April 06--I would like to bring up the largely overlooked presidential campaign of my longtime imaginary unicorn, Chauncey. He's compassionate and, like most unicorns, embraces a sensible fiscal policy.
I believe he has the single-horned toughness to keep our country safe and the passion to Make America Magical Again.
While he has not been on the ballot in any state and has no pledged delegates, I demand that he be considered at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions this summer, regardless of rules requiring that candidates actually exist.
An electoral snub will enrage all members of Team Chauncey and likely lead to imaginary unicorn riots, which are bad because they often result in widespread, imaginary goring.
While this may sound out of touch with reality, it's not as far afield as you might think from the griping we're hearing in the presidential primary campaign.
Many voters, both Democratic and Republican, seem to believe their candidate can and should win simply because they want that candidate to win. The fact that there are rules and a process that must be followed is irrelevant, and anything short of victory will lead to cries of theft and accusations of un-American skulduggery.
The candidates themselves and their advocates are bolstering this misguided belief by prematurely calling foul on the results of an election that hasn't even been decided yet.
On Monday, the day before Wisconsin voters handed GOP candidate Donald Trump a significant primary loss, one of the businessman's higher-profile allies, political strategist Roger Stone, issued a threat to any Republican delegates attending this summer's GOP convention in Cleveland.
Stone said that if there's a contested convention, he will give out the hotel room information of any delegates who switch from supporting Trump to supporting a different candidate.
"We urge you to visit their hotel and find them," Stone said in a radio interview.
This was a new low for Trump's campaign, which has had so many lows it is now technically a subterranean operation. But it also shows a staggering ignorance of the Republican party's nominating process.
If Trump doesn't secure a majority of delegates -- 1,237 -- before the convention, he will go to Cleveland having to fight for support from a group of about 200 unbound delegates. (All delegates from states that held primaries are bound to the results of those primaries during the first round of balloting at the convention.) It's unlikely he'd get enough of those delegates to push him over the 1,237-delegate hump.
