Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton Poised To Leave Opponents In The Dust On Super Tuesday
It's Super Tuesday, and both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are likely to go a long way toward securing the nominations of their respective parties.
After nearly a year of campaigning, and a wild ride on both sides that has defied expectation, the 2016 campaign for President has officially entered a month that is likely to go a long way toward deciding the outcome of the nomination fights in both parties. On the Republican side, a race that has seen candidates that would have been considered top tier in a tradition election year, such as Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, has come down to a contest between a New York real estate magnate whose political loyalties have shifted like the wind in Chicago on a cold night, and whose support seems to only become more loyal and vehement as he says more and more outrageous things, and two freshman Senators of limited accomplishment who have spent most of the race arguing between each other which one would be harsher on illegal immigration. On the Democratic side, the seemingly inevitable campaign of a woman who came close to winning the nomination eight years ago has seen itself have to struggle against an unexpectedly strong insurgency from a septuagenarian socialist from Vermont who managed to catch fire among his party’s progressive wing and attract younger voters by concentrating on issues of economic inequality, but who now seems to be near the end of his fifteen minutes of fame thanks to his inability to attract almost any interest at all from African-American voters. Now that we’re entering March, though, the race in both parties looks as though it may come to an abrupt end in both parties, and it all starts today on Super Tuesday.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump seems poised to sweep nearly all of the eleven states holding contests today, which could cause him to end the night with enough delegates to credibly claim that he is essentially the inevitable nominee:
Donald Trump is poised for sweeping nationwide wins on Super Tuesday, solidifying his position as the Republican front-runner and intensifying the pressure on his struggling primary rivals to find a way forward.
Top Republicans — including governors who convened an emergency conference call on Monday on which Trump was Topic A — expect the real estate mogul to carry as many as 10 states on Tuesday night, an outcome that would deal a body blow to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has staked his campaign heavily on the Southern states holding nominating contests, and to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has yet to win a primary and isn’t expected to do so on Tuesday.
“If Trump wins 8 or more states on Tuesday, it would take a massive collapse on his and/or his campaign’s part for him not to be the nominee,” said Tony Fabrizio, a longtime GOP pollster and strategist who advised Rand Paul.
Trump’s march to the nomination has set off a wave of anxiety across the Republican Party establishment as top officials weigh whether to endorse him — or denounce him as anathema to the party’s values. Reflecting that angst, on Monday morning, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the heads of the Republican Governors Association, convened fellow governors for an unusual conference call to discuss how the primary was unfolding — and Trump was a central topic of conversation.
(…)
No matter what happens on Tuesday, Cruz and Rubio’s allies point out, Trump will be nowhere close to securing the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. The 595 delegates up for grabs will be distributed proportionately, meaning that Cruz and Rubio are expected to rack up a substantial number even if they do not succeed in winning many states. Going into Super Tuesday, Trump has won 82 of the 133 delegates that have been awarded so far.
That means the primary race could well go on for weeks or months longer without any candidate meeting the threshold for securing the nomination.
“Donald Trump is the clear front-runner, and he’s in a very strong position,” said Steve Munisteri, a former Texas Republican chairman who has closely studied the delegate allocation process. “But it’s not over.”
Yet there’s little question that the structural dynamics of the primary favor Trump. Assuming he wins most of the states voting on Super Tuesday and his rivals choose to stay in the contest, Trump will be the beneficiary of two major advantages: a lead in the delegate count, and a splintered Republican field.
With Rubio likely to be blown out on Tuesday, his allies are latching on to the notion that he could still keep Trump from amassing a majority of delegates and then win over party insiders at the convention in Cleveland, securing the nomination at the 11th hour.
“There is a very narrow way forward,” conceded Mel Martinez, a former Republican National Committee chairman and past Florida senator who endorsed Rubio on Monday.
But, Martinez said, there was hope. A majority of the party, he argued, found Trump “increasingly unpalatable,” and they would resist him.
“How that manifests itself I don’t know, but I believe there is a sense by many, myself included, that he just cannot be the nominee,” he said. “So a convention scenario could begin to develop.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Cruz ridiculed the idea. “All these crazy voters go one way, we’ll step in with all of our money and anoint our white knight to ride in and save the day … That’s not going to happen.”
The growing ranks of forces looking for ways to stop Trump insist they haven’t lost hope. Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump super PAC being overseen by former Mitt Romney aide Katie Packer, has launched an aggressive fundraising campaign and is eyeing the possibility of launching ad campaigns against him in four delegate-rich states voting in March: Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, and Florida.
