In the fallout from Trump's presumptive nomination, establishment Republicans are trying to work out where they stand. Prior to Cruz and Kasich dropping out, Washington Post columnist George Will called for Trump to be stopped at a contested convention, earning this response from Drew Magary (very NSFW language):
I wish this democracy didn’t have so much DEMOCRACY in it, you know? Once in a while, it’s important to disregard the will of the voters and leave the selection process to people who know BEST.
Magary is not wrong on the facts. Donald Trump got a large plurality of votes in the primaries. By the time it's all done, he may well have a majority of both votes and pledged delegates.
Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for President.
It was more or less unthinkable to write those words at the beginning of the year, but here we are.
Stopping Trump is now the responsibility of Hillary Clinton, who will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee for President. She will have the last, best opportunity to take Trump down. Along with much of the rest of the world, I am hoping she does not fail.
The odds of a Democratic win are good. The geography of the electoral college favours them. Trump's odiousness is such, to voters in general and minorities in particular, that formerly solid Republican states like Texas and Arizona may be put into play. But it would be foolish for the Democrats to be complacent.
Short post this week, because work and family responsibilities have severely impacted my blogging. To cut a long story short, my wife has been ill (thankfully recovering now), so in addition to working full-time, I've been doing most of the childcare and transportation of our son to and from nursery.
My hat goes off to single parents who do this full-time, because after less than a week, I'm completely shattered and just want to crawl into bed and sleep.
I've got a couple of longer posts in progress, and Cute Cat Friday will be up later this afternoon.
In what appears to be a desperate plea for attention, presidential candidate Ted Cruz has announced his running mate. She is Carly Fiorina, failed CEO of Hewlett Packard, failed Senate candidate, failed Presidential candidate, and purveyor of malicious untruths about Planned Parenthood.
Gin and Tacos has an entertaining piece, pointing out that Cruz' preferred candidates were disqualified by reason of being unconstitutional, imaginary, or dead:
Typically, the running mate is announced after a candidate has won the nomination. This is not so for Cruz. In the words of fictional bookshop owner Bernard Black: In this, as with all else, he is an innovator.
Even the expert prognosticators at Five Thirty Eight are baffled as to what it is meant to achieve. They speculate Fiorina may shore up Cruz' anti-establishment credentials, or help him attack Trump, but his strategy is clear as mud.
By any normal standards, Fiorina is a despicable human being; but compared to the overweening malevolence of Trump and Cruz, she looks almost respectable. Cruz this week was described by John Boehner, supposedly his political ally, as "Lucifer in the flesh" and a "miserable son of a bitch".
Could Cruz' motivation be that simple? Could it be that all he wants is an official spokesperson and surrogate who does not cause audiences to recoil in disgust?
We may never know. Meanwhile, Trump continues to rack up primary victories. Cruz shares at least one thing with the Republican party establishment: Both are desperate to stop Trump and rapidly running out of ideas.
For your further enjoyment, here is the hilarious rant in which Bernard utters the line referenced above:
