Month: April 2016

Trump Supporters Already Pre-Spinning November Trump Loss

RS: Trump Supporters Already Pre-Spinning November Trump Loss

For all the bravado of Donald Trump’s online supporters, now that his sweep of the Northeast has put him in a potentially strong position to take the nomination, they are mostly spending the day…preparing to blame other people for Trump’s inevitable loss in November. You see, that’s going to be Trump’s coming general election message: it’s never his fault, or the fault of his supporters, that Trump is a terrible, doomed general election candidate – nothing is ever their fault, just the fault of shadowy conspiracies and “establishments”.

There’s been a lot of this sort of thing in my Twitter timeline, but the best example of preparing the Trump Dolchstoßlegende comes predictably from Breitbart’s John Nolte. Yes, that’s the same Breitbart where staffers have been complaining since August that they suspected the site was getting paid by Trump for favorable coverage, where site editor Joel Pollak tried to get a job as a Trump speechwriter, where national security editor Sebastian Gorka was paid by the Trump campaign as a consultant, and where the site ordered its own staff to stop defending now-ex-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields after she was manhandled by then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. So, you’d be hard pressed to find many sources that speak more for the thinking of Team Trump than Nolte and his co-workers.

Here’s a section of Nolte’s rant this morning (it’s too long to capture the whole thing on one screen, but you get the idea):

You see, Nolte and other Trump supporters taking this tack must realize by now that Trump is a complete disaster of a general election candidate, for reasons we have all discussed exhaustively. But this causes not the slightest bit of self-reflection over why this is. It can’t be that Trump alienates moderate and independent voters by being boorish, crude, insulting to women, ignorant, and all too eager to throw around racial, religious and ethnic stereotypes. It can’t be that Trump attracts white supremacists like dung attracts flies (Nolte likes to deploy nonsensical uses of words like “supremacist” when used against him or his allies precisely to deprive them of meaning, it’s a regular m.o. of his and of the Trump supporters generally – here, he’s using it to mean people who think Trump voters are stupid and basing that primarily on the fact that voting for Trump is stupid). It can’t be that Trump activates otherwise-unenthused elements of the Democratic base and drives more Hispanic voters into the Democratic camp by loudly broadcasting the message that Hispanics are unwelcome in America. It can’t be that Trump additionally alienates conservatives by being a socially liberal fan of abortion and Planned Parenthood and a big-government fan of single-payer healthcare and confiscatory taxation, and Republicans by being a faithful donor to Democrats who supported John Kerry for President in 2004 and Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 as well as the Democratic takeover of Congress. It can’t be that Trump would be a terrible Commander-in-Chief, hypersensitive to his own ego, easily cowed (as even his own explanation of paying off Democrats suggests), and getting his ideas and information from the likes of Michael Moore and Code Pink. It can’t, in short, be that people don’t want to vote for Trump for President because they think Trump would be a terrible president who doesn’t agree with them on issues, doesn’t represent their values, and isn’t even minimally competent to the job.

No, that can’t possibly be the explanation for why Trump would be a disaster candidate in spite of the colossal press coverage he’s been gifted and his near-universal name recognition. It must be an elite conspiracy! A conspiracy that will extend to the 130 million or so people who may vote in November.

As Erick has noted, this is like the people who get cancer from smoking and then blame the people who warned them that cigarettes cause cancer.

This is, of course, why Republican voters should hold the line in Indiana and the following states, and why the party needs to suck it up and live with the Trump-fan uproar that would follow denying him the nomination at the convention. Because even if the party establishment gives Trump fans everything they want, they’ll still cast the same blame on the same sources for Trump’s – and their – own failures. It is who they are.

What To Watch For In Tonight’s NY Republican Primary

RS: What To Watch For In Tonight’s NY Republican Primary

The stakes are high for Donald Trump tonight in his home state of New York. Ted Cruz and John Kasich would probably be out of the race now without big wins in their home states (Cruz beat Trump by 17 in Texas, Kasich swept all 66 delegates in Ohio; Marco Rubio dropped out after losing Florida). Trump needs a lot of delegates from the Northeastern primaries between today and next Tuesday if he is to have any hope of getting to the 1,237 pledged delegates he needs to avoid a contested convention fight he is likely to lose.  95 delegates are at stake in New York; Trump is unlikely to get a complete clean sweep of them, but he needs to clear 50% of the statewide popular vote and 80 or so delegates to retain any chance of reaching 1,237.  Here’s what to watch for tonight:

When will results be reported?  In general elections, New York is usually called by the networks the instant the polls close, but that’s because the major statewide races are lopsided.  But this is – as discussed below – a statewide race plus 27 local races, and some of those may vary widely in how quickly they report results. Past experience is hard to generalize from, because (1) New York’s optical-scanner machines are relatively new, New York having stuck for many years with the old fashioned lever-pull machines that people in other states have only seen in movies; (2) vote-counting was really slow in 2012’s general election due to Hurricane Sandy.  Early reports have lots of SNAFUs.  So, stay tuned, we could be here a while.  But don’t touch that dial – RedState will have coverage throughout the evening.

How are delegates awarded?  New York’s method of awarding its 95 delegates is neither a purely proportional nor purely winner-take-all system, and is somewhat similar to what we’ve seen previously in Illinois and will see later on in California, Connecticut, and Washington.  14 bound delegates are awarded on the basis of statewide results; the other 81 are awarded on the basis of the voting in each of the state’s 27 districts, 3 per district.

