“At The River’s Edge”: There Aren’t Enough White Voters For GOP Win
With every cycle, American politics is covered more like sports.
There are channels and programs that have elevated once obscure insider moments like the NFL combine or the living rooms of the Iowa caucus into national obsessions. Everyone is an expert because every one watches the game played on television. Everyone blogs, everyone calls into Mad Dog or Rush, everyone knows everything. No one knows anything.
But everyone is an expert. Information is consumed to confirm rather than inform opinions and in the Internet’s endless feedback loop of misinformation, every hunch quickly escalates into an opinion hardened into a truth. If only Seattle had run against New England, they would have won the Super Bowl. And in politics, for many Republicans the most unassailable truth is that winning the presidency is easy if only… and here everyone finishes the sentence with their pet theory of electoral politics.
That there is so much conviction that it might be easy for Republicans to win a national election is an odd one given history. Over the last six presidential elections, Democrats have won 16 states every time for a total of 242 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win. In those same six elections, Republican presidential candidates carried 13 states for 103 electoral votes. Here’s another way to look at it: The last time a Republican presidential candidate won with enough votes to be declared the winner on Election Night was 1988.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and won a landslide victory of 44 states. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 59 percent of whites and lost with 24 states. But it’s a frequent talking point that white voter enthusiasm was higher for Reagan and turnout down for Romney. Not so. In 1980, 59 percent of whites voted and in 2012, 64 percent of whites voted.
But still the myth survives that there are these masses of untapped white voters just waiting for the right candidate. Call it the Lost Tribes of the Amazon theory: If only you paddle far enough up the river and bang the drum loud enough, these previously hidden voters will gather to the river’s edge. The simple truth is that there simply aren’t enough white voters in the America of 2016 to win a national election without also getting a substantial share of the non-white vote. Romney won 17 percent of the non-white vote. Depending on white voter turnout, a Republican needs between 25 percent and 35 percent of the non-white vote to win. RealClearPolitics has a handy tool so you can play with the percentages.
The Trump campaign talks about being able to reach out to Hispanics and African Americans but it’s not an overstatement to say he would be the most unpopular candidate with either group to ever lead a national ticket. Only 12 percent of Hispanics have a favorable view of Trump with 77 percent unfavorable. Even among Hispanic Republicans, he has a 60 percent unfavorable ranking. Among African Americans, 86 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump.
To have even a chance at winning a national election, a nominee must get 90-plus percent of their own party. But one out of every three Republicans view Trump unfavorably.
A function of a contested primary? Not really. Hillary Clinton has an 83 percent favorability with Democrats in the middle of her very hot battle with Bernie Sanders.
One of Hillary Clinton’s greatest weaknesses is her perceived lack of honesty and trust. Only 37 percent of Americans believe she is honest and trustworthy. That could be a devastating opportunity for an opponent to exploit. But only 27 percent of the public believes Donald Trump is honest.
We can go on. But of course none of this will dissuade the Trump believers who will point to his dismantling of the Republican field as proof that he is a new force in politics and to use that popular phrase I loathe, “There are no rules.” It’s a legitimate point and one impossible to argue as there is no alternative universe in which there was an alternative election in which the Republican candidates ran better campaigns against Trump.
It’s true that voter registration and turnout is up in the Republican primaries and I don’t see any reason not to credit Trump with those increases. We’ve seen this before with little impact on the general election but more voters and more voter enthusiasm are positive.
Trump has accumulated about half of the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination and there are credible scenarios where he does not become the nominee. (That’s another piece.) In my view, Donald Trump, if he does claim the party’s mantle, would be a historically weak and vulnerable nominee.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Even if John Kasich or Ted Cruz, the remaining two candidates, were to emerge, the advantage is still very much with the Democrats. And until the party grows its appeal with non-white voters, it’s going to take an inside straight to win the White House.
By: Stuart Stevens, The Daily Beast, March 16, 2016
“Choosing Their Poison”: Anti-Trump Republicans Now Only Have 3 Options: Terrible, Miserable, And Awful
With his near-sweep of Tuesday’s primaries, Donald Trump is now in firm command of the Republican race for president, and although it’s still possible for Ted Cruz to overtake him, it’s looking increasingly likely that Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. Which leaves most Americans (and most of the world) in a state of abject horror, and presents Republican politicians, strategists, and party activists with a dilemma: What do they do?
The time for figuring out how Trump can be stopped from taking over the party is nearly gone. There are essentially three paths left open, none of which are appetizing. The question is merely which brand of poison the party wants to swallow. But each has its pluses and minuses, so let’s investigate:
1. Rally behind Trump. This is the path of least resistance, and it may be the least bad of the options. Yes, many Republicans have said they’d never support him, or at least condemned him in strong terms; they’ll now be confronted with their hypocrisy. But as I’ve argued repeatedly, Trump is going to become a different candidate once the general election comes. Perhaps in the process of appealing to a broader electorate, he’ll also become less bombastic and more serious, and it won’t seem so awful to stand by his side.
