the ballots in November. In May of 2012, Mitt's favorability among Republicans - having already clinched by then - was at 87 percent. (His popularity among national voters made a then-high 50 percent). Right now May 2016, Trump's popularity among Republicans is only at 59 percent, nowhere near the high Romney had. And Trump's national average (dated April) is around 33 percent, nowhere near Mitt's even-50.

There's a lot of lost Republican support in there. About 28 percent difference in the GOP numbers, and 17 percent difference nationally. Can Trump win back support to match Mitt's numbers? I doubt it. There is a lot of public anger and angst right now among the Republican ranks, and that's translating into voters either running away to vote elsewhere or else not vote at all.

'Cause here's the thing: any attempt by Trump to "pivot" from the hard-core Primary campaign style where he pretty much nuked every bridge to moderate and minority voters imaginable will be ignored or mocked. Worse, he and the GOP cannot afford to suddenly drop the hard-and-heavy anti-immigrant and anti-Establishment rhetoric that fueled Trump's rise: they would lose that very base that got Trump his victory. That anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim, anti-Chinese stance will be the foundation of that 28-point loss of support within the GOP ranks made up of those voting blocs.

That all said, right now things do not look good for Republicans. Both Hillary and Sanders poll well over Trump as an opponent, even this far out before the conventions, and there's little sign that Trump is going to turn any of the states that went for Obama in 2012 (there's more evidence that he's LOSING at least four Red states to Hillary).

This is now a general election campaign driven by one question: Will 70 million Americans put faith behind a goddamn con artist like Trump with no political experience to be the nation's next President?

The answer so far is HELL NO.

Then again, never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to blow a sure thing. I'm with Rude Pundit: DON'T F-CK THIS UP, DEMS.

*Unless Cruz is still able to plan a delegate coup to force a second ballot, but even that looks unlikely at the moment.

BREAKING NEWS: Ted Cruz Assumes All His Eggs Are Chickens, Puts Cart Before Horse, Rearranges Titanic Deckchairs Into Pleasing Patterns

Is this seriously happening?

Via CNN:

Ted Cruz will name Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate on Wednesday, according to two sources -- a last-ditch move to regain momentum after being mathematically eliminated from winning the GOP presidential nomination outright.

The Texas senator will make the announcement at an afternoon rally in Indiana, which votes Tuesday in the next GOP contest. Cruz must have a strong showing in the Hoosier State to help block rival Donald Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination, and keep alive his hopes of a contested Republican National Convention.

Cruz is trying to recapture the narrative and keep himself relevant after Trump seized momentum in the 2016 race with a sweep of all five East Coast states on Tuesday, which puts him closer to having enough delegates to win the Republican nomination. The unusual move from the Cruz campaign also comes just hours after the billionaire businessman, who is trying to look like the presumptive nominee, gave a high-profile scripted speech on foreign policy...

Okay, having lived through the past year of absolute crazy political campaigning news, even with half the crazy stuff Trump has thrown out there and some of the more embarrassing things Jeb? ever tried before he disappeared, THIS has to be the craziest WTF moment yet.

How is this crazy?

For starters, Cruz doesn't have the nomination locked up.

You're supposed to pick your Vice-Presidential choice once it's been confirmed you have the delegates in place to win the Convention. Traditionally, the Vice President was picked at the convention itself as part of the back-room deals the party bosses worked out to keep the factions happy, but ever since the Primary system eliminated such deal-making the Veep choice has been left to the winning nominee.

Cruz is not the winning nominee. Granted, neither is Trump at the moment, but at least Trump has the chance to be.

Second of all, selecting the likes of Carly Fiorina does not help Cruz's case that he is capable of making sound decisions. He's going with a choice with a failed political campaigner, in that Fiorina lost both her earlier Senate campaign and her recent attempt for the Republican Presidential nomination. Fiorina's resume of being a "successful" businessperson is itself flawed: she's well-known for having mismanaged Hewlett Packard as CEO and was ignobly fired from that job. There's nothing there of merit or confidence for voters to like.

