Trump is fading

Suddenly drooping in the polls (read it all) and flagging in his desire to be the president because it's not actually a monarchy or a dictatorship, Donald Drumpf may be the only person that can defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.

Drumpf may be taking the lead.

When it comes to a classic narcissist like Donald Trump, it’s hard to say when (or if) he’ll begin to find the process of running for president so humiliating that he’s tempted to just drop out. He clearly doesn’t care that “respectable” people are routinely calling him a racist and comparing him to some of the most notorious fascist dictators of the 20th-Century. He doesn’t seem to care that the intelligentsia and the media elite are condemning his character and his intelligence. But he’s also obsessed with his image and he’s financially dependent on his brand. His campaign has already cost him business relationships and partnerships, yet that hasn’t tamed or dissuaded him so far.

[...]

Trump’s already getting a little squirrelly. He’s under pressure after his campaign manager was indicted yesterday for battering a Breitbart reporter, and now he’s reneging on his pledge to support the eventual nominee because he feels the RNC has treated him shabbily and he can sense that the party elite are plotting to deny him the nomination at the convention. There’s increasing talk that he could cost the Republicans control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

Due to sore loser laws in many states that will prevent Trump from running as an independent after failing to secure the Republican nomination, he cannot run a successful third party candidacy. But he could get on the ballot in some red states, split the vote, and hand Electoral College delegates to Clinton or Sanders. I can see him doing that out of spite.

Ted Cruz never stood a chance of winning the presidency anyway, Drumpf or No Trump.

He’s very unpredictable. He seems to be getting enough validation at the moment to make all the hits he’s taking seem worthwhile, but this doesn’t seem to make much sense from a business or branding perspective, and he surely knows that history is written by the same intellectuals who increasingly despise him with the heat of a thousand suns.

[...]

... what terrifies him more?  The humiliation of losing?  Or the responsibility of winning? 

Relative to sinking popularity (Clinton 54, Sanders 42 in the latest NY poll) as familiarity becomes more contemptible, it was understood that was supposed to be Hillary's problem exclusively.  I am sensing the rising paranoia of those Republicans who claimed long ago he was a stalking horse for Clinton.  Down or out... you go, Donnie.

THIS should be an interesting development.

Updates:

Warning: This May Be as Unpopular as Trump Gets

Trump makes surprise closed-door visit with RNC

Wisconsin town hall serves up smelly cheese

In going to the town hall format for the remaining three GOP presidential contenders, let's at least give a little credit to CNN and Anderson Cooper for their attempt to bring some civility to the discourse.  The two front-runners just aren't up to the task of elevating it.  Too heavy a lift.

It came well into the second hour of a Republican town hall event Tuesday night, in which CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and a cast of carefully curated ordinary Americans got a chance to ask each of the three remaining GOP presidential candidates questions, one by one, and those candidates each got the chance to completely ignore those questions and spray clouds of rhetoric like startled, flailing squids. It was a rerun, in other words, of the same episode that's played out over and over again during this interminable primary campaign.

First went Cruz...

The night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, began with Cooper asking Texas Senator Ted Cruz about his suggestion that US law enforcement should patrol "Muslim neighborhoods" as a way to combat terrorism; a plan that has been roundly condemned by New York City law enforcement officials who tried monitoring local Muslims and realized it didn't help anything. Cruz shrugged off the criticism, calling New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio a "left-wing radical," and raising the specter of Europe's Muslim-dominated "no-go zones" where the police fear to tread, a fairly common myth floating around the far-right wing.

The exchange set a pattern: Someone would ask Cruz a question and he would either avoid answering, or find a way to bend it to his purpose. A job interview-style query about Cruz's biggest weakness prompted a monologue about how dang much he loves the Constitution. A father asked Cruz if he would support a bill aimed at stopping the Department of Veterans Affairs from overprescribing drugs—a measure named after his son, who died of an overdose while in VA care—and the Senator just repeated vague platitudes about VA reform and the War on Drugs.

