Two new polls, both conducted since New Hampshire show the Babbling Babbitt well ahead in South Carolina, the RealClearPolitics average is seventeen over Cruz, nearest to him. The primary is February 20...Feb. 20? A Saturday?...Yep. One week from today.
According to fivethirtyeight, Trump's chances of winning S.C. are about what I remember them being to win New Hampshire, 77% in their "polls-plus" (includes, e.g., endorsements) modeling and 64% in polls-only. Fivethirtyeight projects the vote as Trump, 31.7%, Rubio 19.9% (polls-plus) and Trump, 37.4%, Rubio, 14.9% (polls-only), a twenty-two point lead.
The POLITICO Caucus – a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in the four early states – still don’t think Donald Trump has a clear route to the GOP presidential nomination.
Almost 85 percent of Republican insiders said Trump isn’t on a glide path to become the party’s nominee...
A South Carolina Republican put it this way: “He will flame out as people become more serious.”
South Carolina Democrats don't vote until Feb. 27 and there hasn't been a poll done since before Iowa. So this will be a happy face of short duration. Clinton is overwhelmingly expected to win and to win overwhelmingly.
The polls are going to be more accurate now, after Iowa, like they were in New Hampshire, and there is a debate tonight and Trump is being hit with a fusillade of negative ads from all corners but unless he has a disastrous performance tonight that 17-point gap is too much to make up in a week. If someone got real close to him, say within three points, that would do the trick too but it's nearly the same degree of difficulty, closing a twenty-two, seventeen, or, twelve point gap, to say, three, in one week.
T'AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.
So, Trump wins in another blowout. Now what?
Insiders: Hard road ahead for Trump-Politico.
The POLITICO Caucus – a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in the four early states – still don’t think Donald Trump has a clear route to the GOP presidential nomination.
Almost 85 percent of Republican insiders said Trump isn’t on a glide path to become the party’s nominee...
“Trump needs to show that he can grow his share of the vote,” said a South Carolina Republican, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “Right now he's getting around one-third, but that means two-thirds of the vote is ‘not Trump.’ If he has a ceiling, then as others drop out, Cruz or one of the establishment candidates can pass him. We are down to six in South Carolina – let’s see if he grows this time.”
"If he has a ceiling": This guy is right, of course, about Trump's current share of the GOP vote, and it hasn't really changed much over the course of this young campaign. Trump's negatives among GOP voters is also the highest of any GOP candidate and that has not changed. All of that has informed my judgment that Trump is therefore "contained" (1) within the GOP and (2) at about 30%-40%. But I'm going a little woolly in the knees on the containment theory and consequently I don't like this guy's complacency, "let's see if he grows this time." LET'S NOT!
There is such a thing as momentum: in politics, in sports, when falling out of an airplane. It can be illusory but far more often it is real, it can be evanescent, fragile, or durable, less likely durable, except when falling out of an airplane, I think.
There are psychological consequences to getting too far behind or losing too much and those almost always negatively affect performance. You can give up (drop out in politics) or not try so hard, and not think enough about what can be done to turn the losing around because psychologically you've accepted defeat. You get sort of frozen in your strategic thinking.
There are psychological consequences to getting too far behind or losing too much and those almost always negatively affect performance. You can give up (drop out in politics) or not try so hard, and not think enough about what can be done to turn the losing around because psychologically you've accepted defeat. You get sort of frozen in your strategic thinking.
Has this guy thought through the consequences of a Trump blow-out in South Carolina? Has he factored in, in his "let's see" quiescence, that Michael Bloomberg has said that if it looks like Trump v Sanders is going to be the match-up he's going to run as an Independent? Would a Bloomberg candidacy be more likely to result in the Republican, Trump, being the next president, or less likely?
Would a Trump-Sanders-Bloomberg race be a good thing or a bad thing for the Republican Party in this Republican Party insider's opinion? Trump, who has never held elective office and never served in government, who has been a Democrat for most of his life, as the Republican nominee against Sanders, the Democrat, who has been a Democrat for one of his seventy-four years against Bloomberg, an Independent who was also a Democrat for most his life and a Republican office-holder only for the six years he held office. Is that good is my question. There's an awful lot of "Democrat" in such a race. What does that say about the Republican Party as as a politico-intellectual and electoral force in America?
Has this insider given any thought to William Kristol's tweet that if Trump is the Republican nominee "it's time for a new party?" To National Review's "AGAINST TRUMP" issue, with something like twenty-two contributors?
Does he think Trump v Clinton is a winning match-up for the GOP? Maybe he does! My Republican brother thinks Trump would win 40 states against Hillary Clinton! Other Republicans however see it more like 40-10 the other way. Jeb Bush is one. Kristol another.
Most importantly, has this Republican insider thought through how a Trump nomination would effect the country? Putin and Great Britain have already spoken. He can choose which one he likes.
Would a Trump-Sanders-Bloomberg race be a good thing or a bad thing for the Republican Party in this Republican Party insider's opinion? Trump, who has never held elective office and never served in government, who has been a Democrat for most of his life, as the Republican nominee against Sanders, the Democrat, who has been a Democrat for one of his seventy-four years against Bloomberg, an Independent who was also a Democrat for most his life and a Republican office-holder only for the six years he held office. Is that good is my question. There's an awful lot of "Democrat" in such a race. What does that say about the Republican Party as as a politico-intellectual and electoral force in America?
Has this insider given any thought to William Kristol's tweet that if Trump is the Republican nominee "it's time for a new party?" To National Review's "AGAINST TRUMP" issue, with something like twenty-two contributors?
Does he think Trump v Clinton is a winning match-up for the GOP? Maybe he does! My Republican brother thinks Trump would win 40 states against Hillary Clinton! Other Republicans however see it more like 40-10 the other way. Jeb Bush is one. Kristol another.
Most importantly, has this Republican insider thought through how a Trump nomination would effect the country? Putin and Great Britain have already spoken. He can choose which one he likes.
I have wondered about this also. Maybe the early primaries are like college, let it all hang out, there will be time to be serious later? Maybe. Rick Santorum won Iowa. Pat Buchanan won New Hampshire. Then at what point to we decide "people are serious" and is that going to be too late? And, don't New Hampshirites take their first-in-the-nation status pretty seriously? Don't South Carolinians? Doesn't nearly everybody when the curtains close behind them in the voting booth? It's one thing to tell a pollster, "I'm going to vote for Trump," or attend a Trump rally, but when Trump actually wins New Hampshire by 22, confirming the polls, you can't just say "Oh, those New Hampirites weren't serious."
“I fear our long, national nightmare may become ever longer and darker,” added another South Carolina GOP insider.
South Carolina Democrats don't vote until Feb. 27 and there hasn't been a poll done since before Iowa. So this will be a happy face of short duration. Clinton is overwhelmingly expected to win and to win overwhelmingly.
This whole thing, in both parties, just has such an ominous feel to me. "Sanders wasn’t even officially a Democrat until last year," I was reminded today by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight. So the candidates who have won the only primary elections held so far have not been members of the party whose nomination they seek for long or forever.
I don't recognize the country.
I reprinted a graphic last week showing the overwhelming lead Clinton has in delegates over Sanders and the paltry lead Trump has in the Republican count. Clinton's overwhelming lead was due to inclusion of pledged super-delegates, party insiders. Silver writes today that their pledges are not binding, they can switch any time they want to.