Third, this move reeks of desperation. The CNN report itself is claiming Cruz is doing this to jump-start his campaign and regain momentum to win over the few remaining states not yet siding with Trump. Problem is, who's going to buy this move? Carly's home state of California? She couldn't win there as a Senate candidate. The number of people who are moved to switch votes based on a Veep choice are few: nobody is going to run away from Trump all because Fiorina is teaming up with Cruz.

The only way this move makes any sense is that Cruz is convinced he already has his path laid out and he's already winning that July convention. Either that means he's already planning on cheating with the delegates to turn on Trump even if Trump wins outright, or he's convinced Trump can't win enough delegates period.

Either way, Cruz is courting self-destruction. If he steals away the nomination from Trump, it'll be civil war within the GOP. If he wins out a legitimate fight over unbound delegates because Trump didn't cross the threshold, Cruz still has to answer to a majority of Republican voters who believe the candidate with the most delegates ought to be the nominee.

This is too crazy for even this Florida Man to contemplate. I'm going to go wrestle a gator or something to bring myself back to my senses.

Missing the GOP Queue For the Lifeboats

I've been seeing the other bloggers listing this as "too little too late," such as Rude Pundit:

In a display of too-little-too-late-ism that ranks up there with "Flowers from a cheating husband," John Kasich and Ted Cruz have agreed on a kind of alliance of f-ckery, a Megazord of fail, if you will. Said a spokesturd for Cruz, "To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico..."

...And after Trump wrecks both of them in Pennsylvania and mocks them relentlessly for this strategy (which he's already doing), it's gonna be pathetic watching those campaigns limp around until they finally have the sense to just lay down and fade away...

I can see the intent by Cruz and Kasich to try and generate enough delegates for themselves - and not trip over each other to do so - to prevent Trump from winning outright, but this sort of move is almost impossible to coordinate because voters are going to make up their own damn minds in these primaries and they may not want to play this game.

It gets more interesting when Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post considers the ramifications:

...It emphasizes the degree to which the most likely alternative to Trump — Cruz — has failed to unite the GOP. He can either work hard at crafting an agenda and message directed at “somewhat conservative” voters, or he can make the case that Republicans are not going to win Oregon, New Mexico, Maryland and the like in November, so it shouldn’t matter...

...Cruz’s perceived weakness in turn leads to another unintended consequence of the deal: It will heighten interest in a third candidate. It is now evident that neither Cruz nor Kasich is a sterling candidate. The odds of a Trump nomination are high, so shouldn’t backers of a third candidate get cracking...?

The argument for there being a Third Party candidate that can SAVE the Republican Party from itself is getting more dire: and it turns out there ARE deadlines for a Third Party to file that are due BEFORE the July convention in Cleveland. From what I'm reading here on the Ballotpedia page, it looks like you have to file as an Independent in Texas by MAY 9th! That's two weeks away.

Before all this, there was the fear among Republicans that Trump would go Third Party on them out of spite and ruin their chances to secure any Electoral College AND Popular Vote wins. NOW the fear among Republicans is that they're going to have to run a Third Party candidate because having Trump run at the top of their ticket will (not could) ruin the entire ballot for them. Even though if they do this Third Party move, the Republicans run the very real risk that Trump will - again out of spite - tell his voters at the least to refuse to vote for ANY Republican down-ballot.

Very much a Lose-Lose situation at the moment. Time to remind the readership about the phrase involving the deck chairs of the Titanic.

The only thing the Republicans can hope for now is out-and-out voter suppression, and even THAT can blow up in their faces.

What If Cruz Is Worse At the Electoral Math Than Trump?

Well, the thing is Ted Cruz isn't bad at campaigning for the Presidency. He has an effective organization that just happens to be doing all the heavy-lifting of getting control of the state delegations, playing the long game of a possible contested convention where whomever REALLY controls the delegates wins the second ballot.

Where Trump - and everyone else - is or was playing for the whole ballgame of winning primary delegate counts outright, Cruz saw the landscape shifting towards the convention and got his ground teams to win the behind-the-scenes un-glamorous jobs of actually serving on committees and the delegations. He's putting into play the actual people who serve as delegates: not people in the abstract but those who will be free to vote how they choose if the first ballot fails to select the winner. For all the talk about a White Knight candidate showing up from behind the curtain, the reality is that Cruz could win despite being second-best.

