After gaming the political “game” any way he could for the last year, Donald Trump is complaining that the game is being rigged against him. Is he nuts? The GOP delegate rules haven’t changed recently, and Trump was just too lazy or stupid to pay any attention to them.
But an article by Nate Silver points out that Trump’s complaints are working. Recent polling shows that even though only 40% of Republicans want Trump to be the nominee, 62% agree with him that the candidate who gets the most pledged delegates should be the Republican nominee, even if that candidate doesn’t have a majority.
That’s right, a billionaire who has had his life handed to him on a silver platter has succeeded in painting himself as a victim and an underdog. The man who has lied and cheated throughout his whole life to get whatever he wanted is now calling the nomination rules “crooked”.
Should Trump be able to win with a plurality and not a majority? The GOP has required its nominees to receive a majority of delegate votes for 160 years, and during that time at least seven candidates have come into the Republican convention with a plurality of the delegates and yet failed to become the nominee.
Besides, given how polarizing Trump is, it is easy to surmise that a majority of voters do not want Trump to be the nominee. That’s why the rules are set up the way they are. If nobody gets a majority on the first vote, then candidates are supposed to drop out until someone gets a majority. And yet Trump claims that this would be tantamount to stealing the nomination from him.
2 Comments
He’s neither nuts nor stupid. He’s playing the system to create his best chance to win.
Agree with HMM. He knows his audience (who are, at turns, both nuts AND stupid) and is playing them like a fiddle. He knows his audience distrusts authority, doesn’t care much for facts, and takes braggadocio for strength. Now he’s transitioning, supposedly, into a milder candidate for the general election and his current supporters will take it as a wink/nod that he’s the same ole lovable demagogue who is just playing the game.
At this point, we may just be left hoping that his high unfavorable ratings stay just north of Clinton’s. We’ll quite literally have an election of who is hated by fewer people. We just have to hope that Cruz or Trump gets the nod for the general election because, at least according to the Wall Street Journal they “may be the only two Republicans who could lose to Hillary Clinton.” Hell, one of the Kochs even spoke relatively fondly of her, compared to her likely competition in November.