31 March 2016
The End of the Beginning
More twists and turns from the US Primaries
by J.R.Thomas
Prediction is a foolish sport at the best of times; in these astonishing American Presidential primary elections it seems more and more an act of madness to even try to suggest any possible outcome. Just when everything seems clear, again the unexpected twist. A couple of weeks ago we wrote here that with the withdrawal of Mr Rubio, Mr Cruz now had a fighting chance of preventing Mr Trump of winning an outright majority of delegates before the July convention and might even have a sniff at outright victory himself. And we brushed rudely past Mr Sanders, at the other side of the room, suggesting that Mrs Clinton really had got it sewn up now, and the only point in Bernie carrying on would be if he wanted to stake a claim to the vice Presidency.
Wrong. Or at least, far from proven. Starting on the blue side, Hillary was winning pretty much everything. On Mini Super Tuesday on the 15th March she did win all the contests, albeit in several cases by very thin margins. Then something seemed to get into Democrat voters; in the next six contests, on March 22nd and 25th, she won only Arizona, and Bernie carried, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington State, all of them by very impressive margins. Bernie had 82% of the vote in Alaska; they really don’t seem to like Hillary there. All that gave Bernie 128 extra delegates to her 75. Hillary is still 1,712 delegates overall to Bernie’s 1,004, with a winner needing 2,383. That, common sense suggests, means that Hillary still will win. But there are some big states with lots of delegates to come yet. Over 500 delegates from California. Nearly 300 from New York. Over 200 from Pennsylvania. Could Bernie actually still manage to pull ahead? He is doing very well with the white vote, in poor industrial or de-industralising states, with students, with the young, with women. But badly with older folks, with the black and most other minority voters, in the South. So, who would like to predict California? Even more, who would like to predict New York, birthplace of Bernie but also the former Senatorial seat of Hillary? There is a mood out there but will it in the end push Bernie into the lead?
There has been a lot of commentary about the Republican Party’s need to be winners – like English Conservatives, it is always said that the urge to stir the levers of power overcomes any and all suggestions of ideological purity (Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would, of course, profoundly disagree). But does this also apply to Democrats in 2016? Will the possibility of Donald as Presidential Nominee cause Democrats to make sure they have the strongest possible candidate against him? One of Bernie’s celebrity backers, Susan Sarandon, says she would probably vote Trump rather than Hillary. We suspect though that she is not typical amongst Democrats in this. Certainly, when it comes to personal popularity, Bernie is way ahead of Hillary, but when asked who is the stronger candidate, the one most likely to win, most voters plump for the lady. So will a continuing Trump surge damage Mr Sanders’ prospects? Mrs Clinton will have this in common with Ms Sarandon, they will both be hoping that Donald continues to storm ahead. (To be fair to Ms Sarandon, that is probably not exactly what she meant.)
Which brings us to Stormin’ Donald himself. So what of our theory that with the Republican field down to three (Trump, Cruz, Kasich) Cruz would start to unite all the conventional parts of the GOP around him, and with Rubio’s votes would start to beat Donald? The theory looks good; the GOP leadership has been making encouraging noises at Ted, and Ted has smiled gently back. (Mr Kasich seems to have got a bit overlooked at this point but no doubt is hoping that he might yet emerge in some convoluted way at the convention as compromise candidate, if it becomes a brokered convention. He is probably also relived to be ignored by the Trump big guns. Having sunk Mr Rubio even in his home state of Florida they are now steadily firing very dirty shells at Ted Cruz.) More grist to our theory of Cruz the Unifier, Cruz the Everyman, Cruz the Compromise; last week he obtained the backing of Jeb Bush, who endorsed him with surprising warmth as a President who could fix broken Washington. Also rooting now for Cruz are Mitt Romney, and ex-presidential nomination candidate and Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.
The endorsement of Romney certainly seemed to help – Cruz won Utah, Romney’s home state and the centre of the Mormon faith (Romney is a Mormon) by 69% of the vote, taking all the delegates. Even more surprisingly, Kasich came second, with 17%, leaving the Donald with only 14%, his worst result of the race. But in Arizona, it was very much the picture that we are used to – Trump won it, with around 47%, and Ted got about 25%, just as if Rubio was still there splitting the vote with him . Kasich got 10%, so no change there either. Those good at maths will realise this does not add up to 100% – the reason being that Mr Rubio was still on the paper – early voters stuck with having made the choice of a withdrawn candidate. No doubt Mr Rubio will feel better for knowing that he would have done as badly in Arizona as most everywhere else. But at a guess those delegates will switch to Cruz, mostly, or Kasich, when they are free to do so.
There only were two Republican contests in the last ten days, so we can proudly claim that our theory is not disproved. Yet. As on the Democratic side, there are some big contests coming up in April and May, and quite a number of them are winner takes all, or nearly all. The winner of those big contests could well turn out either to consolidate his position or to move into the lead. Trump still has less than half the delegates and with some transfers from delegates pledged to those now withdrawn, Cruz could yet come through. But who will win New York – Trumps home city, or California, or Pennsylvania? It is hard to imagine either Cruz or Trump coming through in California – but one of them has to. And Pennsylvania is, on the evidence of voter behaviour so far, prime Trump territory.
If you thought the Republican contest was nasty before, you may now be revising your definition of nastiness. Mrs Trump used to be a model and in the course of her professional duties had on occasion removed her clothing to be photographed. Perhaps not surprisingly, copies of those photographs are now circulating freely on the web and in the popular press, and were especially so in Utah before the recent result. Mr Trump says he knows Ted was at the bottom of this and has circulated nasty photographs of Mrs Cruz. They show Mrs Cruz about her professional duties – looking like a scary Goldman Sachs banker. Which, to be fair, she has always admitted to. The Donald has also made rude noises about Ted’s private life; though so far, without proof or substance and, thank goodness, without photographs of Ted minus his trousers.
As this is a family magazine we will avoid salacious photographs but leave you with one which may be relevant to all elections (and referenda). Seen on a Spanish wall: “Citizens,” it says, “No Thinking. Pay-up and Obey”