The group, which has tapped veteran Republican strategist Ed Goeas to conduct polling, has secured donations by a number of prominent Republican Party contributors, including Marlene Ricketts, part of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, and Stan Hubbard, a broadcasting executive.
“I don’t think the opposition to Trump is going quietly into the night anytime soon,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The vast majority of Republicans are horribly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and there is no sign whatsoever that fundraising or energy is dissipating for an alternative.”
If Trump does as well as he’s expected to today, this “Stop Trump” effort is clearly going to be too little, late. Of the eleven contests on the board, the only when where Trump seems most likely to come in anything other than first place is Texas where Ted Cruz is making what the media is already calling the Senator’s last stand, and a state he must win for his campaign to remain viable. The polling out of the Lone Star State seem to indicate that Cruz will indeed win the popular vote, but that may only be half of the issue. Because of the way that Texas allocates delegates, Trump could end up coming in second place and still walk away with a sizable amount of the delegates that are up for grabs in the state. If Cruz manages to lose the popular vote in Texas to Trump, though, there will be much talk in the coming days about whether or not he can maintain a viable campaign and a lot of pressure on him to drop out. Outside of Texas, though, Trump has strong leads in pretty much every other Super Tuesday State, including Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Vermont. The outcome in the remaining states, which includes Arkansas, Minnesota, and Alaska, are unclear largely because there has not been much recent polling there. With respect to Minnesota, though, there’s at least some speculation that Marco Rubio could pull off a win in the caucuses there, which would constitute his first win in any contest this year, but Rubio will stay in the race until Florida regardless of what happens tonight, just as John Kasich will stay in the race until the Ohio and Michigan primaries later this month.
For those of you interested in the hard numbers of the various races, and the projected delegate totals from each state, FiveThirtyEight has compiled a guide to the Republican side of Super Tuesday that does a very good job of explaining everything. As far as projections go, rather than trying to predict the outcome in each state, I’ll simply state the following:
- Ted Cruz will win the popular vote in Texas, roughly within the margin predicted in the polling, but Donald Trump will come in a strong enough second to share in delegate allocation with Cruz;
- Trump will win Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Vermont probably by roughly the margins shown in the polling in those states;
- Trump will also win Arkansas, but at least ten points;
- As stated, Marco Rubio has a chance of winning Minnesota, but will not win any other state; and,
- Let’s just call Alaska a toss-up. It’s a caucus, which means whichever campaign is well-organized up there could win outright, but none of the candidates have spent any time campaigning there so your guess is as a good as mine.
By the end of the night, I’d expect we’ll see Republicans wake up to the realization that Donald Trump has just taken another major step down the road toward becoming their nominee, that Ted Cruz has barely done what he needs to do to maintain a credible campaign, and that Marco Rubio may still be searching for his first victory unless he manages to notch one in Minnesota, a state that has been largely ignored by the other candidates. John Kasich, meanwhile, will continue to insist that he’s staying in until March 15th, while everyone wonders what Ben Carson is really up to.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton stands to do leave Bernie Sanders in the dust in the twelve contests that Democrats are holding today, and one of the main reason for that is the fact that the majority of today’s contests are located in states with large African-American populations. Polling shows Clinton with massive leads in Virginia, Massachusetts, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and Alabama, as well as a narrower lead in Oklahoma. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, unsurprisingly has a massive lead in his home state of Vermont, which he will obviously win easily and which Clinton has not really seriously contested. To the extent there are toss-ups today on the Democratic side, they can be found in Minnesota, Colorado, and the territory of American Samoa. Of those three, Clinton was leading in the last polling taken in Minnesota and Colorado in January, but that may not accurately reflect the Sanders campaign’s ability to pull off a win in the caucuses there. Even if he does, though, Clinton seems destined to walk away with the vast majority of the delegates at stake in the Democrats today, which will put her one step closer to putting the final nail in the coffin of whatever kind of challenge Sanders represented, which in all honesty wasn’t much of one.
As with the Republicans, FiveThirtyEight has a Super Tuesday Guide for the Democrats that explains what’s at stake in each contest and what to look for. By way of projections, I’d expect Clinton to easily win Virginia, Massachusetts, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and Alabama, and that she’ll pull off a narrow win in Oklahoma in the end. Of the remaining contests, I’ll go ahead and predict she’ll also win in Minnesota and Colorado as well as American Samoa. In other words, Bernie Sanders will walk away from the night with a single win and, perhaps, the realization that the fat lady is beginning to tune up.
