1. The decisive victory by Donald Trump in the Indiana primary knocked Ted Cruz out of the race and confirmed Trump as the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee. The magnitude of Trump's victory compared to previous results in neighboring midwestern states suggests that he has gained popular momentum over the past month or so, which would have put him well within reach of a pledged delegate majority even if the margin in Indiana had been closer than it was. With Cruz departing the contest and John Kasich receiving an embarrassing 8 percent of the vote in a state adjacent to his own, Trump now faces an open path to a sweep of the remaining states on the primary calendar and an uncontested first-ballot victory at the national convention.
2. While he had previously declared that the Indiana results would be decisive, Cruz's exit in the immediate wake of his defeat was not universally expected. But Cruz, unlike Kasich, is young enough to consider seeking the presidency again in 2020 or thereafter. Staying in the race with little prospect of victory might only alienate Republicans whose support Cruz might wish to seek in a future contest. A guaranteed Trump nomination is also a better outcome for Cruz, in a strategic sense, than the possibility of an open convention throwing the nomination to an alternative compromise candidate. Trump will probably lose in the fall, and Cruz can run again in the future on the premise that the party suffered defeat by failing once again to nominate a true, principled conservative.
3. All the best evidence that can be brought to bear on the question indicates that Trump begins the general election with little probability of victory. Of course, dissenters will reply that few political experts foresaw Trump's nomination in the first place. But primaries are much more unpredictable than general elections, and Trump's political weaknesses are more vulnerable to attack by Democrats than by fellow Republicans. The complicated strategic dynamics of the multi-candidate Republican nomination race allowed Trump to escape being the target of a sustained negative campaign, but the Clinton campaign and allied Democratic groups will begin firing attacks in his direction immediately, hoping to "define" him quickly as an unacceptable candidate.
4. Yet a long campaign contains inevitable ups and downs in the standing of the candidates, as measured by public opinion surveys or as sensed by the political pundit class. Any signs of competitiveness or "tightening" will probably be heavily publicized by the segment of journalists who find stable races boring, are unimpressed with Hillary Clinton, and/or view Trump as having the potential to fundamentally reorder the electoral coalitions of the two parties. It is also clear that Trump is, in effect, judged by a different set of standards than other candidates; if Clinton or Obama or Mitt Romney had personally accused a rival candidate's father of associating with Lee Harvey Oswald based solely on a report by the National Enquirer, for example, it would be the biggest media story of the month and widely treated as a self-evidently disqualifying catastrophe. Expect much of the press to leap on any sign that Trump has become more "serious" or "presidential" over the course of the campaign—not because journalists are intentionally slanting coverage to favor Trump, but because change is always a better story than more of the same and "both sides do it" is often the default presumption.
5. We should not make too much of declarations from Republicans at this stage of the race that they will not vote for Trump in November. No doubt some disaffected partisans will indeed refuse to support him, though staying home or skipping over the presidential race on the ballot are both more likely forms of Republican protest than actually crossing party lines to vote for Clinton. But general election campaigns are usually effective at rallying partisans around their nominee—if only by reminding them of what they dislike about the opposition—and, unless Trump completely implodes, he is likely to gain the support of the vast majority of Republican identifiers who participate (with the possible exception of Republican Latinos, who may defect at higher rates). Even if Trump suffers a decisive defeat, this residual party loyalty will prevent the Democratic opposition from winning a double-digit victory in the popular vote or carrying more than 30–32 states. There is almost no chance of a true national landslide on the scale of 1964, 1972, or 1984 in today's highly partisan electoral environment—especially when the Democratic nominee is not particularly popular in her own right.
Showing posts with label John Kasich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kasich. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
The State of the Race: Clinton vs. Sanders, Trump vs. Math
Since the night of the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic presidential
nomination race has been a competition between two candidates: Hillary Clinton
and Bernie Sanders. The Republican contest, however, has now become a closely-matched
battle between a single candidate, Donald Trump, and the number 1,237—a sum
representing the delegate total that a Republican candidate needs to win in
order to be nominated at the party’s national convention this July.
Last night’s primary elections in Florida, Illinois,
Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio clarified the status of both parties’
nomination races. On the Democratic side, Clinton’s victories in all five
states, including a 2-to-1 popular margin over Sanders in Florida, gave her a
virtually insurmountable lead in the national delegate count. Sanders will
presumably fight on into the spring, but his campaign cannot realistically
overtake Clinton’s numerical advantage among pledged delegates—and he is even
further behind when the heavily pro-Clinton population of superdelegates is added
to the arithmetic.
For the Republicans, Tuesday’s election results extended
Trump’s lead over the other remaining candidates who nominally represent his political
competition. Even more importantly, however, they increased the probability
that he will prevail over what now looms as his most formidable opponent: the requirement
that presidential nominees win an overall majority of delegates.
Trump benefited from a Republican party rule that allows
states voting or after March 15 to allocate delegates to candidates via
non-proportional formulas. (In contrast, the Democratic National Committee imposes
a uniform proportionality requirement on all state primaries and caucuses.) His
decisive victory in Florida received particular attention in the news media for
ending the presidential candidacy of Marco Rubio, who was favored by many
Republican leaders and campaign professionals. But it was also noteworthy for
significantly bolstering Trump’s position in the delegate hunt, since the state
awards all 99 of its delegates to the winner of the statewide popular vote.