All of a sudden, Trump is realizing that if he can't secure the first ballot he's screwed. While he's still yelling and screaming at the RNC for rigging the contests against him, he's now yelling and screaming at them for letting Cruz out-cheat him where it really matters: the actual nuts-and-bolts management of the party itself.

And even though Cruz could win out, the whole game for the GOP could still be tossed into the dumpster fire. As Infidel753 points out at his blog:

If Cruz takes the nomination on the second ballot, thwarting both Trump and the bosses who had planned to impose a hand-picked nominee like Ryan or Romney, the party will be left even more divided and confused than if the bosses had won.  The Trumpanzees Trumpshirts (sorry, Infidel) (and Trump himself) will be just as outraged at the nomination being "stolen", while the leaders may well balk at uniting behind a man whom they loathe and who cannot win in November.  They could end up split into three hostile factions instead of two.

Cruz, in his way, is just as dangerous as Trump, and just as doomed in November.  He's simply this cycle's Christian Right candidate, the avatar of the Bible-thumping, snake-handling, tongue-speaking element which has been growing in influence within the party for years.  He doesn't play well outside of that constituency; much of the support he's attracting now is really anyone-but-Trump sentiment...

I've posted before about Cruz's weaknesses as a candidate, and I've suggested earlier how bad a Cruz win would look in November. How factual are those warning signs? Can Cruz be as bad or worse to the general electorate the way Trump could be?

Don't forget that Cruz's favorability numbers are almost as bad as Trump: it's hard for a candidate to be over 50 percent Unlikes to do well in a general election. Thing is, it's not as bad, which gives Cruz in theory even odds in a campaign against Hillary (whose Unlikes are also over 50 percent).

It all depends on how the non-party ideologues voting in November are gonna lean.

Will the independent voters - will the moderate voters in both (still) parties - be won over by a Ted Cruz whose overt Christianity - a form called Dominionism - is on the far end of the extremist scale?

Will those independent / moderate voters - the ones who prefer political competency and effectiveness - be won over by a Cruz whose been the major obstructionist player in Congress the last three years?

There's signs there are enough Republicans who won't support Cruz as the nominee because of what he represents: the most extreme Far Right conservative candidate the party would yet have for the White House. Even Goldwater wasn't as documented as extreme.

And Goldwater got his ass kicked back when being a Far Right Conservative meant something.

Cruz will only appeal to certain types of voters: the Anti-Establishment Republican base, which is currently older white males with little education; and the Protestant Evangelical religious voters who are keyed to the belief of End Times and the Rapture. In most other categories - immigration, tax cuts, bombing foreign nations - he's playing to the GOP base same as Trump, but will find it hard to convince the general electorate to believe him if he switches gears and pretends to play nice.

'Cause Cruz already has a reputation for not playing well with others. And the general voters want to see that in their potential leaders: this was Obama's winning grace over Hillary in 2008, that he positioned himself better as a conduit for Change able to work with others. That was McCain's main appeal in 2008 (which almost worked in an election cycle where the Republican brand was mud) as well, as was Dubya's in 2000 and so on.

To be fair, I doubt Cruz will lose as many voters the way Trump will in November: there are entire states that are horrified by Trump the man as much as Trump the Candidate, which will skew the normal voting for the GOP downward.

But I don't see any signs Cruz will improve performance for Republicans over Romney's failings in 2012. Cruz's overt ignorance and smarmy lack of charm denies Republicans the hope of using a congenial figure to win voters back to them. Cruz's hard Right campaign would be a more difficult sell to a nation that wouldn't buy what Mitt was selling.

I have seen a post or three about how the liberal progressive bloggers and pundits are actively hopeful that Cruz wins the nomination and faces it alone against Hillary/Bernie in November. There's the belief that the Republican faithful have kept telling themselves that they would win the Presidency if only their candidate was a TRUE Conservative (McCain and Romney and Dubya all labeled as frauds).

If it's Trump in November and he loses, then those Republicans will keep telling themselves that. But if it's Cruz - he who is MORE Wingnut than the OG (Original Goldwater) - and he loses badly, those Republicans can't lie to themselves anymore.

