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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The mainstream news media was all hepped up yesterday to declare Super Tuesday as the event that cinched the nominations of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, a bias they confirmed by rapidly calling the most obvious states for their heroes: Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas (Trump over Cruz 32.7-30.5%), Tennessee, Virginia (Trump over Rubio 34.7-31.9%), and Massachusetts (Clinton over Sanders -%). Then not much else broke as they expected. Everyone expected Cruz to take Texas (over Trump 43.8-26.7%), but he also won Oklahoma and Alaska. Finally, Marco Rubio won in Minnesota (over Cruz 36.5-29.0%, with Trump at 21.3%, how lowest share of the night).

Sanders was a shoe-in for Vermont (86.1-13.6%; Trump prevailed over Kasich there 32.7-30.4%), but he also won impressively in Minnesota (61.6-38.4%) and Colorado (58.9-40.4%), and surprisingly in Oklahoma (51.9-41.5% -- 538's polls and models favored Sanders there, but I didn't really believe them). Clinton won blowouts across the south, sweeping Virginia (64.3-35.2%) and Arkansas (66.3-29.7%) and four states she has no prayer of winning in the fall (she got 65.2% in Texas, 66.1% in Tennessee, 71.3% in Georgia, and 77.6% in Alabama). The only close contest was in Massachusetts, which she won 50.1-48.7%. That seems like a state Sanders should have won (and needed to win to have a shot at the nomination), but having lived there, one thing I recall is that the state harbors some of the most reactionary Democrats in the north, if not the whole country. I don't know how significant that was, but it's something you wouldn't be aware of unless you lived there.

It seems pretty clear that Clinton will win the nomination: she's running a little ahead of 538's targets, accumulating a majority of popularly elected delegates, plus she has that huge superdelegate advantage. She also appears to be headed toward some big wins in March primaries: 538's polling averages show her winning handsomely in Michigan (60.7-36.3%), Florida (66.8-29.8%), Illinois (65.5-30.4%), North Carolina (59.7-36.8%), and Ohio (60.1-37.6%). Sanders' next best chance is April 5 in Wisconsin, where polling is close to tied. I'm not seeing any polling for the March 5 caucuses in Louisiana, Kansas, and Nebraska, or March 6 for Maine. I expect Kansas and Nebraska to be close, and Maine to tilt to Sanders, so he may get some good news before the bad. At some point I think Sanders needs to pivot his campaign toward retaking Congress -- say thanks for supporting him by campaigning for his supporters, which would allow him to stay on the campaign trail until November, and build up a party which would pull Clinton to the left.

Trump didn't top 50% anywhere (he came close in Massachusetts with 49.3%, followed by 43.4% in Alabama, 38.9% in Tennessee, 38.8% in Georgia, but took less than 35% in his owner wins, bottoming out in Minnesota). And Trump wound up with less than half of the delegates (319 vs. 369 for the not-so-united opposition). He's still the frontrunner and may still be on track to the nomination, but he's not exactly blowing everyone else away. The best you can say for his chances is that no one else looks to have a chance. Kasich finished second in Vermont (close) and Massachusetts (distant, Trump winning 49.3-18.0%). Presumably he'll hang around for Ohio, where he's polling a few points behind Trump. A win there might give him a shot at a broken/brokered convention, as establishment favorite Rubio continues to falter: he won Minnesota, and came in second in Virginia (close) and Georgia (distant), but he specializes in thirds -- eight of them, everywhere else. Carson's best state was Alabama (10.2%), which netted him 0 delegates. Today he conceded that he sees no 'path forward' for his campaign, but rather than suspending it he'll just fade into occlusion (like the last Shiite Imam). Presumably his voters will gravitate toward Trump (if they don't follow their leader into occlusion).

That leaves Cruz, who'd like establishment conservatives to realize that he's their last chance to stop Trump -- something that it's safe to say isn't going to happen, if only because many of them despise Cruz even more viscerally than they do Trump. They may, after all, worry that Trump isn't a true conservative, but Cruz is so true he makes their carefully worded rationalizations look like a cruel joke. And while they may not wish to admit it, Trump at least is thoroughly corruptible, with a substantial personal stake in his fortune. Cruz, on the other hand, has the air of a true believer, the sort of fanatic who in his extremism could bring them all down. (Hence Rubio: never in history has a candidate so completely looked the part of a tool of his donors' interests. No wonder he's their favorite.)

Some links:

• FiveThirtyEight: Super Tuesday: Live Coverage and Results: Start at the bottom if you want to follow the night minute-by-minute, the bottom having a lot of background data (since it started before any new data came in). Only some of this avalanche of info is useful, but note, for instance, at 6:53PM someone asked about Rubio's polls, and Harry Enten answered: "The two states where [Rubio] has been competitive, according to data I've seen, are Minnesota and Utah." That was before Rubio won Minnesota. Also suggests that if he was going to win anywhere, that would be it, and winning there doesn't suggest he's going to win anywhere else (well, except Utah, maybe).