And from an ideological standpoint, there’s a powerful logic to it. If you’re a conservative, even if you think Trump would be a terrible president and an inconsistent ally (almost certainly true on both counts), he’d at least do what you want some of the time, which is better than what you’d get with Hillary Clinton as president.
The trouble is that while Trump has the support of a plurality of Republicans, that isn’t anywhere near a majority of the electorate as a whole. So Republicans may decide that it’s better to do their part and try to convince the public that a Trump presidency really would be great. If they succeed, at least they’d get to fill the executive branch with Republicans.
2. Try to take the nomination from Trump at the convention. Trump may get to the necessary 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination outright, but at the moment it’s anything but a sure thing. If he doesn’t, it would bring Republicans to a contested convention, which is likely to be a nightmare no matter what the final result. If it comes to that, the anti-Trump forces will try to find a leader to unite behind, but it won’t be easy. If it’s Ted Cruz or John Kasich, it would be hard to take the nomination from Trump on the grounds that he didn’t win a majority of the delegates, then give it to someone who won even fewer. But giving it to someone who didn’t run at all could be even worse.
Just imagine how Trump’s supporters will react if the very establishment they’ve rebelled against snatches the nomination from their champion and gives it to some low-energy weakling. All their rage and frustration would come pouring out, perhaps literally on the heads of their tormentors. Trump has already said “I think you’d have riots” if such a thing occurred, and you can bet he’d be encouraging them.
And keep in mind that conservative talk radio hosts will spend the months between now and then getting their audiences riled up about what a despicable crime it would be to take the nomination away from Trump and hand it to some establishment stooge (they’re already getting started). So Trump’s supporters would be ready for a fight as soon as they got to Cleveland.
The whole chaotic mess would be broadcast live on TV, making the party look even less responsible and sane than it does now. Then even if the establishment prevailed, chances are strong that many of Trump’s supporters would simply stay home on Election Day out of frustration, increasing the chances that Hillary Clinton gets elected.
3. Mount a third-party bid. This is the most outlandish of the possibilities, yet some people are actively exploring it. There’s a meeting of prominent conservative activists happening Thursday to discuss whether and how to go about it, and some donors have already hired consultants to assemble a roadmap to a third-party campaign. The biggest practical problem is getting on the ballot in all 50 states, which requires lots of signatures before deadlines that are coming up soon. But more important from Republicans’ standpoint is that such an effort is almost guaranteed to fail.
If you had a conservative third-party candidate, he or she would face Trump, taking some portion of Republican voters, and (probably) Hillary Clinton, holding nearly all Democratic voters. A unified Democratic Party facing a Republican Party split in two means the Democrat would win.
Now it may be that some Republicans are so worried about what a Trump presidency would do to the GOP over the long term that they see Hillary Clinton in the White House as a preferable outcome. But I’m guessing there aren’t too many of them. Which is why the first option — swallow your pride, hold your nose, and get behind Trump — is the one most Republicans are probably going to take.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, March 17, 2016
“Aiding The Rise Of Donald Trump”: Rubio Is Gone, But The Damage He Caused Remains
Tuesday night Donald Trump’s main ally in the Republican primary campaign, Sen. Marco Rubio, finally called it quits. He was praised by many Republican pundits, as he typically is, for some of the aspirational language he used in his non-victory speech, though most of those pundits shied away from a fair assessment of Rubio’s behavior during this presidential campaign season.
Here is such an assessment: Rubio ran on a promise of being the candidate of the future with a bold, optimistic platform, but he never delivered on that promise. In the process, he did perhaps irreparable harm to his party and to the country.
First, he ended the campaign season with a platform that can only be characterized as far-right. Sure, Rubio started his campaign with a number of extreme views – for example, he wanted the state to force rape victims to give birth to the child of their rapists and incest victims to give birth to the child of their fathers, while plotting to forcefully disband hundreds of thousands of same-sex marriages.
But it was only a year ago that the senator proposed a tax plan, with Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, that would raise taxes on millions of people in the middle class. By now, his proclaimed tax reform preference involves raising the debt-to-GDP ratio to 150 percent, while lowering Warren Buffett’s tax rate to zero. And that’s not all: He has also gone from supporting amnesty to wanting to deport children who have spent practically their entire life in the U.S., as well as supporting the deportation of the parents of U.S. citizens. In addition, he has proposed closing down not just mosques but also cafes and the like where Muslims may gather.
Now, some of Rubio’s supporters will claim that he does not actually believe in those things and he was just trying to out-Trump Trump, but by endorsing them he made them more respectable.
Second, he has done more than perhaps anyone but Trump to coarsen public debate. It was Rubio, after all, who introduced – and I can’t believe I’m writing this – discussions of penis size to the presidential race.
Third, he has done more than perhaps even Jeb Bush and his donors to help Trump win the Republican nomination in simple delegate terms.