Well, actually, they will keep lying to themselves, 'cause they've got nothing else to cling to. But they'll definitely be screwed as a national power, because how further Right can the Republicans go if even Cruz fails them?

Just think of the Red states Trump won as a Primary candidate: those will likely NOT go for Cruz, even if the party response is supposed to line up and be good soldiers. If Trump doesn't run as a Third-Party candidate, those states become toss-ups and Hillary could grab three or four or nine of them while Cruz holds only the Red states who sided with him. The states to flip Blue are likely Georgia and North Carolina, maybe Arizona and Tennessee and Mississippi and Missouri.

It won't be a deep electoral defeat the way Trump's will be - I've got Trump winning at BEST eight states - but it'll be serious, and a possible sign of cracking up the solid Deep South votes that have been reliable conservative counts for the last four decades.

The only question would be how badly Cruz might affect the down-ballot votes: it is possible Cruz would adversely affect the Senate races - he'll have a tough time campaigning alongside colleagues who will be fighting the urge to punch him in the face - to where the Republicans lose control, but in a Cruz campaign the GOP may well hold onto the House.

This will explain why the RNC is likely going to hold its nose and embrace Cruz at the same time. It gives them some kind of hope to stave off a possible Democratic landslide.

Which is why it's still so very imperative for Democrats and moderates to get the damn vote out this November!

When The Best Choice is The Parachute, Dave.

One of those questions I pose for myself from time to time is "How would I behave myself in public when confronted with two loathsome options?"

Let's say I'm booked for a flight on an airplane, and it's packed except for two last seats remaining. One seat is next to Grover Norquist, the second seat is next to Ann Coulter. Which seat would I choose?

And of course the correct answer is "I would choose the parachute, Dave."

(Just don't ask who Dave is)

I'm bringing this up as an opening bon mot to get you in the mood for this latest news bit from ABC News and what not.

The Republicans are not going to like this news one bit, because ABC hosted a poll on Favorable/Unfavorable numbers again on the current Presidential candidates... and both Donald Trump AND Ted Cruz - the two likeliest nominees - are working with some of the highest UNFavorble numbers in recent memory (PDF link here):

Donald Trump ranks as the most unpopular top-tier presidential contender in more than 30 years of ABC News/Washington Post polls, trailing only former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke among presidential candidates in any election year since 1984.

At the same time, the unpopularity of Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz, has reached its highest level yet this election cycle. John Kasich breaks even in basic popularity, with many – at this late stage of the primary season – still yet to form an opinion of the Ohio governor.

Remember what I keep saying about Machiavelli's warning, kids: it's tough to be loved, better to be feared, BUT ALWAYS AVOID BEING HATED.

(And for those crowing about how Hillary is also hated, please note the hate for her is still less than for Trump and near-even for Cruz... and there's a growing likelihood that the Republican Establishment - along with everyone else - may settle for Hillary as a better option than a man who has alienated that Republican leadership like no other)

Right now the Republicans are looking at their two remaining serious options - Kasich is mathematically eliminated from winning outright, he's merely in this race to keep both Trump and Cruz from winning outright - and realizing that their only real choice is that damn parachute.

They can't lie to themselves that either candidate - Trump or Cruz - will turn into a beautiful swan post-convention and everyone in the party ranks happily smiling as they line up to support whomever the winner will be. The numbers we're talking about involve the general voters, the moderate and independent voters who have no party loyalty that can sway them to like candidates they already loathe.

And we're talking about the type of depth to such loathing that can have a serious effect on down-ballot races. We're talking about the possibility that an anti-Trump or anti-Cruz movement could give Democrats a chance to break the gerrymander advantage the Republicans currently hold on the US House.

The buzz over the Republican Establishment running their own third-party candidate - now swirling around a retired general with little political presence - to try and salvage the Senate and House campaigns will not abate, not after news like this.

An Apostate like myself feels a little warm in the part of my soul that cherishes schadenfreude like this: watching the very real possibility of a Trump-led Republican campaign that barely cracks 30 percent of the popular vote and wins only Wyoming and Alabama. With 68 Senate seats going to the Dems and enough wins in the House to embarrass the Republicans into realizing their obstructionist sh-t no longer impresses anyone.

