Trump Whines About A ‘Rigged’ System, But The Blame Lies With Him
Donald Trump is complaining about a 'rigged' delegate selection process, but the truth is that the fault lies with only one person, Donald Trump.
After having been largely out manuevered in the fight for delegates in Colorado by a better organized Cruz campaign, Donald Trump has taken to telling his supporters that the Republican delegate selection process is ‘rigged’:
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump and his allies are engaged in an aggressive effort to undermine the Republican nominating process by framing it as rigged and corrupt, hoping to compensate for organizational deficiencies that have left Mr. Trump with an increasingly precarious path to the nomination.
Their message: The election is being stolen from him.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump berated the politicians he said were trying to stop his nomination and denounced the Republican Party, which he cast as complicit in the theft.
“Our Republican system is absolutely rigged. It’s a phony deal,” he said, accusing party leaders of maneuvering to cut his supporters out of the process. “They wanted to keep people out. This is a dirty trick.”
His charges built on comments in the last few days by associates, senior advisers and Mr. Trump himself, seeking to cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the local and state contests to select delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.
By blaming the process rather than his own inadequacies as a manager, Mr. Trump is trying to shift focus after Senator Ted Cruz of Texas outmaneuvered him in delegate contests in states like Colorado, North Dakota and Iowa, losses that could end up denying Mr. Trump the nomination.
Asked about the appearance of disorganization, Mr. Trump said in an interview, “You have to remember I’m leading.” He added, “I’m more than 200 delegates ahead, so over all, I’m doing very well.”
But in what sounded like a wink-wink aside, he said, “Don’t forget, I only complain about the ones where we have difficulty.”
The new approach is a tacit admission that Mr. Trump’s campaign, which has been so reliant on national news coverage and mass communication via Twitter, has not been able to compete in the often intimate and personal game that is delegate courtship.
His effort to sow doubt about the system plays into the suspicions and anxieties that many of his most ardent backers have about a political process they believe has intentionally disenfranchised them. And it allows Mr. Trump to divert attention from his recent losses in delegate races occurring all over the country.
Mr. Trump has a pattern of claiming fraud when an election does not go his way. And his critics say this kind of misdirection is his specialty.
“If Trump can’t win something, he’ll always say it’s someone else’s fault,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist who has advised several presidential candidates, most recently Mitt Romney in 2012. “Donald Trump is a place you go to settle scores,” he added, noting Mr. Trump’s tendency to play on grievances, whether political, economic or racial.
“And that’s what he’s selling. ‘You’ve been cheated here, you’ve been cheated there,’ ” Mr. Stevens said. ” ‘I’ll get you yours.’ ”
After losing the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump insisted that Mr. Cruz had prevailed by duping Ben Carson supporters into voting for him after spreading a false rumor that Mr. Carson was dropping out of the race. “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter at the time.
Mr. Trump’s complaints also reflect the difficult math he seems likely to face at the convention. Each delegate denied pushes him further away from winning the nomination on the first ballot, after which most delegates would be free to vote for someone else. And after the most recent rounds of voting, Mr. Cruz is poised to have many loyal supporters who would stand with him on a second ballot or beyond.
The Trump campaign has, by its own admission, fallen perilously behind in the delegate effort, narrowing Mr. Trump’s road to the nomination with each contest.
The outlook in the coming weeks is not much better. Even if Mr. Trump prevails in high-profile battles like next week’s New York primary, there are growing signs that he is not well equipped to succeed in the lower-profile skirmishes for delegates.
There, Mr. Cruz has an advantage. His campaign recently hired Ken Cuccinelli, a conservative former attorney general of Virginia and a veteran of the state’s internecine Republican battles, to oversee its effort to send pro-Cruz delegates to Cleveland.
The process for choosing delegates can be convoluted and arcane. Even if one candidate wins a state, the delegates who are supposed to vote for him at the convention might privately support one of his opponents, and could do so formally after the first ballot. In some states, like Colorado, delegates selected at a district caucus then vote for separate delegates to the national convention. Because the approach varies by state, campaigns must be well versed in each set of rules.
