“Morning After Thoughts” 3/23/16

Morning after thoughts. 
Please keep the comments coming and thank you for reading. Again, not split 5/5 evenly, apologies to the obsessives out there.

1. I am well past the “how did Donald Trump do it?” And remain firmly implanted in the “why did it take the “GOP establishment so long to try and stop him?”stage, as in ‪#‎toolittletoolate‬.

2. Still think contested convention is a pipe dream, but maybe Cruz can just barely eek out enough wins to just barely deny Trump the 1,237. Crazier things have happened (see: Trump, Donald J., leading candidate)

3. No one voted for Bush, so I don’t really see how his endorsement helps Cruz (remember how much Lindsay Graham’s endorsement helped Bush?). I suppose it may help with the money chase but Trump is certainly in no way at risk of losing the money game.

4. With it being a true 2-man race now you’ll start to see how bat-sh!t insane and unlikeable Ted Cruz really is — although super scary smart. He would be without a doubt the most _____ (enter own term below) republican candidate since Goldwater.

5. The pressure on Kasich to get out and endorse Cruz will become incredibly intense.

6. I suggested in one of these thought dumps a while back that the parlor game of trying to figure out who may make up a candidate’s cabinet is an interesting experiment. Would love to start hearing from y’all about who a Trump VP could be (I have a hard time thinking it’d be Cruz), and who is SoS, SoD and SoT would be. I think he’d have to find some military officer for VP…

7. This may be the most terrifying observation yet, in a Tweet from VICE columnist Michael Tracey (@mtracey): “It’s gotten to the point where *any world event* is immediately filtered through the lens of Trump. He’s annexed the public consciousness”

8. That loveable curmudgeon Bernie Sanders is just wasting people’s time and money. He’s moved HRC left more than anyone thought he could. It’s time to go back to being an independent senator full time.

9. It will be interesting to see HRC pivot to take on 2 candidates (Trump/Cruz).

10. Lastly, in a new (maybe regular?) feature, take a gander at the graphic below put together from info from the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact. Make of it what you will.