Today in Campaign 2016
In the wake of electoral tsunamis in the Empire State last night, the Republican and Democratic frontrunners set their sights on the upcoming “Acela primaries” in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware - while the opponents they left in their wake scrambled as their chances of winning their respective party’s nominations diminished.
Here are some of the biggest stories to come out of the campaign today:
- Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign raised more than $29.3 million in the month of March, according to Federal Election Commission filings made this evening. The haul was donated from roughly 400,000 people who made more than 670,000 contributions to the former secretary of state’s campaign. The average donation was roughly $45.
- Meanwhile, as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders nursed his wounds from last night’s thumping in New York, he was able to enjoy his own lucrative March: His campaign raised nearly $46 million in March, a new record for the senator’s campaign. “Bernie’s grassroots campaign has now out-raised Secretary Hillary Clinton for three months straight,” said campaign manager Jeff Weaver in a statement. Sanders’ campaign received 1.7 million individual contributions, with an average campaign contribution of $26.20.
- At a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Texas senator Ted Cruz argued that Trump’s New York win was insignificant compared to Cruz’s recent scores. “Donald Trump won his home state. Truly a remarkable feat. Upon winning his home state, Donald, with a characteristic display of humility, declared this race is over, Manhattan has voted, and if the rest of the voters would quietly go home now and allow him to give the general election to Hillary, all would be better.”
- Meanwhile, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver attempted to lay out his own candidate’s increasingly improbable path to the presidential nomination in an appearance on MSNBC, saying that a lot of delegates remain to be captured and arguing that superdelegates might switch to Sanders.
- An internal Trump campaign memo projected that Trump will capture the nomination with 1,400 delegates voting in his favor in the first round of voting at the national convention in Cleveland in July. “Our projections call for us to accumulate over 1400 delegates and thus a first ballot nomination win in Cleveland,” the memo reads, according to the Washington Post, which first obtained it.
That’s it for today in major campaign news - stay tuned tomorrow, when Tom McCarthy will be filing from a Clinton campaign event in Connecticut and I will be dispatching from Ohio governor John Kasich’s event in Philadelphia.
Billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly tonight that if he is elected, he will look into the possibility of indicting former secretary of state Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server during her time at the State Department.
“Certainly that is something you would look at,” Trump said on The O’Reilly Factor this evening, but “I would only do something 100% fair. You’d certainly have to look at it very fairly.”
Trump also described Bernie Sanders’ unwillingness to talk about Clinton’s email server was a mistake from a political perspective. “He made a big mistake by not doing the emails,” Trump said. “He wished he could do that over again. I don’t think that the emails are that nasty.”
Trump told O’Reilly that any chance of a Clinton indictment before the next administration is unlikely for partisan political reasons. “I don’t think she will be indicted - I think the Democratic Party will protect her,” Trump said. “I think what she’s done is very, very serious. I think they’re a big part of her life story right now.”
Donald Trump’s incorporation in Delaware is getting a little bit of attention - from the candidate himself.
Trump suggests he is polling well in neighboring Delaware "because I have so many corporations registered in Delaware...."
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) April 21, 2016
Bernie Sanders' campaign raises nearly $46 million in March
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has filed a report with the Federal Election Commission this evening showing that it raised nearly $46 million in the month of March, a new record for the senator’s campaign.
“Bernie’s grassroots campaign has now out-raised Secretary Hillary Clinton for three months straight,” said campaign manager Jeff Weaver in a statement. “We’re honored to have the strong support of 2.2 million passionate donors who have given more than 7 million times. It’s because of them that our campaign can take on the establishment and win eight of the last ten primaries and caucuses.”
Sanders’ campaign received 1.7 million individual contributions in the month of March from more than 900,000 donors. His average campaign contribution in March was $26.20, a shade under the $27 he frequently call-and-responses during speeches on the campaign trail. Unlike former secretary of state, Sanders’ donors rarely max out - only 127 donors gave the $2,700 maximum allowed by federal law in March.
After an emotional meeting with the mothers of victims of gun violence and police misconduct, Hillary Clinton held a rally at the Fillmore in Philadelphia.
