After last week’s surprise win by Sanders, many pundits are very cautious about making predictions this week. I share the caution.  You can read good takes by Harry Enten at Fivethrityeight.com regarding expectations for both the Democrat and Republican races.

For the Democrats, Paul Krugman linked to a model from Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz which looks at racial composition and a dummy variable for whether the state  in question is part of the South.  This simple model explains over 90 percent of the variance in Clinton’s vote share.  It predicts FL and NC to be Clinton’s best states; with MO as perhaps her weakest.  An interesting question is whether Dem voters cross over to vote for Kasich in Ohio’s open primary.  Finally, the proportional way that Democrats award delegates makes it hard for Bernie to catch Clinton unless he has some big wins along the way.

Read Harry Enten’s take at Fivethirtyeight for a full rundown on the Republicans.  I think the divided field continues to give Trump the ability to win big delegate counts with plurality victories.  But will voters be coalescing around single anti-Trump candidates in specific states or remain divided?  With no special knowledge or secret sauce in my possession, my hunch is that Trump will win FL and Rubio will drop out of the race. Kasich will probably win Ohio and stay in, but I’m not sure he has much potential past his own home state.   If Cruz can win a couple of states, that might give him some momentum to become the single conservative alternative to Trump.  But it may be too late.  Who knows?

Although there is nothing new about Republicans appealing to racist impulses in the electorate, this is typically done with dog whistles and code– “welfare queens” and calling Obama the “food stamps President.”  Trump does the same thing; but explicitly and on steroids. He also gives cover to his supporters engaging in public intimidation and/or violence.   While he remains a weak (though not quite fatally flawed) general election candidate, I agree with Jonathan Chait that his style is corrosive to democracy and politics even if he is defeated in the general election.  From Chait:

The Republican Party relies on the covert mobilization of racial resentment and nationalism. Trump, as I saw it, was bringing into the open that which had been intentionally submerged. It seemed like a containable dose of disease, too small to take over its host, but large enough to set off a counter-reaction of healthy blood cells. But the outbreak of violence this weekend suggests the disease may be spreading far wider than I believed, and infecting healthy elements of the body politic…  I remain convinced that Trump cannot win the presidency. But what I failed to account for was the possibility that his authoritarian style could degrade American politics even in defeat. There is a whiff in the air of the notion that the election will be settled in the streets — a poisonous idea that is unsafe in even the smallest doses.

Matthew Yglasias comes to a similar conclusion:

The framers of the Constitution rather sharply circumscribed the president’s authority to make and repeal legislation, making it in many respects a weaker office than the prime ministerships of more majoritarian countries. But the president and his appointees have enormous discretion over the enforcement of existing laws. Putting a leader who would condone violence against the supporters of his political opponents in charge of the federal law enforcement apparatus is frightening. Giving him the power to unilaterally issue pardons is terrifying.

There have been clear signs all year that this was the direction the Trump phenomenon was heading, but I assumed that as he got closer to the Republican nomination Trump would tone down his extreme behavior in order to demonstrate his acceptability to mainstream voters. In fact, he has done the opposite. It’s a surprising decision that has truly scary implications for how he might behave were he to actually win the presidency.

The sooner Trump’s candidacy ends the better.  In a separate piece, Yglasias makes the case for Democrats to cross over and vote for Cruz in open primaries because he is probably the only candidate who could actually overtake Trump in the delegate race.

 

 

I’ve been wresting with two related issues and haven’t yet hat time to get my thoughts down.  1) How likely is Trump to win a general election?  2) And if you believe the chance is low, though not impossible, is it fair or appropriate to root for his success in primary process as it brings a wrecking ball to the Republicans?  My tentative answers are: 1) low (less than 20 percent likelihood), and 2) maybe not.

Isaac Chotiner has a very good piece on these issues in Slate. I will quote extensively:

Trump is the least electable Republican presidential candidate in a generation, a sinister demagogue who would almost certainly lose to Hillary Clinton in November. But Trump’s demagoguery also frightens liberals, and many centrists: His success has revealed an ugly side of America, full of prejudice, suspicion, and hate, all of it terrifyingly on display Friday night at his canceled rally in Chicago.

And yet, as the campaign has worn on and Trump has emerged as the leader in the delegate count, another liberal reaction to his rise has emerged: schadenfreude. Trump’s nomination could very well lead to the collapse of the Republican Party, which many liberals view as an increasingly debased institution that deserves not merely to lose elections but to be permanently vanquished. Even more satisfying to liberal rubberneckers is the idea that the Republicans have been the architects of their own demise—that this is a classic case of chickens coming home to roost. A party that for decades fomented and benefited from racial resentment is now seeing its political future potentially collapse thanks to the very forces it nurtured.