In Illinois and Missouri, most Republican delegates are allocated
in a winner-take-all fashion at the level of individual congressional
districts. This procedure also favored Trump, who tends to attract a
broadly-distributed geographic base of support. Trump received 41 percent of
the statewide popular vote in Missouri—edging out rival candidate Ted Cruz by
less than 2,000 votes—and 39 percent in Illinois, but appears to have
accumulated as much as three-quarters of the delegates from both states.
Trump lost Ohio, and its 66 delegates, to John Kasich, but
even in defeat the news was not all bad for the front-runner. Kasich had
indicated that he would fold his campaign if he lost his home state, but the results
in Ohio keep him in the race for now. Kasich’s continued presence as an active
candidate will reduce the share of delegates won by Trump in upcoming state
primaries that continue to employ proportional allocation formulas, but the
likelihood that Kasich and Cruz split the anti-Trump vote may allow Trump to
gain substantial numbers of delegates from the larger number of winner-take-all
states even if he falls short of an overall popular majority. In any event, the
delegate allocation rules from this point forward provide the leading candidate
with a clear structural advantage; as long as Trump keeps winning states, he
will receive a disproportionate share of the remaining delegates.
It is yet impossible to predict with certainty whether or
not Trump will succeed in reaching the magic number of 1,237 delegates by the
end of the primary season, which is still nearly three months away. But
Tuesday’s results virtually ensure that Trump will at least come close to that
milestone—absent a spectacular and unprecedented collapse in his popular
support—and will be able to claim more state-level victories, more popular
votes, and more delegates won than any other Republican presidential candidate.
Trump has made it clear that he will demand the nomination even
if he only achieves a plurality, arguing at the March 10 debate in Miami that
“whoever gets the most delegates should win.” But the members of the Republican
Party who cannot accommodate themselves to the Trump candidacy—a faction led unofficially
by 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney—have staked their hopes on stopping
Trump short of a majority and maneuvering in a contested convention to award
the nomination to somebody else.
This plan has always faced significant obstacles, from the
inherent difficulties in coordination among a large population of party officials
and delegates to the certainty of outraged protest not only by Trump but also
by Cruz, the probable second-place finisher in the delegate race, who is
unlikely to represent the Republican leadership’s favored alternative prospective
nominee. But perhaps the most powerful force working against the stop-Trump
movement is the widely-accepted norm of democratic legitimacy awarded to the leading
candidate in an electoral competition. Even the recipient of a mere plurality
can claim to be the people’s choice, at least in comparison to any other single
individual, and Trump, as a near-certainty to place first in the delegate count,
will surely do so with no little vehemence.
Tuesday’s results indicate that Trump could well achieve an outright majority of delegates by the end of the primary calendar—and will otherwise fall short by a relatively modest margin. Republicans dedicated to blocking his ascent must not only mobilize to develop a procedural plan to take control of the nomination process on the inside, but must also begin to persuade the American public that denying the prize to the leading Republican candidate is not an unfair and illegitimate use of power by party elites. Otherwise, the conflict and rancor that we have seen so far in this campaign will pale in comparison to what lies ahead.
Tuesday’s results indicate that Trump could well achieve an outright majority of delegates by the end of the primary calendar—and will otherwise fall short by a relatively modest margin. Republicans dedicated to blocking his ascent must not only mobilize to develop a procedural plan to take control of the nomination process on the inside, but must also begin to persuade the American public that denying the prize to the leading Republican candidate is not an unfair and illegitimate use of power by party elites. Otherwise, the conflict and rancor that we have seen so far in this campaign will pale in comparison to what lies ahead.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Dumping Trump Without Choosing Cruz
The more subdued Donald Trump who showed up at last Thursday's debate was seemingly eager to coast on his front-runner status without risking any political damage by indulging in his usual pastimes of making controversial remarks and aggressively belittling his opponents. But this new "kinder, gentler" phase of the Trump campaign lasted less than 24 hours before the candidate plunged the Republican race back into turmoil. Trump's abrupt cancellation of a planned Chicago rally on Friday in the face of a large contingent of protestors, his subsequent verbal defense of supporters who engaged in violent acts against his critics, and the attempt of one anti-Trump activist to rush the stage during a Saturday morning speech in Ohio—to which Trump later responded by accusing the man of terrorist connections—added up to one particularly unsettling weekend of the campaign, inspiring a variety of political analysts and thinkers on the left and right alike to condemn Trump as a uniquely malignant force in American politics whose pursuit of power must be stopped for the very sake of the nation.
It is safe to assume that the majority of Republican leaders are privately aghast at the prospect of a Trump nomination. Apart from highly dubious assertions that he expands the traditional appeal of the GOP to independents and Democrats, Trump brings nothing to the party table. He is neither consistently loyal to conservative principles nor devoted to the Republican Party as an institution. His political rhetoric, business record, and decades of media pronouncements are rife with potential attack-ad fodder. He leads no larger faction within the party that can demand deference from its elected officials. He is, by all evidence, the most unpopular major political figure in the eyes of American voters, and he inspires especially intense antipathy among several key groups—racial minorities, young people, single women—whose electoral participation is undependable but whose energetic mobilization in November would be particularly beneficial to the Democratic opposition. It is reasonable to expect that a Trump candidacy would produce a potentially cataclysmic Republican defeat, with damaging consequences enduring for years to come.
