Is it just me or is this blog becoming the home of the convention-related bullet point?
Republican Party
- Yet more evidence that the Cruz campaign is outmaneuver in Team Trump in delegate collection, this time from Colorado and Iowa. Also, if I’m reading this correctly, in Arizona too. I’m seriously beginning to wonder if Cruz may end up with more votes on the first ballot than Trump. No joke.
- Trump is finally reacting to all this, however. The now indicted Cory Lewandowski was previously his point man on the delegate hunt, despite the fact that he had no experience with this, but no more. Trump has now named Paul Manafrot the head of his delegate effort. Dude is good at what he does, but he’s also sketchy as hell: “Over a 40-year career as a lobbyist and political consultant, Manafort and his firms have advised, in no particular order, a business group tied to Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines; Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted Ukrainian president and ally of Vladimir Putin; and Lynden Pindling, the former Bahamian prime minister who was accused of ties to drug traffickers.”
- Nate Silver has a great look at how the math doesn’t favor Trump. Here’s the takeaway: “The threshold Trump needs to win states is increasing considerably faster than the share of the vote he’s getting, which isn’t increasing much at all…While there will continue to be some variance from state to state, Trump is now usually going to have to be in the 40s to win. That’s a problem, because…it’s not clear that his performance is improving much at all.” Even more from Nate Cohn over here at NYT.
- The RNC is making plans to keep the delegates safe at the convention. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write! And while I’m on the subject, if you’re looking for some light historical reading on contested conventions, check out this great history from Rolling Stone and this one from Vox.com.
- All this talk about someone other than Trump or Cruz becoming the nominee is just silly. At this point, I’m pretty certain it’s going to be Cruz, and I’m apparently not alone. Of course, this entire election has defied prediction and predictability, so I’ll likely have to revisit that more than once between now and July. The thing is, not matter what happens, it’s likely to be disastrous for the GOP. Josh Marshall walks you through why.
Democratic Party
- Wisconsin looked bad for Hillary, but…she actually outperformed her vote in 2008 and kept the delegate math on her side. And since the delegate math is the only math that matters, she is still, barring something epic and for better of for worse, going to be the nominee.
- Nate Silver has all the details, but it turns out the Bernie actually underperformed the numbers he needed from Wisconsin to get on track for the nomination. So like Trump, this thing is actually slipping away from him, no matter what he might say.