In an interview, Mr. Cuccinelli noted that 28 states or districts will select delegates this weekend. “We’ll have them all covered,” he said by phone from the Cruz campaign’s Houston headquarters, where he spends much of his time.
Mr. Cuccinelli said he had only recently detected evidence that Mr. Trump’s staff was engaged in the shadow campaign to elect favorable delegates at state and local conventions.
“We are very blessed that our opponent had no idea what he was doing on this until about a month ago,” Mr. Cuccinelli said. “A media-only campaign has its advantages, but it also has its very severe disadvantages.” Mr. Trump’s newly hired chief delegate strategist, Paul J. Manafort, did not respond to an interview request
Donald Trump’s whining not withstanding, the truth of the matter behind these delegate controversies is really quite simple. In each case, the method by which the delegates to the National Convention are chosen is something that was announced well in advance of the beginning of this process. In Colorado, for example, it has always been the case that delegates were chosen via a process that begins with local caucuses which select delegate to county and Congressional District level conventions, which in turn select delegates to the state party convention, and that the final slate of delegates is selected at the state convention. It used to be the case that the Colorado Republicans would also hold what effectively amounts to a straw poll at their local caucuses, but that step was canceled in August after the Republican National Committee ruled in August that a state which holds a caucus at which there is such a poll must agree that delegates to the National Convention will be bound by the results of that poll for at least the first ballot. Since Colorado Republicans did not want to be bound by that rule, they canceled the straw poll. The remainder of the process remained in place, and there was nothing preventing the Trump campaign from participating in the same manner that the Cruz campaign did. The fact that it did not do so is a reflection of either incompetence or a conscious decision to not expend resources in a particular state. Whichever it is, the only campaign responsible for what happened to Trump in Colorado, or Indiana, or Louisiana is Donald Trump’s own campaign.
In the end, Trump’s complaining about the process should be dismissed for the whining that it appears to be. If the campaign really is being blindsided as Trump himself claims, then they have nobody to blame but themselves. A well-organized, competent campaign would have been on top of this process months before the caucus process began and been ready to go forward as necessary, and they should have been prepared to do so in every state where delegate selection is more than just a mere post-primary formality. Instead of doing that, though, Trump has been content to run a campaign that consists primarily of hurling insults, operating a Twitter account, and flying in for rallies and speeches and then flying home at night to the comfort of his Manhattan bedroom. For a guy whose entire campaign has been all about advertising his skills as a manager and his ability to pick the right people to get things done, Trump’s utter failure to do that with respect to this crucial aspect of his own campaign is telling, and it’s doesn’t reflect well on him.
Dead on.
It’s wonderfully ironic that the self-proclaimed great deal maker is now whining that he didn’t know that he had to make deals in order to firm up his chances of winning the nomination.
Standard Trump:
If the rules help me, (i.e., in bankruptcy), then “hey, I’m a great wheeler-dealer! Look how successful I am!”
If the rules don’t help me: “I wuz robbed!” (whine whine whine.)
And really, isn’t this like someone totally ignoring the rules to set up a corporation in a state and then complaining when he gets into trouble?
Sheesh, man–do your homework.
Trump’s proportion of delegates to date exceeds his proportion of the popular vote due to his victories in several winner-take-all states. Then again, I suppose his fans lack the lofty math skills (read: basic arithmetic) that are needed to know this, so they’ll eat up his victimhood routine.
@Pch101: It’s well known that arithmetic has a liberal bias.
@Pch101
Trump supporters love seeing him as a victim, since they view themselves as perpetual victims, too. It’s another bond, jut as they view him as the great patriot and real American they believe themselves to be.
Looks like The Donald is working on a sequel to his “Art of the Deal” book.
Rumored to be titled “Art of the Squeal”
Trump is like a novice chess player who doesn’t bother to learn the rules, but thinks he can go up against Garry Kasparov and win.
@SC_Birdflyte:
Great analogy.
It’s possible he never bothered to learn the rules because he never expected to get this far. It’s probably more likely that he didn’t think they’d apply to him.