And yet luck smiles on Trump. For, in an unlikely twist, his chief rival in the nomination race is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas—the one Republican politician whom party elites detest more than any other (Trump included). The undoubtedly-strong instinct of many Republicans to denounce Trump, to call for all right-thinking party members to unite in order to ensure his defeat, is stayed by the consideration that such an effort at this stage in the race would primarily benefit Cruz.
Over the weekend, the nomination race provided quantitative evidence to bear on this matter in the form of the District of Columbia Republican caucus. DC is, of course, overwhelmingly Democratic, and its relatively modest population of registered Republicans is mostly composed of political professionals: congressional staffers, campaign operatives, think tank fellows, and the like. About 2,800 of them turned out on Saturday to register their presidential preferences, producing a narrow victory for Marco Rubio—still the favorite of Republican politicos if not Republican voters—over fellow "establishment" type John Kasich. Unsurprisingly, Trump finished far behind the two leading candidates, gaining less than 14 percent of the vote—his worst showing by far in any primary or caucus in an English-speaking state or territory.
He still placed ahead of Cruz.
For the majority of Republican elites, the presidential primary process—up to and including the convention itself—is not currently dedicated to the lone purpose of preventing the unique national catastrophe of a Trump nomination, but has instead evolved into a frantic exercise in steering the prize away from Trump and Cruz alike. Single-minded efforts to minimize Trump's delegate count at any cost might have the unwelcome consequences of opening a window for Cruz to claim an overall delegate plurality, if not a majority—a particularly troublesome development from the perspective of party leaders, who would have much less pretext to deny the leading candidate the nomination at the convention if it were Cruz, not Trump, who wound up with the most delegates.
What does this mean for the Republican contest from this point forward? If the polls are accurate, Marco Rubio is likely to lose his home state of Florida by an ample margin on Tuesday, which would make it nearly impossible for him to avoid folding his campaign. Assuming that John Kasich does well enough on his own home turf of Ohio that same day to justify soldiering on, Kasich would then become the only non-insurgent in a three-candidate contest—and thus the lone remaining factor keeping either Trump or Cruz from assembling a majority of delegates. Republican regulars would likely provide Kasich with the necessary resources to stay in the race for the long term, rendering him a stalking horse—now there's a newly-relevant entry in the American political lexicon!—for an eventual establishment-approved nominee to be chosen at the convention itself.
It's a pretty crazy scheme that just might work. But let's be clear: this plan is not merely dedicated to the cause of averting a national crisis by stopping a uniquely destructive individual from capturing the banner of a major party. It is also a scramble by desperate Republican leaders to seize control of a nomination process heretofore dominated by a mass electorate that has repeatedly registered a preference for not one but two candidates whom most party elites view as thoroughly, and equally, unacceptable.
It is safe to assume that the majority of Republican leaders are privately aghast at the prospect of a Trump nomination. Apart from highly dubious assertions that he expands the traditional appeal of the GOP to independents and Democrats, Trump brings nothing to the party table. He is neither consistently loyal to conservative principles nor devoted to the Republican Party as an institution. His political rhetoric, business record, and decades of media pronouncements are rife with potential attack-ad fodder. He leads no larger faction within the party that can demand deference from its elected officials. He is, by all evidence, the most unpopular major political figure in the eyes of American voters, and he inspires especially intense antipathy among several key groups—racial minorities, young people, single women—whose electoral participation is undependable but whose energetic mobilization in November would be particularly beneficial to the Democratic opposition. It is reasonable to expect that a Trump candidacy would produce a potentially cataclysmic Republican defeat, with damaging consequences enduring for years to come.
And yet luck smiles on Trump. For, in an unlikely twist, his chief rival in the nomination race is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas—the one Republican politician whom party elites detest more than any other (Trump included). The undoubtedly-strong instinct of many Republicans to denounce Trump, to call for all right-thinking party members to unite in order to ensure his defeat, is stayed by the consideration that such an effort at this stage in the race would primarily benefit Cruz.
Over the weekend, the nomination race provided quantitative evidence to bear on this matter in the form of the District of Columbia Republican caucus. DC is, of course, overwhelmingly Democratic, and its relatively modest population of registered Republicans is mostly composed of political professionals: congressional staffers, campaign operatives, think tank fellows, and the like. About 2,800 of them turned out on Saturday to register their presidential preferences, producing a narrow victory for Marco Rubio—still the favorite of Republican politicos if not Republican voters—over fellow "establishment" type John Kasich. Unsurprisingly, Trump finished far behind the two leading candidates, gaining less than 14 percent of the vote—his worst showing by far in any primary or caucus in an English-speaking state or territory.
He still placed ahead of Cruz.
For the majority of Republican elites, the presidential primary process—up to and including the convention itself—is not currently dedicated to the lone purpose of preventing the unique national catastrophe of a Trump nomination, but has instead evolved into a frantic exercise in steering the prize away from Trump and Cruz alike. Single-minded efforts to minimize Trump's delegate count at any cost might have the unwelcome consequences of opening a window for Cruz to claim an overall delegate plurality, if not a majority—a particularly troublesome development from the perspective of party leaders, who would have much less pretext to deny the leading candidate the nomination at the convention if it were Cruz, not Trump, who wound up with the most delegates.