Polls begin to close starting at 7pm tonight — see the schedule here — so we should have a good idea of how the night is going to go in both parties fairly early.
The narrative will be that Trump is inevitable. Trump himself will push this hard. But if he only controls a a plurality of the delegates, this isn’t over. There are two more weeks of heavy voting that should determine this.
(I say that as someone who now thinks the GOP will go ahead with the seppuku and nominate Trump.)
@Hal_10000:
You are correct, but if Trump does as well as expected today it will give him a lead in delegate allocation that will be hard for the others to overcome, and it will give him momentum headed into March 8th and March 15th.
My political savvy friends are expressing marvel and disbelief over how Trump could actually end up as the GOP candidate.
Me? Not so much. Trump is the distilled version of the average Republican voter: Trump is a greedy, racist, egocentric moron.
It’s a match made in Heaven. (Or Hell, depending one’s point of view)
Cheers.
@Hal_10000:
Without a major decline in support, Trump is inevitable – because the delegate allocation rules disproportionately award delegates to the leaders. Sam Wang has a model that says on Super Tuesday, Trump at 31% polling support can get 287 delegates out of 595 – almost 50%. Later in the process, there will be winner take all states. (The most recent polls have Trump well over 40% support.)
Scroll down to the bottom of this link as reference:
http://election.princeton.edu/2016/02/27/cake-bakes-rubio/
Today marks the day Trump becomes inevitable…and the beginning of the end of the GOP as a serious political party. The party electorate is poised to choose a leader who is overtly racist, misogynist, and violent. Stay classy, Republicans.
@C. Clavin: I wouldn’t gloat too soon. You are assuming rational behavior on the part of the voters. Look how that assumption worked out for the Republicans.
I just read an interesting piece in U.S.News and World Report positing that Massachusetts is “the state to watch” on Super Tuesday, the point being that if Mass. goes for Trump, he’s virtually unstoppable. At present, Trump’s combined polls are 45+%, giving him a 26.8 lead over Rubio and Kasich, who are duking it out for second place. According to an article in the Boston Globe, Trump gets YUGE support from Mass.union members, particularly SEIU.
If this is correct, then it’s Trump.
@Scott:
I’m not gloating, I’m mourning.
Conservatism has much to offer the Republic. Unfortunately Conservatism was bastardized and rendered unrecognizable beginning with Reagan and continuing through present day.
Trump (and the rest of the clown-car for that matter) has absolutely nothing to offer that is worth the garbage that comes with it.
@PogueMahone:
If that’s what you think is going on here, you’re seriously misunderstanding why Trump is winning. The thing I hear over and over from Trump supporters is that the game is rigged, that the system protects the elites, ignores the concerns of the citizens and continues to push the same old policies with nary a token of opposition. I don’t agree entirely with what Bainbridge says here but I think there’s a lot to it.
I think they’re wrong. Opposition from the GOP kept the budget flat and brought the deficit down. It stopped card check and cap-and-trade and a public option (whether you think these are good things or not is beside the point). I also think that electing Donald Trump to fight unfairness in the system is like smoking to treat your cancer. There are few people in America who have benefited from the unfair system as much as Donald J. Trump. And I expect him to continue to push policies that will protect the elite caste.
But I do understand where it’s coming from. There are racists in Trump’s fold but that’s not the core of his support, much as it might make people feel superior to pretend so. They feel ignored and marginalized, with their view on any issues considered irrelevant and de facto ignorant. Saying they’re a bunch of racists simply pours more gasoline on that fire. It’s a way of dismissing someone’s POV rather than engaging it.
@Hal_10000:
I would take racists over the fascism of the ‘anti-elite’ crowd. Does the meritocracy in America suck? Sure. But a lot of other things do to, including the f—ing people who believe they have been stabbed in the back a million times. If you are an adult and you find yourself furious that somewhere there is a person who thinks your tastes are gauche, that’s your problem and has nothing to do with the elite. The actual problems with the country lie in greed and violence, not in a hypothetical New Yorker reader looking down on the hypothetical Christian who believes in the Resurrection. The entire ‘anti-elite’ argument is designed to evade that, as if there are no local elites and nepotists in Peoria.
