Donald Trump claims to be “self-funding” his campaign for President.  In reality, Donald Trump’s campaign has been funded by free coverage in the main stream media.  Recently the main stream media has pulled the plug on all the free coverage and if Trump wants to be President he will have to up his game big time.  The following article in the Washington Times explains:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/27/kelly-riddell-donald-trumps-money-problem/

Trump clearly has a lot of money, but I wonder if he is ready to cough up the $1 billion big ones necessary to win the general election.  It is a lot more fun campaigning with other people’s money.  Imagine spending a billion dollars in a Don Quixotic pursuit of the impossible dream.  Michael Bloomberg imagined that and decided, upon careful reflection, that he didn’t want to spend the money.

I am still not convinced that Trump even wants to be President.  Perhaps he ran because he knew it would be good fun.  He may be shocked that things turned out this way.  There is no doubt that his ego wants to win, but at what price.  In some ways Donald is running into the same problem socialists encounter.  At some point, you run out of other people’s money.

It is obvious that the Trump campaign has melted down big time this week.  One must either assume that Donald Trump is incredibly stupid, has zero control over his emotions, or he is sabotaging his own campaign.   Donald Trump has his detractors, but few people would call him stupid.  He clearly has demonstrated control over his emotions on numerous occasions and a lot of this sure looks like an acting job.  That leaves one to wonder if Donald has decided he doesn’t actually want to spend $1 billion and he doesn’t even want the job.  But, he is not about to tolerate the RNC ignoring both him and Cruz and putting in another RINO Republican establishment candidate.  While Trump calls him lying Cruz, on several occasions Trump goes out of his way to say he agrees with “Ted” and that “Ted” is a really bright guy.  I think Trump respects Cruz.

I am not exactly the only one seeing this:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433526/donald-trump-campaign-self-sabotage

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/13/donald-trump-is-either-launching-a-new-even-trumpier-campaign-or-hes-self-sabotaging/

There are even some people who thought Trump starting doing this long ago; it was just that his supporters didn’t notice:

http://healourland.net/2015/11/13/did-donald-trump-intentionally-sabotage-his-own-campaign/

I have always believed that the only one, who could stop Trump, is Trump.  Perhaps Trump understands that too, which would be a pretty good explanation for what we saw this week.

TDM

There are numerous rumors that the Clinton e-mail scandal is about to explode.  Several sources are reporting that the guy who set up Hillary’s server is singing like a canary.  We know he was given immunity and the FBI typically does that when it is after a really big fish.  We are now at the point where top aides are going to be asked difficult questions, under oath, by FBI agents who know the correct answers.  If they lie, under oath, they could easily end up doing serious time.  If they don’t lie, then Hillary has a serious problem.  Heck, even if they do lie, Hillary may still be in serious trouble.  There are certain Clinton supporters willing to take one for the Gipper, but are they willing take one for a Gipper about to go down for the third and final time?  John Kennedy once said that “victory has a 100 fathers but defeat is an orphan.”  The minute it becomes obvious that Hillary is actually going down in flames the most dangerous place on earth will be between her and the nearest exit off the ship.

All the experts are predicting a general election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  I suspect they are wrong with regard to both of them.  We better hope they are wrong.  If they are right, it will be the ultimate race to the bottom.  Currently about 60% of people hate Hillary and 60% hate Trump.  Each has support from about 30% of the people too stupid or too biased to recognize the obvious problems.   That means the 40% of voters who still retain residual brain cells capable of rational thought will stay at home or drag themselves to the polls, fight the nausea long  enough to pull the lever for the lessor of two evils and then throw up.  Really smart people know this and they are desperately seeking Susan, or at least someone like Susan who has some kind of solution.

Republicans are in much better shape than Democrats because Donald Trump is not going to have enough delegates and Ted Cruz is a viable option.  Kasich has zero chance and neither does the mythical Republican establishment unicorn superhero.  Unless Cruz starts taking on water, he is odds on favorite to win the Republican nomination.  He would trounce either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in a general election.

