How Trump wins the nomination
by digby
You might be wondering how Donald Trump gets the GOP nomination without having a majority of the GOP behind him. This article by Sam Wang from a couple of months ago explained that it’s all about the delegate math. The Republicans have put in place a byzantine system that was supposedly designed to keep long drawn out 2012 battles from happening and it’s resulting in something very, very different.
I’ll leave it to you to read the piece with all the charts and graphs explaining the mechanics. But the upshot is that if he can keep his 35-40% he can win it. Wang concludes his piece with this:
If no candidate gets to an outright majority, the convention becomes genuinely suspenseful. Party insiders should not necessarily be consoled by this idea. Delegates are usually selected for loyalty to their candidate. If current trends were to persist, the convention floor in Cleveland would be filled with close to 1,000 Trump delegates. These delegates won’t be from the usual pool of party loyalists. They seem like an unpromising starting point for elites to work their magic.
Is it wrong for me to hope so strongly for this shitshow?
Yes, actually it is. You don’t play around with the presidency and these people are all very dangerous, especially Trump and Cruz who are the most likely to come out the winners in my opinion. The stakes are just too high to be cavalier about handing power to fanatics.
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