A woman asked what Cruz would do specifically for women and he rambled about how great his mom and wife are (in other words, he isn't going to do anything in particular for women). When Cooper brought up the ugly campaign fight over a National Enquirer story accusing Cruz of infidelity—a story that Cruz has accused Trump's campaign of planting—and asked whether the Texan would support Trump as the party's nominee, Cruz hemmed and hawed for long minutes, then basically refused to answer the question.

Trump used up most of his fourth-grader-on-the-playground vocabulary early in his segment.

When it came to foreign policy, not day-to-day Twitter spats, however, Trump seemed less prepared. The most substantial exchange came when Cooper challenged the candidate to clarify some of his statements about nuclear proliferation, since Trump has said he's worried about more countries acquiring nuclear weapons, but also OK with Japan, South Korea, and maybe Saudi Arabia getting nukes. Trump's response was, basically, Whatever, if it means the US does less to police the world, fine. Later, he pulled the same light-on-details act when he said the US government should provide healthcare and education, and then said no, the states should, or the private sector should get involved, or something.

We've seen this all before—the avoidance of questions, the pandering, the almost pathological focus on talking points. The latter was most grossly displayed Tuesday when a police officer who'd been shot 15 times while fighting a white supremacist who was attacking a Sikh temple asked the Republican frontrunner what could be done to combat prejudice. Trump had a chance to soften his tone, to look presidential while interacting with a man universally regarded as a hero. Instead, he trotted out some stuff about Muslim terrorism, and once again, completely ignored the question.

That Kasich had to go last meant most everyone tuning out before he came on, another sad reality of the state of play for the GOP this cycle.

(Kasich), it must be said, actually did answer questions, including those about unpopular stances he's taken in the past. As the campaign's third wheel, he doesn't have the luxury of ignoring the queries of interested voters. He won't be president no matter how well he performs at events like these.

Kasich's hopelessness, like Trump's bluster and Cruz's smarm, was nothing new. When Wisconsin primary voters cast ballots next week, they'll be choosing from the same menu they faced before the town hall; the same spread of squabbling and half-truths will be laid out, growing increasingly stale for the next few months, until the Republican Party finally lands itself a nominee. In that sense, Trump's complaint about being tired of debates was the truest moment in a night that was short on them—he's as eager to see the end of this as voters are. 

Kasich's last luxury is that, as the winner of one primary -- his home state of Ohio -- and the possessor of 143 delegates, at least nobody (except Ted Cruz) is calling for him to drop out.  Contrast that with the hourly exit calls to Bernie Sanders, who owns 15 state wins to Clinton's 20 and trails her by only 200 delegates ... the human, mortal, democratically-chosen ones, not those of the super variety.  All numbers here.

Republicans thought that they would be safer holding town halls than presidential debates, and they were wrong. The top two Republican candidates made a great argument for supporting the Democratic nominee. The town hall was a total disaster. Neither of the top two Republican candidates is electable, and there is no sense in discussing John Kasich because he will never be the nominee.

I sourced PoliticsUSA -- a questionable opinion site, poorly edited being my main objection -- for the above excerpt because some people think it's a propaganda outlet equal to Blue Nation Review.  That's what is known as a false equivalency.  Click over and look at their stories and tell me if you agree or disagree.

Yes, we need to see some grown-ups do this debate thing, but we won't get that.  Because somebody is a little miffed about someone else's tone.

Why Clinton won't debate before the NY primary

The last public poll conducted two weeks ago showed her with a very comfortable 71-23% spread.  (You may recall that her win here in Texas at the beginning of this month was by a 66-33 margin.)  So what does she have to gain by debating?  Nothing, and she stands to lose some if she does.

The ever-cautious and calculating leader much prefers to sit on her lead, run out the clock.

FiveThirtyEight.com projects an almost even split of the NY delegation, which strikes me as ass-covering on their part after their earlier embarrassments.  Fresh polling, somewhere in the pipeline, will likely show the lead shrinking; that's what the polls have done throughout this cycle, tighten up as election day draws closer.  So in the three weeks between now and April 19 -- when New Yorkers vote -- her campaign has probably calculated that can withstand some Twitter flak and even the grievous attacks of her nasty handlers and their enabling, sycophantic third-rate media (Blue Nation Review, need I say more?) and still come away with both a convincing victory and the talking heads on teevee spinning as loudly as we have yet heard for Sanders to exit the contest.