Wise Democrats should be approaching suicidal levels of despair.  The only thing worse than Hillary Clinton winning the nomination would be Hillary not winning the nomination.  Then the only option would be Bernie Sanders and even the inept RNC is going to have a serious problem losing to Bernie Sanders.  Democrats are dreaming the impossible dream of Hillary winning the nomination, and then withdrawing to be replaced by someone better.  The problem is that while Republican options are scare, there are no Democratic options at all.  When people are talking seriously about Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren being the draft candidate it becomes increasingly difficult to suppress the giggle factor.  Granted, they probably wouldn’t lose 48 states, like Bernie, but it would be extremely unlikely for either or them to win a general election.  There is a reason Democrats have stuck with Hillary through thick and thin, there is no thin.

TDM

Several months ago I wrote that California might be the deciding state in the Republican nomination.  At the time, Ted Cruz was leading in California.  Currently Donald Trump is leading, but it is actually a tie with Cruz surging.

The winner of the California Republican primary is likely to win the nomination.  The Republican establishment still dreams of a brokered convention where they can float in an establishment kind of candidate, like a Paul Ryan, to save the day.  That will not happen.  Donald Trump has almost zero chance of having 1,237 delegates before the convention.  Ted Cruz has a slim chance at getting 1,237 but he has a slightly better chance than Donald.  Between the two of them, they will have a vast majority of the delegates.  One of them is going to get the nomination.

California is the last primary before the convention.  It is a closed primary.  There are 172 delegates.  The person who wins the California primary is extremely likely to be the Republican nominee.  If Trump wins he may just have 1,237 delegates.  Even if he doesn’t have 1,237, he will be close and will have huge momentum because of California.

If Cruz wins, Trump won’t have 1,237 delegates and Cruz will not be far behind.  If you combine the Kasich and Rubio delegates that will easily put Cruz over the top.  If Cruz wins California he will go to the convention with almost unstoppable momentum.

Following is the remaining primary schedule:

Some people foolishly think Cruz needs to win 80% of the vote to get the nomination.  That is not true.  He just needs to win enough to stop Trump from winning.  If Cruz wins 50% of the remaining votes he is likely to win the nomination.

The bottom line is that the nominee is going to be either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump and it is very likely to be which of them wins in California.  If their campaigns don’t know this already, they will figure it out soon.  Prepare yourself for more political ads than you thought possible.

TDM

We all know about the twitter war between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, regarding their wives.  An anti-Trump Super Pac ran a nude picture of Melanie Trump and asked if people really wanted this to be the next first lady.  What Trump should have done is condemned an obvious cheap shot on his wife.  He should have blamed Cruz, which would have probably worked even though Cruz had nothing to do with this. That would have really hurt Cruz.  But instead Trump responded by threatening Heidi Cruz.  Then, incredibly, he posted an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz next to a glowing picture Melanie Trump.  It was a huge mistake. Cruz responded with a withering attack on Trump.  Cruz looked straight into the camera and called Trump a sniveling coward.  This is a classic example of someone taking on a bully and taking him out.  It was a beautiful thing.

Then today, National Inquirer published a hit piece on Ted Cruz alleging numerous sex scandals.  Coincidence?  Probably not! Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for year.  Trump even recommended David Pecker to be the CEO of Time Magazine. National Enquirer ran a hit piece on Jeb Bush claiming he was involved in the drug trade and also accused Bush of a sex scandal.  It ran an article slamming Carly Fiorina for her druggie daughter.  Numerous times it has reported that Hillary Clinton is dying, she has strokes, brain cancer, depression, alcoholism, ms, endometriosis and paranoia. It even ran a hit piece on Ben Carson accusing him of medical malpractice.  But with regard to Donald Trump, the National Enquirer publishes glowing headlines.  For example it ran an article with a flattering picture of Trump saying: “The Man Behind the Legend.”

