dagblog - Comments for "It's Not Stop Trump. It's Stop Cruz."

Wondering about our post

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 04 May 2016 14:05:48 +0000

In reply to You don't have to say "I told

Wondering about our post-mortem now, or whether we dare give one. De mortuis nil nisi bene (et de malis vivens). It's like when Dusk to Dawn crossed the Mexican border - Tarantino's Pride and Prejudice remake. Leaving Las Cruces, entering terra infirmata. The world must be amazed by America's sole remaining Superpower, and not in a good way. Somehow I thought hesitation would show some sanity, but instead we got consensus. Around a sphynx and a sphincter. It's like telling the globe "Pull my finger!"

Yeah. I think there are real

Doctor Cleveland — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:11:00 +0000

In reply to Doc, Simon Malloy has just

Yeah. I think there are real differences between Cruz voters who oppose Trump and Kasich/Bush/Christie voters who oppose Trump.

Trump DOES have a low ceiling. He may never get to 40% or 45% support even among primary voters. That should be electoral death for him (and WOULD be electoral death in the general), but the "high floor" keeps him the front-runner as long as the vote is split 4+ ways. But the party actually is split more than three ways.

I think the nightmare scenario for the GOP is that there are still 3-5 significant candidates, each with at least 10-15% support, still running at the end of March. Trump will still be around, plus 2 or 3 of the "mainstream" candidates from the Rubio/Kasich/Bush/Christie menu, and either Cruz or someone else who picks up the standard for Cruz's voters (if, for example, Cruz were successfully driven out and his voters just migrated to Rand Paul or to Huckabee). Trump could blunder along "winning" a fair number of states with 28-35% of the votes.

Two things to remember in this nightmare scenario:

1) After the first phase of the election, the GOP primaries shift from dividing up the delegates proportionally between all the finishers to some winner-take-all or winner-take-most primaries where the first past the post gets ALL of that's states delegates. The winner in New Hampshire doesn't bank that many more delegates than the #4 finisher in New Hampshire; the point is for the also-ran candidates to take the hint and drop out while the party coalesces around the front runners. Then the mid-game primaries are designed to give one of those front runners enough delegates to lock up the nomination.

This system breaks down if the field isn't whittled down enough by March or even April. If there are still more than three major contenders in a winner-take-all race, you can have someone racking up big delegate wins with only 30 or 40 percent of the vote. You could even have someone win the popular vote, in a pretty lopsided way, but lose the nomination.

These winner-take-all states should be a firewall against a candidate like Trump, but if Trump still has three substantial opponents these rules will help him instead.

2) Some of those important winner-take-all states in March include Florida and Ohio, which gives Kasich, Bush, and Rubio strong incentives NOT to drop out until then. (I expect Bush to drop out after losing Florida to Rubio, with a tiny chance that it's the other way around.) Those candidates can rack up a big batch of delegates, and maybe even move into the delegate lead, by hanging around and winning their home states.

Similarly, Ted Cruz is going to hang out until the Texas primary on Super Tuesday.

Doc, Simon Malloy has just

Oxy Mora — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 00:53:01 +0000

In reply to It's Not Stop Trump. It's Stop Cruz.

Doc, Simon Malloy has just tried to shoot down the bank shot theory on Kasich in New Hamsphire. Article in Salon.

That is, the Kasich bank shot won't pocket, consolidate, an est. candidate for the primaries because his moderate (that's a laugh) position, say, on medicaid, will make him unsuitable to many conservatives, thereby perpetuating division rather than closing ranks around aTrump alternative (serious browser problem here).

We'll see. Don't get me wrong, can't stand the guy. But that's my point, Kasich is as mean as Trump, and any est. candidate will have to be able to cut Trump up to win the nomination. I recall Gingrich's, an even more distasteful person than Kasich, surge in S. Carolina, backed by Adelson, in 2012.

Of course, the attempt to derail Cruz might in itself backfire.

Not to belabor all this.

Right, I see that Trump could

Oxy Mora — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:10:42 +0000

In reply to Sure. The bank shot makes

Right, I see that Trump could benefit. But for New Hampshire in particular, the laconic strain, not sure they like the guy very much. Rove says Trump has high floor and low ceiling.

Maybe somewhere deep inside

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 07:52:19 +0000

In reply to This is really quite shocking

Maybe somewhere deep inside they still have a residual awareness that they're just bluffing, while Cruz doesn't have that? New generation of Replicant had self-awareness safety valve removed, as too many were self-destructing.

This is really quite shocking

ocean-kat — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 07:01:36 +0000

In reply to Yup. Not a coincidence. Bobby

This is really quite shocking to me. What is wrong with this guy that they hate him more than Trump? I hate him because he's such a far right extremist. But I'm a liberal. Though he's to the right of the republican party there's at least a few dozen in the house and senate that are just as far right as Cruz that aren't so hated. I know he's attacked other senators but that still seems an insufficient reason to hate him more than Trump. And it's not just the senate. Every where he's been and everyone he's worked with seems to hate him. What is it about Cruz that people who know him hate him so much? It seems like there's a piece missing to explain this.

Forget these Rep-vs-Dem

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 05:17:09 +0000

In reply to o.k. I called Cruz early on

Forget these Rep-vs-Dem comparisons - they're so far out as to be meaningless.

What did a Hillary vs. Bernie poll in June mean? with Biden Too!!! And that's closer than next November. And it matters a whole lot what this weird pack of Republicans does between now and then. Even Bush could rise from the dead (zombie alert).

Yup. Not a coincidence. Bobby

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 01:12:08 +0000

In reply to http://www.nytimes.com

Yup. Not a coincidence. Bobby D. didn't decide to make this statement to the press right now by accident.

In other news, Nate Silver seems to agree with me: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/one-big-reason-to-be-less-skeptical-...

Even if the GOP is mostly in disarray, my assumption was that it would muster whatever strength it had to try to stop Trump.

But so far, the party isn’t doing much to stop Trump. Instead, it’s making such an effort against Cruz.

Sure. The bank shot makes

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 01:08:12 +0000

In reply to I just happened upon the

Sure. The bank shot makes sense. But notice that it's not knock out TRUMP and then bank to whoever comes in second in NH. It's take out Cruz now, for sure, and Trump later if they can manage.

Taking out Cruz now actually makes it harder for the Stage 2 candidate to beat Trump in the second stage of the bank shot, because when Crux goes Trump may take more of Cruz's voters than Rubio/Kasich/Christie/Bush will.

HILLARY would chew Rubio up

CVille Dem — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 01:03:21 +0000

In reply to Michael, Rubio has the best

HILLARY would chew Rubio up and spit him out. He is a light-weight little shit who can only memorize and really knows absolutely nothing.