He hasn’t learned how running for president works. Why should I believe he’d ever be ready for the proverbial 3:00 AM call?
It’s good that for once Trump notes it’s the Republican Party that is doing him dirt. (If Rience Priebus can screw him over, I shudder to think what Putin could do to him.) This seems to me a metaphor for his whole campaign. It’s not “the system”, or minorities, or Democrats that are screwing over his supporters. It’s mostly Republicans.
@CSK: It’s possible he never bothered to learn the rules because he never expected to get this far. I think that sentence sums it all up.
Trump will retain the support of the true believers, who would support Count Dracula if he had an R by his name, but this “game is rigged” nonsense should have actual conservative Republicans (as opposed to RWNJs) VERY concerned.
It would appear that Donald Trump doesn’t care one bit whether the GOP is still standing after his run. Rather, it seems like he’d prefer to burn it all down in a fury of righteous fury.
And with this, Trump completes his set of the seven deadly sins. He adds sloth to his collection of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony and wrath.
He thus becomes the perfect exemplar of the “Values Party”.
OT, but a damn fine article about Sherman’s March to the Sea and why he did it.
@James Pearce:
Is there something news worthy here?
@grumpy realist: Saw that last night via John Cole. Don’t think it’s entirely off topic as much of Trump’s support is in the South and this touches on why.
I’ll offer a piece on the same subject by Col. Bateman at Esquire. I thought of it because of his habit of referring to the armies as the Confederate Army and the United States Army. It seems after all this time we should be able to get across the simple idea that Georgia is part of the United States. And that as such, Georgia should celebrate that WE won.
As should Mississippi, which is currently being sued to remove the Confederate flag from their state flag because they don’t have the decency to have done so years ago. (OK, Second Naval Jack to forestall the ‘that’s not the Confederate flag” trolls.)
@gVOR08: Yes, there is a little something about “needing to burn the South down to convince them the war was a losing proposition” in our present-day Republican Party, isn’t there?
A lot of the Republican candidates this year wanted to jump to the top rank (POTUS) from total political novice without doing any of the grunt work in-between, it seems.
And if Trump can’t even be bothered to figure out how to run a winning campaign, why does anyone think he’s be any good at being POTUS? Does he really think that POTUS means he can say “jump” and everyone has to do so?
Sadly, yes.
@grumpy realist:
Yes, and so do his supporters. He and they think its all just that simple. And, by the way, there is also never any blow back.
That Ted Cruz knows how to work the system and Trump doesn’t is one of the best arguments I’ve seen in favor of Cruz over Trump. Systems have rules and an effective politicians knows how to success within that framework, however “unfair” it might be.
If Trump thinks is unfair, just wait until he gets into negotiations with foreign countries.
@Joe:
I imagine it’s news to many Trump supporters.
Also:
I don’t know about that… Seems like all he’s getting is blowback. The media love him for his trainwreck quality, and his supporters love him because…well, they’re fools, idiots, or assholes.
But no one else loves him. Most conservatives are embarrassed by him. Nearly every liberal and progressive is appalled by him. Be not afraid. Trump will be in our rear view mirror soon enough.
@Hal_10000:
Yep. Gotta do your homework as POTUS.
It’s not like Cruz outsmarted Trump. It’s that Trump outdumbed himself.
@Joe:
Forget who to credit, but the best explanation I’ve seen is that Trump’s supporters don’t know how any of this stuff works. It’s all magic to them. So maybe Trump is the magician who will make it work for them.
@gVOR08:
Long ago on this site I characterized Trump supporters as people who start all their political opinions with “why don’t they just . . .” because, you know, a “real” President could just wave his wand and make it happen.
@Hal_10000: I’m sort of impressed at how Cruz is in many respects a conservative mirror image of Obama. He’s at about the same level of experience that Obama was when he ran for President, he’s a senator, an ivy leaguer with a reputation for high intelligence, and he seems to somehow end up in a lot of “halo” photographs. To their political opponents, they both come across as holding themselves in incredibly high regard. This is another thing they have in common. Obama played the delegate game better than anyone in 2008, and now Cruz is doing the same thing on the GOP side.
