“Morning After Thoughts” 3/16/16

“Morning After Thoughts” Keep the comments coming! Up until now, I think I’ve split these evenly Rep/Dem on days after both parties had contests. I don’t think I can be so balanced today.

1.Trump needs 60% or so remaining delegates to secure nomination before convention, with the winner take all states, this is entirely possible

2.Cruz is still in best position, even if Kasich gets all of Rubio’s delegates, he’s still trailing by some 90.

3.Perhaps more horrifying than the things he’s said and incited, he’s denouncement of the press, freedom of the press, hope of changing libel laws and barring reporters from his event last night could be the worst.

4.Rubio’s future: he isn’t Clinton or Reagan or Nixon and when 66/67 counties reject you in your home state, your state-wide office holding future really needs to be questioned. He didn’t just lose, he became a loser and that’s much harder to overcome

5.I still think contested convention is the trickle down economics of party nominations. That being said, it’s clearly what the party is aiming for and it will get much more confusing than “oh, Donnie T doesn’t have enough delegates”

6.Logistical question: can the “conservative establishment” still run an independent candidate? Don’t they need to be collecting lots of signatures around the country to get ballot access starting, like yesterday?

7.Will be interesting to see how Utah votes

8.HRC now has 2/3 of the needed delegates and is up by 300 pledged delegates — a larger spread than BHO had during ’08.

9.Hard to understand Bernie’s play now. He has actually been successful at pushing HRC in a different direction than she would have probably gone during the primaries (I expect a thorough tack back to the center in the general), but he seems to be planning to fight on. But then again…people laughed at Marx.

10.Looking ahead a little to the general election, here’s some important numbers to keep in mind (and this is the “tear out” section). It looks like the democrats have a solid hold on 246 Electoral College votes, republicans are holding on to 179. Which means, there are 113 up for grabs. Democrats need to win 24 of them (21%) and GOP would need to win 91 (80%). In case you’re wondering, I’m putting VA, NC, FL, OH, IN, IA, CO, NM and NV in the toss-up column (Obama won all but IN and NC in ’12).