Not enough people are paying attention to the question of, "What's the path?" While we can all root for Person X or Person Y, at some point the simple question revolves around identifying real scenarios under which your favorite can actually . . . win.
Ted Cruz understood the point. So long as there was a path, he was hangin' around. Then he laid the groundwork for getting out when the path evaporated. (Supposedly, he was saying that from the "beginning"; yes, if the "beginning" means "this week for the first time".) It wasn't only the Indiana ("heartland") shellacking. It was that in conjunction with the 30-point walloping in the latest Cali polls. I was on record as saying that, if Cruz lost Indiana big, he would suspend. I give him credit for doing so. It was the right move at the right time.
So what's the path for Trump? That is the real question. People should be focusing on the "Wag the Dog" theory of numbers assembly. (C'mon, Mr. Rove, get with your own program!) Reince Priebus has already said that the RNC is building a monolithic numbers machine for figuring out just where Republican resources should go, and that the nominee, whoever he is (now Trump) will have the full benefit thereof. The Democrats should fear this as much as they fear anything.
But it's not just a purely state-by-state allocate-the-wins thing. There are so many WtD and WtD-type dynamics here, and here are two of them:
- CNN's Van Jones makes the incredibly prescient point that if Trump gets a material minority of the black vote he's your next president. With his support among certain voting blocs, he doesn't need to win the black vote. When you drill down into the numbers, what he needs is to get some of it. Can you say, "Cain, Carson, Tyson, West"? . . . with more coming? And watch what happens on the women's side. People are going to be shocked at the number of women that go for Trump. There's a secret weapon here named Ivanka. (Will Trump play the Monica Lewinsky and Orgy Island cards?) When it comes to the Hispanic vote, to me the jury is still out. Etc., etc. The potential numerology here is truly fascinating.
- People are not making enough of the mischief The Donald will do in states like New York, California, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Hillary wants to be able to ignore such states. Even if Trump can't carry them, how much damage will he cause if he causes her to devote substantial resources thereto? And what if he wins just one or two of those states? What happens to the WtD numbers, then?
- And let's not forget the Bernie factor. Bernie could never have won, to be sure (certainly, not in the general election). But his staying power is undeniably remarkable. Can Trump start picking off some of his voters? If Bernie waits too long to unify behind Hillary will too many of his voters already have gotten comfortable with Trump? For that matter, when Bernie does throw his support to Hillary, will it be at all enthusiastically? That's an interesting aspect of the numbers calculus.
It's also not too soon to start talking about Mo'. This could be an odd part of the cycle when it comes to Momentum. Hillary is not particularly popular, and indeed in certain circles is brutally unpopular. If Trump is able to cloud her ability to get her messages out, and if he is able to start driving up her unfavorables even further and putting her back on her heels, then we could be looking at a situation in which she is consistently swimming upstream. One of the keys for the Democrats seemed early on to be the "joke" aspect of Trump's candidacy, especially given some of the early, and quite silly, Hillary v. Trump polls. I felt that the post-Indiana early polling would show Trump down by, let's say 46 to 41. Some are a little worse, and some are a little better. But the notion that the Trump candidacy is a joke is, well, a joke. If Hillary starts swimming backwards, it could start to be hard to reverse the Momentum. We'll have to see.
The path for Trump started to become evident here, even as the pundits identified roadblocks at every turn. He can't get away with saying X (about illegal immigrants). Surely, he can't say Y (about John McCain). Let's see what happens when people "really" start to vote. His ceiling is 32%. His ceiling is 38%. His ceiling is 45%. We'll see (this one is particularly funny) what happens when the field winnows down. (I guess his ceiling is now somewhere in the 70%-to-80% range?) And on and on and on and on. And, of course, more recently, we have: well, that's just all primaries stuff, and now, you see, as we enter the general election, the game will change. Really? Well, maybe so. And, then again, maybe not.
So now we head off to the next chapter of (with apologies to the Disney folks) Mr. Trump's Wild Ride. Buckle your seatbelts . . .
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