 

So last night was medium Tuesday with R contests in Michigan, Mississippi, ID, and HI (Dems in MI and MS only).  I have no real insights beyond what others are saying at Fivethirtyeight, VOX and the NYT.  That said, here’s my current thinking.

On the Republican race, Trump won 3 of 4 contests and picked up 71 delegates.  In his loss in ID, received 28 percent of the vote; in the winning states, he received 37 percent to 47 percent.  These are nice pluralities  (in all but ID) that gave him 49 percent of the delegates.  In the future, more states have winner take all or winner take most rules where pluralities could lead to significantly greater delegate shares.  Bottom line, Trump continues to do very well.  It’s hard to see anyone catching him or even a contested convention.  We won’t know for sure until Rubio drops out and Kasich’s one likely win in Ohio is in the rear view mirror.  In other words, when it’s down to Trump, Cruz and Kasich (the likely case after March 16), will Trump continue to win in this narrower field?  I think he will.  And pluralities are all he needs.

On the Democrat side, Sanders’ surprise win in MI gives him some momentum that is likely to keep the race going for at least another month or two, but Clinton still remains the heavy favorite.  At VOX, Dylan Mathews says it well, although Sanders is in a worse position today than Clinton was in 2008 compared to Obama.   Mathews:

It’s important not to overstate Clinton’s woes. Before tonight, she was nearly 200 pledged delegates ahead of Sanders, with over 58 percent of those allocated to date. She is absolutely demolishing him with superdelegates. She’s winning the popular vote. She’ll net more delegates tonight. She’ll probably win the nomination….But tonight still suggests it could be a long slog à la 2008, with Clinton playing Obama and Sanders playing ’08 Clinton. The losing candidate is winning just often enough to keep raising money and motivating volunteers. As long as that’s happening, Clinton can’t pivot to the general election, no matter how faint Sanders’s chances eventually get.

While Trump and Clinton remain heavy favorites, two factors worth watching are: (1) open vs. closed primaries (Cruz does better in closed) and (2) as the race moves away from the south, do Clinton’s numbers vis-a-vis different demographic groups remain steady.

 

My first reaction to Super Tuesday results was that Trump was close to being the inevitable nominee. In a nutshell, Trump dominated, while Cruz and Rubio each won just enough to stay in the Race. This helps Trump as they keep dividing the anti-Trump vote, allowing Trump to win with just a plurality.  With some winner take all contests coming up, plurality victories could mean huge delegate wins.  So why hasn’t Trump moved even closer to being the inevitable nominee?

Because the race continues, and probably longer than any Republican Presidential primary since maybe 1976.  Typically once a commanding lead in delegates is established, other candidates leave the race because money dries up and they have no path to the nomination.  Josh Marshall says it very well:

If you look back at most recent primary processes, the winner doesn’t usually officially clinch the nomination until as long as a couple months or more after he “wins.” That is because in US nomination processes, you don’t win when you yourself win. You win when no one else has a realistic prospect of catching up with you or winning outright themselves. Once that’s the case, the rationale for everyone else’s campaign disappears. And with the rationale gone, money and stakeholder support quickly disappear as well…Normally this shouldn’t be a big problem since presumably someone who is far out in the lead wouldn’t be far out in the lead if they weren’t a fairly strong candidate and someone most people can get behind, even if that candidate wasn’t their first choice.

Like Josh says, normally this wouldn’t be a problem because the primary leader is broadly acceptable to the entire party–that’s why he or she has been winning.  But obviously that’s not the case here. Trump is the leader among voters, but is not broadly acceptable to all Republicans, especially other elected officials. So the race continues.  Trump remains the favorite. He may build on his plurality (he got 49 percent in MA).  Pluralities wins could be even more delegate rich down the stretch.  But a small stumble in a winner take all race like FL could cause problems.

Nate Silver has been skeptical of Trump from the beginning. (He owns his mistakes and is the best “numerical” political analyst by far).  But I remember him analogizing the establishment’s power to that of a boxing referee.  The referee can’t say anything with a knockout, but can break a tie.  That’s what all the talk about a contested convention is about–breaking a tie, in this case against Trump.  I am not saying this is likely; it isn’t. But it’s premature to crown Trump at this stage. He remains a strong favorite to be the nominee (say 75 percent chance in my view), but not quite there.  I’ll let Josh have the final word for now:

. ..Most sophisticated party observers must realize that if the party establishment bands together to deny Trump the nomination even though he’s won by by far the most delegates, they are in all likelihood conceding the election. Most of the ‘contested convention’ talk now is just people who are in denial about what’s happening. I would say virtually all of it. But I got the first inclinations late today that certain party stakeholders may be genuinely considering the possibility of throwing away the presidential election over Trump.