Following is a video clip from CNN this morning.  Kate Bolduan was hosting a segment regarding the twitter war.  She asked Trump supporter Adriana Cohen if she was ready to move on.  She didn’t take the hint.  The link to the video is below:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-supporter-derails-cnn-segment-by-accusing-fellow-guest-of-having-an-affair-with-ted-cruz/

Instead of moving on, Cohen dropped the National Inquirer story on Amanda Carpenter, who is one of the alleged mistresses.  Bolduan tried desperately to stop Cohen from repeating the story and quickly said that CNN is not supporting the National Inquirer report:

 “It will come as no surprise to our viewers, CNN has no reporting on what you’re talking about coming from from The National Enquirer,”  

Then Amanda Carpenter fought back.  This is the kind of defense you get from someone who has been falsely accused:

“What’s out there is tabloid trash.  If someone wants to comment on it, they can talk to my lawyer.  It’s categorically false.  You should be ashamed for spreading this smut.  Donald Trump supporters should be held to account for it.  …I will not be intimidated.  I will continue to make my thoughts known about Donald Trump.  I’m not backing down.”

This is the kind of denial that you get when someone is confronted with a patently false accusation.  When you get this kind of response your lawyer starts checking your insurance policy to see if you have coverage for a defamation of character claim.

I have been watching the news and neither Fox News nor CNN is doing ANY reporting on this story.  This story is exploding on twitter, primarily by people who are more than willing to believe any negative rumor about Ted Cruz.

This is incredible. It has the potential to do far more damage to Trump than to Cruz.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of people who have been trashed by the National Enquirer seize the day.  Just recently we had the huge verdict with regard to Erin Andrews and Hulk Hogan. Ironically it is Donald Trump who has suggested that we change laws to make it easier to sue for libel.  Checked your own insurance lately Donald.

TDM

Did you notice something yesterday?  For the past several months, if you turned on your Television you saw Donald Trump.  My wife is so disgusted with this that she now turns off the Television every time she sees a picture of Donald Trump or hears his name mentioned.   This usually takes less than one minute.  Yesterday was very different.  It wasn’t Donald Trump on the screen, it was Ted Cruz.

There were two things that supposedly inspired this change.  One was the silly twitter exchange between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  Someone, apparently a Super Pac ran a nude picture of Melania Trump and asked Mormons in Utah if they wanted this to be next First Lady of the United States.  The picture was real, but Donald was not amused.  He promised to spill the beans on Heidi Cruz.  Then he posted side by side pictures apparently designed to show how much more beautiful Melania Trump is than Heidi Cruz.  It was immature but also stupid.  He just verified what people already knew about Melania Trump, her number one attribute is physical beauty.  She looks like what she is, Donald Trump’s third trophy wife.  Heidi Cruz, on the other hand is a very nice, but normal looking lady who happens to be brilliant.  She is a senior executive at Goldman Sachs on leave of absence.  If this becomes a contest between potential first ladies, Trump loses big time.

The other was the suggestion by Cruz that police keep an eye on Muslim communities where there is evidence of radicalization.  The liberal left is too busy booing to notice the vast majority of people are standing up applauding, saying: “about time.”

But neither of these things are what triggered the change.  Instead it was the results in Arizona and Utah.  I took a close look at Arizona and the numbers are shocking.  Over 50% of the vote was early voting.  That is why Marco Rubio, who was not even in the race, got 13.8% of the vote.  It is safe to assume that very few of those votes were cast on Election Day.  So I went back and took out the votes for Rubio, Carson and Bush who had all withdrawn from the race.  There were numerous reports that Donald Trump was doing very well in the early votes.  Cruz was far behind.  Once I did the analysis it became clear that on election night Cruz and Trump were in a virtual dead heat and if Kasich wasn’t in the race Cruz would have won by a comfortable margin.  I am sure the real experts figured out the exact same thing.  This race has changed fundamentally and right now it is Cruz who has the big mo.

That was reinforced by recent polls that show Trump and Cruz tied nationally, for the first time and which show Cruz ahead in Wisconsin.  In addition, a lot of people hate the establishment, but when people like Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney say that Trump is fundamentally unsuited for the Presidency, that is hard to ignore.  There is a big difference between not liking someone and saying someone lacks the character to be President of the United States.  In addition even Democrats are appalled at the prospect of choosing between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  There are five people still theoretically in the race, but only Ted Cruz is a viable alternative to either Trump or Clinton.  That changes everything.  It has already changed who is getting attention from the media.

