Hillary dodges a bullet. So does Trump

The Unablogger

FBI Director James Comey’s conclusion that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted, in spite of her careless disregard for the safety of confidential information entrusted to her, saves Clinton’s presidential campaign. If he had recommended prosecution, as he could have and should have, the same Democrats who rigged the nominating process to make her the party standard bearer would have intervened and forced her to step aside. Or, failing that, the very super delegates who put her over the top would have revolted against her, allowing Democratic convention delegates to pick someone else. Even deliberate inaction by the Department of Justice and a presidential pardon wouldn’t have saved Hillary.

But Hillary isn’t the only presidential candidate whose hopes were revived by Comey’s actions. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump also got a campaign lifeline from Comey. Trump has the worst unfavorable numbers  for any presidential candidate in polling history. The only reason Trump is even competitive in this contest is Clinton’s own unfavorable rating. If Democrats were able to substitute a less unpopular Democrat – say Vice-President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (or even Bernie Madoff or O. J. Simpson!), they could count on coasting to a 40+ state win, a Democratically controlled senate and maybe even a Democrat house.

But Comey changed all that. By laying out, in convincing detail, how Hillary broke the law and endangered national security in the process, but holding back on a recommendation to prosecute, Comey saved Trump’s hide too.

Democrats have noticed. With apologies to William Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of the mainstream media. The usual Democrat sycophants are suddenly turning on Hillary. The Washington Free Beacon compiled this video montage of Democrat media talking heads piling on Clinton in her time of supposed triumph. De facto Democrat press spokesmen like the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, and St. Louis Post Dispatch piled on. This is no sudden discovery of press fairness. They are loyal Democrats who want to shape the Democratic ticket with candidates who will win. They want Clinton out.

Stay tuned.

#NeverTrump could set a regrettable precedent

The Unablogger

After having earlier supported Ben Carson (until his ignorance about foreign policy was exposed), then Scott Walker (until his campaign imploded and he withdrew) and Marco Rubio (until his campaign imploded and strategic voting required a different choice), I cast my vote in the Missouri Primary for Ted Cruz. He was the best chance to stop Donald Trump, and he would have made an excellent president. I don’t like Trump. I still haven’t resolved for whom I am voting in November.

However, the budding movement to change the convention rules after the fact in order to deny Trump the nomination he won with the votes of legitimate (albeit misguided) primary voters and caucus attendees is the wrong thing to do. Yes, I realize that younger generations believe that the ends justify the means, but they’re wrong.

There are two major reasons the convention’s #NeverTrump movement must fail. First, and most obviously, it would make the likely Democrat landslide this November even worse.The erstwhile reliably Republican voters who won’t vote Trump but who would return to fold for virtually any other nominee will be outnumbered by the millions of Trump supporters who would abandon the GOP. If you deny Trump’s supporters what they won fair and square, they’ll bolt. And while most #NeverTrumpers will nevertheless vote for the rest of the Republican ticket, most of the cheated Trumpkins will not. That would lead to a Democratic senate (perhaps even with a filibuster-proof majority) and a Democratic House. Such a scenario would empower the Democrats to pass their entire left-wing wish list into law, whether constitutional or not. A filibuster-proof senate would be primed to confirm the most leftist justices imaginable, who would immediately bless the new administration’s blatant overreach and be young enough to plague society for a generation. Such a court would regard the Constitution as an archaic, unbinding relic, replaced instead by a moving “living, breathing” standard of “public policy.” No overreaching action by either Congress or the president would be unlawful, as long as it was consistent with the public policy desired by the Democratic Party. It would not be beyond such a court to rule portions of the Constitution itself unconstitutional.

A Trump-led electoral bloodbath would not lose 14 senate seats to create the filibuster-proof senate. A “dump Trump” nominee would.

