On paper, neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz should be anywhere near their parties’ presidential nominations.
Donald Trump is a rich barroom loudmouth who has given as much money to Democrats as he has Republicans, and Bernie Sanders is a self-professed socialist who wasn’t even a registered Democrat until less than two years ago.
So why do they both continue to get support?
Part of it is that the country – both sides of the aisle – are enormously unhappy with “the establishment”. Read the polling on congressional approval and you’ll wonder if axe murderers would do any worse.
And then we have how “the establishment” in each party is addressing each candidate’s campaign.
On the Republican side, for example, Ted Cruz (who is no fan favorite of establishments Republicans in his own right) just managed to win every delegate from Colorado – without benefit of a primary.
The decision to not hold a primary pre-dated Trump’s emergence as the leading candidate. But the inside-politics games that were played to give every vote to Cruz, as if he would have won 100% of the Colorado vote if there were one? That is a disgrace.
As the Denver Post angrily editorialized:
“Imagine that: party officials fearing that an interesting race might propel thousands of additional citizens to participate. But of course that might dilute the influence of elites and insiders.
There is more to the editorial, which you might agree or disagree with, but, at least to me, that part is spot on.
Then we have the Democrat side, where Bernie Sanders just won the Wyoming caucuses in a landslide – 56% to 44%.
But not only did that get him only 7 of Wyoming’s 14 delegates – as if he tied Hillary Clinton instead of beating her handily – but the four superdelegates from Wyoming are – suhr-prahze, suhr-prahze – all supporters of Hillary Clinton (nationwide, 95% of the superdelegates picked by the party are Hillary partisans…now there’s a fair fight), so Sanders winds up losing by 11-7 in a state he won by a landslide.
Is there any wonder that Trump supporters and Sanders supporters – who would have started with bad feelings about “the establishment” to be Trump and Sanders supporter in the first place, are digging their heels in?
I don’t know if anyone is still considering a third party run. But in my life (which started when Truman was President) I have never seen a better time to consider it.
I said I wasn’t going to vote for Trump. However after what the msm and the left have been doing and now the GOP, I have decided to vote for him. I wonder how many others will be doing the same.
Donnie Trump is not a fool.
1 ) He narrowed the field down to just two candidates (plus the ‘Establishment of RINO’s and Bosses)
2 ) In the last six months until November, imho, he will roll out detailed, practical-sounding positions on just about all the major issues (including those not talked about — $200 trillion in unfunded obligations, Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, Public Pensions, etc).
3 ) For sure, there is a small army of Policy Wonks hard at work, producing position papers on each issue.
4) Because Donnie has been light on the specifics ’til now, truckload after truckload of detailed, good sounding, plans will attract even more (free) attention and discussion.