What does this mean for the Republican contest from this point forward? If the polls are accurate, Marco Rubio is likely to lose his home state of Florida by an ample margin on Tuesday, which would make it nearly impossible for him to avoid folding his campaign. Assuming that John Kasich does well enough on his own home turf of Ohio that same day to justify soldiering on, Kasich would then become the only non-insurgent in a three-candidate contest—and thus the lone remaining factor keeping either Trump or Cruz from assembling a majority of delegates. Republican regulars would likely provide Kasich with the necessary resources to stay in the race for the long term, rendering him a stalking horse—now there's a newly-relevant entry in the American political lexicon!—for an eventual establishment-approved nominee to be chosen at the convention itself.
It's a pretty crazy scheme that just might work. But let's be clear: this plan is not merely dedicated to the cause of averting a national crisis by stopping a uniquely destructive individual from capturing the banner of a major party. It is also a scramble by desperate Republican leaders to seize control of a nomination process heretofore dominated by a mass electorate that has repeatedly registered a preference for not one but two candidates whom most party elites view as thoroughly, and equally, unacceptable.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Debate Recap: Would Republicans Really Stand Up to Their Base to Dump Trump?
The Republican debate in Miami Thursday night surprised almost everyone with its unexpectedly calm tone and focus on policy, to the extent that Donald Trump himself remarked on stage that he "cannot believe how civil it's been up here." Undoubtedly, all four candidates are running short on energy after weeks on the campaign trail. Trump clearly chose to sit on his lead in the race and refrain from stirring up more controversy, John Kasich remained loyal to his strategy of selling himself as the most positive candidate in the race, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who have tussled with Trump in the past, no longer exhibit confidence that attacks on the front-runner will benefit their own campaigns.
Late in the evening, conservative writer and radio host Hugh Hewitt asked the candidates about the prospect of a contested convention in which no single candidate held a majority of delegates. Kasich and Rubio, neither of whom could plausibly receive a majority themselves at this stage in the race, both dodged the question. Trump replied that he believed that "whoever gets the most delegates should win" even if the total fell short of an overall majority, which he referred to as an "artificial" and "random" number. Cruz did not explicitly agree with Trump's position, but argued that "some in Washington" are "unhappy with how the people are voting and they want to parachute in their favored Washington candidate to be the nominee. I think that would be an absolute disaster and we need to respect the will of the voters."
Trump and Cruz both understand that they are disliked by Republican Party leaders and that recent talk of a contested convention is coming from corners of the party that wish to block their ascent. Trump, anticipating that he will lead in the overall delegate count at the end of the primaries, is signaling that he will demand the nomination anyway even if he fails to accrue an overall majority. Cruz would presumably do the same if he manages to surpass Trump in delegates, but he may also be keeping the option open of arguing that any convention bent on denying a majority- or plurality-winning Trump the nomination should rightfully turn to him, the likely second-place finisher, instead. It is clear that Cruz would prefer a Trump nomination to an insider-blessed compromise choice, for reasons I have discussed before.
Any contested-convention scenario would thus surely occur over the intense opposition of the party's two leading presidential candidates (who between them will likely have attracted at least 70 percent of the total popular vote and an even greater share of the delegates), further validating the central premises of both men's candidacies that the "Republican establishment" is out of touch with, and even hostile to, the party grassroots. One can only imagine the protests that would ensue, egged on by talk radio hosts and other populist voices as well as Trump and Cruz themselves, against such a maneuver. Republican members of Congress and other elected officials would likely be threatened with future primary challenges for even suggesting publicly that the top choices of the voters be denied the nomination, much less carrying it out—and such threats are by no means idle in today's Republican Party.
The nomination of Trump in particular might well turn out be such a disastrous event that it would be worth whatever price Republican politicians would need to pay to prevent it from happening. But both Trump and Cruz provided notable reminders last night that the cost of choosing a nominee who is not one of them is likely to be high indeed. While it's comforting for many Republicans—and fun for many analysts—to envision a surprise twist ending to the nomination process in Cleveland this July, such an outcome remains somewhat improbable from today's vantage point. How likely is it that a party leadership that has become scared to death of its own popular base would reject the preferences of that base in the most dramatic possible manner?
Late in the evening, conservative writer and radio host Hugh Hewitt asked the candidates about the prospect of a contested convention in which no single candidate held a majority of delegates. Kasich and Rubio, neither of whom could plausibly receive a majority themselves at this stage in the race, both dodged the question. Trump replied that he believed that "whoever gets the most delegates should win" even if the total fell short of an overall majority, which he referred to as an "artificial" and "random" number. Cruz did not explicitly agree with Trump's position, but argued that "some in Washington" are "unhappy with how the people are voting and they want to parachute in their favored Washington candidate to be the nominee. I think that would be an absolute disaster and we need to respect the will of the voters."
Trump and Cruz both understand that they are disliked by Republican Party leaders and that recent talk of a contested convention is coming from corners of the party that wish to block their ascent. Trump, anticipating that he will lead in the overall delegate count at the end of the primaries, is signaling that he will demand the nomination anyway even if he fails to accrue an overall majority. Cruz would presumably do the same if he manages to surpass Trump in delegates, but he may also be keeping the option open of arguing that any convention bent on denying a majority- or plurality-winning Trump the nomination should rightfully turn to him, the likely second-place finisher, instead. It is clear that Cruz would prefer a Trump nomination to an insider-blessed compromise choice, for reasons I have discussed before.
