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.