The answer to this question is what is going to make the next month or so so fascinating. Is the party really going to fight this battle out state after state, not with any hope of having any other candidate win but simply to deny Trump the ability to automatically claim the nomination on the first ballot?

Gotta to go to work.  More later.

Mrs. Center Left and I just watched John Oliver’s twenty minute takedown of Donald Drumpf.  It demonstrates he is a serial lier, thin skinned, and possessing a very questionable business record.  All this and more will be real liabilities in the general election this fall.  But what drives his popularity with Republican voters?  And should we fear him more than the rest of the Republican field?  I will be thinking about these questions  for several months.  Here are some thoughts tonight.

Much of Trumps’ appeal derives from the overblown irresponsible rhetoric of the Republican Party.  Jonathan Chait argues well that “Trump Doesn’t Represent Conservatism, But Does Represent Conservatives.”  Chait’s first paragraph:

Donald Trump’s rise to Republican presidential front-runner has surprised nearly everybody. Watching last year as Trump exploded onto the scene, some liberals quickly concluded that his mastery of right-wing populist currents could easily win him the nomination. Others (like me) believed the forces of the party Establishment would likely crush him, whatever his authentic appeal to the rank and file. What neither camp missed was that Trump’s nativist, authoritarian, anti-intellectual style was something the Republican electorate craved.

Like Chait, I believed that other Republicans would stop him. But it turns out they faced a collective action problem, whereby as a group, it would be good to attack him, but individually, it made sense to hold back and let others do the dirty work.  Now I think it’s too late.  Chait closes with the following and I agree 100 percent.

When figures like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin brushed aside detailed policy critiques as the picayune obsessions of Washington insiders, Republicans cheered their vapid anti-intellectualism as the righteous populist folk wisdom. It has been a bracing experience for conservative elites to behold when the forces they have successfully harnessed for so long shake free and turn against them. Conservatives are right that Trump does not represent their ideas perfectly, or even very well. What he represents instead is the actual constituency for those ideas.

Let me turn briefly to my second question, should Trumps’ candidacy be feared by liberals and center left thinkers?  Kevin Drum says yes:

A few of my fellow liberals have been suggesting lately that they’d prefer Donald Trump as president to, say, Marco Rubio. Mostly this is for two reasons. First, they figure Trump will be easier to beat. Second, if he does win, Trump’s volatile personality and tenuous relationship to ideology suggest that he might be surprisingly flexible in office. Rubio, by contrast, is a stone ideologue who would appoint hundreds of fellow ideologues to office. He’d make a real effort to do every horrible thing he says he’s going to do. This is an enticing argument, but it’s also dangerous.

I agree it’s dangerous, but not as dangerous as Marco Rubio with a Republican Congress and Supreme Court.  I’m not saying Trump can’t win.  He could win, especially if there is a recession. But Trump brings a lot of exploitable baggage into campaign.  I expect him to be defeated.  However, if he did prevail he would be better in terms of policy (with the exception of immigration) than his Republican rivals.  His tax cut would be less regressive, his foreign policy more dovish, and he does not favor reductions in Social Security or Medicare. He has not said he will tear up the Iran deal his first day in office.

I recognize that it’s very scary to vest someone of his uneven temperament with power of the U.S. presidency. Despite this scare, he is actually more moderate than the rest of the Republican field.   I’m not saying there is no risk in Trump. I’m just saying it’s not much riskier than the likely outcomes associated with another Republican.  And he will be easier to defeat.  I will continue to assess the relative risks of Trump in future posts.

Like many others, I believe Hillary and Trump will win big tomorrow.  When Christie endorsed Trump my gut feeling moved from “Trump is the front runner but others may still catch him” to “Trump is the likely nominee.”  I will be surprised if he does not capture the nomination this year.

Hillary’s extra strong performance in South Carolina suggests she will dominate in most diverse states.  According to Nate Silver, with demographic adjustments, Bernie should have been even stronger in Iowa and New Hampshire than his actual vote totals.  In fact, he underperformed in those states (a tie and a 20 point win) relative to Nevada (where he lost by 6 percent).  With proportional delegate allocations being the norm, it will take Hillary several months to actually clinch the nomination.  But after Tuesday she will have a big lead in delegates and will never look back.