Ah, a crazy Florida boy like me can dream...

And as always, that dream can become a reality if the Democratic voters remember to GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

Blogging Update on the Florida Primary Night: As We're Waiting for the End of the World

I'm actually going to bug out at some point tonight, as there's a project I'm working on that needs to be done after nightfall and I'll be unable to blog during then. But I will likely have my Twitter going at @PaulWartenberg so you can track me there if need be.

Otherwise, considering all the polling for Florida it's already looking like a good night for Trump (AUGH), a bad night for Rubio (HAHA) and Cruz (AUGH) and Kasich (Meh) on the Republican side, and a good night for Hillary (Ehhhh, Okay) and a not-so-good night for Bernie (Son, you gotta learn not to talk to women that way).

I'll provide a link to a news site that you can follow in the meantime, and I'll add other sites that may liveblog or at least keep a running commentary...

Update: I've got the NBC News tracker linked here for Florida.

Balloon Juice's link finally has a thread going.

The Atlantic has a liveblog link here.

I will see about others.

Be right back.

UPDATE 7:20 PM EDT: The early polls for Florida are in. Trump is decisively beating Rubio and Hillary is decisively beating Bernie. However, the state's Panhandle will be coming in late due to their being in the Central Time Zone, so they won't close until 8:00 PM or so. There's also the possibility of the South Florida turnout swamping the ballot count, so there may be a delay there as well.

I want to see what the overall voter turnout is like. If the Republicans are substantially turning out in higher numbers than the Democrats, I will be worried. One thing I hate about Florida is the terrible voter turnout among Democrats when they're unimpressed with their candidates. If the numbers are within norms - that is, accounting for their being more Republican candidates to vote for - then I'll feel okay. But this is what's going to bother me most tonight.

UPDATE 7:35 PM EDT: Ohio and North Carolina polls are starting to close. We're not going to see serious numbers on them yet, but we'll see. Ohio is a huge state for Hillary to win or lose, because if Sanders wins there that hurts her momentum. Illinois is another potential speed bump, but Ohio is as much a key for her as Florida.

UPDATE 7:43 PM EDT: The number of voters so far are polling within reason, at least in my opinion, between the Republicans and the Democrats. Right about now, Trump has 590,000 or so voters to Hillary's 640,000 or so, with Bernie at 313,000 or so compared to Rubio's 350,000 or so. Where the numbers add up more are for the remaining two Repubicans, with Cruz in Third at 207,000 and Kasich at around 70,000. Carson is out of the race but still polling with 14,000 (likely holdovers from Early Voting and Absentees).

UPDATE 7:45 PM EDT: Alright, I'm going to bug out in a few minutes to run my errand, and I'll be right back. Add comments if you'd like, send me a Tweet at my @PaulWartenberg account.

Be right back!

UPDATE 9:25 PM EDT: Okay, I'm back from my errand..

SO OF COURSE MARCO RUBIO SUSPENDS HIS CAMPAIGN WHILE I'M NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

Losing your home state in a primary run is about as painful as you can get in politics. Losing your state in the general election is a blow, but you can always excuse it by noting the overall political bent of your state was never really in your favor. When it's a Closed Primary and your state DOES bend your way, then you were never really as well-liked as you thought you were...

UPDATE 9:52 PM EDT: I may wrap this up since the Florida stuff is pretty much done for the night and I have other projects to work on.

The big news will be of course the end of the Rubio campaign, which whimpered into the night by failing to win his own state. On the other side of the "Will He Drop Out" question, Kasich won his home state of Ohio, which gives him momentum for the next week or so before Trump humiliates the hell out of him. Cruz is still Cruz, probably in this all the way to the end as need be until he gets a deal he likes.

As for the voter turnout, right now it's looking a little disappointing in terms of overall turnout. There's about 4 million Republicans and 4.9 million Democrats, and yet both parties are totaling up to around a quarter of their registered numbers. There's looking to be about 1.7 million total for the Democrats (with Hillary winning about 1 million), and over 2.1 million for the Republicans (with Trump getting about 1 million himself with Rubio getting over 600,000 and Cruz at 300,000).

