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