Any contested-convention scenario would thus surely occur over the intense opposition of the party's two leading presidential candidates (who between them will likely have attracted at least 70 percent of the total popular vote and an even greater share of the delegates), further validating the central premises of both men's candidacies that the "Republican establishment" is out of touch with, and even hostile to, the party grassroots. One can only imagine the protests that would ensue, egged on by talk radio hosts and other populist voices as well as Trump and Cruz themselves, against such a maneuver. Republican members of Congress and other elected officials would likely be threatened with future primary challenges for even suggesting publicly that the top choices of the voters be denied the nomination, much less carrying it out—and such threats are by no means idle in today's Republican Party.
The nomination of Trump in particular might well turn out be such a disastrous event that it would be worth whatever price Republican politicians would need to pay to prevent it from happening. But both Trump and Cruz provided notable reminders last night that the cost of choosing a nominee who is not one of them is likely to be high indeed. While it's comforting for many Republicans—and fun for many analysts—to envision a surprise twist ending to the nomination process in Cleveland this July, such an outcome remains somewhat improbable from today's vantage point. How likely is it that a party leadership that has become scared to death of its own popular base would reject the preferences of that base in the most dramatic possible manner?
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
The Republican Race After Super Tuesday II
By a staggering coincidence, the logic behind the stop-Trump forces in the Republican Party abruptly shifted from pushing to narrow the competition (in order to concentrate the anti-Trump vote behind a single alternative) to tolerating, and even encouraging, a multi-candidate field immediately after last Tuesday—just at the point when it became clear that Ted Cruz, not Marco Rubio, was best positioned to be the only plausible non-Trump nominee. Over the past week, anti-Trump Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, have indulged in the comforting idea that Cruz, Rubio, and John Kasich would join together with a strategically savvy anti-Trump electorate to form an A-Team dedicated to defeating Trump on multiple fronts in multiple states, denying him a first-ballot delegate majority and allowing the convention to throw the nomination to Rubio, Romney, Paul Ryan, or some other hero of the Republican elite class.
This scheme, though not impossible, has many under-acknowledged deficiencies—not the least of which is that Cruz has no incentive to play along unless he is assured of getting the nomination himself. But last night's primary and caucus results in four states show how it can backfire even as an electoral strategy. The problem is that Rubio and Kasich are such weak candidates that they cannot reliably attract enough votes to place above most states' minimum threshold for winning delegates (usually 15 or 20 percent of the total popular vote in the state). For example, Rubio received 16 percent of the vote in Idaho, 9 percent in Michigan, and 5 percent in Mississippi—netting zero delegates in all three states. Kasich won 24 percent of the Michigan vote (and received 17 delegates there), but won just 9 percent of the Mississippi vote and 7 percent in Idaho.
The continued presence of Rubio and Kasich in the race thus drains anti-Trump votes away from Cruz without denying Trump significant numbers of delegates. There is no evidence that either Rubio or Kasich can actually defeat Trump in any upcoming states except their own home states of Florida and Ohio (and perhaps not even there). Normally, presidential candidates who had achieved either one victory (Rubio) or none (Kasich) over 23 state primaries and caucuses would not still be running active campaigns. But the lure of playing kingmaker (or, better yet, being crowned themselves) at a contested convention has prompted them to soldier on instead, encouraged by Romney and other members of the "Never Trump" brigade.
Despite a lot of hype (perhaps inspired by wishful thinking), it seems that Trump's losses over the weekend in Kansas and Maine (and narrower-than-expected victories in Kentucky and Louisiana) did not reflect a broader decline in his electoral support. A national poll released yesterday had also given heart to Trump's opponents by suggesting that the race was tightly bunched among the four remaining contenders, especially in the states that have not yet held Republican primaries. But the actual election results, both last night and previously, are impossible to reconcile with the results of the survey. Trump may have sufficiently limited appeal to be vulnerable to defeat in a one-on-one race, but he holds a clear and geographically broad advantage in the current four-candidate field, with no sign of imminent collapse.
The biggest change in the Republican race over the past two weeks has been a notable increase in popular support for Ted Cruz, who not only achieved his seventh state-level victory last night by winning the Idaho primary but also placed second to Trump in the three other states, finishing far ahead of Rubio everywhere and even farther ahead of Kasich everywhere but Michigan. But Cruz is unlikely to benefit from strong elite support, at least not soon enough to make much difference. (A Politico story today is headlined "GOP Establishment Creeps Toward Cruz," but the fact that 60 percent of the total number of Republican delegates will have been awarded by this time next week would seem to suggest that a faster means of locomotion might be more appropriate.)
The unacceptability of Cruz as a Trump alternative has done much to power Republican regulars' contested-convention daydream machine; note how David Brooks reassured his readers yesterday that "it's not too late" to stop Trump while simultaneously recommending that Cruz's advances be spurned as if he were a seedy barfly at last call. "Hit the pause button on the rush to Cruz," admonished Brooks, preferring "another path" that "doesn't leave you self-loathing in the morning"—to wit, the Romney A-Team strategy that has only seemed so far to benefit Trump.