What matters is the Winner-Take-All nature of Florida's delegate counts: Trump is now building a serious lead, with Kasich's win the only minor speedbump he's facing tonight. Trump's likely to increase that lead with a win in Illinois, and it's down to North Carolina's final numbers to see if Cruz ekes out a win there to hamper Trump's numbers.

On the Democratic side, Sanders could win Missouri tonight, and maybe Illinois, but Hillary's wins in Florida and North Carolina and now Ohio give her a huge boost in delegate counts as well. I'm not sure if the Winner-Takes-All rules apply to the Democratic side, but still this is a good night for Hillary.

I might check in one more time before midnight, just for another recap or last second thought.

UPDATE 11:39 PM EDT: It bothers me a little bit that Twitter is now chatting up Hillary's likely Veep choices. Settle down, folks. It's still a few months before worrying about that.

There's still buzz - coming out of Politico - that there are a few Republican movers and shakers arguing for a Third Party run against Trump... as though they were even able to beat Trump within their own ranks. It's still a part of the Denial they're facing that their own party has turned against their interests. I doubt it'll go very far. There are few people with any stature who would sign off for this suicide mission.

This is pretty much it for tonight. I'll post something else in the week about my thoughts and fears about the Trumpocalypse. G'night kids.

UPDATE 11:40 PM EDT: At least DUNK CITY won tonight. :)

UPDATE MARCH 16: It's the morning after.

It turns out Hillary won all five states on Tuesday and built a larger delegate lead. Sanders is now talking about trying to rally the Superdelegates to him, but that's unlikely because they're more focused on protecting the party and let's face it Sanders is just a Democrat for this Presidential race (he has little cred within the organization itself). The optics of the Democratic race is now all on Hillary. The best Sanders can do is run an honest race and keep Hillary focused on the key issues.

As for the Republicans... Trump is getting worse. He's making it very clear and very public that he wants his convention and his nomination and he's threatening riots in the streets if he doesn't.

More on this later. There's other news: Obama is announcing his SCOTUS pick to replace Scalia today. The Republican response is going to be such an epic fail, you can tell even before this happens, they've dug themselves into such a deep hole on their obstruction that they're stuck...

Some Thoughts About South Carolina and Nevada Tonight (Updated)

The primaries trudge on, this time stopping in South Carolina for a GOP primary and also a side trip for the Democrats into Nevada for another confusing caucus (Republicans will caucus in Nevada next week, Democrats will primary next week in South Carolina. This is how effed up our primary system is).

As far as the Nevada results go - coming in earlier than South Carolina due to odd hours of the day hosting them - it's looking like Hillary Clinton secures the win there despite the Bernie Sanders late surge.

As far as the results are going for the Republicans, the media outlets have already declared Trump the winner, and now it's a question of who gets to be in Second Place and get the set of steak knives, because Third Place is gonna net zero delegates right now and that's pretty much means Alec Baldwin is here to fire you.

As things are polling now, Rubio is in a tight spot for Second Place, which is going to be annoying as hell because the effing media is gonna keep acting like Rubio is gonna happen. /headdesk

It's odd to note that Cruz - who campaigned as sleazy and pandering in South Carolina like never before, even robocalling in favor of the goddamn Confederate Battle Flag - isn't doing as well in Fundamentalist, Far Right Wingnut South Carolina. Very odd...

It's not odd to note that Jeb? is polling under 10 percent overall in South Carolina. Considering how the Bush family has used that state - in 1988, and in 2000 - to effectively firewall their closest opponents into burnt burger meat, this is a telling sign of both their family's political pull - none - in Far Right states and Jeb's overall terrible campaign style.

I was thinking Jeb would keep campaigning at least to Florida, in one last-ditch effort to win SOMETHING considering his own home state might help him, but reports are coming in right now that Jeb? is suspending his campaign. The zombie nightmare may well end... and the Trump nightmare keeps steamrolling along.

So, in short, Trump is dominating and dooming the Republicans, Jeb's out, Rubio is gonna become the Great GOP Hope for the next goddamn news cycle, Cruz is scheming, and Hillary is sitting somewhere in Vegas thinking "I can win with a straight over a full house, right?"

And it's not even March yet.

