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.

The Republican primary in South Carolina as well as the Democratic Caucuses in Nevada are now concluded. Candidates have left the race, and the Republican establishment continues the waking nightmare that is the ascendancy of Donald Trump. I will deal with the Caucuses tomorrow, but first the Republican South Carolina primary.

So what happened? 

Donald trump won big. Very big. Again. This was not meant to happen. By this time in the cycle we were meant to be watching the Bush juggernaut grind towards the nomination with glacial inevitability. But, to paraphrase the poet Burns, shit comes up. In this instance in the form of Donald Trump. If you take away only one thing from this primary let it be that The Donald is sailing towards the GOP nomination. Like an object in Newtonian physics he will remain in motion unless acted upon by an exterior force. Those waiting for his candidacy to self destruct will wait in vain, i’m afraid. Disillusionment with the operation of the American political system and the elites and establishment that surround it has reached such a stage that a plurality of voters on one side simply want someone to tell it like it is and break heads on their behalf.

What about the rest of them?

Well lets go through the candidates in order of vote total.

1st Donald Trump

With 36.9% of the vote, Trump walked away with the gold medal. This is an important development. Firstly, it was the first primary in the South. Remember that the Republican party of today is essentially a Southern party. Don’t misunderstand me, there are many northern and blue states with Republican governors. But the influence of Southern voters is unavoidably greater on those who represent Southern states and districts. A congressman from Boston cares very little how popular he is in rural Alabama. To fail to win the South is to fail to connect with the foundation of the Republican party and the bedrock of its electoral support. Trump proved that he could win Southern primaries, that New Hampshire wasn’t a fluke and that his candidacy isn’t some media soap-bubble that expands meteorically only to pop. His campaign is real and, looking increasingly inevitable, swelling like a dying star before exploding in a crescendo of in this case electoral  annihilation.

2nd (But not really) Marco Rubio 

Expectations are key in shaping the all-important narrative of the campaign, and Rubio managed to beat them by scraping in to what some are calling second place. I say this because beating someone by (at time of writing) .2 of a percent in a crowded field is not a rational barometer for ascendancy. Rubio and Cruz got circa. 165,000 and 164,000 respectively. That is not statistically significant. But, expectations for Cruz were high. While Rubio, off the back of his disastrous debate performance and subsequent pummeling in New Hampshire by John Kasich, had set expectations very low. This is why expectations are important. Because of them, a statistical tie for both of them is a victory for Rubio and a defeat for Cruz. Rubio’s strong showing in South Carolina helps him in his ambition to become the standard bearer for the non-tea party and non-trump conglomeration.

3rd (But not really) Ted Cruz

This was a disappointing result for Texas’ least amusing son. His campaign is predicated on support from the movement conservatives of the hard-right and the evangelical wing of the party. South Carolina is overwhelmingly favorable ground in that regard, with the evangelical vote dominating the primary. His failure to come closer to Trump’s vote total, if not beat him again as he did in Iowa is a serious obstacle in Cruz’ path to victory.

 

4th Jeb Bush

After calling on his elder brother and his mother to campaign for him, and after having spent vast piles of cash on advertising in South Carolina Bush was able to muster only a desultory 7.8%.He staked it all on South Carolina, a state with a history of support for the House of Bush, and lost crushingly. Swiftly afterwards, and to the surprise of nobody he suspended his campaign. The crucial question now is where does that support go?

5th John Kasich

The expectation game is working for John Kasich in this primary. Having essentially no support in the state before the New Hampshire primary, nobody seriously expected him to win or even place highly. He is not a good fit for the South Carolina primary, either in style or in terms of policy. His more pragmatic and conciliatory message largely fell on deaf ears. Kasich was, however, able to catch up to Bush, ending with virtually the same result. Because of this he can claim there is momentum behind his candidacy, that his campaign is growing and survive long enough to make a stand in the mid-west where his appeal is thought to be greater. Whether he can survive long enough to be a factor in such states, or demonstrate any significant support at all in places other than New Hampshire are open questions. Personally i don’t like his chances. In previous cycles Kasich would be just the sort of man to be a first-tier contender. But the adults lost control of the show a long time ago.

6th Ben Carson

The core of Ben Carson’s national support are evangelical Christians. Since they are the dominant group in this primary it should be unsurprising he got quite a lot of support considering the parlous state of his campaign. 7.2% is obviously not a winning number, but it is certainly enough to move the dial. That is why most of the discussion in the media surrounding his campaign is about when he will drop out, to see where that support will go. Under usual conditions that would be some time ago, but his campaign recently announced a larger than expected fundraising haul so perhaps the good doctor will continue his seemingly semi-conscious presence on the trail.

So why did Trump win? 

The crucial factor to understand in this season is that Trump is winning because the field is divided. He isn’t winning absolute majorities, merely the largest plurality of voters. If you take the votes of what are perceived to be the ‘establishment’ candidates (Rubio, Kasich and Bush) you get a number that eclipses Trump’s. But Cruz splits off the Conservatives and many Evangelicals, Trump takes the anti-establishment angry and disillusioned crowd and then the other three candidates fight over the remaining ‘governing’ wing of the party, concerned with governing the country in a conservative fashion rather than ideological crusades or populist preaching. Unless and until candidates follow Bush’s lead and drop out to allow the anti-trump blocks of the party to consolidate, Trump will continue on to victory.

God help us all.