If Trump wins the nomination and turns out to be such a cataclysmic disaster that he causes a down-ballot implosion and fatally damages the image of the Republican Party for years among Latinos and other racial minorities, future historians will wonder why Republican officials and thought leaders didn't rally around the strongest alternative candidate while there was still time. Brooks's column, and others like it, will be of immense scholarly value in explaining why.
This scheme, though not impossible, has many under-acknowledged deficiencies—not the least of which is that Cruz has no incentive to play along unless he is assured of getting the nomination himself. But last night's primary and caucus results in four states show how it can backfire even as an electoral strategy. The problem is that Rubio and Kasich are such weak candidates that they cannot reliably attract enough votes to place above most states' minimum threshold for winning delegates (usually 15 or 20 percent of the total popular vote in the state). For example, Rubio received 16 percent of the vote in Idaho, 9 percent in Michigan, and 5 percent in Mississippi—netting zero delegates in all three states. Kasich won 24 percent of the Michigan vote (and received 17 delegates there), but won just 9 percent of the Mississippi vote and 7 percent in Idaho.
The continued presence of Rubio and Kasich in the race thus drains anti-Trump votes away from Cruz without denying Trump significant numbers of delegates. There is no evidence that either Rubio or Kasich can actually defeat Trump in any upcoming states except their own home states of Florida and Ohio (and perhaps not even there). Normally, presidential candidates who had achieved either one victory (Rubio) or none (Kasich) over 23 state primaries and caucuses would not still be running active campaigns. But the lure of playing kingmaker (or, better yet, being crowned themselves) at a contested convention has prompted them to soldier on instead, encouraged by Romney and other members of the "Never Trump" brigade.
Despite a lot of hype (perhaps inspired by wishful thinking), it seems that Trump's losses over the weekend in Kansas and Maine (and narrower-than-expected victories in Kentucky and Louisiana) did not reflect a broader decline in his electoral support. A national poll released yesterday had also given heart to Trump's opponents by suggesting that the race was tightly bunched among the four remaining contenders, especially in the states that have not yet held Republican primaries. But the actual election results, both last night and previously, are impossible to reconcile with the results of the survey. Trump may have sufficiently limited appeal to be vulnerable to defeat in a one-on-one race, but he holds a clear and geographically broad advantage in the current four-candidate field, with no sign of imminent collapse.
The biggest change in the Republican race over the past two weeks has been a notable increase in popular support for Ted Cruz, who not only achieved his seventh state-level victory last night by winning the Idaho primary but also placed second to Trump in the three other states, finishing far ahead of Rubio everywhere and even farther ahead of Kasich everywhere but Michigan. But Cruz is unlikely to benefit from strong elite support, at least not soon enough to make much difference. (A Politico story today is headlined "GOP Establishment Creeps Toward Cruz," but the fact that 60 percent of the total number of Republican delegates will have been awarded by this time next week would seem to suggest that a faster means of locomotion might be more appropriate.)
The unacceptability of Cruz as a Trump alternative has done much to power Republican regulars' contested-convention daydream machine; note how David Brooks reassured his readers yesterday that "it's not too late" to stop Trump while simultaneously recommending that Cruz's advances be spurned as if he were a seedy barfly at last call. "Hit the pause button on the rush to Cruz," admonished Brooks, preferring "another path" that "doesn't leave you self-loathing in the morning"—to wit, the Romney A-Team strategy that has only seemed so far to benefit Trump.
If Trump wins the nomination and turns out to be such a cataclysmic disaster that he causes a down-ballot implosion and fatally damages the image of the Republican Party for years among Latinos and other racial minorities, future historians will wonder why Republican officials and thought leaders didn't rally around the strongest alternative candidate while there was still time. Brooks's column, and others like it, will be of immense scholarly value in explaining why.
Friday, March 04, 2016
Debate Recap: How's "Never Trump" Supposed to Work?
The Republican presidential debate held last night in Detroit will be remembered most for the moment that the front-runner for the presidential nomination of a major American political party made reference to....well, you already know if you're reading this. But it also revealed the difficulties that the anti-Trump faction of the Republican Party face in preventing Trump's nomination, even as Trump himself was knocked around by a sustained blast of attacks from fellow candidates and Fox News moderators alike.
Now that the field has narrowed to four remaining contenders, each candidate receives enough debate time to establish his distinct political persona. Trump, of course, is already well-defined and sui generis. Marco Rubio is the candidate of the Republican Party regulars—ideological conservatives who are also mindful of team spirit and electability. Ted Cruz is the leader of the conservative purists who are frustrated with the institutional leadership of the Republican Party, especially in Congress, for failing to engineer a conservative policy revolution during the Obama presidency. John Kasich is the chief spokesman for can't-we-all-get-along Republicans who are tired of conflict and intra-party attacks.
Each of the remaining three non-Trump candidates personifies a different case against Trump, ably expressed in their rhetoric last night. According to Rubio, Trump's main flaw is that he's a charlatan who lacks moral character and exhibits serious flaws that will make him a weak general-election candidate. According to Cruz, Trump is primarily unacceptable on ideological grounds—he's a phony conservative who once supported Democrats and can't be trusted to respect right-wing principles. For Kasich, Trump's main deficiency is his slashing style and tone, though Kasich hewed to a "nice guy" strategy by contrasting himself with the front-runner implicitly rather than attacking him openly.