Update: just to clarify, Trump is pretty much claiming ALL - by winning the state as well as each county/congressional district - of the delegates South Carolina has to offer (50) leaving the Second/Third place "winners" Rubio or Cruz (they're too close to call STILL) with nothing to pin a "victory" on. And yet both Rubio and Cruz gave "victory" speeches avoiding the reality of the fact that Trump is gaining serious distance between himself and the rest of the horse race.

The pundits are going to point out that with Jeb out, the likelihood of his backers switching to Rubio as the best possible candidate vs. Trump will go up. But considering that Jeb had roughly 6-to-8 percent of the GOP voting base and that Trump is pretty much 10-to-12 points ahead of Rubio, Rubio's still not getting enough people out Jeb's departure. And if Kasich does stick it out at least until Ohio's primary (March 15) that is going to cut into Rubio's numbers.

Rubio's not gonna happen, media elites. I don't blame you for thinking he could - as Trump is a nightmare candidate - but he's not gonna save you.

Predicting Character: The Willful Ignorance of Ted Cruz

Today's news was mostly buzz about Senator Ted Cruz's formal announcement to run for the Republican Party nomination for the 2016 Presidency.  There are others who can easily detail the horror and hilarity of the moment better than I.

Researching Cruz's background to develop a world-view analysis is tricky because of his relative newness to the national stage.  Where Jeb Bush's history is easy to find - tied into biographies of his President father and President brother - Cruz doesn't even have an official book biography as a reference point.  The best I could find as a librarian were articles in various magazines and websites, which can provide some profile material but not as much as a full-depth review would need.

Most of what's known about Cruz comes mostly as anecdote, such as:

• His history at Princeton University, where fellow students noted him as "abrasive" and "intense" with an already hardline conservative world-view.  One student noted that he remembers Cruz as someone who wanted to argue over anything or nothing, just for the exercise of arguing. "The only point of Ted talking to you was to convince you of the rightness of his views." The link to that Daily Beast article is pretty much one of the more detailed works on Cruz's biography I've found so far.
• His history at Harvard Law, where he reportedly refused to study with any student who did not previously attend another Ivy League school like Princeton or Harvard (for undergraduate studies).
• His history as an evangelical, where the world-view is permanently set to "Waiting For Rapture" and openly claiming the "world is on fire", as a religious expression of Revelation-esque apocalypse.  It's important to note that evangelicals are pretty much hard-core Believers who do not change their views on anything, religious and political.

In short: Ted Cruz has the mindset of "my way or not at all."  A New Yorker profile said it best in the article's own title: The Absolutist.  To the writer Jeffrey Toobin about Cruz's failures to win friends in his own workplace and his own party:

...Cruz has learned no such lesson. As he travels the country, he has hardened his positions, delighting the base of his party but moving farther from the positions of most Americans on most issues. He denies the existence of man-made climate change, opposes comprehensive immigration reform, rejects marriage equality, and, of course, demands the repeal of “every blessed word of Obamacare.” (Cruz gets his own health-care coverage from Goldman Sachs, where his wife is a vice-president.)...

I have a variable descriptive of Cruz: he is someone willfully ignorant.  Someone smart enough to know how things work, but has made the conscious decision to deny those things to work at all because those things do not fit his personal values or fulfill his objectives. And where the hypocrisy of his ignorance is the most noticeable - his opposition to healthcare coverage while he himself enjoys the best that money can buy, his opposition to immigration reform when he himself as the son of an immigrant profited from the government's functional role as provider to new arrivals - Cruz refuses to acknowledge it, turning the accusations back on the accusers as though debating the conflict of interest away saves his position.

I've mentioned in an earlier, quick one-paragraph review of each major potential GOP candidate that nearly every candidate automatically fulfills the Active-Negative grade.  This is due to three factors:

• Each candidate openly and wholeheartedly accepts the radical Far Right party platform, which disdains a pro-active government in favor of a pro-business, restricted federal system that many previous A-N Presidents pursued as policy.  Cruz not only accepts this, he wants to take it further Right...
• Each candidate openly favors massive spending cuts to social needs yet massive spending increases to military/defense, which happens to pay off their business allies and which plays into a vicious pro-war agenda.  While a good number of A-N Presidents didn't actively pursue many wars (they were pretty much equal to Active-Positives in that) at least not until the 20th Century, many of them did not shirk from the jingoistic fervor that envelopes the nation during wartime moods.  Cruz's pro-war, bomb-Iran stance is a given.
• Each candidate seemingly lacks the laid-back Congenial or Reserved traits common to Passive-Positives or Passive-Negatives, seen from their aggressive gubernatorial and legislative records.  Cruz certainly does not have the reputation of being a Compromiser. 