• Nate Silver: Can Republicans Still Take the Nomination From Trump? Main thing I take away here is that the picture will become much clearer after March 15, when winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio can shift the delegate counts dramatically. Currently 538 has Kasich slightly ahead of Trump in terms of "chance of winning" Ohio (41-39%), but the poll data tilts the other way: Trump (30.1%), Kasich (27.4%), Rubio (21.6%), Cruz (18.8%). Trump is doing a little better in Florida, with 41.4% polling average, vs. Rubio (35.2%), Cruz (12.4%), and Kasich (8.5%). If Trump wins both, I don't see how he can fail to take the nomination.

  By the way, the other polling averages for March primaries: Michigan (March 8): Trump 38.4%, Rubio 24.9%, Cruz 17.4%, Kasich 15.1%; Illinois (March 15): Trump 37.3%, Rubio 29.4%, Cruz 16.8%, Kasich 13.1%; North Carolina (March 15): Trump 31.3%, Rubio 29.0%, Cruz 21.8%, Kasich 12.9%; Arizona (March 22): no average, but latest poll shows Trump 35%, Rubio 23%, Cruz 14%, Kasich 7%. Trump is also leading polls for April primaries in Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania. Nothing on smaller states, but March 5 could be a good day for Cruz with caucuses in Louisiana, Kansas, and Nebraska (contiguous, as they are, with three of his four wins: Texas, Oklahoma, and Iowa).

• Clare Malone: If You Want to Understand What's Roiling the 2016 Election, Go to Oklahoma: This was written a couple days before the election, when Sanders upset Clinton, and Cruz pulled ahead of Trump. It's been a long time since anyone has brought up Oklahoma's early-19th-century populist past, but when you're looking for explanations, it's always handy to grasp at straws.

• Nate Silver: Don't Assume Conservatives Will Rally Behind Trump: Another piece from before the election. Useful mostly because it looks back at the history of partisan abandonment ("share of party's voters voting against its presidential candidate"), something Democrats have done more often than Republicans (indeed, aside from 1964 Republican defections appear to have mostly gone to third party candidates. But note that 2012 had the lowest total figure (8+7) since the chart starts up in 1952, and 2004 had the second lowest (11+7) -- one can argue that after a lot of party-jumping from 1952-1996 we've entered a new period of stability. Sure, Trump could change that, both by losing Republicans and by drawing Democrats. Perhaps Sanders also (conversely, of course). But I don't expect many Republicans to cross over and vote Democratic -- just too much pent-up hatred to swallow that pill. And thus far I haven't heard any credible talk of a third party candidate meant to torpedo Trump support among Republicans, even at the cost of throwing the presidency to Hillary Clinton. (Bloomberg maybe, but he seems far more animated by Sanders than Trump, which makes sense given where his billions come from.) That leaves, who? The Republicans are a party of lemmings. They'll follow anyone off the cliff.

• Amanda Girard: How Hillary Clinton's Super Tuesday 'Win' Relied on Dismal Voter Turnout: Some numbers here. Sanders has been hoping that high voter turnout will boost his chances. Most of the numbers I've seen are down from 2008 (Clinton v. Obama), but that's a pretty high bar. The chart does suggest that Sanders do relatively well where the turnout is relatively high: turnout in the five states Sanders won or barely lost (Massachusetts) was down 8.8%; in the six southern states Clinton won by landslides, turnout was down 32.7%. That really just corresponds to the adage that competitive races draw more interest. On the other hand, Republican turnout has generally been high higher this year, which probably has more to do with the competitiveness of the races (and the obscene amounts of money spent on them) than a net shift to the GOP.

• Martin Wolf: Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end: Intellectual mischief, introducing the phrase "pluto-populism" ("the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism" -- the more common historical term for this is "fascism").

• Kevin Drumm: Will Conservatives Do the Right Thing in November?: Uh, no: even though focus groups have long cautioned conservatives against over-the-top racism (while identifying all manner of viable "dog whistles"), deep down the only thing conservatives really care about is their money, and they'll do whatever it takes to grab the political clout they need to keep their good thing going. I got a kick out of this quote from Bret Stephens complaining about how unfairly conservatives have been maligned for trading on racism:

  It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years. Nativist bigotries must not be allowed to become the animating spirit of the Republican Party. If Donald Trump becomes the candidate, he will not win the presidency, but he will help vindicate the left's ugly indictment. It will be left to decent conservatives to pick up the pieces -- and what's left of the party.

  That's a real knee-slapper, "decent conservatives." I won't deny that there are decent people who identify with conservatism, mostly because the movement flatters them for their personal virtues -- most of which I approve of and share in -- and they take that as some sort of tribal identity. But the conservative movement doesn't stop there. It takes advantage of their decency and isolation and uses that to promote the wealth of a very few at the expense of nearly everyone else.

