The Mid-West Presidential Primaries
by
Howard Adelman
We are now in South Dakota in a little town called Chamberlain known for its trout fishing. We will do no fishing, but that seemed to be the main attraction for all the men in Charlys Restaurant & Lounge last evening where N’s chardonnay was terrible and her filet minion even worse. I remind myself that we should follow my personal guideline – never order a steak in cattle country because the best meat gets shipped to the high class restaurants in New York. (This conclusion is, of course, based on extensive empirical research.) However, we very much look forward to visiting the Akta Lakota Museum this morning before we set off further west.
Yesterday morning in Des Moines, Iowa, we had an auspicious start. Instead of writing my blog, I got up early to move the top tarp on the packed trailer we are hauling to deliver a load of personal belongings to our son Daniel who has become a farmer in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. The tarp was luffing and one of the straps on top seemed to have gotten loose. eyes, problematic enough, but because of how I process visual information. I have difficulty recognizing faces, though nowhere as difficult as Oliver Sacks. I had enormous difficulties in medical school in recognizing what I was looking at through a microscope. A neighbour who had helped me finish covering the trailer and fastening the ratchet straps sent me a video with clear and simple instructions on how ratchets worked.
I watched it perhaps five times. It was short, direct and clear, but when I went to translate what I had seen into practice, I seemed to bugger it up every time. I did not tell N what an idiot I had been, but told her that everything was perfectly tied down. For, after two hours – most of the time admittedly not spent on the ratchets – I finally asked a truck driver in the parking lot for help. In less than a minute, he corrected my mistakes and had the straps properly tightened. I relearned what I have learned many times before. I have the visual intelligence of an idiot. I may be terrific with abstract thought and analysis, with absorbing reams of material, but my visual intelligence is sub-moronic. And to think that I was admitted to medical school! Can you imagine all the lives I saved by quitting medicine?
We then had to find and go to an auto shop, for our right brake and blinker light on the trailer were not working. The mechanic had to rewire the connection because the plug was in poor shape and one of the wires had been pinched. Then we stopped at an auto parts dealer to purchase and put on some universal reflector plates for the side of the rear lights on the trailer that had gone missing and that we had been advised to put in to prevent moisture getting into the rear trailer lights. Not to worry. In addition to all the driving, N did the job. Such are the joys of pulling a trailer.
Yesterday was the first day of spring. The temperature rose from 28 degrees Fahrenhei t in the morning – there was frost on the top of the tarp on the trailer – to 65 degrees F. It was a glorious day. However, we are lucky. If we had delayed our departure by two days, we would have run into rain later today and snow tomorrow in Sioux Falls and Sioux City. As it is, the temperature will drop today when we get to Billings, Montana to 42 F and we may get 1” of snow the next day on route to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, but no high winds or squalls, so we are almost in the clear weather-wise all the way to Oregon.
In the past two days we have travelled from Michigan through the north-west corner of Indiana through Illinois and stayed overnight in Des Moines, Iowa, actually a suburb called Urbandale. Yesterday we traversed the rest of Iowa, the north-east corner of Nebraska and ended up in South Dakota. So in two days we have traveled through six of the fifty American states, not a bad sample size, except het the states come from only a few geographical regions. I have already written about Michigan, but I will first reply to two of the responses for clarification. But first, one correction!
I think the number of electors in the electoral college for each state equals the number of that states number in congress: representatives plus senators. For Michigan, I think it is 16.
Dead on! My apologies.
Response 1:
- I would not norm around Michigan. Ohio’s a better index for the Dems. From here on in, Hillary should lock up most of the states and especially the big ones. The question lingers: why she captures the votes but not the hearts. It’s interesting to hear Jacob on this, because he captures an important, lingering sentiment. It’s about trust. People trust Sanders even though his policy program is unrealistic. One is tempted to say this is the hangover from 2008 and Obama’s hope pitch.