In terms of legislative successes, Cruz is something of a paradox: he actually doesn't have much of a track record with bills or legislation.  He's in the middle of the pack when it comes to co-sponsored legislation, but has zero of those bills made into law.  Cruz's success has been taking that lack of a legislative record and parading it as evidence he's not one of those "insider" politicians more obsessed with resume-building than "fighting the good fight." (which ironically pads his resume for the anti-government crowds)

As for his odds, Cruz offers another paradox: he's at once the most-liked candidate among the voting base (hi, Tea Partiers!) and the least-liked candidate among his own colleagues.  Cruz's habits of sabotaging legislative efforts in both the Senate and the House (his undercutting of Speaker Boehner in particular violates a lot of unwritten rules of congressional decorum) all in the quest of making himself look good to the rabid primary base has made far too many enemies among his own, which can hurt the part of the campaigning of getting endorsements.

Another knock against Cruz is his extremism, which is pretty harsh even for the primary system that favors the Far Right rhetoric.  To quote again the 538 article:

Cruz is more conservative than every recent nominee, every other candidate who mounted a serious bid in 2012 and every plausible candidate running or potentially running in 2016. Let’s look at three ideological measures: DW-Nominate common-space scores (which are based on a candidate’s voting record in Congress), fundraising ratings (based on who donates to a candidate), and OnTheIssues.org scores (based on public statements made by the candidate). As my colleague Nate Silver has previously noted, these measures aren’t perfect, but together, they give you a fairly good idea of where a candidate stands.

538 even brought a chart:

There's Cruz at the bottom: he's scaling more conservative than the legendary Barry Goldwater, and to the right of failed hard-line candidates like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

This, however, gets to be the scary point: if the 2016 primaries are going to be anything like the 2012 Republican primaries, Cruz has a genuine shot to win.  This is because the 2012 campaign was pretty much a "Mitt vs. Not-Mitt" primary: the Establishment, Deep Pocket candidate Mitt Romney against whomever appealed to the extremist base that did not trust Romney's too-calculated posturing.  Every week a different candidate - Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Newt, Santorum - would be the preferred flavor because those candidates spoke to the twisted spirit and emotions of the Far Right.  Romney won out of sheer endurance because none of those Far Right candidates had the campaign savvy or charm to last.

In 2016, the Establishment candidate Jeb Bush is pretty much running a Jeb vs. Not-Jeb campaign (unofficially).  If a real charmer - Huckabee, as I noted then and now, could have seriously won the 2012 primaries against Mitt - gets in this race, Jeb is going to be toast even with the deep-pocket support much the same way Mitt was toast in 2008.

In fact, Huckabee right now is the only real reason not to fear Cruz.  This year, Huckabee is in the mix, and when he officially announces - which ought to be soon now that jumping into the race is a thing to do - he's going to be stealing and owning the religious conservative base that Cruz relies on for support.

But we dare not count Cruz out.  He has a base of support already.  The polling on him now among Republicans may be weak compared to Bush and Huckabee, but that is due more to those two being established players on the stage.  Cruz is one of those types of fear-baiting demagogues that does well in early primary states like Iowa and South Carolina (not so much in New Hampshire, where they actually consider the small details like actual competency).

The other thing Cruz is going to do is make the primaries play to him.  By going out there as the hardest of hardliners, he will force the debates on immigration and religion and Obamacare to play to his opinions.  He's noted as a decent debater, who will likely stay strong at the podium instead of flaming out like Rick Perry did.

What makes Cruz dangerous as a Presidential candidate is not his debate savvy, however.  What makes him dangerous is his closed world-view that makes him more Active-Negative in the worst way, a world-view that makes him genuinely ignorant of facts.