But the second reason risks even more dire consequences. Denying Trump the nomination he has already won (or even an unsuccessful coup attempt) would set a dangerous precedent, by Republicans no less, for Democrats to use as an excuse to impose their own will. There is a plausible theory (which I am not yet prepared to accept) that Trump will win in a landslide, powered by blue-collar former Democrats and foreshadowed by the unforeseen success of the Brexit referendum in Great Britain. Establishment Democrats, especially President Obama, are so obsessed with the perceived evil of Trump (or any Republican who would trespass on the presidency to which their nominee is “entitled”), that they will do anything – anything – to prevent it from happening. If the voting public goes off script and delivers an inconvenient Election Day surprise, cue the contrived violent protesters to provide the pretense for lame duck President Obama to declare martial law, and put the “proper” people in charge. If the Republicans can entertain the idea (even if unsuccessful) of reversing the results of their nominating process, reversing an election with martial law would be a piece of cake. So would end the American republic as we know it.

Time to vote strategically, unite behind Cruz

The Unablogger

I have favored Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for President ever since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker dropped out. I still think Rubio would make an outstanding president. I still recommend Rubio to voters in Florida, where he is the strongest opponent to flawed front runner Donald J. Trump, and perhaps in North Carolina as well, where delegates will be awarded proportionally.

But here in Missouri and neighboring Illinois, Rubio lacks the support necessary to win either winner-take-all primary, or even a congressional district (whose winner also gets delegates). Rubio himself recently stated that he was concentrating his efforts on winning Florida, and not to expect favorable results in Tuesday’s other primaries. In other words, he was writing off the other four states (including Missouri and Illinois).

If you think (as I do) that it is important to keep the Republican nomination away from Trump, it’s time to vote strategically. It’s time to unite behind Ted Cruz.

Strategic voting requires solid polling information, and unfortunately, that is sorely lacking as we struggle to decide. For lots of reasons, polling in 2016 has been spotty at best, and polling for Missouri and Illinois is even worse. The only Missouri poll taken any time in the past six months is one by the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University in western Kansas (hardly in the league of the Survey Research Center in Michigan, or even Quinnipiac or Marist). The poll was based on a tiny sample size of just 208 Republican voters, with a high 7% margin of error. The poll’s gender mix was an unrealistic 54%-46% male. But it’s all we have. The poll was commissioned jointly by several Missouri newspapers, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I give it some credence, though, because the results are about what I would expect. It shows Trump and Cruz well ahead of the others, with Trump leading Cruz, 36% to 29% (i.e., within the margin of error), with Rubio and Kasich in high single digits and 17% undecided. Also, the polls gender mix may overstate the Trump vote, because Trump generally polls better with men than women.

Four Illinois polls taken this month also show Trump ahead and Cruz in second, with margins varying from 13 points to just 4 points. Unlike Missouri, Kasich and Rubio polled in significant double digits. A We Ask America poll on March 7 polled over a thousand likely voters (margin of error 3.1%), a Chicago Tribune poll, March 2-6, polled 600 likely Republican voters (margin of error 4.1%), a CBS/YouGov poll, March 9-11, polled 656 likely Republican voters (margin of error 3.5%), and an NBC/Marist poll questioned 421 likely Republican voters (margin of error 4.8%). The Illinois polls are probably more reliable for that state, and two provide some area breakdown. The We Ask America and Chicago Tribune polls showed Trump ahead across the state, with Cruz most competitive downstate (including the St. Louis Metro East). The polls had contradictory results as to who is the strongest alternative to Trump in and around Chicago.

Unfortunately, the Missouri poll does not break down the results by district, or even by general areas of the state. In the early states, Rubio had been more successful in urban and suburban areas. The Illinois polls suggest that Kasich has recently leapfrogged Rubio in those areas. Rubio’s support nationally has plummeted as Kasich’s has risen over the past week or so. But Cruz has also consolidated support and leads both of the others. The polls that the Post Dispatch formerly commissioned with Survey USA gave separate results by areas of the state, like the two Illinois polls. That information would have been extremely helpful for strategic voters in contests awarded by district.

Many Republican voters have been concerned that Cruz, though more principled, would be just as weak a general election candidate as Trump. While early national polls supported that skepticism, Cruz has dramatically improved in more recent tests. The Missouri poll showed Cruz beating both Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders handily in this state, and better than Rubio (who also beat both Democrats) and Trump (who beat Clinton but lost to Sanders). The poll did not test Kasich against the Democrats. While the poll’s male bias may skew these results in favor of Republicans, its suggestion that Cruz would be the strongest Republican is probably not affected by that bias.

