“Super-Duper Tuesday”: March 15 Could Be A Bigger Deal For The 2016 Presidential Race Than Super Tuesday
A few weeks ago, I began to map out the March Madness that is the race for the White House. There has been a lot of focus on yesterday’s March 1 Super Tuesday line up. On the Democratic side after all, 859 delegates were at stake, roughly 20 per cent of the total. Republicans had about 25 per cent at stake.
For both parties, things shook out more or less as expected: advantage Clinton and Trump. But, given the results, one can argue that the lead up to March 15 and that big day may be even more critical.
For the Democrats, 11 states are up in the next two weeks with nearly 1,000 at stake, more than yesterday’s total. Three of these are caucuses – Maine, Nebraska and Kansas – and the rest are primaries. Michigan next week has 130 delegates, Florida has 214, Illinois has 156, Ohio has 143, North Carolina has 107 and Missouri has 71. As we know with the Democrats, there are no winner-take-all primaries and delegates are awarded proportionately.
For the Republicans, one can argue that the winner-take-all primaries of Florida and Ohio are now looming as critical to any effort to stop Donald Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio has to win Florida and Gov. John Kasich has to win Ohio. If Trump wins those states, plus does well in the other 13 contests, he will be well on his way to securing a majority of the delegates.
Clinton is piling up large delegate leads in states with very diverse populations, especially in the South. She stands to not only win Louisiana and Mississippi handily in the next couple of weeks but also could score big victories in Illinois (with a 43 percent non-white Democratic primary electorate), North Carolina (38 percent non-white), Florida (34 percent non-white), and possibly Michigan (28 percent non-white) and Ohio (24 percent non-white).
Sen. Bernie Sanders can not win enough delegates by scoring victories in caucus states like Maine, Nebraska or Kansas. He must win the big states and Michigan is the first up on March 8. He has the money to stay in and compete but this is now about the math. He can’t continue to lose major delegate-rich states, especially by large margins.
So, the next two weeks and March 15 will be very important for Clinton’s march to 2,383 delegates and Trump’s effort to amass 1,237. Unless Sanders can show that he can win in a number of these big delegate-rich states, he will not be able to overtake Clinton, especially with her huge lead with the 712 super delegates. Also, Republicans’ efforts to stop Trump may rise or fall in the next two weeks.
There will be more to come, but we may be talking about the Super-sized Tuesday come March 15.
By: Peter Fenn, Democratic Political Strategist and Head of Fenn Communications; U. S. News and World Report, March 2, 2016
“Marco Rubio Is Right: Donald Trump Is A Con Man”: The Key To The Donald’s Success Has Always Been A Gullible Public
Even now, as Republicans mount a last, desperate attempt to stop Donald Trump, they have to do it on his terms, not theirs.
They tried saying he wasn’t conservative enough, because, they thought, isn’t that what we’ve been arguing about for the last few years? Who’s a real conservative and who isn’t? But it turned out that while ideology matters a great deal to the elite, it’s less important to the rank and file, and it doesn’t matter at all to the plurality of Republican voters supporting Trump. Then they figured he might just implode on his own, so nobody bothered to dig up the dirt that would arm them against him. Despite the fact that there surely is plenty there.
It was the South Carolina primary that finally made Republicans realize that everything they had been doing when it came to Trump was wrong. It wasn’t just that he won, it was that he won after a debate in which he actually—brace yourself—criticized George W. Bush for not stopping September 11. Jaws hung slack as one of the most critical conservative taboos was violated, and someone calling himself a Republican mocked the idea that Bush “kept us safe.” Then Trump won South Carolina anyway, and won Nevada to boot.
After that, Marco Rubio obviously decided that the only way to beat Trump was to be Trump, or at least a somewhat less compelling version of him. So the guy who had touted himself as knowledgeable, smart, and serious went out and started tossing personal insults at Trump, with all the cleverness of your average fifth grader. “Donald Trump likes to sue people,” Rubio said. “He should sue whoever did that to his face.” Zing! Trump replied that Rubio isn’t smart enough to get into the University of Pennsylvania, where he went to school. Zap!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln would be so proud.
But in the back-and-forth, Rubio may have come upon an attack that might lead some people to reconsider their support of Trump: that he’s a con man.
