Tag: primaries

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: it’s looking hard for Ted Cruz to win Arizona at this point. Not impossible, but we don’t know how the early voting went and people are legit worried that Marco Rubio banked too many of those. Keep an eye on how well John Kasich does in a vacuum: he didn’t bother to campaign in Arizona, so that’s useful info to know.  Utah looks better.  Heck, Utah looks like an easy Cruz win at this point. And Kasich did spend money there.  As for American Samoa… nobody knows, and anybody who says that he does is just lying to you.

Bottom line is, whatever happens tonight – maybe late tonight, so be prepared for that – the race goes on and everybody moves on to Wisconsin. Unless Kasich runs out of money before then, which would be frankly lovely for both the Republican party, and the Republic itself.

This was asked in comments, so here goes: On the Democratic side, it’s basically like ’08, except Hillary is an unloved Obama, Bernie is a less-competent Hillary, and everybody on the Dem side not-so-secretly wishes that Obama could run again because those two candidates are horrible.  …I could pad this up more, but that’s basically what’s happening.  The Democratic campaign this year is where enthusiasm and energy come to die.

…Donald Trump had a bad night tonight and Ted Cruz had a great one.  This was supposed to be a four state sweep for Trump with maybe a squeaker in Kansas. Instead what we got was a hard win for Cruz in Kansas and a legitimately surprising (to people who didn’t notice the polling issues) one for Cruz in Maine. We won’t know for some time whether the night will get any worse for Trump; nobody wants to call Kentucky while its two biggest counties (by far) are out, but observers are dubious that the expected gains for Cruz there will make up the difference. And everybody assumes that Louisiana (which is still voting) will go for Trump because, well, who knows?

But as a proof-of-concept… yeah, I think that if you don’t like negative political attacks then you should probably go live on a pillar for a couple of weeks, because they’re just gonna keep happening. Gonna be a slog. Gonna be a lonnnnng slog.  Rubio (who is having a bad night himself, even if he doesn’t care because Florida*) probably will win Puerto Rico tomorrow, and then there’s Michigan, and then it just goes on and on and on. And yes, there is a strategy there.  Or so I suspect.

[UPDATE: Trump won Kentucky (by only 3) and probably Louisiana (by probably 5 or so), but not in a fun way for him: Louisiana in particular demonstrated the drastic difference between early and same-day voting. They called LA right away because the early voting had Trump ahead by 20, and since then horrified political scientists across the spectrum watched as that lead drained in a way not hitherto seen by mortal eyes. Ted Cruz had a really, really good night tonight.]

Moe Lane

*That’s a post for another time.  Suffice it to say that Florida is gonna be a warzone, and the Rubio campaign already sees the right kind of movement for them.

There are primaries in Maine, North Dakota, Nevada, South Carolina, Virginia, and a runoff primary election for the Republican nominee for Arkansas Attorney General (all of this via The Green Papers).  It appears that that last one in Arkansas has gotten kind of heated; I have absolutely no idea who the better nominee is, except of course to note that any Republican beats any Democrat.  PARTICULARLY when it comes to Attorney General spots; we have been seeing a bad habit among Democratic AGs lately to refuse to defend laws that the populace likes, but Democrats do not.

OK, soapbox rant over.  Make sure you vote today, if you’re in one of those states.

Moe Lane

Iowa and Mississippi are probably the most interesting to my readers, but there’s also ones in Alabama, California, Montana, New Jersey (special election primary there too for NJ-01), New Mexico and South Dakota (list via The Green Papers). Keep an eye on New Mexico: it’ll be interesting to see whether New Mexico Democrats will reward that Alan Webber fellow for his race-baiting of Susana Martinez. I’m betting ‘yes,’ but not to the point of actually putting up money on it.

As usual, Jim Geraghty is thinking along the same lines that I am.

The usual suspects will argue that this result is one more sign of the decline of the Tea Party. But this continues the chaotic classification system, in which all a candidate needs to be considered the “Tea Party” candidate in the narrative is to say, “Hi, I’m the Tea Party candidate.” Tillis is hardly a squish, and 59 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters felt positively about Tillis; 24 percent felt unfavorably.

A more accurate interpretation is that “Establishment” candidates – read, those who have actually been elected to office before – are getting better at adapting to a political environment shaped by “Tea Party” supporters and making the case that they will indeed fight for conservative reforms.

I am frankly just going to be happy when all of the primaries are over. They’re getting in the way of me trying to make Democratic politicians’ lives miserable.

Moe Lane

I heard a rumor that Romney was going to do better than expected in the first two; darned if I know who will win the third.  And I’d say that I didn’t particularly care who wins in Hawaii, except that it would imply that I cared who will win in Alabama or Mississippi, either.  Any of the three will do, so let’s get this over with already.

Not to mention fix our primary system.