A large Hillary for Pennsylvania sign hung from the second-level and the chandeliers glimmered blue.
“We had a very, very good day in New York Yesterday,” Clinton said, taking the stage around 7:30, over an hour after the rally was due to begin.
Aides said there were 2,000 people came to hear Clinton speak at the trendy concert venue.
At several points in her speech, small groups of protesters were escorted out of the event. Outside, a group chanted Black Lives Matter and urged voters not to support Clinton.
Even we know better than this...
"We love Tom Brady, right?" asks Trump. Maryland crowd, full of Ravens fans, boos loudly.
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) April 21, 2016
Happy Federal Election Commission Filing Day!
First up: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which raised more than $29.3 million in the month of March, donated from roughly 400,000 people who made more than 670,000 contributions to the former secretary of state’s campaign. The average donation was roughly $45.
“We head into the homestretch of the primary in strong financial shape with the resources we need to continue to run a competitive race through the end of the primary and the road ahead,” campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement accompanying the report. “Thanks to smart investments and the help of more than 1.1 million people who have donated to this campaign, Hillary Clinton has earned more than 2.5 million votes more than her opponent and opened up a nearly insurmountable pledged delegate lead.”
Of the $29 million, roughly $11 million was sourced from contributions of $200 or less. Clinton began April with $28,971,372.10 in cash on hand.
Newt Gingrich: Donald Trump is 'the presumptive nominee'
In an editorial penned for the conservative Washington Times, former House speaker and onetime presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that “the scale of Donald Trump’s victory in New York turned him from frontrunner into presumptive Republican nominee.”
“The champion of the stop Trump movement just won ZERO delegates,” Gingrich wrote of Ted Cruz’s crushing defeat in the Empire State. “Every analysis of the next few weeks indicates Trump’s margin will widen and he will move steadily closer to 1,237 [delegates]. Already, he is only 392 short before any undecided delegates, Rubio delegates, and the like are counted.”
“These are the numbers of a presumptive nominee, not a front runner. If this were any candidate but Donald Trump, the media would be saying his rivals’ efforts were hopeless and the establishment would be pressuring them to exit the race.”
“It is time for the GOP establishment to work with this new reality rather than wage war against it,” Gingrich concluded.
Retired pediatric neurosurgeon and onetime presidential candidate Ben Carson has come out against the replacement of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, telling Fox Business Network that Harriet Tubman, the Treasury Department’s chosen successor to Old Hickory, would be better placed on the little-used $2 note.
“I think Andrew Jackson was a tremendous secretary - I mean a tremendous president,” Carson said. “I mean, Andrew Jackson was the last president who actually balanced the federal budget, where we had no national debt.”
"I love Tubman, [but] we can find another way to honor her. Maybe a $2 bill?"—Ben Carson https://t.co/flYPTacBXC pic.twitter.com/Of6pimHIX0
— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) April 20, 2016
(That policy kicked off what would then become the longest economic depression in US history, but bygones.)
“I love Harriet Tubman. I love what she did, but we can find another way to honor her,” Carson said. “Maybe a $2 bill.”
In a conversation with the Washington Post, Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich explained his failure to catch on with either voters or the party establishment by declaring that Republican party leadership “doesn’t like ideas.”
“Frankly, my Republican Party doesn’t like ideas,” Kasich told the Washington Post’s editorial board this morning. “They want to be negative against things.”
Stump speeches by opponents Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who have highlighted what they see as cabals of wealthy influencers and foreign agents undermining the country’s future, are “over-dramatized,” according to Kasich. “We’ve had worse times in this country, far worse times in this country. We’ll be fine.”
Although Kasich himself wasn’t without dire predictions for the future of the nation, telling the Washington Post that if Trump or Cruz end up as the party’s presidential nominee, “I think we’ll probably get wiped out, probably lose the United States Senate, the courthouse, the statehouse.”
“After that, there will be this soul-searching,” he said.
Following news that three Michigan government officials are facing charges in connection with the Flint water crisis, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton issued a statement.