At the moment, Rubio is making the case through the story of Trump University, which does indeed appear to have been a con. People desperate to change their financial circumstances were roped into seminars on the belief they’d be learning Trump’s real-estate secrets, when in fact, “The contents and materials presented by Trump University were developed in large part by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and seminar and time-share rental companies,” according to a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Once they had you there, they’d tell you that to learn the real secrets you’d have to pay for a higher-level (and of course even more expensive) seminar. And the instructors “urged students to call their credit card companies during a break in the sessions, requesting increases to their credit limits.”
While Trump University may be the clearest example of a con game Trump has established, is it really that far from Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, or the Trump presidential campaign? Trump’s business these days is less about real estate than it is about monetizing his brand. Here’s the model: Take a crappy third-rate product, slap the name “Trump” on it, and hope that rubes who are blinded by the big plane and the gold-plated furnishings will think they’re buying success.
But the idea that Trump is a con man isn’t potent simply because it’s true. Like the most successful campaign messages, it not only tells you something about who the candidate is, it tells you something about who you are if you vote for him.
The best presidential campaigns have always done this. If you voted for Richard Nixon in 1968, you were part of the Silent Majority, the ones who were sick and tired of hippies and protesters and the degradation of their society. If you voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, you were optimistic and confident, ready to march into an American future that would be just like the past, only even better. And if you voted for Barack Obama in 2008, you were young, hip, creative, multicultural, open-minded, and future-oriented.
The story Trump tells is that his voters are fed up with losing, angry at the idiots in Washington, and ready for a strong leader who can kick the stuffing out of all the immigrants and foreigners keeping us down. But there’s another story you can tell about them: They’re marks. They’re losers. They’re suckers.
Every con man needs suckers, after all—the people who are gullible and dumb enough to turn over their money (or in this case their votes) to the one doing the conning. But a sucker is the last thing anyone wants to be.
The trouble is that America is full of suckers. We’re a nation of people who pay money to have motivational speakers tell us to reach for our dreams, who buy books describing three-year-olds who got to heaven and meet Jesus on his “rainbow horse,” who also bought millions and millions of copies of The Secret, which told you that if you wanted something, like a new Hermes handbag, you just needed to imagine yourself having it and it would actualize its way to you. We’re a nation of the Puritan ethic but also of the get-rich-quick scheme, and Donald Trump’s presidential run is the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme. Just vote for Trump, and before you know it “We will have so much winning … you will get bored with winning.”
Well if you believe that, you are indeed a sucker. The problem for Marco Rubio and the rest of the GOP is that it may just be too late to make the case. Super Tuesday is this week, and Trump may deliver a crushing blow to his opponents as all those suckers come out to vote for him, ready to make America great again. How long can he keep this con going? We’re all going to find out.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 2, 2016
“The Threat He Embodies”: Against Fascism; For Honest Conservatives, The Only Answer Is #NeverTrump
From his opening slur against Mexicans to his current coddling of the Ku Klux Klan, Donald Trump has shaped the Republican presidential race into a character test for conservatives. For months too many of the country’s most prominent figures on the right have failed to respond adequately to the threat he embodies. Yet now, as Trump seems favored to clinch the GOP nomination, a growing cohort of principled Republicans is forthrightly proclaiming #NeverTrump – and placing country and Constitution above narrow partisanship.
It may be too late to save the Grand Old Party from the extremist contamination that Trump represents, but it is never too late to stand on principle.
Many Republicans have opposed Trump all along, of course, while supporting one or another alternative on the party’s overcrowded debate stage. The casino mogul was too vulgar, too inexperienced, too empty, too populist, or simply too compromised by his long record of contradictory political positions and alliances. Back when all of the Republican presidential candidates signed that pledge to support the eventual nominee, however, uniting the party behind Trump still seemed possible. They didn’t trust him, but they might have supported him anyway in order to win back the White House.
That tempting path is no longer open for any honorable conservative – and fortunately for America, there seems to be quite an assortment of them, including Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, RedState editor Erick Erickson, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and Iowa radio personality Steve Deace. Although they held varying opinions of Trump until recently, they agree today that his appeals to bigotry, his despotic attitudes, and his coziness with white supremacists and neo-Nazis are — as Scarborough put it — “disqualifying” for his presidential candidacy.
And while others like Ann Coulter, Mike Huckabee, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and radio host Hugh Hewitt still promote Trump, to their eternal disgrace, the #NeverTrump conservatives have vowed not to support or vote for him under any circumstances.