- Is Trump a winner or the GOP a loser? I think it’s the latter; as the GOP coalition splinters, Trump benefits. Their worst nightmare was Ohio. Kasich will now stay in the race and continue to splinter the anti-Trump bloc. His latest declaration that Merrick Garland should come up for a vote is part of his gambit to seem moderate. This will only perpetuate the divide. With Rubio gone, which really was the GOP establishment’s last, very flimsy, hope, the pathway to Trump is clearer than ever. Neither Cruz nor Kasich can possibly win so long as the other stays in. Once CA and NY vote, and it seems likely Trump will win both, there is no real alternative without shattering the party, which the brass may choose to do: smash it all in order to rescue it. See below, nuclear options.
You have to love the irony of the anti-country clubbers voting for the man who builds country clubs. Literally. What has surprised many observers, though is that the breaks don’t go the anti-Trump way — that’s to say, when a rival drops out, his backers (or in the case of Carla F, her backers) they don’t go to the runner up to Trump; they break in his favor more than many expected.
Hillary could lose to Trump is the right conjugation. But it is implausible. The only demographic he has a chance at winning is white men. That’s a small fraction of the US population now. About 35%. So, even if he takes 55% of that vote, he’ll get swamped by the tide going the other way. This is the reason why the GOP brass are in a total panic; for the long term health of the party, it’s a disaster. Have a look at this report:
Of course, I am mindful of the fact that we should presume the triumph of reason. It’s happened before that demagoguery — of the hard and soft kinds — have prevailed.
Response 2:
If Trump runs for president as the GOP candidate and loses, will he then self-describe as a loser? If Trump wins, it is guaranteed more Americans will leave for points south and north. Will that not make him a loser of citizens? If Trump wins as an expression of the ugly, stupid and AND angry American, what can he possibly do to make that contingent happy and calm? Won’t they quickly become disaffected and, once again, he is a loser? Bottom line: if Trump wins, isn’t that just a loss by another name?
My Reply:
- I did not offer Michigan as a norm but as an outlier given the results the following week, but there are lessons to be learned from outliers. You are correct that Ohio is a better indicator for the Democrats, but why did Sanders win Michigan, why were the polls so wrong, and is there any implication for the presidential election even as Hillary clinches the nomination?
- Re Jacob’s leaning towards Sanders, Gabriel too has for a long time been a strong Sander’s supporter’ So are his friends who think about politics, but he admits most are uninterested.
- In my examination, it is better to keep Kasich in the race since, if he dropped out, many of his supporters would not go to Cruz, who is at least as unrealistic as Trump and much further to the right. Some would go to Trump because he is relatively more appealing to Reagan democrats and working class Republican voters than Cruz. The only way to keep Trump from winning is to make sure he cannot win on the first ballot and then fight for the votes released, particularly from the winner take all states. Given the broader base of Trump supporters, Trump would be a riskier opponent for the Democrats than Cruz.
- Is Trump the winner and the GOP the loser? Other than replying that everyone is a loser if Trump wins, including Trump, the real issue the Republicans face is whether they want a very different party or whether they are better off trying to put together the shattered pieces of what is left, especially since, for many Republicans, Trump is believed to be a disaster for America as well as the Republican Party. Though neither Cruz nor Kasich can possibly win as long as the other stays in, it is also true that neither can win if the other drops out. The only way Trump can lose is in a brokered convention, admittedly a nuclear disaster for the Republican Party. Who will blink? Definitely not Trump.
Back to the primaries.
Tonight we will have the results from Arizona which, in the Republican primary, has 75 delegates in a winner-take-all state where Trump is expected to win big. Cruz may win both Idaho (23 delegates) and Utah (33 delegates), but those states are divided proportionately, so Trump is once again expected to be the big winner. As of today, he has 680 delegated to 424 for Cruz and 123 for Kasich, more than the other two put together. Because of carryovers from other delegates in the race and his expected performance in the remaining primaries (South Dakota’s is not until 7 June), he is not likely to get the 1237 required, but is expected to come close and to easily beat both his rivals by considerable numbers. So the issue has now become whether the party will observe the will of the largest plurality of voters or behave in accordance with the rules and let the delegates decide on the second and possibly subsequent ballots. I suspect they will not give in to Trump’s bluff and bullying and will let the delegates choose, even though Trump is still expected to win even then.
