How to stop Donald Trump? Keep him from getting the 1237 delegates he needs (see this excellent spreadsheet from Taniel). That’s all you have to do. See, John Kasich wins OH. And Marco Rubio wins FL. Then you go to a brokered convention. Then you win.
Except there’s a problem. Kasich by a little and Rubio by a lot trail Trump in their home state. So, that’s why March 15 is so crucial (FL, OH) though MI and a few others come first.
And Mitt Romney is supposed to speak today. Nothing like an establishment figure telling the establishment-hating base what to do.
Molly Ball:
Can Trump be stopped? Dozens of articles say he can; just as many say it’s too late. The truth is, nobody knows. After Tuesday, he is far ahead of his rivals in the race for the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination; their best hope is not to overcome him but to prevent him from getting a majority, so that they can fight it out on the floor of the Republican convention in July.
Over the past week, the Trump resistance began in earnest, an anguished outpouring of fed-up conservatives who swore they’d had enough and would block him at all costs. A Trump nomination, they said, would be the end of everything they had worked for and believed in. “A generation of work with African Americans—slow, patient work—I can’t tell you how great it is that we’ve pissed that away because of Donald Trump in one day,” sputtered Rick Wilson, a Florida admaker who had been agitating for months that Trump needed to be stopped.
I looked and looked for all the “Clinton fears Rubio” stories today. Nada.
Meanwhile enjoy the Chris Christie Stockholm Syndrome stories.
Alexandra Petri:
I believe that Donald Trump was talking, tonight, and that he, in fact, held an entire press conference. But it was impossible to hear him over Chris Christie’s eyes.
Chris Christie spent the entire speech screaming wordlessly. I have never seen someone scream so loudly without using his mouth before. It would have been remarkable if it had not been so terrifying.
Sometimes, at night, do you still hear them, Clarice? The screaming of the Christies?
There was even a twitter hashtag, #FreeChristie, trending yesterday.
NY Times:
Chris Christie, Standing With Donald Trump, Is Diminished
LA Times:
Editorial
Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States
First of many.
MSNBC:
It was one of the most striking images of Super Tuesday — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie standing awkwardly behind GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, remaining uncomfortably silent as the polarizing candidate gave a long victory speech.
Christie, who has taken heat from many of his Republican colleagues since endorsing Trump last week, becoming the businessman’s most prominent supporter in the so-called GOP establishment. He introduced Trump on Tuesday night at the opulent Mar-a-Lago Club, then proceeded to deliver what The Washington Post described as a “wordless scream.”
Brian Beutler:
Donald Trump’s Nomination Will Have Real, Lasting Upsides
And the only thing that can stop it now is well-intentioned, but deeply misguided, #NeverTrump liberals.
So, you wanted more on the D side? Ok, you got it. Delegate counts from AP here and from RCP here. Current count is 1052 (594) Hillary and 427 (405) Bernie — total number including superdelegates (won). The numbers will change a bit as late delegates are assigned. Taniel has the updates.
Suzy Khimm:
FROM the start, Bernie Sanders has insisted that his bid for president is more than just a bid for president. “This campaign is not about electing Bernie Sanders for president,” the campaign tweeted in August. “It is about creating a grass-roots political movement in this country.”
By that measure, the test of the “political revolution” Mr. Sanders has started won’t just be the strength of his primary challenge, but also whether his movement can survive without him and help get other candidates elected.
Nate Cohn:
Bernie Sanders has vowed to fight for the presidential nomination until the Democratic convention, but the results Tuesday suggest that he is not anywhere close to being on track to amass a majority of pledged delegates.
Hillary Clinton’s landslide margins in the South and her competitiveness elsewhere translate to an overall lead of around 15 to 20 percentage points nationwide. Her support is anchored by a huge advantage among black voters, who represent nearly a quarter of Democratic voters and have offered her more than 80 percent of their votes — a tally rivaling or even exceeding the share won by Barack Obama in 2008.
Mr. Sanders, despite pockets of strength, has not fared well enough to overcome such a huge deficit among black voters.
Harry Enten:
We’ve now seen 15 states vote in the Democratic contest, and it’s clear that Clinton’s coalition is wider than Sanders’s. Sanders has won only in relatively small states where black voters make up less than 10 percent of the population. That’s not going to work this year when black voters are likely to make up more than 20 percent of Democratic primary voters nationwide.
On Tuesday, we saw why. As she did in Nevada and South Carolina, Clinton won huge margins of black voters. Her worst performance was in Oklahoma, where 71 percent of black voters in the Democratic primary chose her. InAlabama, she won 93 percent of black voters on her way to winning 78 percent of Democrats overall. Clinton took no less than 64 percent of the overall vote in the Southern states she won.
Vox:
Winning Oklahoma is not going to get Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination.
But Sanders surprised many observers in taking the Southern state by a 10-point margin on Tuesday night, suggesting for the first time that the Vermont senator's coalition could extend beyond the Northeast.
The results are particularly counterintuitive when you consider that Sanders was also defeated in Massachusetts, which is much more reliably liberal. But how did a candidate with the most left-wing policy positions win one of the most conservative states in the country while also losing one of the most liberal?
Monkey Cage Blog:
Donald Trump’s success in the Republican presidential primaries — especially after last night’s Super Tuesday contests — has flummoxed many political observers, including many (though not all) political scientists. This has led to glee and schadenfreude among some commentators:
The notion that “political scientists are dumbfounded” mainly relies on the fact that Trump’s rise appears to contradict a single work of political science, a book called “The Party Decides.” That book argued that during the period from 1980-2004, elites within the broader party network influence presidential nominations by working to coordinate on a candidate. Clearly, as one of the authors of this book, Hans Noel, wrote yesterday, a Trump nomination is not consistent with this argument.
Fortune:
On two occasions, this writer has spent weeks striving to demystify the Vatican’s finances. Now I’m attempting to solve the riddle of Donald Trump’s income and net worth. Pope Francis, who recently exchanged barbs with Trump over immigration, has bravely promised to open the Vatican’s books. Trump sounds less righteous in claiming that he won’t publicly release his tax returns while he’s being audited by the IRS, but does pledge to eventually make the highly anticipated filings public.
Until then, voters can glean a great deal of information from two sets of documents the Trump campaign has already provided: A balance sheet released in June, when Trump declared his candidacy for President, and a 92-page Personal Financial Disclosure (PFD) form submitted to the Federal Election Commission a month later.
Neither document is as telling as a tax return would be. But when closely read together, you can learn a great deal about Trump’s financial affairs. Here’s the most concerning thing I learned: Trump appears to have overstated his income, by a lot, which could be the reason he has so far tried to avoid releasing his returns.