Apologies for the long hiatus. Life interferes. So what has happened since last time?

In a nutshell, the cavalcade of absurdity that is the Trump campaign rolls on.The chances of his winning the nomination have not receded. Neither has Bernie Sanders discovered some new source of votes to make his campaign come out on top. Clinton and Trump still appear to be sailing towards the general election. But let’s dig deeper.

 

Republican 

The red team continues to suffer attrition. The most interesting phenomenon of the last couple of weeks is the growing realization among Republican elites that they should have acted sooner, and that it may already be too late. This precipitated K-Street lobbying firms and big money donors of the Chamber of Commerce Republican stripe to begin flooding the race with money and endorsements. Initially the main beneficiary of this was Marco Rubio, but for reasons we will explore shortly the vaunted Establishment, even before Florida, were coming to the conclusion that Marco wouldn’t go the distance.

So who is still in this horror show anyway?

Donald Trump

Yes, he is still unfortunately running for president. The moment greatly hoped for where we discover this is all some sort of hideous practical joke has once again failed to materialize. Trump has notched up wins in Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Hawaii and Michigan. Barring the trajectory of the race turning considerably he seems likely to continue to increase his delegate lead and take the nomination. What is more interesting in all of this is the strange change in tone in the Trump campaign. The bellicose and brash rhetoric is still there, but there is a discernible pivot towards a more mainstream focus on economic issues, infrastructure and jobs that could be the beginnings of the Trump general election campaign. While it is still possible to stop his nomination, and it will remain possible until he amasses a majority of delegates, the maths becomes increasingly difficult as the contests left to redress his advantage dwindle. What is more, there has been no nominee of a major party in the modern primary system who has not won either Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina. Make no mistake, if you had to put money on it right now it would be Trump. Personally i think their chance to stop him was between New Hampshire and South Carolina. Trump cleaned up on Super Tuesday, winning a slew of states by large margins. It was at this point that i think the Trump nomination became practically inevitable. The result in Florida makes Trumps nomination all but inevitable. But first.

Lets talk about Marco

This is not how it was meant to go. The Republican Party almost always has to deal with some Conservative or Populist insurgency in its presidential primaries. But the nominee ends up being a center-right Pro-Business corporate republican. This worked for Romney, for McCain, for Dole, for the Presidents Bush and so on. With the notable and debatable exception of Ronald Reagan, the ‘Establishment’ is usually able to get their man to the top. But after very disappointing Super Tuesday results, he blew the all-important expectations game. He was meant to be the Great Hope of the Very Serious People. But in an attempt to dethrone Trump he jumped into the mud along side him, turning a campaign previously obsessed with looking like the grown-ups in the room into a second-rate Comedy Club warmup act. This impressed approximately none of the serious-minded people he had previously been courting, leading to him being beaten out by John Kasich in several primaries. And now, at last, the final nail in Rubio’s coffin. He has lost his home state to Donald Trump, effectively ending his campaign. Even before he announced the suspension of his campaign, it was obvious this would be the end. What is more, having lost his home state seriously damages Rubio’s credibility as a political figure of national consequence. If he can’t deliver Florida, those in the smoke-filled rooms will reason, is he really going to make it long-term in this game? Not only did he fail to win the state, he won only a single county in the entire state. Whether this tanks his career remains to be seen. But for now Rubio has fretted his hour upon the stage, and is well and truly out.

 

Cruz

Ted Cruz is currently experiencing firsthand the fantastical metamorphic powers of presidential politics. A man who famously has only one friend in Washington (Utah’s Senator Mike Lee), is now becoming the favored candidate of an establishment that loathes and reviles him. Once again it comes back to positioning. As the proverb goes, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. In a race where the only other competitive candidate is Donald Trump, Ted Cruz becomes the establishment insider representing established political norms. Which is a problem, at least from my perspective. Because to be absolutely honest Ted Cruz scares the hell out of me in ways Donald Trump never could. I will write a longer piece on why this is, but suffice to say given the choice of Cruz and Trump i’m not at all sure we shouldn’t be rooting for the Human Hairpiece himself, depressing though that thought may be. Cruz strategy has always been to try and knockout rivals and consolidate the Evangelical, Tea-Party and Movement Conservative factions of the party. He has notched up big wins in several of the more conservative states like Alaska, Kansas and Idaho as well as more independent-driven states like Maine, leading up to essentially fighting Trump to a tie in Missouri. If the nominee is not Donald Trump, it is likely to be Ted Cruz. That is what he has always banked on, with the implication that of the two people would be forced to gravitate towards him. Despite possible upcoming wins in states like Utah, this is complicated by…

John Kasich

Yes, he is still here. By winning his native Ohio in a convincing fashion he avoided the sort of blow that felled Brave Sir Marco, but the harsh truth of the matter is there is just no way for him to amass sufficient delegates to win. And he knows this. Then why is he till in the race you may ask? This is because of a possibility that has political wonks all over America giddy with hope and anticipation.There might be a brokered convention. While this might not seem like a big deal, it is a rare event. Not since Reagan sought to beat Ford for the nomination in the seventies have we gone into a nominating convention not knowing who the nominee would be. It is usually just theater, a sort of giant pep rally to get the troops excited and roll-out the campaign. But it was not always thus. In the old days, before the democratizing reforms of the sixties and seventies, the nominating convention did exactly what it said on the tin. They selected the nominee. And they could pick anybody, although it was usually arranged between bosses behind the scenes.

What is a brokered convention?

Basically, to get the nomination you need to win a majority of votes at the convention. That is what all these states are about, and all these delegate numbers actually signify. So all the delegates elected in the primaries and caucuses meet at the national convention and have a vote. If nobody gets elected on the first ballot, then they continue with wheeling and dealing and cajoling and all the dark arts of political persuasion to try and swing states from one column to another. Which is possible, because although the delegates are pledged to vote for the candidate who won the election back home on the first ballot, many states do not require them to do so on the second ballot and on the third virtually all delegates are up for grabs. The theory that is propelling Kasich and Cruz, as well as acting as the current talisman of protection for the establishment, is that Trump will fail to win a majority of delegates. This seems plausible given current trends, but could change given the more liberal makeup of remaining states and how well trump did in such places previously. The hope is that after that failure, delegates attached to Trump will peel off in the second and third ballots and they will be able to wrest the nomination from his grasp at the 11th hour. Interestingly it need not even be someone running for president this year. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is being floated as a possible candidate at the convention, and he has stayed as far away from this cycle as it is possible to be without moving to Alaska.

Is that likely?

There has been speculation of a brokered convention before. But this cycle is the most mathematically plausible deadlock for a long time. Now that it is essentially a two man race in most states between either Trump and Cruz or Trump and Kasich if there was ever a time for the much anticipated consolidation of the anti-Trump vote it is now. If that occurs and Trummp loses some states or fails to gain a large enough majority of delegates we could see real chaos in the convention. And considering where the sympathies of most of the party workers and activists in the GOP lie its difficult to imagine Trump being the beneficiary of a protracted floor fight.

What happens then?

Nobody knows. Currently the leadership is in the position of either going to the election with Trump as standard bearer of snatching the election away from the clear pick of the primary voters. Either course would likely fracture the loose confederation of warring tribes that is the modern GOP.

What to look for next?

Contests in Utah and Arizona. If Trump’s momentum can be blunted, we may see a brokered convention. And that blunting would need to start pretty much now.