The Republicans are determined to present us with a rude, ill-qualified, arrogant buffoon as the best of their best, while the Democrats are splitting themselves into the left, the far left and the farther left, with the most extreme manning the barricades to demand that the party's candidates are not liberal enough.
The country has never in its history faced an electoral challenge with as odd a collection of enigmas as this one.
Trump, who to any rational observer remains a catastrophe in progress, is actually becoming palatable to the hidebound of the right wing pols. The reddest of them are beginning to talk of accommodating his presidency. O’Reilly, for example, is looking fondly on Giuliani to be homeland secretary and Christie as his obvious pick for attorney general.
It could be worse. If Cruz gets his hands on the levers of power, with his 19th century Victorian views of social mores and his iconoclastic attitude towards the role of government, the country could be set back to the middle of the last century. And the mere thought of entrusting the “football†to Rubio appalls. He is no more than an immature school boy in an empty suit running for class president.
Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win on the first ballot. He has accumulated 82 delegates out of the 133 available from the first four states, or 61%. Counting all few caucus states that start their processes on Tuesday but won’t have reports until later, there are 661 more delegates up for allotment, with results immediately available from 11 states by the end of the day. If Trump continues at anywhere close to the same rate, he will have close to 400 delegates by when all the votes are counted, or over 480 total. This will put him substantially ahead of the curve as the campaign moves along, and far ahead of any of his competition. He will only need fewer than 760 or so delegates out of the remaining 1,600 plus delegates to be awarded, or something in the range of 45%. This means that so long as Cruz, Rubio Kasich and Carson continue to split the anti-Trump vote between them, Trump will be in no trouble. Any combination of plurality wins in the same ration as before Super Tuesday will sweep the remainder of the states by an ample percentage, almost certain to be sufficient to deliver a bullet proof majority before the convention.
The only hope now to derail Trump appears to be a sudden and sustained surge by one of the remaining candidates sufficient to deny Trump enough delegates to win on the first ballot. If the convention goes to a second ballot, Trump delegates who are no longer committed by law might bolt and either support one of the others or get behind a last-minute white knight. Hello, Governor Romney – anybody wonder why he has not endorsed anyone yet?
One would think that all of these Republican machinations would serve to solidify the eventual race to the Democrats. But, the Democratic candidates have their own set of problems. Clinton, who for the second time in her career is running a meandering, unfocused Presidential campaign, continues to give the singular impression that her principle theme for running is that she wants to be elected. She does, however, bring a set of skills to the task that are unmatched by anyone else. She is the only one capable of taking over immediately, without risking the country to a learning curve or a trip through la-la land.
But her candidacy, and her administration if elected, will be laden with the baggage she is dragging around that runs back 30 years. Never has a candidate with negative popularity numbers in the range of Hillary’s managed to get elected. Unless, of course, one compares her negative numbers with the unpopularity index of Donald Trump.
Now that Hillary has turned the corner, the polls seem to indicate that the major primary states are all going to deliver for her from here on out. But Sanders shows no sign of slowing down, and continues to draw huge crowds. He has been the enigma of every pundit and curious onlooker with access to internet commentary in the country.
Not one of the cognoscenti gave Bernie a chance to rise out of single digits when he announced last year. He should never have had a chance on the national scene: he’s too old, he’s Jewish, he’s an atheist, and he is a committed socialist. He qualifies his position to being a “democratic†socialist, but nobody to the right of the centerline pays attention to that distinction.
In another time, it might also have been crippling to any national campaign that he was a pot-smoking, draft-dodging, hippie father of an illegitimate child in his youth. But he never made any attempt to keep any of this secret, and when the press tried slinging some of it around last summer, none of it stuck. If he gets the nomination, all of this will come pouring out of the woodwork again, but as of today, it does not appear to make a whit of difference to the huge crowds following him around. It is impossible to count him out until the last votes are in.
A pragmatic problem to the movers and shakers within the party is that Bernie has no ties to the Democratic party organization other than his decisions to caucus with them in the Senate and to run on their ticket for national office. This leaves nothing to attach coattails to, meaning it is uncertain how his candidacy might impact the down-ticket races for governorships, congressional seats and state legislatures. These races are of critical importance to the Democratic party organization as the country approaches the 2020 census and the mandatory round of legislative and Congressional redistricting that will follow. While the Democrats can justly console themselves by maintaining that either of their candidates would be better than any from the clown bus, many of the older pols are apprehensive of a Sanders’ administration as it may affect the integration of the Democratic party down-ticket. This would tend to indicate that the super delegates, who are made up almost exclusively of party insiders, will opt overwhelmingly for Hillary come vote time.
But then, what do I know? These opinions and a buck won’t even get a cup of coffee anymore. Approximately one year ago this week, my predictions were for a Republican circus of modest interest until the party reluctantly coalesced around Jeb Bush – maybe as early as Halloween, followed by a stately and probably boring Democratic procession to Hillary’s coronation. Hoo, boy! Did I ever get it wrong.