The Lesser of Three Evils

The haphaz­ard schedul­ing of the cal­en­dar will likely cre­ate a false sense of mo­mentum for both of the GOP front-run­ners. Trump will enter May with a hot streak if he sweeps the five North­east­ern states (Con­necti­c­ut, Delaware, Mary­land, Pennsylvania, Rhode Is­land) hold­ing primar­ies Tues­day. That doesn’t mean he’ll be closer to clinch­ing.  In May, as the cal­en­dar heads west, Ted Cruz is well-po­si­tioned to win four of the five next con­tests. The only way the race will tip in one can­did­ate’s fa­vor is if there’s a true up­set—for ex­ample, Trump los­ing Mary­land or Cruz los­ing In­di­ana.

Cruz has failed to ex­pand his ap­peal bey­ond his core base of con­ser­vat­ive and evan­gel­ic­al sup­port­ers. His dis­tant third-place fin­ish in New York and ex­pec­ted weak show­ings throughout the North­east un­der­score his cam­paign’s lim­it­a­tions. He’s not pick­ing up Hill en­dorse­ments. But Trump also needs to show that he can win the ma­jor­ity of GOP voters in a state out­side his com­fort zone. His 60 per­cent show­ing in New York was the first time he’s won a ma­jor­ity in any state. That’s an im­port­ant ac­com­plish­ment, but it’s tempered by: a) his home-state ad­vant­age, b) few of New York’s re­gistered voters are Re­pub­lic­ans; c) the anti-Trump op­pos­i­tion held its fire be­cause of the pro­hib­it­ive cost of New York City ad­vert­ising.

It’s worth pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the res­ults from the Pennsylvania primary. Since 54 of the state’s 71 del­eg­ates are un­pledged, it’s not likely to make a not­able dif­fer­ence in the del­eg­ate count. But Trump could at least show he’s broadened his ap­peal by per­form­ing re­spect­ably in the mod­er­ate, af­flu­ent Phil­adelphia sub­urbs. Pennsylvania may also un­der­score John Kasich’s lim­it­a­tions. On pa­per, he holds the po­ten­tial to do well in the west­ern part of the state (he was raised in a Pitt­s­burgh sub­urb) and in east­ern re­gions (his cent­rist mes­sage is pitch-per­fect for sub­urb­an Phil­adelphia voters). But his cam­paign’s lack of money and scat­ter­shot schedul­ing means his best-case scen­ario is a dis­tant second.  

Our back-of-the-en­vel­ope es­tim­ate has Trump with 1,160 del­eg­ates go­ing in­to Clev­e­land, 77 short of the ma­gic num­ber. The prob­lem for the anti-Trump forces is that his two GOP com­pet­it­ors are limp­ing to the fin­ish line as well. If the stale­mate holds, the chances of an out­side can­did­ate emer­ging at the con­ven­tion grow ever great­er.  

TRAIL MIX

1. In a story de­tail­ing the Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee’s fun­drais­ing chal­lenges in a Trump-dom­in­ated uni­verse, New York Times re­port­er Jonath­an Mar­tin re­vealed that the RNC is plan­ning to cre­ate a fund that is spe­cific­ally in­ten­ded for Sen­ate races—so donors look­ing to sup­port down-bal­lot Re­pub­lic­ans can do so without seem­ing to sup­port Trump. One prob­lem: The Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Sen­at­ori­al Com­mit­tee is the typ­ic­al vehicle for such fun­drais­ing. That cre­ates the po­ten­tial for ser­i­ous in­tra­party con­flict.

Asked about the RNC’s new­found en­gage­ment in Sen­ate races, a seni­or NR­SC of­fi­cial told Na­tion­al Journ­al: “This is the first I’ve heard of any­thing like this. Nobody has talked with me about this.” Ex­pect more in­tra­party con­flict like this to come, es­pe­cially if Trump emerges as the party’s stand­ard bear­er.

2. Chat­ter about Eliza­beth War­ren be­com­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton’s run­ning mate hit fever pitch last week. But if Clin­ton still needs to pla­cate her party’s pro­gress­ive, pro-Sanders wing even after clinch­ing the nom­in­a­tion, it would be a sign of weak­ness as she moves in­to the gen­er­al elec­tion. She’s got a golden op­por­tun­ity to use her se­lec­tion to win over the cen­ter, giv­en that Re­pub­lic­ans are most likely to nom­in­ate either Cruz or Trump. Pick­ing War­ren would be the equi­val­ent of Cruz se­lect­ing Trump to uni­fy the GOP’s anti­es­tab­lish­ment wing.

The Clin­ton run­ning mate re­cruit to watch? Vir­gin­ia Sen. Tim Kaine, a swing-state Cath­ol­ic who is well-re­spec­ted on both sides of the aisle. It doesn’t hurt that he was a fi­nal­ist to be Obama’s run­ning mate in 2008 as well. Clin­ton could use a His­pan­ic or Afric­an-Amer­ic­an run­ning mate, but the pick­ings are sur­pris­ingly slim in her party. HUD Sec­ret­ary Ju­li­an Castro, Sen. Cory Book­er of New Jer­sey, and Labor Sec­ret­ary Tom Perez are the most-men­tioned names, but none have the re­sume for the second-highest of­fice in the coun­try. 

3. The ma­jor takeaway from this month’s NBC/Wall Street Journ­al pollwas that Trump, Clin­ton, and Cruz would be the three most dis­liked can­did­ates to emerge as their party’s nom­in­ee in the his­tory of polling. But there were some oth­er nug­gets from the poll that il­lus­trated the po­lar­iz­a­tion in Amer­ic­an polit­ics.

First, the num­ber of Amer­ic­ans be­liev­ing the coun­try is headed in the wrong dir­ec­tion hit 70 per­cent—the highest level since Au­gust 2014. The coun­try is deeply di­vided on Pres­id­ent Obama’s per­form­ance: 49 per­cent ap­prove, 48 per­cent dis­ap­prove.  Most of those who dis­ap­prove are strongly against him. But only 13 per­cent of re­spond­ents feel “very pos­it­ively” to­wards Clin­ton, while Obama’s very-pos­it­ive score is more than twice that (28 per­cent).

Second, des­pite the Re­pub­lic­an party’s battered brand, both parties are close to par­ity on a gen­er­ic pres­id­en­tial bal­lot. Forty-six per­cent of re­gistered voters said they’d prefer to see a Demo­crat as the next pres­id­ent, while 45 per­cent said they’d vote for a Re­pub­lic­an. But over one-third of Re­pub­lic­an voters said they couldn’t sup­port either Trump (38 per­cent) or Cruz (35 per­cent). Only 21 per­cent of Demo­crats said they couldn’t sup­port Clin­ton.

Fi­nally, the poll con­firmed that the iden­tity of the GOP nom­in­ee will go a long way in de­term­in­ing the com­pet­it­ive­ness of the gen­er­al elec­tion. Against Trump, Clin­ton leads by 11 per­cent­age points, 50-39. Against Cruz, she leads by only two points, 46-44. And against Kasich, Clin­ton trails by a double-di­git mar­gin, 51-39.  (In a hy­po­thet­ic­al match­up, Paul Ry­an would lead Clin­ton by 1 point—a sign that Cruz is not sig­ni­fic­antly less elect­able than the es­tab­lish­ment’s favored son.) Clin­ton looks like the weak­est Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee since Mi­chael Duka­kis in 1988. The main ques­tion for Re­pub­lic­ans is wheth­er they’ll put a cup­cake in the ring with her.