Philip Bump:
Why Donald Trump is poised to win the nomination and lose the general election, in one poll
One reason both the top-line poll numbers and the favorability numbers are iffy is that we're still in the heart of a contested primary. People who reallywant Bernie Sanders to win really don't like Hillary Clinton right now (and if you don't believe me, just ask them) -- just as people who really wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2008 really didn't like Barack Obama at about this point of that year. But in November, the vast majority of Democrats voted for Obama.
The question is if Republicans will do that this time, with Trump. And Quinnipiac's poll suggests: Maybe not. Almost three times as many Republicans say they'd never vote for Trump than Democrats say the same about Clinton.
Foreign Policy:
The Brussels Bombings Highlight Just How Wrong Trump Is About NATO
The United States is lucky to have strong friends and partners in Europe. And now’s not the time to talk about weakening this alliance of democracies.
NY Post:
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton lashed out at Ted Cruz on Wednesday, saying the GOP presidential candidate is clueless when it comes to anti-terror policing.
“He doesn’t know the hell what he is talking about, to be frank with you,” Bratton told “CBS This Morning.”
This is an extraordinary speech, worth watching even a little of it for tone and contrast with the Republicans.
Know what folks? Ted Cruz is Joe McCarthy (really) and Donald Trump is George C. Wallace (really). While Hillary is giving a somber speech about how to deal with terrorism, these jerks are going after each other’s wives. Perhaps that’s because neither Trump or Cruz is qualified to be President and Hillary is.
This will be some election in November.
Thomas Edsall:
It’s hard to see how Trump, if he wins the nomination, could emerge from the Republican wreckage he leaves in his wake to actually win the general election — an assessment supported by the findings of a March 9 ABC/Washington Post poll. Not only did Hillary Clinton beat Trump 50-41 in the survey’s match up among registered voters, but 67 percent of voters had a negative view of Trump, 15 points more than Clinton…
Nowhere on the right is the conflict as hostile as it is among conservative Christians.
Steve Berman, a self-described “100% conservative” writing for the Resurgent, argues that in effect Trump is the current anti-Christ. “If America is not on God’s side, then God will not bless America,” Berman wrote.
Josh Kraushaar:
The main goal of the Republican National Committee is to ensure that Republicans get elected to office. So it’s remarkable how immobilized that party leadership has become at the prospect of a hostile takeover by Donald Trump, whose nomination would likely cost Republicans control of the Senate and put the party’s sizable House majority in play.
That’s the political reality of the moment. The GOP’s rank-and-file is spending more time rationalizing how a Trump nomination wouldn’t be such a political disaster than it is working to prevent a Trump tornado from pulverizing the party’s sizable congressional majorities.
(My Senator) Richard Blumenthal and (my friend) Monte Frank:
This great nation has one foundation: the rule of law. Emanating from our Constitution, which establishes the three essential, inextricable branches of government, the American rule of law requires that the arbitrary exercise of power remain subordinate to well-defined legal principles. In the aftermath of President Obama's nomination of D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans have continued to maintain that they will refuse to consider the nomination. In addition to demonstrating obstructionism unprecedented in American history — never, in the 100 years since the Judiciary Committee began holding hearings, has a Senate majority simply denied a nominee hearings and a vote — these tactics threaten to undermine the rule of law itself.
McKay Coppins:
Speaking before one of his smallest crowds this campaign season, Donald Trump declared Friday night at a rally in Salt Lake City that he loves the Mormons.
The feeling does not appear to be mutual.
Trump suffered one of his most decisive defeats of the year Tuesday in the Mormon mecca of Utah, where Republican caucusgoers voted overwhelmingly to support Ted Cruz.
The drubbing shouldn’t come as a surprise. So far in 2016, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have proven to be one of the most stubbornly anti-Trump constituencies in the Republican Party.
National polling data focused on Mormon voters is hard to come by, but the election results speak for themselves. Even as Trump has steamrollered his way through the GOP primaries, he has repeatedly been trounced in places with large LDS populations.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal:
Donald Trump has inspired a gaping regional divide among Republican voters in Wisconsin, reflecting many of the fault lines plaguing the GOP today.
In an upside-down version of a traditional campaign, the Republican front-runner is immensely unpopular in the reddest part of the state — the outer suburbs and exurbs that ring Milwaukee.
These are the party’s bedrock counties: Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee. They typically dictate the outcome of GOP primaries like the one Wisconsin will hold for president April 5. And in fall elections, they’re arguably the best-performing Republican counties in America.
But GOP voters in these counties dislike Trump by a very large margin. In extensive polling by the Marquette University Law School, 25% view him positively and 64% view him negatively, for a “net favorability” — in his own party — of “minus 39.”
Monkey Cage Blog points out the that kids are alright:
In 2014, the General Social Survey, one of the most highly respected opinion surveys in the social sciences, repeated several questions from Sidney Verba et al.’s classic studies of American political participation in 1967 and 1987. As you can see in the figure below, over time, people have become much less likely to vote in local elections. But they’ve continued to be involved – sometimes more so — as civic volunteers, by contacting politicians, and in other ways.
Other major academic surveys confirm this. The American National Election Study found that around 30 percent of the public tried to influence others how to vote in elections from 1952 until 1996; since 2000 this has averaged over 40 percent. The World Values Survey shows that protest activity has increased since 1981. And more Americans are active in new forms of political action such as political consumerism (buying or not buying a product for political reasons), and online activity.
Still, they need to learn to vote. And get their flu vax. And eat their vegetables. And get off my lawn.
This from Fiscal Times is strictly for your amusement:
Republicans should do everything possible to keep Bernie Sanders in the race. He is doing what no one else can do--by pushing Hillary Clinton further to the left, Sanders could render her unelectable.
CJR:
For months, mainstream news outlets have been reporting that superdelegates are overwhelmingly favoring Clinton and that they might hand her the nomination even if Sanders were to lead in pledged delegates. Now that Clinton is piling up primary wins, the opposite possibility is being floated. But many of these stories—and the graphic “delegate trackers” offered by news outlets—may be too credulous of the idea that superdelegates would actually do such a thing…
But if, as many political observers believe, the superdelegates will shy away from overruling their party’s electorate and will mostly support the pledged delegate leader, then it is the pledged delegate count that matters. That’s why some outlets, such as the Times andFiveThirtyEight, only count pledged delegates in their online delegate counts and relegate superdelegates to a general aside.
That what we try to do here. Pledged delegates only, the super delegates can be listed separately.