TDM

Sometimes the most important headline is the one that doesn’t happen.  Last night the Drudge Report, which has morphed into a Donald Trump campaign media outlet, was boasting about Trumps big win in Arizona and saying Utah results were coming.  Then the Utah results did come in and now Drudge is reporting on the terrorist attack in Brussels.  Drudge is no longer crowing about the election yesterday.

There is a reason for this.  Trump did win big in Arizona, but people who were paying attention noticed something important.  Donald Trump under performed in Arizona by a big margin.  A lot of pundits were predicting that Trump would finally break the 50% barrier.  They knew he had a huge lead in the early voting.  A significant percentage of the votes in Arizona were cast long before last night.  For example, Marco Rubio got 13.4% of the vote and he withdrew from the race on March 15^th.  Odds are almost all of those votes were cast before Rubio dropped out of the race.  This means Trump had a good election result, but he did not necessarily have a good result among those who voted last night.   If a candidate doesn’t start getting over 50% at some point, they are doomed to lose.  Trump has yet to break that barrier.  His best chance was last night and he came up short.

In addition pundits were saying that if Ted Cruz did not get 50% of the vote in Utah that he would have to drop out.   They were shocked to see that Cruz got close to 70% of the vote and Trump came in third.  You are going to hear more about Ted Cruz in the next two weeks than you have heard in the last six months.

It is no coincidence that Jeb Bush endorsed Cruz this morning.   There is a lot of pressure from the Republican establishment demanding Kasich get out of the race.  It is obvious that Kasich has zero chance of winning, but he could possibly give the nomination to Donald Trump.  The Republican establishment despises Ted Cruz, but it is brutally clear that the only choice is between Cruz and Trump.   Lindsey Graham said choosing between Trump and Cruz was like choosing between being shot or poisoned.  The Republican establishment chose poison.    They may hate Cruz, even more than they hate Trump, but they realize Cruz is up to the job.  They do not think that Trump has the character or maturity to be President of the United States.

Every time Kasich or one of his surrogates is interviewed by any media outlet, the first question is whether or not Kasich is going to withdraw.  The money is already disappearing.  When a candidate has to explain why he is still in the hunt, he isn’t.

TDM

In 1965 the Lovin’ Spoonful released their debut album called “Do You Believe in Magic.”  One of the songs on that album, written by John Sebastian, was “Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?”

The Lyrics to that song are more than appropriate today:

“Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Pick up on one and leave the other one behind
It’s not often easy, and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did you ever have to finally decide?
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There’s so many changes, and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide?”

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 changed everything. Rubio has officially withdrawn. Kasich is still in the race, but he will no longer be a factor. This is now a two man race.  Republicans have a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  They may not like either candidate, but those are the only options.  No one is pretending that John Kasich has any rational path to the nomination. The one thing every pundit agrees on today is that a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.  Kasich cannot win, but he can prevent Ted Cruz from winning. This means one way or the other, people are going to vote for or against Donald Trump.

There is no way to predict the outcome.  Donald Trump has already exceeded everyone’s expectations.  But, then, so has Ted Cruz.  Trump has won most elections, but he has never gotten more than 50% of the vote and in most states he is closer to 30% than he is 40%.  If Trump can increase, even a little, he wins.  If that does not change, Cruz wins. In the next couple of weeks people will have to make a choice.

This won’t take long.  It all starts next week in Arizona. This is a closed primary.  It is winner take all.  There are 58 delegates.  If Trump wins, it is hard to imagine Cruz recovering.  If Cruz wins the race is on.