Nobody should discount how difficult that stance must be for committed Republicans, especially given the strong likelihood that Hillary Clinton will secure the Democratic nomination. Not a few of them sincerely despise her (and none of them would be thrilled with a President Bernie Sanders, either). Nevertheless they appear to realize that Trump is in a wholly different category from any normal partisan or ideological foe. There is more at stake than a single election, even an election as significant as this one.
It is fair to wonder why so many conservatives didn’t seem to comprehend Trump’s toxic essence from the moment he brayed about Mexican “rapists” in his rambling announcement speech. For too long, right-wing pundits and politicians seemed much more disturbed by his past positions on healthcare, abortion, and guns than his current appeals to racism, xenophobia, and violence. Even last January, when the National Review devoted an entire issue to essays scourging Trump, most contributors worried about his issue positions and electability rather than his demagogic contempt for American values.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party and the conservative movement have not yet confronted the profound problems that Trump did not cause but merely symbolizes. His rise can be traced to the racial undercurrent in the Tea Party movement, the segregationist legacy of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, the Willie Horton tactics used by George H.W. Bush, and the Southern strategy deployed by Richard Nixon – indeed, the whole long history of ugliness not just tolerated but often celebrated on the right. Combined with the coarse, vacuous culture epitomized by Fox News and encouraged by the right’s leading intellectuals, that tainted history made someone like Trump almost inevitable.
Whether the party of Abraham Lincoln can be preserved and rehabilitated in the aftermath of a Trump nomination remains to be seen. For conservatives determined to rescue their movement and their party from fascist perdition, the way forward is clear if painful. Author and journalist Max Boot — who was among the first conservatives to reject Trump for the right reasons — addressed the depth of their dilemma with refreshing candor.
“I’m a lifelong Republican,” he reflected on Twitter the other day, “but [the] Trump surge proves that every bad thing Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true.” Bitter as it is, that verdict may signal the possibility of real reform someday.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, The National Memo, March 1, 2016
“The White Supremacists’ Candidate”: Trump’s Racial Controversies Leave GOP In Awkward Spot
It was just a few days ago that Donald Trump, pressed to respond to support from former KKK leader David Duke, told reporters, ”I didn’t even know he endorsed me. David Duke endorsed me? I disavow, OK?”
Yesterday, however, Trump was asked again about support from overt racists, and this time, the Republican presidential candidate’s line grew murky.
In an interview Sunday morning, GOP front-runner Donald Trump would not condemn former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke’s support for his presidential campaign, telling CNN host Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that he has no knowledge of the white supremacist leader.
“Just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on,” Trump said.
Asked about his willingness to condemn white supremacists, Trump was hardly unequivocal. “Well, I have to look at the group,” he told Jake Tapper. “I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups I will do research on them and certainly I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong. But you may have groups in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair. So give me a list of the groups and I’ll let you know.”
Not surprisingly, the exchange prompted yet another round of “Will this sink Trump’s campaign?” speculation, and it wasn’t long before the GOP candidate’s rivals were publicly criticizing Trump’s apparent reluctance to denounce his white-supremacist allies.
In a year like this one, guessing how conservative voters might respond to various developments is increasingly difficult. That said, it’s important to understand the degree to which the Republican Party is in an exceedingly awkward position.
At a Virginia event yesterday, for example, Marco Rubio was eager to denounce Trump’s latest racially charged controversy. And who was introducing Rubio on the campaign trail yesterday? That would be none other than Virginia’s former governor and senator, George Allen (R), whose career was cut short in the wake of his own racially charged controversy.
What’s more, while Trump evidently no longer knows what to say about David Duke, let’s also not forget that Louisiana’s Steve Scalise spoke at an event for white supremacists several years ago and described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” House Republicans nevertheless made Steve Scalise the House Majority Whip – the #3 position in the House GOP leadership – and largely failed to even criticize him after the public learned about Scalise’s past.
More to the point, Trump’s most notable contribution to the political discourse – before his racially charged rhetoric as a presidential candidate – was his leadership role in the “birther” conspiracy theory, which, at its core, was racist nonsense. Republican leaders not only failed to denounce Trump’s ridiculous crusade, they also publicly welcomed his support and endorsements, Trump’s “birtherism” notwithstanding.
With this in mind, isn’t it a little late for GOP officials and candidates to wring their hands and claim the high ground? Had Republicans been consistent all along – removing Scalise from his leadership post, denouncing the “birther” garbage from the outset, etc. – the party would likely be in a more credible position now, but that point passed long ago.