 

 

Over the next few days I plan to post more detailed analysis of each candidates place in the field, biography and potential hurdles. I was holding off on this on the assumption that the fine people of New Hampshire would winnow the field down still further, and in this they have obliged me. So to begin with lets just nail down the event that was the New Hampshire primary, who won, why and what it means.

 

What is a New Hampshire, and why does it matter?

New Hampshire is a small irregular rectangle on the north-eastern edge of the United States. As they never tire of repeating, they hold the nations first primary. But what about Iowa i hear you say? Well, technically Iowa is a caucus. A caucus in American political parlance signifies a big meeting where you demonstrate support for your candidate by standing in certain parts of a large room in front of your friends and neighbors, resisting their appeals to shame, greed and avarice with the white hot flame of your political commitment. Unless you have a job. In which case, you basically can’t play. It’s a bit of a problem. New Hampshire, by contrast, opts for the more traditional ‘vote by putting a piece of paper in a box’ method we all know and love.

But which people? And what box? 

Iowa and New Hampshire are the one-two punch of primary politics. Very seldom does a candidate win both, largely because of the diversity of those two states. Whats important to note about New Hampshire is that there is a much smaller evangelical electorate in that state. While Iowa has a reputation as being up for grabs for the insurgents and the populists, New Hampshire is traditionally seen as the domain of the moderates (with a few notable historical exceptions). If you are not a firebrand conservative, New Hampshire is the state you need to do well in early to demonstrate your viability. What most candidates go there looking for is a ‘ticket out’ of the state, as the saying goes. They want the right to compete and be taken seriously in later contests.

So who got a ticket?

Most obviously Trump, but others as well. But lets just settle on that point for a second. Donald Trump won a primary. We are living in a world now where he of the inimitable hair and perpetual bankruptcy  is amassing delegates. Any lingering doubt you may have about whether or not the Trump Show was actually a real presidential campaign or simply a bad joke should be put from your mind. Because this was a big victory. The Donald won working class voters, younger voters, older voters. His victory could, if one was so inclined, be called emphatic.

Does that mean Trump will be the nominee? 

Not by a long shot. His support seems to have a ceiling of around one-third of the GOP primary electorate. He will need to expand that if he wants to win the nomination. What this victory does mean is that you we will be seeing more of New York’s less than favorite son.

What’s all this about John Kasich? 

John Kasich overcame the handicap of nobody outside of Ohio knowing who he was to come in second in New Hampshire. To be honest it wasn’t even a terribly strong second, but he was the person with the most votes whose name wasn’t Trump. This apparently entitles him to the adoration of much of the press corps. That shouldn’t be important, but it is. This is what i mean about the narrative nature of this process. The fact his second place finish is being treated as a big deal makes it a big deal because in many of these cases perception and reality are intimately intertwined.

 

What is the next thing to watch? 

The next contests are in South Carolina for the GOP, and Nevada for the Democrats. I’m currently preparing a long post about South Carolina for both parties, and will also do one on Nevada for the blue team. In the meantime i’ll be posting some more detailed analysis of each candidate and where they stand now that the field is down to a more manageable size. I have been desperately hoping Ben Carson will drop out so i can be spared writing about him, but sadly the good doctor has disappointed me.

 

 

 

Rand Paul has joined the list of Republican ‘also ran’ candidates for this cycle. Like Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham the Kentucky Senator has ended his campaign. He has the dubious privilege of actually surviving long enough to be rebuffed by the electors of Iowa, many of the others having had their candidacies strangled virtually at birth either by incompetence or The Donald sucking down all the metaphorical oxygen with a kleptomaniacal relentlessness.

 

Who Cares?

Well, i’m sure the people of Kentucky will be delighted to have their Senator back. Laws, rules and regulations were all bent and altered to allow Rand this run. After sacrificing so much, going to such great lengths to simply pursue the presidency his failure must be galling. But this raises a question crucial to this whole presidential cycle. His father, Ron Paul, achieved considerable success in Iowa. In 2008 Paul Superior got 21% in Iowa, within 5 points of victory. So where is all that support now? Where is the libertarian, small government, non-interventionist wing of the party we all saw grow in the post-Bush years? There were patchy performances on the part of Rand at some of the debates to be sure, but this hardly explains shrinking the family escutcheon in Iowa by three-quarters, down to a measly four percent. Especially because Rand was meant to be a younger, more forceful, more establishment-friendly and ultimately more electable version of his father.

So why didn’t he do better?

The sad truth is that the Republican primary electorate this year is not buying what the Saints Paul are selling. Medieval Islamist psychopaths are despoiling the cradle of civilization, Russia is nicking off with parts of other countries it likes the look of and America is being ruled over by a radical socialist hell bent on making the USA into Sweden. Now here comes Rand to talk about cutting back on the military, isolationism and civil liberties. Anger is the dominant emotion of this campaign. People are after a tribune to go crack some heads wherever heads need cracking. Randbot simply does not ship with such functionality.

What happens next?

The first major public poll of New Hampshire since Iowa comes out. Paul and Huckabee, both now gone from the race, had a combined total of 3 percent in the Granite state. Not much, but each narrowing of the field means more voters forced back into the undecided box. That box will be emptied shortly, and minds will have to be made up. They can’t choose Paul any more, so who will it be? And who will drop out next? The endless drama continues.

 

P.S. My money is on Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. To be honest, i don’t understand why he hasn’t announced it already. Or perhaps he did and nobody noticed.