TDM

Donald Trump is celebrating as well he should.  But in reality this election, once again, showed why he is unlikely to be the Republican nominee.  Here is what happened compared to the pre-election polls:

Donald Trump basically performed almost exactly as expected.  The Trump ceiling is all too apparent.   Rubio surged slightly in Florida, which was expected, but not enough.  Kasich surged in Ohio, as expected but he didn’t surge anywhere else.  In every other state Cruz, including Illinois, Cruz beat Kasich by a huge margin.  Cruz surged in North Carolina and Missouri.  But now Rubio has dropped out and his votes will go somewhere.  Since Rubio despises Trump and since Kasich has zero chance, odds are they will go to Cruz.

Here is how last night might have looked if Rubio was not in the race:

Trump and Cruz would have tied in Florida, Cruz would have won Illinois and Missouri and North Carolina would have been very close.  Kasich still would have won Ohio. Does this put a little perspective on what really happened last night?

Now let’s look at the delegate count.

Trump: 621, Cruz:  396, Rubio: 168, Kasich: 138.  The total number of delegates chosen so far is 1,323 or slightly more than half of total 2,473 total delegates available.

Trump needs another 619 or 49.8% of those remaining. Cruz needs 841, or 69% of those remaining.  Kasich has zero chance of winning enough delegates.  Smart voters will realize that a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump. The problem is that people dumb enough to support John Kasich now are likely to be dumb enough to continue to support him.  .

All this is very misleading because of the sleeping bear, California. California has 173 delegates.  Most of them will go to the winner.  If Ted Cruz wins California, this is far from over.  If Donald Trump wins California, he wins the nomination.  Brace yourself for an unprecedented barrage of political ads.

Trump will try to morph into the statesman and get Republicans to unite behind him. He will start to embrace the Republican establishment and move to the center.  Left to his own devices, he will destroy himself.

Of course the Republican establishment is far too stupid to allow that to happen.  They will viciously attack Trump and save him from himself.  The Republican establishment is arrogantly saying they, not the voters, get to choose the nominee.  John Kasich will continue to dream the impossible dream that he can deny both Trump and Cruz the nomination and win the prize in a brokered convention.  That would result in the worst general election nightmare in the history of the Republican Party.

Both are ignoring the obvious.  Unless something changes, in most states, Kasich does not siphon enough votes away from Cruz to matter.  Last night he only came close to 20% of the vote in Illinois, where he should have been very strong.  Even in Illinois, without Rubio, it probably would have been a dead heat between Trump and Cruz with Cruz slightly ahead.  There are no more states like Florida and Ohio.

John Kasich looks awful, sounds awful and is openly embracing the failed Republican establishment policies that have infuriated the vast majority of Republicans.  The arrogance of a man consistently getting less than 10% of the vote in most states believing he is the people’s choice is mind boggling.  What is even more disgusting are the Republican establishment clowns, like Paul Ryan, openly dreaming of being the draft candidate at a broken down convention.

I do not know who will be the Republican nomination, but I can easily predict this.  If Donald Trump wins this will be a very scary general election.  He could win, but he could also lose in a landslide.  If it is someone other than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Republican Party will have finally succeeded in destroying itself.  It will be impossible for me, and a lot of other people, to continue to support the Republican Party.  When Republicans are indistinguishable from Democrats, what is the point?  I think a third party will become the only alternative.

Sadly, this will all take place during an election year when if the Republicans had united behind anyone of the 17 original candidates and avoided the silly season they would have run the table.

TDM

No one is quite sure why Chicago is called the Windy City.  Some blame it on the windy politicians primarily for bragging about Chicago.  One would note that there is a lot less bragging now.  Others blame it on the wind caused by the high buildings.  Even on calm days there are some places where downtown Chicago is still pretty windy.  Anyone familiar with baseball understands the significance when the wind is blowing out at Wrigley.

Chicago is also famous for demonstrations and riots.  This is now exactly new.  Fort Dearborn was constructed on what is now the corner of Michigan and Wacker.  The fort was built to tell the Indians who was now in charge.  In 1812 Fort Dearborn was abandoned and the Indians responded by killing many of the evacuees in the Ft. Dearborn Massacre.  There have been other events, like the Haymarket protest.  Most of us are familiar with the protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic convention.  It should be no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump ran into significant protests in Chicago.  It is what they do.  Chicago is famous for protests.  The Chicago police are famous for handling protests.