@Hal_10000:
Another thing about Trump supporters is that they actually revel in what they think of as their marginalized status. They enjoy being victims.
But beyond that, they have zero knowledge of how politics and government work. They’re enraged at Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan for giving, as they see it, Obama everything he wants. They’re enraged because the House of Representatives didn’t single-handedly impeach Obama, convict him, and try him for treason. (I’m serious.) You can’t tell them the House can’t do that, because they don’t believe it.
They also refuse to believe that Trump can’t do what he’s promising to do without violating the Constitution, which they purport to revere.
@Hal_10000:
I have many beliefs that are a total non-starter for 99% of Americans. I believe we should kick out all references to God from government documents, totally federalize education, and make the states nothing more than administrative divisions. My views will never, ever, be acceptable to the political system. Does it give me the right to whine about how life is unfair, and dream about a dictator that will steamroll my enemies? Hell no.
And you know what? Leaving my fringe views aside, do you know who had been marginalized and neglected for pretty much the entirety of the American history? African Americans! What kind of a fit do you think the rest of us would have thrown if they lined themselves behind a Trump equivalent- say a Farrakhan, instead of remaining to the premises and promises of our system?
The difference between African Americans, and liberals, and any other group in America that doesn’t get what it wants, and Trump supporters is that the latter truly and really that any political arrangement they don’t rule is illegitimate at best, product of conspiracy betwen cosmopolitan elites and mooching minorities at worst. Rule or Ruin, not E Pluribus Unum is their slogan.
This is why Sanders resonates also. This is exactly what Elizabeth Warren has been saying. Unfortunately, the two demographics that support Trump and Sanders respectively have been conveniently taught to despise each other. And both can’t get past that.
No, that’s sanctimonious BS. Warren supporters have no problems that benefit Trump supporters, and view them as misguided, maybe bigoted, but fellow citizens. Trump supporters view Warren supporters as moochers, and policies that benefit them as theft.
@Hal_10000:
I think that’s largely correct. Whether he would push elitist policies is too speculative for me. On immigration alone I think he’d break that mode.
The rest of you really need to seek professional help.
@Doug Mataconis: On the 15th we get into winner take all/most states where 40% for Trump gets most the delegates.
The GOPs designed this after Romney’s protracted, embarrassing primary slog to provide a quick victory to the anointed candidate. Not working well for them.
@humanoid.panda:
African-Americans are so elite that thirty can show up at a Trump rally and marginalize everyone there.
@humanoid.panda: Thank you for proving my point.
@CSK:
I agree with this. I think another part of the problem is talk radio hosts and the like pushing the idea that compromise is an evil word and that the Republicans are getting rooked at every turn. I get enormous fire on my own blog when I point out that Republican “capitulation” has resulted in the most spending restraint since the end of World War 2.
Trump is taking advantage of a perfect storm: a dysfunctional media, an angry core of voters, a GOP that had no real front-runner and reality-TV obsessed culture. It’s kind of scary.
A little while back, someone in one of the comments threads linked to a site called The Weekly Sift. I hadn’t heard of it before but have been visiting regularly since. Today the author put up his opinion of the rise and apparent inevitability of Trump. Given the current discussion in this thread, I thought it relevant.
http://weeklysift.com/2016/02/29/trump-is-an-opportunistic-infection/
@Hal_10000:
Also the next post down in Bainbridge’s blog is about a dinner he cooked which he paired with a 2003 Napa cab. I’m enough of an ‘elite’ to know that the bottle in question was reasonably priced, as Napa cabernets go. But anyone who has the audacity to talk about elites and sharing ‘real’ values with the downtrodden while they blog about the wines in their cellar is living a sham life. Trump represents this more than anything else, which is unfortunate.
I don’t think it’s quite that cut and dried, Doug. Florida’s and Ohio’s primaries aren’t until March 15. Ohio is winner-take-all.
If Cruz wins a good chunk of Texas’s delegates, Rubio a good chunk of Florida’s, and Kasich captures Ohio’s delegates, and all three of them remain in the race and continue to capture delegates, it will be darned hard for Trump to win outright.
@Guarneri:
Hey, Guarneri…how many days left until the EU collapses?
5 or 6? I think you said it was going to be by the 7th, right?
And when it doesn’t happen by then you’re going to stop typing, right?
