(02-26-2016 12:34 AM)Jonathan Sadow Wrote:  The Democratic race has become fairly simple. Barring a major disaster (like being caught in bed with a dead woman), Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. While Bernie Sanders will eventually pile up a significant number of delegates, thanks to Clinton's likely huge edge in superdelegates (established by the Democratic Party precisely to keep someone like Sanders from the nomination) and Sanders's relative weakness outside the Northeast and Midwest, it's unlikely he'll overcome Clinton's current delegate lead.

Thanks to super delegates, the Democratic race is over. Sanders got a nice victory in Michigan, but Clinton keeps winning states outside of the Northeast and Midwest by huge margins and now has over the half the delegates needed to win the nomination. Sanders would have to win states by far larger margins than he's been doing in order to prevail now.

Quote:The Republican race is clarifying. Right now, Donald Trump is in the best position, having the delegate and being competitive, if not leading, in many of the remaining states. He still isn't getting a majority of the vote, but he's been getting enough of a plurality to continue putting distance between himself and the only two candidates who can catch him, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Jeb Bush's suspension of his campaign probably helps Rubio the most, but the question at this point is whether that can be enough to overhaul Trump's lead. John Kasich and Ben Carson are dead men walking and are in this race now only to be spoilers or kingmakers. I suspect some of their support will drain away as some of their supporters decide they'll vote for candidates who actually have a chance to win. The erosion of support for Kasich will probably help Rubio the most, and Carson's support likely will drift to Cruz. Therefore, expect to see Cruz and Rubio close in on Trump. However, Trump's lead may be such at this point that, unless Cruz and/or Rubio can make significant inroads in the delegate count of the March 1 primaries, by mid-March the race may be effectively over.

Things have gotten interesting in the Republican race. Trump won the most delegates in the Super Tuesday primaries, but Cruz didn't trail by much (Trump won 42% of available delegates to Cruz's 37%), and then Cruz actually won a majority of the delegates in the March 5th vote. Could this be an inflection point in the race? After the results from March 8 (excluding the all-important Hawai'i primary, which is ending too late for me to include it), Trump gained a little on Cruz, but not much. From the numbers I'm looking at now, Trump has about 44% of the apportioned delegates, Cruz has 34%, and all of the rest have 22% combined.

This presents an interesting dilemma for the so-called GOP "establishment". It seems to want either Rubio or Kasich to be the party standard-bearer in the election, but with each cycle of primaries those two candidates keep falling farther and farther behind in the delegate count. Next week, each of them has their home-state primaries, and while Kasich is doing well in the Ohio primary, Rubio may not even win Florida. It's really hard to argue that the party should coalesce around Rubio if he can't win his home state. Kasich could win his home state, but otherwise his delegate count is even lower than Rubio's, which hardly makes him a compelling candidate. Given their performances so far, it's looking increasingly likely that each will run afoul of Rule 40 (which states that candidates put forth for nomination to the office of President must have won a majority of delegates in at least eight states). Trump and Cruz may be the only ones now who can qualify under that rule.

Ted Cruz has run about as good a campaign as one can given the unusual challenge of Donald Trump. Cruz has managed to position himself as the only viable anti-Trump alternative left (unless something very unusual happens). What this means, though, is that the two remaining viable candidates are perhaps the two least-attractive ones to the establishment. Will it hold its nose and go all-in for Cruz, and if so, will it do so in time? Trump's been bloviating about how he's been winning all these primaries, but a lot of them have been close, so even with the wins at this point he's still barely a third of the way to the total needed for nomination. There's plenty of time for him to be stopped if the remainder of the Republicans so desire, but the longer they wait, the greater the chance for ultimate victory by Trump. The Republicans will have a lot of decisions to make after the March 15th primaries.