That article seems to come at it at a different angle than I take his statements. I thought he was always saying that the trade deficit gives the U.S. leverage to force them to build the wall. i.e. they are the losers in a trade war if we force the issue that way.
No doubt Trump gets support from both of those demographics. I was making the rather acerbic point that a substantial segment of Trump’s support does not come from a particularly rational or morally defensible place. Trump’s mannerisms and rhetoric are those of the classic demagogue, and therefore much of his base – though certainly not all of it – is constituted accordingly.
Over at Upshot, it seems that Trump is winning but also doing worse than what polls suggest. Here are the estimated delegate gains:
Trump ~246
Cruz ~178
Rubio ~121
Kasich ~18
Carson ~5
Note that Cruz+Rubio total to ~299, which is higher than Trump’s score. Though the big Winner Take All contests are still in front of us.
Trump looks like he might get 3rd in Minnesota. At least we end the night with a small piece of good news.
At this point it’s really just about denying Trump a first ballot majority. None of these guys can do it, they can only deny it to Trump. Rubio needs to win Florida, Kasich needs to win Ohio. And we need Rubio to get some more wins somewhere.
If that holds up then it has to be considered a good night for the Stop Trump movement. Trump polls best in the SEC states and on the day most of those states voted we kept Trump from a majority.
Certainly he may believe that. It’s unlikely that he goes to Safeway or Kroger for his fresh fruits and vegetables.
His butler probably goes to Whole Foods to pick them up but I’m not sure what difference that makes.
I’m wondering whether the establishment will attempt a divide and conquer or block Trump strategy. Allocate different big states to different candidates. The problem is that Cruz is hard to work with. I could imagine Rubio and Kasich cutting a deal, if it made sense.
Nobody in the GOP really has the power to knock heads though. Based on behavior so far, I say that Trump will need to be stopped by non-politicians. Pundits and opinion leaders.
This could very well be a once in a lifetime election.
While I’m uncertain how much of the trade deficit I’m contributing to, many of the fresh fruits and vegetables I buy come from Mexico.
Alabama would be a good example, Lord help us all:
Trump way ahead and clear winner in Alabama. The three crazies way behind. Kasich, the sane one, barely gets over 4%.
On the Dem side, Hillary is the overwhelming winner, Bernie doesn’t even get 20%.
I don’t know what Alabama’s state motto is, but I’ll guess “We’re so backwards even our Democrats are regressive troglodytes!”
No dealmaking is really required. Rubio and Kasich just have to replicate Cruz’s performance in their states and Rubio and Cruz need to keep it close in the proportional states, hopefully winning more delegates between them than Trump like they may have done today.
Interestingly, Trump’s stock dropped a little today on Predictit. He lost 7 points. He’s still the favorite to be the nominee, but the odds of a brokered convention are now going at 31%.
For the establishment prior to today, it was “Get out! Get out!” to everyone but Rubio. I think after today, it’s “No! Stay in! Stay in!” for pretty much all the candidates.
The way you spin things is humorous.
“Oh look, Kasich has 0.2% of the vote and is in 7th in one small state. Trump can still lose!”
The probability is that Trump is the nominee. Wishful thinking and grasping at straws accomplishes what?
The Republican electorate has spoken. They want Trump. If the party finds a way to deny him the nomination, they’re going to have more problems than if he wins it. You can’t let the voters in, give them their say, and deny them the result they want. All those Trumpians are going to take their ball and go home if they get robbed by the party elite. It’s over, there will be no brokered convention, you have your nominee, you made your bed and it’s time to lie in it.
Well, you are contributing your fair share to the deficit I suspect. But the point is that Mexico makes more koney from the US than the other way around. So istm, Trump is saying you can use that to strongarm them into paying for the wall, not that the trade defecit will somehow pay for the wall.
For Trump to rightfully earn the nomination, he needs a majority of Republican voters. If he only wins say, a third of them, then he can’t very well bitch about the delegate rules. He just wasn’t the choice of the voters, fair and square. Sure, the other candidates got even less, but in the absence of a majority, no one really has a claim on the nomination. So the delegates start compromising.
Go ahead, tell his voters in the thirty five or so states that he’s going to win that they have to support Cruzio. Just let me pop some corn first.
BTW, doesn’t this mean that NO GOP candidate hit their targets, according to 538?
Yeah, I understand that, but how’s he going to do that? Cut me off from tomatoes and onions? From green peppers and lettuce? Does he think that I’m willing to pay higher prices in the grocery store in order to pay for the wall?
So Trump is still on pace with the number he needs to win an outright majority by the end of the primary calendar (as has been mentioned upthread.) I also think we’re going to see the GOP formally abandon the “coalesce around the anti-Trump” strategy. For a few reasons:
-
It isn’t clear Rubio would beat Trump in a strategy like that, because the vanquishing of Cruz will see a lot of voters peeled off toward Trump, and Trump does decent % wise with the Carson voters as well. Cruz may have been able to beat Trump 1v1 if the race had been 1v1 from the beginning, but even that’s not likely–Trump beat Cruz where he’s strongest, everywhere throughout the evangelical South other than his home state of Texas and Oklahoma. So honestly there isn’t a great 1v1 option. On top of that, everyone knows Rubio won’t back out, and the establishment would probably flip a coin picking between whom they hated more between Trump and Cruz, so they are never going to push Rubio to sit out in preference for Cruz.
-
It looks like the candidates left may have the unique geographic ability to starve Trump of delegates to the point of forcing a contested convention, that none of them alone have–this includes John Kasich. Kasich is in a dead heat in Ohio, a winner take all state that is worth 66 delegates. Rubio is the best chance of beating Trump in Florida, which is worth 99 delegates. Cruz probably has at least a couple more states on the calendar where he too might win.
On the flipside, I think if Trump wins both Ohio and Florida then you’ll probably see even more movement among the establishment to get behind Trump. Some guys will never get behind him, but as the behavior of figures like Christie and several Congressman and a Senator has shown, at least some of the establishment will.