@Joe:
Which is also how they manage to blame Obama for everything. Unemployment too high? Obama must want it high. ISIS isn’t collapsing fast enough? Obama doesn’t want them gone. Wages stagnant since the early 80s, Obama. If you ask how exactly Obama caused whatever, you get either mumbling or Obama could have fixed it if he wanted to. In a way, I’m touched by their faith in his mojo.
@Hal_10000: Cruz works very hard. He’s very smart. He seems to be a good organizer and persuader. A really competent guy. Can anyone come up with an example of him using all that ability for any purpose but enhancing his own wealth and power?
@gVOR08:
I’m being 100% serious when I say I have to reject your premise. It’s like calling Paul Ryan smart. I just finished reading Cruz’s dildo brief. I mean, what even was that? He can string words together in a sentence that sound good, impressive even. But the critical thinking behind the words in those sentences? Not so much.
@Blue Galangal: I am NOT going to search out the brief. I’m sufficiently gobsmacked at discovering one can actually Google “Cruz’s dildo brief”.
He’d scare me less if I could convince myself he’s not terribly bright.
Trump seems to think that primaries are something that are spelled out in the Constitution. The Republican party is a private club and it can choose it’s representative any damn way it chooses. It’s not necessarily one person one vote. There’s a hierarchy where some people have more power than others. He doesn’t seem to get that.
@J-Dub:
Trump and his fervid acolytes do seem to believe that if he becomes president, the world will become “The Apprentice,” in which he yells “You’re fired,” and whoever he yells at magically vanishes: a Supreme Court justice, a senator, a representative, an entire government agency.
I wish to post a quote that I mentioned here several months ago, which looks increasingly insightful the more this race goes on.
Basically, almost 30 years ago the late Roger Ebert nailed an aspect of Donald Trump’s character, in the course of a review of the 1987 movie Wall Street:
Right there is a perfect summation of Trump’s value system, in a nutshell: he wants to win. It’s his whole purpose in life. Nothing else matters, not even making money per se, and certainly not contributing to society in a positive way.
It provides an illuminating insight into his presidential candidacy. It helps explain why he’d insult one of his rivals last year by declaring triumphantly “I’m at 42 [percent] and you’re at 3.” It helps explain the hissy fit he threw after losing Iowa in January, after being slaughtered in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago, and during the current spat over delegates.
He wants to win. He doesn’t care about anything else, certainly not about policy (where he’s been on opposite sides of virtually every major issue–sometimes in a matter of days, as the recent abortion flap revealed). I’m not even sure he wants to be president. But he sure doesn’t want to lose.
@gVOR08:
Didn’t read the whole article on my Yahoo search, but reading the summary convinced me that if you researched this at all, you’d be encouraged.
This is why I come here — for the LULZ.
Trump’s whining had two purposes.
1) It was Trump practicing identity politics, like every other politician. This was him saying to his base “those people screwing you over? Now they’re trying to screw me over, too, because I’m fighting for you.”
2) Trump was firing a warning shot to the RNC that if they fight him in a way he doesn’t like, he’ll go all out against them.
This is what is so entertaining. Trump crafts his messages towards select audiences. The crowd here all chortles with glee about how much smarter they are than Trump and his supporters, and how little effect Trump’s moves have on them. Well, guess what? Trump doesn’t care. You’re not the target audience. There’s no way in hell you’d ever vote for Trump, and he knows it, so he isn’t wasting any time or energy at trying to appeal to you.
The core of Trump’s complaint is that the RNC set up the rules to favor their chosen candidate. The problem with that is that Trump and Cruz wiped out all the candidates the establishment might have chosen before their rules could be used. So now they have to choose between Cruz (who they hate) and Trump (who they hate and fear).
Cruz realized this a while ago, and set himself up to benefit from that plan — even though he was one of the people that plan was set up to crush.
Cruz and the RNC each have the same thought: they despise each other, but each thinks they can use the other and get what they want. So they’re reaching a modus vivendi, with the immediate goal of stopping Trump.