• Colbert Rips Trump's KKK Fumble: 'This is the Easiest Question in Politics!': It should be pretty pro forma by now for Republicans to disavow David Duke and the KKK -- it's not like they haven't had to do it before -- but somehow Trump hesitated. I saw a meme on Facebook from The Other 98% -- somehow Facebook has made it impossible to share their photos anywhere else (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). The text reads: "Donald Trump eagerly attacks Muslims, Mexicans, journalists, newspapers, scientists, women who aren't pretty enough for him, women who breastfeed, people who are taken prisoner, Macy's, Apple, fat people, thirsty people, handicapped people and the Pope . . . but he has to be careful and do more research before he criticizes the KKK."

• Peter Beinart: Why Liberals Should Vote for Marco Rubio: OK, this is bizarre, but Beinart has quite a history of thinking himself into ridiculous positions, like when he supported the Bush invasion of Iraq, then wrote a book blaming the Bush team's conservatism for fucking it all up (The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again). He admits that Marco Rubio "would be a terrible president" but considers Trump so odious that he's urging Democrats to abandon their party, forgoing the non-trivial differences between Clinton and Sanders, to vote for a guy who's only taken seriously because conservative pundits can't think of anyone better to back. He even offers three reasons why voting for Rubio is a dumb idea, yet his paranoia about Trump is so great he dismisses them out of hand. He even suggests liberals should help out by donating money to Rubio's campaign, as if they'd make a material difference compared to the billionaires already bankrolling Rubio. And he has a "plan B" if liberal largesse doesn't tilt the nomination to Rubio: convince your conservative buddies to vote for Hillary Clinton. That at least isn't so far fetched: some are already gravitating to Clinton because they view her as an even-more-trigger-happy Commander in Chief.

  Not sure whether that factors into Beinart's thinking: regardless of how hawkish Clinton is, the GOP "establishment" candidates -- Kasich as well as Rubio -- have staked out even more reckless neocon positions than Clinton, Cruz, or Trump. Indeed, one of Beinart's charges against Trump is how he's "praised Vladimir Putin": going soft on Putin seems to violate one of the "norms that both decent liberals and decent conservatives cherish." He concludes: "Across the ideological divide, it's time to close ranks." Effectively, he's saying that none of the differences between Rubio and Clinton (let alone Sanders) matter. In truth, Beinart comes off as such a smug and complacent liberal elitist it's hard to read this without thinking, hey, this guy deserves Trump. Of course, why should we suffer because he's a dolt? I can see going soft on Clinton because bad as she is she isn't nearly as awful as any conceivable Republican. I can see differences between those Republicans, but none that make me want to pick one, let alone try to influence the Republican primary to pick the least evil one. Nor am I even sure that Trump is the most evil: Rubio and Kasich are clearly more pro-war, and Cruz is more prone to blow up the government lest it ever help people in need. My biggest worry about Trump isn't that he'll be much worse than Rubio. It's that he'll prove more effective campaigning against a corporate shill and shameless hawk like Clinton.

• Derek Thompson: How Donald Trump Can Beat Hillary Clinton: To wit:

  But here's the problem: If Trump doesn't care about policy and his appeal truly transcends issues, what's stopping him from becoming a starkly different person in the general election, the same way he's morphed, with convenient timing, from a moderate businessman -- supportive of Canadian health care, a friend of Democrats, an admirer of Hillary Clinton -- to a nationalist demagogue?

  Trump's most famous skill is self-promotion through bloviation. But his most underrated skill is he is a terrific panderer. He will say anything he thinks people want to hear, but he'll say it in a way that makes his pandering look like an act of courage. The ingenious subtext of much of his messaging is: "Nobody wants to hear this hard truth, but here it is: you're right!" [ . . . ]

  Trump is also positioned to offer a devastating critique of Hillary Clinton -- that she never wins: She tried to pass health care reform. Biggest disaster I ever saw in Washington. Biggest I ever saw. And that's saying a lot. She wanted us to go into Iraq and then into Libya. Look at that mess. Worst decision in foreign policy history. Worst. NAFTA, prisons, welfare reform. You know that story about King Midas? Where he touches something and it turns to gold? Hillary's the opposite. Everything she touches blows up. She's a disaster.

  Is it really so hard to imagine Trump peddling a populist message that keeps the Great Wall of America (he can't disavow that wall), dials down on the dog-whistle rhetoric toward Hispanics and Muslims, and goes hard at the economic and cultural insecurity of the middle class by promising them a gorgeous new fleet of protectionist trade deals, a big beautiful tax cut, and all the social spending they've come to love? Pay Less, Keep More, Win, Win, Win. It will be a incredible six months of populist pandering. And what's worse: If it produces results and he rises in the polls, the political media will paint Trump as a rapidly maturing centrist.

  The word Thompson keeps using about Trump is "authentic." George Burns used to be quoted as saying "the secret to acting is sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made." Trump's figured out how to fake authenticity, and that's likely to cause Clinton fits (not that she isn't unskilled at faking sincerity).

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