Finally, bottom line, I believe Cruz would make an excellent president. Of utmost importance, Cruz will appoint solid Supreme Court justices, and would be much more reliable than Trump. Cruz is just as tough as Trump on illegal immigration, but without Trump’s in-your-face bluster that turns off a majority of general election voters. A superb debater, Cruz will perform excellently against either Clinton or Sanders. While Rubio also scores well on those points (albeit a bit weak on immigration), he won’t be in a position to do that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination. Frankly, the polls and the math are against Rubio now.

Trump has been winning with large pluralities, but not majorities, but pluralities are enough to win, even in winner-take-all primaries. Trump will ride 30% victories all the way to the convention if the other 70% remains splintered. It’s time to unite behind the strongest alternative to Trump. It’s time to united behind Ted Cruz.

When did Al Gore take over Republican thinking?

The Unablogger

In the tumultuous months following the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush narrowly won the electoral vote, supporters of Al Gore lamented (and still do, for that matter) that he should have been awarded the presidency because he won the popular vote. The electoral vote is so outdated and technical and thwarts the so-called “will of the people.” The usual leftist whine, “It’s not fair!”, filled the airwaves of the mainstream media.

Of course, supporters of George W. Bush noted that the rules in place provided that the president be elected by a majority of electoral votes, not the national popular vote. Bush himself explained correctly that he campaigned to win the Electoral College, and that he would have campaigned differently (e.g., campaigned more in areas, like Texas, where he was safely ahead, in order to increase turnout there) if the popular vote determined the outcome. We play by the rules.

Fast forward to today. Republicans have the most fractured presidential field since before World War II, and there is a distinct possibility that no candidate will win the necessary majority of all delegates prior to the national convention. The rules require that a majority of all convention delegates vote for a candidate in order to make that candidate the party’s nominee. Not just who has the most delegates (i.e., a mere plurality), but a majority (i.e., more than 50%). This has been the established rule in both major parties for well over a century.

Opponents of Donald J. Trump are holding out hope that, if Trump falls short of the 1,237 delegates needed for the majority, convention delegates can coalesce around a different, more electable candidate. This would require a second or subsequent ballot, at which time most delegates are no longer bound to support the candidate who won them in their state’s primary or caucus.They act as delegates, i.e., people to whom party members have delegated the task of choosing the party nominee.

Trump supporters (as well as hostile media seeking to discredit Republicans at every opportunity) refer to that time-honored process pejoratively as a “brokered” convention. Even as reputable a conservative as former RedStater Erick Ericksen, who actually started the #NeverTrump movement, laments, ” If Donald Trump has the delegate lead headed into the convention, even if it is short of 1,237, the GOP would destroy itself if they did not make Trump the Presidential nominee [emphasis part of quoted text].” Erickson concludes, ” I am very much opposed to Donald Trump . . . , but if he heads to the convention with the most delegates and the GOP does not make him the nominee, I’d call foul on them as well.”

Huh? Really? Following long-established rules would, in Erickson’s words, “steal from [Trump] the nomination when he gets the most votes”? As best I can figure out, voters are thought to have an expectation that the candidate with the most delegates, even if it’s just a plurality, should get the nomination; and if their inaccurate expectation is not met, they will pout and not vote any more.

When did the “It’s not fair” mentality of Al Gore’s sore losers morph into an “It’s not fair” movement to change retroactively the rules of nominating a candidate? This seems a lot like campus movements to create “safe spaces” to “protect” vulnerable, hypersensitive students from arguments or theories they are not already predisposed to believe.

Unfortunately, in today’s world where feelings always trump fact (pun not intended, but acquiesced), Erickson may be right. Voters have every right to pout and cut off their collective noses to spite their many faces, and elections are decided exclusively by voters who actually vote. While the apparent extortion by Trump supporters actually or implicitly threatening to bolt if they don’t get their way is an extreme form of bullying, totally consistent with their candidate’s personality and tactics, the rules of the general election give them every right to do so.

I write this not as an advocate of a “brokered” convention, but simply to lament to what our society has dumbed down. It’s sad.

But I do agree with Erickson on one point. “The way to beat Trump is to beat him in the primaries and caucuses.” The time to coalesce behind one Trump alternative is now.