Please, continue to entertain me. I need the LULZ.
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: In the 21st Century it’s really hard to make a case that the State has a vital interest in what people might be doing with dildos in the privacy of their bedrooms. Which is why they were trying to split a hair over OK they can use it, but you can’t sell it to them. That Cruz failed may say more about the case than about Cruz’s intelligence.
Also, do you think Cruz much cares if people sell dildos? His political need is to be seen ardently fighting for Christian Values (sic). It’s OK if he loses as long as he’s seen as fighting the “good” fight. One may suspect he didn’t put his best effort, or his best staff, into this case.
@Jenos Idanian:
Hey Supergenius,
Thank you for sharing your sublime wisdom with us. But despite your brilliance, you made one small error in your calculations: Everyone here understands exactly that Trump’s messages are calculated to appeal only to a specific audience.
And we understand something that neither Mr. Trump nor the towering intellect that calls itself Jenos can quite grasp:
Even though the comments are aimed only at one small group, they are heard and remembered by everyone else.
So that even if they do their job with their intended targets, they still serve to alienate the vast majority of potential voters.
Winning the minute is all that seems to matter to Trump and to the Exquisite Intelligence here. The thought that the tactics used to gain that victory might actually ensure defeat in the larger and more important contests to come is somehow too difficult for them to grasp.
Steve V:
You listed some compelling evidence, but I’m not buying this until you can prove that Cruz, like Obama, was born in the USA.
Bit of a fun house mirror though, considering how many people are repulsed by Cruz…
@An Interested Party: Actually, Rubio was more of a Trump figure. Lightweight with no real accomplishments, first-term Senator, glib and likable but no real substance…
@Jenos Idanian: Dammit. Rubio was more of an Obama figure than a Trump. Dammit…
@Jenos Idanian:
Don’t fret. Your earlier comment was somewhat correct about Trump. Lightweight, no real substance…
@Surreal American: Sorry, there are far more plausible criticisms of Trump. The descriptors used really do better fit Rubio and Obama.
That’ll teach me to comment when I am under the gun, time-wise…
@gVOR08: No, I was trying for the case that he was making was not a sign of a “smartest guy in the room” figure. I’m sorry that I was too oblique.
@gVOR08: Cruz defended the dildo law because it was his job to do so. He was the Solicitor General, which meant it was his job to represent the state in lawsuits, regardless of how he felt about the suit in question.
If that argument sounds familiar, it should. Two recent examples:
1) The tape emerging of Hillary Clinton laughing about how she managed to get an accused child rapist off on a technicality was cited as an example of her doing her job.
2) The Obama administration’s refusal to defend laws when challenged in court (like the Defense of Marriage Act) was cited as an example of the Obama administration refusing to fulfill its legal obligations.
So, should Cruz be praised for acting like Hillary, or denigrated for not acting like Obama?
It’s really that simple.
@Jenos Idanian: Or, for a more recent example of sanity at the state attorney level, you can be Roy Cooper: “North Carolina’s attorney general said Tuesday that he would refuse to defend the state’s new bathroom law in court, which a growing chorus of critics are calling it an anti-LGBT measure.
“We’re talking about discrimination here,” Attorney General Roy Cooper said at a press conference. “Not only is this new law a national embarrassment, it will set North Carolina’s economy back.”
Cooper spoke as more than 80 CEOs and executives co-signed a letter to North Carolina’s governor pushing for a repeal of a “deeply discriminatory” bathroom law.”
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/29/news/companies/north-carolina-attorney-general-bathroom-law/
@Blue Galangal: Or, for a more recent example of sanity at the state attorney level, you can be Roy Cooper: “North Carolina’s attorney general said Tuesday that he would refuse to defend the state’s new bathroom law in court, which a growing chorus of critics are calling it an anti-LGBT measure.
How fascinating I’ve always understood the way our system of government works is that the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch executes and enforces the laws, and the judiciary interprets and judges the laws. But now AGs (part of the executive branch) now also get to decide what laws are Constitutional or not?
When did this happen? Did the AGs take over this role from the courts, or do they just share it? And did anyone inform the courts about this development?