California's primary in early June, where she holds just a 7-point lead, looks long in the distance.

I still see a Democratic convention where Bernie gets a prime time speech in one of the first couple of nights, concedes gracefully, and politely herds his supporters onto the Clinton bandwagon.  There will be some larger-than-usual quantity of bitter-enders, but the safe bet is that like the PUMAs in 2008, most of the #NeverHillary-ites fall in line.

On a side note, has anybody been called a Sandbagger (scroll down to the comments) yet?

Just as boring as being alive.  Let's hope for a minor miracle, like a little bird alighting from the closed-auditorium sky, or another polling error, or the *ahem* usual something-unforeseen.  Clever and seriously snarky hashtags aren't going to be enough.

Otherwise the hearse bus is waiting.

Update (3/30): Nate Silver applies the numerical coup d'grace.

The Weekly Wrangle

In presenting this week's blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance is sad that Rick Perry won't come out of retirement to run as a third-party alternative to Donald Trump. (Sad for all the missed comedy opportunities, of course.)

Off the Kuff would really like to see some general election polling of Texas soon.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos exposes how the Republican Party cleverly stoles fear and hate among its religious base voters for the sole purpose of winning: How the GOP Foments Outrage and Fear Among Christian Fundamentalist Voters.

SocraticGadfly takes a deep look at the problematic background and connections of Tulsi Gabbard, the Congresswoman and former Democratic National Committee vice-chair who resigned the DNC spot to endorse Bernie Sanders.

Dan Patrick touts xenophobic, racist memes at the border while forgetting about community building trade. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes Patrick is a Republican and that's what they stand for nowadays.

Hillary Clinton is eager to get her war on, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs really doesn't want to go down this road again: war protests, war criminals, torture, disabled vets who can't get their VA benefits handled properly, etc. and so on.

Egberto Willies talked to an insider about why we no longer get the truth from our media: news is packaged and sold for ratings and clicks.

TXsharon at Bluedaze was at the seminar in Denton where experts from across the country said that a 100% renewable community was possible, ending the need for additional gas plants.

Dos Centavos posts some of the races and candidates he's watching in the Harris County Democratic Party's runoff election, to be held May 24.

Neil at All People Have Value encountered a Donald Trump window sticker on his travels around Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And the Lewisville Texan Journal had a concert review of Texas legend Jimmie Dale Gilmore and his son Colin who put on a music show locally.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

In an Easter ritual where the most evil thing  is cleansed, Trail Blazers reported that Mexicans burned effigies of Trump (as 'Judas') in the streets of that country.

Grits for Breakfast revealed the business model for the company that manufactures Tasers: they also supply police bodycams and intend to be the dominant vendor in that market.

Prairie Weather points out the Democrats' forty-four-year-old paranoia, and its name is George McGovern.

Texas Election Law Blog reports that the Firth Circuit Court of Appeals in its entirety (en banc) will review the Texas voter ID lawsuit, and the plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court to block the law from implementation in the 2016 election.

Zachery Taylor is on board the "Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, but never Hillary Clinton" bandwagon.

Carl Davidson at The Rag Blog premises that there are actually six political parties in the United States (and that's within the two that wear the "major" label), and has some suggestions for working within them for progress.

The TSTA Blog highlights a rural school district that is trying to hang on.

Better Texas Blog celebrates the 6th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.

The Texas Campaign for the Environment advocates for a Zero Waste plan for Houston.

Paradise in Hell asks the tough questions about Ag Commissioner Sid Miller.

The Current reminds us that SBOE candidate Mary Lou Bruner is still deranged.

Austin On Your Feet lists nine barriers to building housing in Austin's central city.

Pages of Victory saw a nice dance.  A strange one, but a nice one.