Well surely with all the money you supposedly have you could pay for that…
@Hal_10000:
OK, you lost me there. reducing the deficit, stopping card check, stopping cap and trade, and stopping the public option are all things our elites want. The TP or whatever you want to call the heartland Republicans may also want these things, which is why we’re always confused by their voting against interest. Even if I assume you share Bainbridge’s confusion over what constitutes our elite this only sort of makes sense. (The elite is the .01% who run the country, not pointy headed agnostic college professors who don’t.)
@Guarneri: The rest of you really need to seek professional help.
Why? Because we strongly oppose a man who has promised to commit war crimes when elected (killing the families of terrorists certainly qualifies as a war crime under any definition).
Because we oppose a man who said that Mexicans are murderers and rapists.
Because we oppose a man who has no values or ethics whatsoever, who is an obvious con man (Trump University, his shilling for ACN, a pyramid get-rich quick scheme).
Because we oppose a man who, when asked to renounce support from David Duke, lied about not knowing him and professed ignorance about his connections to white supremacy movements.
Because we oppose a man who lies incessantly, to the point where the website PolitiFact checked 77 of his statements, and rated 76 percent of as varying degrees of false.
Because we oppose a man who mocks the disabled, and is a racist, sexist pig.
Because we oppose a man whose tax plan has been destroyed by every economist out there as completely irresponsible, increasing the deficit by $10 trillion over 10 years.
I believe in listening to what a man says, if Trump were POTUS this country would be in deep shite trouble.
@Hal_10000:
This is probably the most meaningful and important point made on the thread so far. All those things are Republican priorities that directly hurt the people now voting for Trump. Budget cuts and a lower deficit have lead to a smaller economy and slower wage growth during the recovery. Card check protects the business owners at the expense of middle class wages. Cap and trade hasn’t caused direct immediate harm like the others, but delaying action on climate change means it’ll be more painful for the middle and lower class when it’s no longer optional. A public option would lower health care costs for the middle class getting insurance through the exchanges.
This is a large part of why the GOP is cracking up, because it’s servicing of the 1% at the expense of the middle class has started to reach a breaking point.
@Hal_10000:
They feel marginalized because the Republican elite has told them they are, while at the same time doing everything they can do to marginalize them.
@Dave Schuler:
Biggest flaw in that plan: Florida is Winner take all, and Rubio seems to be down 20 there. If Trump takes it, Rubio is knocked out, and Trump made huge stride towards an outright majority of candidates.
@David M:
This.
The Republican establishment has been conning the middle class and telling them that small government and tax cuts for the wealthy were going to make it better for everyone. The “rising tide floats all boats” horse patooey. But it’s all been a lie. The 1% are the only ones that have been benefiting since Reagan started marginalizing the middle and lower classes 30 years ago.
And Hal is absolutely right…the idea that Trump is going to do anything about it is like smoking cigarettes to cure lung cancer.
@SenyorDave: Character is very important to conservatives. But they’re such poor judges of character.
@Hal_10000: This seems to be a “NOTA” election: none of the above. Trump finished me off with his comments about trying to control the press. Hillary has experience and Washington insider know how, but she is like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Maybe it is getting time for some third party people to step up. Bloomberg: cleaned up New York, but I kind of like to supersize my orders. Iron Mike seems to know how to get things done. At this point, I would even consider Alan Keyes, or Powell, Gates, Cuban, Bettman, Major Dunford. We need a military person in there or a someone who has been successful in business.
@Tyrell:
Well at least you thought out, in a logical and analytical manner, the kind of person you would like as commander-in-chief.
My cousin in New Zealand sent me this comment of his observations related to our election this year:
@Tyrell: Iron Mike?
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: Bloomberg: reputation for straightening things out in NYC.
@Dave Schuler:
Can you see any of them other than Trump taking 8 states or more? Without that, by current rules Trump can be the only name on the first ballot. If the rules are changed so that Trump loses, I think he’d be petulant enough to run third party. At this point I don’t see anything the GOP can do to beat Trump that doesn’t lead to him running third party.
@PogueMahone: No, I do not believe that Trump is a racist. Being opposed to illegal immigration is not racist. Now adays if you disagree with someone you are called a racist.
@Tyrell:
Thinking Mexican immigrants are all racists and drug dealers (minus a few good ones), circulating false stats African American crime distributed by racist groups, and accepting (even if temporarily) the support of avowed white supremacists are good signs he is a racist, or is at least pandering to racists.