And why am I not surprised that Eric Holder is involved in this?
Finally, since I’m sure that you’ll make the argument that the particulars of the case are far, far, far more important than any precedents that might be set or any principles at stake here, let me leave you an example of what you’re arguing for.
@Blue Galangal: Or, if you prefer, here are a couple other ways to interpret how you want things to be.
@Jenos Idanian: Several years ago Rick Santorum caught a lot of ridicule for “santorum” meaning the oozing residue after anal sex. That wasn’t at all fair as that definition was made up by gay rights activists, not a real dictionary definition. Sure was funny though. Same with Cruz’s dildo brief.
@Jenos Idanian: So you believe that Cruz was right to argue in court that the government should be freed to make masturbation a crime? Is this what is called a small-government conservative in your mind?
And without getting into too many details, how many decades should you be spending in prison under a Cruz administration?
@wr: Let me see if I can speak to you in your language here.
Jesus Christ, you are so f’ing stupid, it’s unbelievable. Can you even count high enough to know how many things you got wrong?
1) The Texas law in question did not ban the possession or use of sex toys, merely the sale of them. So your idiocy about masturbation being a crime is… well, criminally stupid.
2) The job of getting rid of bad laws is that of the legislature (by repealing them) or the judiciary (by ruling them unconstitutional). It is NOT the purview of Attorneys General or Solicitors General or even presidents or governors to decide what laws do or do not pass Consitutional muster.
One of the few things worse than a stupid person is an aggressively stupid person.
@Jenos Idanian: “The Texas law in question did not ban the possession or use of sex toys, merely the sale of them. So your idiocy about masturbation being a crime is… well, criminally stupid.”
It’s amazing how you still haven’t figured out that calling people stupid doesn’t actually make you smart.
Perhaps if you read what Cruz actually wrote, you might have noticed this line: ” “There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.””
In other words, the government is free to outlaw masturbation. This was Cruz’ argument, not the words of the law he was defending.
As always, you know nothing about what you’re commenting on, and attempt to cover that obvious fact by calling everyone who does know something “stupid.”
Maybe you should come up with a new trick every few years…
@wr: So why don’t you cite the substantive-due-process right that is being violated here?
And you missed one essential point. I don’t customarily call people “stupid.” I save that for you, because it’s one that you use so often and it so appropriately fits you.
Especially when I notice that you didn’t actually respond to the key aspect of my argument — that it is not the place of Solicitors General, Attorneys General, governors, or presidents to declare laws unconstitutional.
Because if it is now, :won’t it be entertaining for a future Republican president to use that power in some of the ways the Obama administration has. The best (or, rather, worst) is the “sue and settle” arrangement between the EPA and environmental groups. That one has tremendous potential for future counter-exploitation.
@wr: So, where’s your victory lap, bucko?
@Jenos Idanian: “I don’t customarily call people “stupid.” I save that for you,”
Well, of course. Because once I started pointing out that most of your “arguments” were simply stupid, you took the word and started flinging it like a monkey flings poo.
Because this is your sole rhetorical trick — whatever is said of you, you repeat it back at the person who said it.
It’s never been clever or convincing or entertaining, but I guess it’s all you got.
@wr: Hey, look. You completely bypassed the subject at hand to engage in ad hominem attacks. Let me show you my shocked face. Why, I don’t think you’ve pulled that stunt more than 3 or 4 thousand times.
Now let me put on my Nostradamus hat and predict that you won’t bother addressing just what right was being abrogated, or how it’s just awesome that representatives of the Executive branch can now decide what is law and what isn’t. Because when you dump the topic entirely and get all snotty condescending (in a completely unjustified way) and resort to personal insults, it’s obvious that you know you’ve lost and you’re trying to save the tiniest bit of your dignity.
You don’t, of course, but it’s a wonderful tell and remarkably entertaining, even despite the constant repetition. It just never gets old…
And now it’s time for someone to step in and try to save wr’s ass from getting stomped too badly by taking up the arguments that he is not capable of making. Who’s going to take on that thankless task this time?