Will Trump win?  Yes, barring a truly improbable polling miss.  As Leon noted earlier, the pollsters have struggled this year, but they are pretty unanimous that Trump is way ahead and very likely to break 50% statewide, which means he would also break 50% in at least 10-12 districts, probably more.  The polling also has Cruz finishing third behind Kasich and probably struggling a bit to break 20% statewide.  New York is just a bad state for Cruz, compounded by his slam on Trump’s “New York values” during the Iowa race (which amazingly was only three months ago).  Long Island Republican Pete King, who previously endorsed Rubio and is the only elected pro-lifer anywhere near New York City, hates Cruz so much he says he would take cyanide if Cruz was the nominee.

We can, however, generalize about a few things.  Trump is likely to utterly dominate the Buffalo area districts like NY-23 through NY-27 (a stronghold for Carl Paladino, the proto-Trump who was our disastrous gubernatorial nominee in 2010), Staten Island (NY-11), and probably several other districts in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island like NY-1 through NY-6, NY-8.  He also looks to be very strong in NY-17 and NY-18, the districts just north of Westchester and Rockland.  Endorsement-wise, New York is Trump’s best state: among others, he has Paladino, Rudy Giuliani, and a couple of Congressmen around Buffalo.

His main competition downstate (from Westchester on down) will be Kasich, who some polls have shown to be surging; Kasich is the kind of candidate that Republicans in places like Manhattan and Westchester are likely to warm to.  I live in NY-6 in Queens (a district that is heavily Democratic and 40% Asian, one of the most Asian districts in the country), and I’ve seen nothing of the Cruz campaign while being bombarded with robo-calls for Kasich, who also has signs up around the highways.  Kasich’s endorsers include George Pataki (who previously backed himself and then Rubio), 2013 Mayoral candidate Joe Llhota, and possible 2017 Mayoral candidate Eric Ulrich.  Cruz has…don’t ask.

But the real Cruz-Trump battleground will be the heart of upstate, the mostly Republican districts around Albany, Syracuse, and the Adirondacks, NY-20 through NY-24, maybe NY-25.  Those are the places that will really decide how strong Trump is tonight.

Who can vote?  Well, it’s a little late to ask that now, eh?  It’s a closed primary, and New York has the earliest deadline in the country to change your party registration – you had to do it before last Election Day in November.  Worse yet, the Board of Election website simply tells voters:

How to Make Changes to Your Registration

Change of Name and/or Address

The voter registration form should be used as a change of address form. Notices of change of address from registered voters received at least 20 days before a special, primary or general election by a county board of elections must be processed and entered in the records in time for that election.

Change of Party Enrollment

The voter registration form should be used to change your party enrollment from one party to another or to enroll for the first time in a party. A change of enrollment received no later than 25 days before the general election shall be deposited in a sealed enrollment box and opened the first Tuesday following that general election and entered in the voter’s registration record.

How do I change my enrollment?

If you wish to change your enrollment from one party to another or from not-enrolled to a party, send a Voter Registration Form with your new choice to your county board of elections. The board will notify you when the change takes place, by Law, after the next general election.

You gotta read those real carefully to notice that this means 25 days before the last general election for this primary; the website nowhere mentions the deadline explicitly.  That’s bad for Trump, and polling places are apparently collecting plenty of provisional ballots from people who don’t qualify, which presumably will never be counted.  Two of Trump’s children and his own lawyer are among those who won’t be able to vote for him.  If Trump underachieves tonight, expect that to be a major reason why.

What does Trump need?  This is where the context gets important.  Look at the calendar ahead:

Trump is widely expected to dominate the Northeast, but after that, only West Virginia and New Jersey are really likely Trump country rather than contested turf.  And Trump at this writing has – the count varies by source – 44.5% of the delegates awarded so far.  If he isn’t sitting on 50% or more at the end of this month, it seems pretty hard to see him getting there by June 7.  But how dominant does Trump need to be in order to get to 50% before Indiana, so that he can just split the rest of the way and win 1,237 delegates?

So, expect good news for Donald Trump tonight, on its face – but news that may actually be very bad for him if he’s bringing home 70 or 75 delegates.

No, Donald Trump Can’t “Burn It Down.” Washington Would Go On The Same.

RS: No, Donald Trump Can’t “Burn It Down.” Washington Would Go On The Same.

The wrong man for the job.

Of all the arguments made in favor of a vote for Donald Trump to be President of the United States, or at any rate the Republican nominee, probably the most seductive is the argument that Trump will “burn it down”: replace the business-as-usual Washington political establishment with a bull-in-a-china-shop outsider who will do something different. A great many Americans across the political spectrum are deeply frustrated with our system, for many reasons – some of them very good reasons, others understandable ones. Trump speaks to their frustrations, which is a major reason why he has won 37.1% of the popular vote so far in the Republican primaries; so does Bernie Sanders, which is a major reason why Sanders has won 41.1% of the popular vote so far in the Democratic primaries. But even setting aside the many reasons why Trump is highly unlikely to win a general election, anyone who understands the problems with how Washington works also knows that Trump is almost uniquely unsuited to actually change them.

Continue reading No, Donald Trump Can’t “Burn It Down.” Washington Would Go On The Same.