Passing through Iowa the day before yesterday and yesterday, helps recall the state which was a turning point in the primary race. Last night on CNN in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump was boasting he was likely to win a majority of delegates in the primaries and, in any case, would come so close that, given the distribution of delegates among the 17 candidates who started in the race, he would deserve to be crowned as the winner. He also insisted that he had the momentum, winning 4 of 5 states last week and losing to Kasich in his home state of Ohio by only a very small margin. True to Trump’s pattern of constructing reality out of his imagination rather than actuality, the vote in Ohio was 956,762 (46.8%) for Kasich to 727,585 (35.6%) for Trump (Cruz received 267,592 votes – 13.1%). When Trump wins by 10%, for him his victory is “huge, really huge,” but when Kasich beat him by more than that margin, Trump contends he came “close, really close” and only lost by a small margin. Trump is almost impossible to fact check simply because the number of facts he gets wrong and distorts is so enormous. But mostly he obfuscates and evades.
Bernie soldiers on now, no longer as the surprise real contender but as the leader of a movement rather than a force seeking to be the Democratic candidate. Of course, Ohio was really the end of the road for Bernie, because he could not carry over his victory in Michigan to Ohio and received only 42.7% (513,549) to Hillary’s 679,266 votes (56.5%), so the real excitement remains the Republican race. And it ends in Ohio in the convention in Cleveland. One interesting observation in Ohio: Kaslich captured the eastern and southern third (geographically) of the state, while Trump won in the western third. In contrast, in the democratic race, Bernie won a smattering of counties in the south-east, the south-west, the north-west, the centre, but only one county in the north-east.
In contrast to the Ohio primary, where it was hoped that Bernie would come close to or even beat Hillary, Illinois was a virtual tie, with Hillary eking out a very slight psychological victory with only 50.46% of the vote, but only the same number of 78 pledged delegates as Bernie. But Hillary is expected to get 100% of the 22 unpledged or super-delegates. In Illinois where Trump won his “huge, really huge” victory, he received only 38.8% of the vote (exactly as the average of the poll projections) to Cruz’s 30.3% and Kasich’s 8.7%. Together, his two opponents beat him and both came in slightly higher than poll expectations. However, Trump must get a majority of the delegates. Even more interesting, Trump boasts that he brings out huge numbers of new voters, but his total vote in Illinois was only 556,916. In contrast, Hillary garnered over a million votes.
In Iowa, Ted Cruz was the big winner with 51,666 votes to Trump’s 45,427 in a clear two-way race in the Iowa caucus, even though in the polling prior to the vote, Cruz had been trailing by roughly 5%. As we listened to talk radio in Iowa yesterday, the radio host on the phone-in show was a clear Trump supporter. One of his callers was a woman who had just been in a verbal political argument at her chiropractor’s office. She had emerged totally frustrated. The media were all against Trump playing one video clip over and over again showing a supporter hitting a protester. (Last night, Trump insisted that they were not protesters but professional agitators.) For the female Trump supporter, Trump was for peace as he said and she ignored the statements (as did Trump) that Wolf Blitzer in his interview cited of his encouraging violence. After all, as Trump said, he opposed any violence at the Cleveland Convention, but if the establishment denied him a victory, the voters were very angry and, he was just saying, you can expect riots. The female call-in supporter said she just would not vote if the Republican Party denied her candidate the right to be on the ballot in accordance with the will of the people.
Nebraska, though it only has a small number of delegates, is interesting because, in a Republican state, in the Democratic primary, Bernie won 57.1% to Hilary’s 42.9%. In South Dakota, all the men up early with me in the motel breakfast room were far more interested in discussing fishing than watching or analyzing the replays of Clinton and Trump addressing the AIPAC meeting yesterday. (I did not see any replays of Cruz or Kaisich – perhaps they speak today, and Bernie rejected AIPAC’s invitation to address them.) The men at breakfast all seemed to be Republican voters, but rather than enthusiastic for one candidate or another, politics as conducted just seemed to turn them off. Perhaps not one of them would actually vote.
With the help of Alex Zisman
Howard Adelman 