Republican Party voters are thus being presented with a diverse set of grounds for expressing opposition to Trump. In theory, this fits well with a stop-Trump effort within the GOP that has moved from anointing a single non-Trump alternative to simply trying to block his first-ballot nomination at the Republican convention. Perhaps, the thinking goes, three different flavors of anti-Trumpism are better than one at keeping him from winning the delegates he needs for a majority.
But the debate also illustrated the limitations of this strategy. It's difficult to rally Republican voters, activists, and donors around three different candidates at once. No single anti-Trump can dominate the debate or the ensuing media coverage as long as the attention focuses mainly on Trump and is otherwise divided three ways. While most of the delegates will be chosen by the middle of March, the nomination process itself stretches on for three more months; is it really plausible that more than one non-Trump candidate can survive in the race until June?
The more likely eventuality is that the field will narrow further after March 15, when both Rubio and Kasich are in danger of losing their home states. The anti-Trump sentiment in the party will become more concentrated, perhaps with Ted Cruz as its only remaining vessel in the primaries, but the delegate arithmetic will become even more daunting. Unless there is an earthquake-level change in the race, it seems clear that this election is headed straight in the direction of Trump Tower.
Now that the field has narrowed to four remaining contenders, each candidate receives enough debate time to establish his distinct political persona. Trump, of course, is already well-defined and sui generis. Marco Rubio is the candidate of the Republican Party regulars—ideological conservatives who are also mindful of team spirit and electability. Ted Cruz is the leader of the conservative purists who are frustrated with the institutional leadership of the Republican Party, especially in Congress, for failing to engineer a conservative policy revolution during the Obama presidency. John Kasich is the chief spokesman for can't-we-all-get-along Republicans who are tired of conflict and intra-party attacks.
Each of the remaining three non-Trump candidates personifies a different case against Trump, ably expressed in their rhetoric last night. According to Rubio, Trump's main flaw is that he's a charlatan who lacks moral character and exhibits serious flaws that will make him a weak general-election candidate. According to Cruz, Trump is primarily unacceptable on ideological grounds—he's a phony conservative who once supported Democrats and can't be trusted to respect right-wing principles. For Kasich, Trump's main deficiency is his slashing style and tone, though Kasich hewed to a "nice guy" strategy by contrasting himself with the front-runner implicitly rather than attacking him openly.
Republican Party voters are thus being presented with a diverse set of grounds for expressing opposition to Trump. In theory, this fits well with a stop-Trump effort within the GOP that has moved from anointing a single non-Trump alternative to simply trying to block his first-ballot nomination at the Republican convention. Perhaps, the thinking goes, three different flavors of anti-Trumpism are better than one at keeping him from winning the delegates he needs for a majority.
But the debate also illustrated the limitations of this strategy. It's difficult to rally Republican voters, activists, and donors around three different candidates at once. No single anti-Trump can dominate the debate or the ensuing media coverage as long as the attention focuses mainly on Trump and is otherwise divided three ways. While most of the delegates will be chosen by the middle of March, the nomination process itself stretches on for three more months; is it really plausible that more than one non-Trump candidate can survive in the race until June?
The more likely eventuality is that the field will narrow further after March 15, when both Rubio and Kasich are in danger of losing their home states. The anti-Trump sentiment in the party will become more concentrated, perhaps with Ted Cruz as its only remaining vessel in the primaries, but the delegate arithmetic will become even more daunting. Unless there is an earthquake-level change in the race, it seems clear that this election is headed straight in the direction of Trump Tower.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Debate Recap: A New Phase
The biggest development in last night's debate was that Donald Trump was treated like the front-runner he has become. Rather than fight among themselves to claim status as the #1 alternative to Trump while letting Trump himself off easy, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were much more aggressive in aiming fire at the race's leading candidate. Rubio in particular opened up new lines of attack on Trump, citing his previous employment of illegal immigrants, the foreign manufacture of his signature menswear, and the lawsuit in progress over "Trump University." Cruz mounted more familiar attacks on Trump from the ideological right, repeatedly portraying him as a phony conservative.
The change in approach reflected a new urgency in the Republican race, as the other candidates have suddenly realized that they can no longer wait for Trump to go away on his own. There is always risk in making attacks in a multi-candidate contest (John Kasich, who conspicuously declined to join in, obviously hopes to gain support from conflict-weary voters by remaining above the fray), but Cruz and Rubio have both concluded that Trump has become a serious threat to their candidacies. Though they may still view each other as one another's chief rival for votes, a Trump sweep over the next three delegate-rich weeks would put them both out of the running. At this stage, simply playing for time is a sensible strategy.
The collective joy expressed by the news media when Rubio went on the attack reveals the pent-up frustration within the political world with the lack of obstructions that have been placed between Trump and the nomination. But it will take more than one debate to derail Trump's candidacy. In fact, if both Rubio and Cruz turn out to benefit from the debate, the prospect that one of them will soon fold his campaign grows slightly dimmer, to Trump's strategic advantage. The race is by no means over, but the anti-Trump case will have to be made more forcefully—perhaps via some negative ads?—than it has so far.