Postscript: On a related note, Rachel has an incredibly well-timed piece in the Washington Post that you’re going to want to check out: What does it say about the GOP that Trump is the white supremacists’ candidate?”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 29, 2016
“A Much Smarter Politician”: Donald Trump Has Already Won The GOP Nomination. Now He’s Pivoting To Center
The entire establishment Right and much of the press are singularly obsessed with one question: how do we stop Donald Trump? The GOP is engaged in a “desperate mission” to stop him; Nate Cohn of the New York Times is speculating on how Rubio might be able to win the nomination without winning any Super Tuesday states; GOP strategist Stuart Stevens is offering messaging advice on how Republican candidates can still beat Trump; conservative media figures from RedState to National Review are still frantically trying to advance Marco Rubio’s cause.
But the reality is that barring some unforeseen collapse, Donald Trump has already locked up the GOP nomination. He is a national frontrunner who has come off three consecutive victories. There is no state polled outside of Texas in which Trump does not currently lead–and there he trails local favorite Ted Cruz, who is otherwise flagging behind Marco Rubio, the establishment lane candidate who trails Trump even in his own home state of Florida. The longer the primary season wears on, the more voters’ minds become made up and the loyalty to their preferred candidates hardens.
Some Republicans are hoping that as the field winnows to one or two candidates, Trump’s ceiling will be overcome by the number of Republicans voting against him. But there is no reason to believe that a two-person race will save the GOP from Trump. The evidence suggests that Trump, Carson and Cruz are trading essentially the same pool of voters–the so-called anti-establishment lane. Kasich and Rubio are vying for the same pool of establishment voters. But the key is that in most states, the anti-establishment lane is winning 55-60% of the vote. The only plausible pathway to an establishment victory would involve Kasich dropping out and ceding the field to Rubio even as Carson and Cruz stay in and chip away at Trump’s anti-establishment vote, allowing Rubio to slip in by the back door in a brokered convention. That scenario seems like a distant long shot, especially as an increasing number of politicians like Chris Christie see the handwriting on the wall and begin endorsing Trump.
Some Republican donors have seen the truth of the situation and are already looking into the possibility of an independent run for President–though no credible conservative candidate is yet forthcoming. Some are resigned. Some are in denial. But Trump has almost certainly already locked up the nomination.
That in turn explains some of Trump’s supposedly confusing and heretical behavior for a Republican candidate in recent speeches and debates. Trump has attacked George Bush over 9/11 and Iraq. He has attacked corporate cronyism and medical insurance companies. He has derided the inability of the government to negotiate on Medicare prices. He has spoken kind words about Bernie Sanders and his populist appeal. He has defended Planned Parenthood and his support for universal healthcare.
That’s because Donald Trump is a much smarter politician than almost anyone gives him credit for. Aware that he mostly has the Republican primary sewn up regardless of what he says or does, Trump is already pivoting to center. He is establishing his dual-purpose populist bona fides for the general election as a Jacksonian Democrat–fiercely racist and anti-immigrant, brash and outspoken, autocratic and authoritarian, anti-interventionist, anti-establishment and anti-corruption.
Trump’s pitch is simple: “I can’t be bought, and I’ll put real Americans first.” That includes xenophobic opposition to immigrants and various “others” in society that tickles the fancy of conservative voters, but it also includes anti-offshoring, anti-outsourcing and anti-corporate collusion platforms that will appeal broadly to many Democrats and independents as well.
Democrats, for their part, seem likely to nominate in the general election a candidate who is a quintessential neoliberal establishment figure and long-time supporter of free trade and high finance, and who will make a perfect foil and punching bag for Trump’s populist arguments. Rather than counter and anticipate Trump’s unique appeal, Democrats seem likely instead to believe that exposing Trump’s sleazy past will be enough to turn serious-minded independent voters away from him, and that Trump’s xenophobia will be enough to generate record turnout among the growing number of Hispanic and other minority voters.
Perhaps that’s a good bet. But everyone who has wagered against Trump has had egg on their face so far, even as Bernie Sanders’ parallel populist appeal has also dramatically outperformed expectations (though it will likely fall short.)
Trump may not win the general election. But he will be the Republican nominee, and he’ll be a much tougher general election candidate than most are currently acknowledging.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 27, 2016
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