I don’t know who “won” the debate, or even how to decide who won, but I am worried, as I was after the Michigan primary, that Hillary Clinton, who is the odds-on Democratic nominee, will have difficulty in the fall even against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. I don’t understand why she can’t put the Goldman, Sachs question behind her. I initially assumed that she either didn’t have transcripts or that what she said was the usual milquetoast stuff politicians offer up. But her continued refusal to provide transcripts (which I now assume must exist) suggests that there must be something damning in them.
Lauren Fox explains how the blown budget deadline shows that Paul Ryan’s Speakership faces the same structural, numbers breakdowns as Boehner did and indeed as has played out in the GOP presidential primaries.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R) says he’s going to be too busy with his campaign to make it to the GOP convention in Cleveland.
Earlier this week, numerous pundits were suggesting that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was all but finished. A number claimed that unless Trump came into the convention with 1237+ delegates and secured the nomination on the first ballot, he was toast.
Trump surrogate Palin says voters will “rise up” if Trump or Cruz isn’t the nominee.
Trump Attack Haikus make appearance in amazing anti-Christie billboard campaign in New Jersey.
Following up on my review of Pathfinders, I wanted to return to another book that I discussed a few years ago. This is actually a revised version of an earlier review. But I’m returning to it because this is another book that centers on this basic historical question of why did Europe dominate the last two or three centuries of global history. It is a fascinating question and one that is only now quite approachable as dominance of Europe and now North America’s extension of Europe has begun to recede.
I mentioned before that Republican primary voters nationwide seem clearly against awarding the party’s presidential nomination to someone who didn’t get the most votes or delegates in the primaries and caucuses, regardless of who they support themselves. A new poll shows that 62% of Republicans say it would be “unacceptable” for the candidate who won the most votes not to get the nomination, if no candidate was able to clinch outright by getting to 1237 delegates.
There are two additional points worth noting about this new poll.
Epic US Virgin Islands party meeting this weekend features guns, cops, plenty of Crazy and a delegate to the national convention thrown to the ground in a scuffle. Lauren has the story.
In case you missed it, I wanted to flag this post over the weekend. I hate to say I told you so, but … well, we have more poll data which shows that substantial majorities of Republicans don’t think it’s okay to deny the nomination to the person who got the most votes. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But as I said earlier, you can have whatever rules you want. But the whole process depends on the perceived legitimacy of the process. And it seems pretty clear that a clear majority of Republican primary voters do not think this would be okay.