The change in approach reflected a new urgency in the Republican race, as the other candidates have suddenly realized that they can no longer wait for Trump to go away on his own. There is always risk in making attacks in a multi-candidate contest (John Kasich, who conspicuously declined to join in, obviously hopes to gain support from conflict-weary voters by remaining above the fray), but Cruz and Rubio have both concluded that Trump has become a serious threat to their candidacies. Though they may still view each other as one another's chief rival for votes, a Trump sweep over the next three delegate-rich weeks would put them both out of the running. At this stage, simply playing for time is a sensible strategy.
The collective joy expressed by the news media when Rubio went on the attack reveals the pent-up frustration within the political world with the lack of obstructions that have been placed between Trump and the nomination. But it will take more than one debate to derail Trump's candidacy. In fact, if both Rubio and Cruz turn out to benefit from the debate, the prospect that one of them will soon fold his campaign grows slightly dimmer, to Trump's strategic advantage. The race is by no means over, but the anti-Trump case will have to be made more forcefully—perhaps via some negative ads?—than it has so far.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
John Kasich's Risky Move
Yesterday, Ohio Governor John Kasich publicly expressed exasperation with the state of a Republican presidential nomination contest in which he is currently a secondary candidate:
Given the leading position that Donald Trump and Ben Carson currently hold in the polls, as well as their unorthodox positions on certain issues, it is natural for other candidates to attack them—even if not by name. And there are no doubt plenty of Republicans who share Kasich's point of view; abolishing Medicare is unlikely to be a winning issue even in a Republican primary. But the rest of Kasich's remarks are more newsworthy:
Kasich has moved here in a few sentences from criticizing Trump and Carson to criticizing the party and ideological movement in which Trump and Carson are, at the moment, popular figures. He does not argue that Trump and Carson are not true Republicans because they are not conservative enough—the most common criticism lodged against them from within the party, especially in Trump's case—but rather that the party and the movement have gone too far in the other direction and become disconnected from political reality. It's hard to know exactly what Kasich means by his reference to health care reform; he could be talking about Carson's position alone, but he could also be construed as questioning the broader support among many of his fellow candidates for repealing the Affordable Care Act—the primary policy goal of the Republican Party and conservative movement over the past 5 years, after all—without proposing a replacement plan that would cover the same number of people.
In the short term, Kasich may benefit from the attention that his remarks will receive, especially if he continues to voice these objections during tonight's debate and in the future. Kasich may even succeed at breaking out of the large field of also-rans to become the preferred candidate of moderate and pragmatic Republicans. But it is hard to imagine the GOP ultimately choosing a presidential nominee who has openly expressed such a critical view of both the party and the conservative movement that he seeks to lead. Though Trump and Carson may fade, the primary electorate that now supports them is unlikely to muster enthusiasm for a candidate who shows such limited sympathy with the sentiments that now attract so many Republicans to the prospect of revolutionary policy change.
"I've about had it with these people," Kasich said at the rally in Westerville, Ohio. "We got one candidate that says we ought to abolish Medicaid and Medicare. You ever heard of anything so crazy as that? Telling our people in this country who are seniors, who are about to be seniors that we're going to abolish Medicaid and Medicare? . . . We got one person saying we ought to have a 10 percent flat tax that will drive up the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars" and there's another challenger in the field who "says we ought to take 10 or 11 [million] people and pick them up — I don't know where we're going to go, their homes, their apartments — we're going to pick them up and scream at them to get out of our country. That's crazy. That is just crazy."
Given the leading position that Donald Trump and Ben Carson currently hold in the polls, as well as their unorthodox positions on certain issues, it is natural for other candidates to attack them—even if not by name. And there are no doubt plenty of Republicans who share Kasich's point of view; abolishing Medicare is unlikely to be a winning issue even in a Republican primary. But the rest of Kasich's remarks are more newsworthy:
"We got people proposing health care reform that's going to leave, I believe, millions of people without adequate health insurance," Kasich says. "What has happened to our party? What has happened to the conservative movement?"
Kasich has moved here in a few sentences from criticizing Trump and Carson to criticizing the party and ideological movement in which Trump and Carson are, at the moment, popular figures. He does not argue that Trump and Carson are not true Republicans because they are not conservative enough—the most common criticism lodged against them from within the party, especially in Trump's case—but rather that the party and the movement have gone too far in the other direction and become disconnected from political reality. It's hard to know exactly what Kasich means by his reference to health care reform; he could be talking about Carson's position alone, but he could also be construed as questioning the broader support among many of his fellow candidates for repealing the Affordable Care Act—the primary policy goal of the Republican Party and conservative movement over the past 5 years, after all—without proposing a replacement plan that would cover the same number of people.
In the short term, Kasich may benefit from the attention that his remarks will receive, especially if he continues to voice these objections during tonight's debate and in the future. Kasich may even succeed at breaking out of the large field of also-rans to become the preferred candidate of moderate and pragmatic Republicans. But it is hard to imagine the GOP ultimately choosing a presidential nominee who has openly expressed such a critical view of both the party and the conservative movement that he seeks to lead. Though Trump and Carson may fade, the primary electorate that now supports them is unlikely to muster enthusiasm for a candidate who shows such limited sympathy with the sentiments that now attract so many Republicans to the prospect of revolutionary policy change.
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