Instead of dropping out after losing in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada (where he used to live!), Rubio set a target of losing the first 25 or so states. He roughly succeeded in losing those states, but in the process he helped Trump amass a significant delegate lead over his most serious opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz. He did this not only by winning delegates himself here and there, but perhaps most harmfully in states like Idaho and Texas by denying Cruz outright majorities that would have made those states winner-take-all. In those two states alone, Trump added 120 delegates to his lead. It is extremely likely that without Rubio, Cruz would have been the Republican front-runner going into this week, thereby fundamentally transforming the dynamics of the race.
Perhaps the senator will yet redeem himself. His almost-tearful press conference this weekend indicated that he might try – but for now, the damage he has done is tremendous.
By: Stan Veuger, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, March 16, 2016
“Trump Doesn’t Really Mean It About The Riots?”: The Aftermath Is Sure To Be Messy If Trump Is Denied
Well, you can relax. It turns out that when Donald Trump said there would be riots in Cleveland if he is denied the nomination, he was only speaking figuratively. So says the Republican National Committee’s chief strategist and spokesman, Sean Spicer:
“Well first of all, I assume he’s speaking figuratively,” Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist and spokesman, told CNN. “I think if we go into a convention, whoever gets 1,237 delegates becomes the nominee. It’s plain and simple.”
CNN host Carol Costello pushed back, remarking that she did not think Trump was speaking figuratively when he told the network’s morning show that in the event he comes up short of the nomination, “I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots.”
Spicer disputed the assessment, remarking, “It’s the left, and the people on the left that have disrupted events are trying to go in and undermine people’s First Amendment rights,” a possible allusion to protesters supporting Bernie Sanders who forced the cancellation of Trump’s rally in Chicago last Friday.
Given the definition of figuratively, we have to assume that Spicer doesn’t believe Trump meant it when he said that there would be riots. Maybe he thinks whatever fisticuffs occur among foaming-mad delegates won’t rise to the level where the term “riot” would “literally” apply.
If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, the question will be whether the riot occurs right then and there in an effort to intimidate those intriguing against him, or if the riot only breaks out after Trump has been outmaneuvered and sidelined.
I’m pretty sure that it will prove impossible to have a “plain and simple” second ballot vote, but the aftermath is sure to be messy if Trump is denied. Will Trump’s delegates file peacefully out of the convention hall in protest? Will Trump take to the podium and promise to pay their legal fees if they assault opposing delegates?
It’s not going to be orderly. I’m sure of that.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, March 16, 2015
“Pandering To Prejudice”: Trump Loses Two Delegates Because Of Their Foreign-Sounding Names
Two Trump delegates with foreign-sounding (i.e., Muslim) names failed to make the top three spots during last night’s Illinois primary, despite overwhelming Trump support in the districts they represented.
The state has one of the most complex delegate allotment schemes in the country. Rather than receiving just one delegate per electoral district, the Illinois primary provides three delegates per electoral district. That means that Illinois has 54 delegates who have already pledged to a presidential candidate to draw from its 18 electoral districts. And following the results of the primary, the first place candidate, is awarded another 15 delegates during the national convention.
The results were further proof of Trump’s pandering to prejudice in his run for the Republican nomination. The two candidates, Nabi Fakroddin and Raja Sadiq, prevented Trump from winning even more candidates in Illinois. The drop in support for the two was notable because Trump delegates won in the third and sixth districts. In the sixth district, Paul Minch won the district with 35,435 votes while Barbara Kois got 35,120 votes. But Fakroddin finished sixth with 5,000 fewer votes, despite running as a Trump delegate. That allowed a John Kasich supporter to take the third place spot, giving the Ohio governor an extra delegate.
The same took place with Sadiq in the third district. He should have finished somewhere in the top three, again, given that Trump won the state. But he also finished in sixth place, with 25 percent fewer votes than Doug Hartmann, the Trump candidate who won. Ted Cruz supporters took second, third and fourth place there. Even the fifth place finisher, Toni Gauen, also a Trump delegate, got 4,000 more votes than Sadiq.
While the loss of a couple delegates won’t hurt Trump as he bulldozes his way to the Republican nomination, the virulent form of Islamophobia he has espoused likely played a roll in the results for Fakroddin and Sadiq. Trump’s supporters are among the most hostile to Muslims. Some 67 percent hold unfavorable views of American Muslims, while 87 percent said they support his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.
It’s unlikely that this phenomenon will repeat itself, simply because there aren’t many Muslims supporting Trump. But if the Republican frontrunner’s targeting of other minorities (Mexicans, Hispanics, African Americans, women) continues, Trump delegates with non-white names could see themselves losing primary races due to the same man they represent. In that case, it would be perhaps the only time Trump’s overt appeals to white nationalism haven’t helped his campaign in some way.
By: Saif Alnuweiri, The National Memo, March 16, 2016
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