The primary blame belongs to the people who organized the protests.  Freedom of speech is not just confined to liberals.  These protests were orchestrated by the far left.  That is why you never see such crap at a Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton campaign.  They get protestors, but it is typically one or two people.  In Chicago this was a well-organized effort that successfully shut down a major event.

The sad truth is that Donald Trump poured fuel on the fire.  His primary strategy has been to ignore political correctness and insult almost everyone.  While it is refreshing with regard to some of the political correctness insanity, Donald Trump crossed the line on numerous occasions.  He did encourage people in his crowd to get physical with protestors.  Contrast that with George W. Bush who always responded to protestors by saying he was glad to live in a country that honored free speech.

These protests may even help Trump, for a while.  But eventually people will grow weary of the nonsense.  It is really unfortunately that Trump cancelled that rally in Chicago because now the protestors think they have won.  We can expect more and more of this in the future.  If Trump wins the nomination, it will be a long, hot and very ugly summer.

In the short run, this is likely to help Trump.  That is the problem with Trump.  Everything seems to help him in the short run.  In the long run, the country is likely to have a world class case of buyer’s remorse.  The only question is when?  If we are lucky it will be before the Republican nomination is sewn up.  If we are unlikely it will be during the general election.  We better all hope this doesn’t happen after we elect Donald Trump to be President of the United States.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day.  There are no accurate polls, since most of them are based on surveys taken before the debate and he Chicago protests.  Trump should win everywhere, but that is what people predicted before Super Tuesday.  So far all the predictions have been predictably unpredictable.

TDM

There are two things certain after any debate.  One is that the professional pundits will get it wrong.  The other is that the real impact of a debate never shows up immediately.  Sad to say, the Fox News panel was actually worse than CNN.  That is incredible when one considers the pathetic liberals that dominate CNN.

For weeks we have watched the Republican establishment attack Donald Trump, only to make him more popular.  Yet the recommendation was always to attack Trump.  The more people attacked Trump the bigger he looked.  Rubio, in an act of desperation, listened to this advice and attacked Donald Trump with disastrous results.  Yet, again tonight there was Charles Krauthammer saying that Rubio and Kasich missed an opportunity to attack Trump.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Donald Trump did appear more Presidential tonight but I am not sure that helped him.  A large part of the appeal for Donald Trump is that he was the politically incorrect outsider who fought off his attackers.  He was always the most out of control guy in the room and voters furious with the establishment absolutely loved it.  Well tonight the fighter never showed.  Instead we saw a kinder, gentler Donald Trump.  The result was that Trump stumbled badly on important issues.  When Trump gets into an adult policy debate with Ted Cruz he loses badly.

So how bad was this.  Perhaps we can take a clue from the Drudge Report.  A lot of people have noticed that the Drudge Report has been very favorable to Donald Trump.  I always checked the instant poll on Drudge after every debate and in every case Trump was the big winner.  At times was almost shocking because to me Trump was acting like a spoiled eighth grader.  But his supporters loved it and he typically won the instant poll by huge margins.  Ted Cruz usually came in a distant second, at around 20%.  Rubio always came in just below Cruz and no one else mattered.  Tonight the results were very different.  Donald Trump still won, but by a much smaller margin.  Approximately 49.5% percent of people thought Trump won the debate, but this time 43.5% thought Cruz won.  Rubio and Kasich barely registered with 3.75% saying Rubio won and 3.14% saying Rubio won.

This is not a scientific poll; it just measures people who read the Drudge Report and then vote.  But the enormous change in results is still significant.  There is no doubt that Donald Trump did a lot worse, Cruz did a lot better and Rubio and Kasich were considered irrelevant.   I was surprised because I thought Rubio had a really good night, but I suspect the results reflect the obvious fact that Rubio has no chance at winning the nomination.

How will the new Trump play?  No one knows for sure.  All we know is that things have changed.

TDM