“Senate Republicans have pushed through today’s energy bill at the expense of the people of Flint, who are still waiting for clean water and critical aid for rebuilding their infrastructure,” Clinton said. “It is unconscionable for this bill to move forward without this desperately-needed aid. It’s important that people be held responsible for the water poisoning in Flint - but it’s not enough. I will not stop fighting for the families of Flint until they receive the help all Americans should expect, and the justice all people deserve.”
Clinton is referring to the Senate’s passage of an energy bill that does not contain $250 million in aid for Flint, the result of a Republican hold on the aid package.
Updated
Ted Cruz echoed Mark Antony on Wednesday: “John Kasich is a decent and honorable man.” Of course, in Cruz’s opinion, Kasich was trying to kill the Republican Party in November by serving as a lackey of Donald Trump, suggesting that the Ohio governor was only staying in the presidential race because “it may be John is auditioning to be Donald’s vice president.”
Cruz, who once again openly admitted that “we are on a path to a contested convention,” shrugged off both disappointing election results in New York Tuesday night and all but conceded the Acela primary states on April 26. Instead he assured reporters “I am not gong to reach 1237 delegates but Donald isn’t going to reach 1,237 delegates either.”
The drama for Cruz is that while he is in good shape in upcoming races in May, John Kasich is far better positioned than him in most of the delegate contest next week.
The mothers and family members of children who were killed by gun violence greeted each other like old friends outside St Paul’s Baptist Church in Philadelphia.
They’d come to see Hillary Clinton hold a roundtable on gun violence with former US Attorney General Eric Holder ahead of the state’s primary next week. The women wore buttons with the faces of their loved ones. Aleida Garcia wore a sash filled with pins of mostly young people from Philadelphia who’d been killed by gun violence. On the largest button was a photo of her son, Alex Rojas-Garcia, who was shot to death by a gunman with a semiautomatic weapon in January 2015.
“This is a public health epidemic. These are people,” said Garcia as she tugged at her sash. “It’s a disease. People are dying every single day.”
Mothers and families of victims of gun violence outside the church where Clinton will hold a convo with Eric Holder pic.twitter.com/zaZvwiqfQj
— Lauren Gambino (@LGamGam) April 20, 2016
She was joined in the queue by Rosalind Pichardo, whose brother Alex Martinez, was killed while trying to protect his nephew during a robbery in January 2012. Though Clinton already has her voted, Pichardo said she is eager to hear what the former secretary of state has to say about strengthening gun laws.
Of priority for Pichardo are laws that would decrease the number of out-of-state guns that flow across the border into states with stricter laws. She’d also like to see the assault weapons ban re-instated.
“TEC-9 does not keep people safe. A machine gun does not keep people safe. This is not a war zone. This is a community.” She added: “I can understand the right to bear arms but I just don’t understand semi-automatic weapons.”
Farther back in the line, Stacie Wilkins stood with a group of women wearing shirts that said “Mothers in Charge” in graffiti paint. Wilkins lost her son Byron Wilkins in August 2010.
“After it happens to do you, get out here because you don’t want it to happen to someone else,” she said. “The pain is so great that either you’re going to die or you’re going to get up and do something about it. And so I made the choice to get up and do something about it because I know my son would want me to live.”
Want to work for a potential president? You’ll need to pony up.
The Trump Organization, holding company and real estate empire of billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, is auctioning off a ten-week internship at the company. The opening bid: $40,000.
“There is no more highly recognized surname or company in the world right now than Trump,” the listing on Charitybuzz says. “You will gain real-world, first-hand exposure to the various disciplines housed within The Trump Organization and have a series of power group lunches with each department head.”
Interns, who must have at least a 3.0 grade-point average and pass a criminal background check, will also have the “exclusive opportunity to sit down for 15 minutes each with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump to pick their brains about how to be successful in the real estate and business world.”
The Associated Press is backing up Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s assertion that Texas senator Ted Cruz has no concrete path to the party’s nomination, describing Trump’s primary opponent as “mathematically eliminated” from winning the nomination before the party’s national convention in Cleveland this summer.
“Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention,” the newswire declared this morning. “Ted Cruz was mathematically eliminated Tuesday after Trump’s big win in the New York primary.”
With the delegate math being what it is, the Associated Press declared, “there aren’t enough delegates left in future contests for either Cruz or Kasich to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination.”
Their only hope? A contested convention - and all of the insanity that entails.
Silver linings!
Bernie Sanders has so far won every county named Clinton County pic.twitter.com/CdNVdd9fwU
— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) April 20, 2016
Michelle Dean has a fascinating look back at Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s “mentor in shamelessness”:
Donald Trump is a man who likes to think he has few equals. But once upon a time, he had a mentor: Roy Cohn, a notoriously harsh lawyer who rose to prominence in the mid-1950s alongside the communist-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. His tactics would often land him in the papers, but Cohn was unafraid of being slimed by the press – he used it to his advantage. A devil-may-care-as-long-as-it-gets-a-headline attitude was Cohn’s trademark in life. Trump, in our time, has made it his.
His careful manipulation of negative attention is something that Trump noticed immediately when the two met in 1973. Trump and his father had just been sued for allegedly discriminating against black people in Trump’s built-and-managed houses in Brooklyn, and sought out Cohn’s counsel. Among other things, Cohn advised that Trump should “tell them to go to hell”. Cohn was hired, and one of his first acts as Trump’s new lawyer was to file a $100m countersuit that was quickly dismissed by the court. But it made the papers.
This was the beginning of a long and close relationship. Trump relied on Cohn for most of the legal matters during a particularly tricky decade. Cohn drew up the pre-nuptial contract between Donald and Ivana when they married in 1977 – a famously stingy contract that only gave Ivana $20,000 a year. Cohn also filed a suit brought by the United States Football League in 1984 against the NFL, seeking to break up the monopoly held over American football. Trump owned a USFL team and was widely seen as the force behind the suit; the initial press conference about it was a tag-team show performed by Cohn and Trump.
“I don’t kid myself about Roy. He was no Boy Scout. He once told me that he’d spent more than two-thirds of his adult life under indictment on one charge or another. That amazed me,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. The unabashed pursuit of power, quick resort to threats, a love of being in the tabloid spotlight – all of these are things Trump took from his mentor.
In fact, if you’re familiar with Cohn’s history at all, their friendship starts to seem an even greater influence on Trump than any other.
The New York Times has published excerpts of a revealing interview with Donald Trump conducted after he voted for himself for president Tuesday. He talks about the feeling of voting for himself, a recent campaign transition that pushed campaign manager Corey Lewandowski aside, and his penchant for winning.
Here’s a snippet of the interview:
On the race for delegates: It’s a rigged system. It’s a disgraceful, disgusting rigged system in the Republican Party. Worse than the Democratic Party, because in the Democratic case it’s obvious with superdelegates. Look at Bernie. He wins every week, and everyone says he can’t win. In the Democrat Party, it’s obvious because they have a superdelegate, that’s like throwing it in your face. The Republican Party is worse, the Republican Party has a system where you can buy the delegates if you want. And you can do anything you want with a delegate, except give them cash. I can play the game better — I can fly them on a 757 to Mar-a-Lago, I can fly them to California where I own a place that’s unbelievable, on the Pacific Ocean. But it’s a bad system. You’re buying the election. It’s really wrong, and I’m looking into it, legally.
Trump is meeting with the Indiana governor ahead of a rally in Indianapolis, Fox News reports:
Indianapolis- @realDonaldTrump set to meet with @GovPenceIN at his residence at 1pm. Pence will not be attending Trump 3pm rally.
— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) April 20, 2016
Trump tweeted earlier today that he was headed for the Hoosier state.
Off to Indiana! #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/zqUdaaSaXD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 20, 2016
Bernie Sanders’ Twitter account praises the announcement earlier today by the Treasury that emancipation hero Harriet Tubman will replace president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
I cannot think of an American hero more deserving of this honor than Harriet Tubman. https://t.co/GL64NPrOL1
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 20, 2016
But Hillary Clinton got there first:
A woman, a leader, and a freedom fighter. I can't think of a better choice for the $20 bill than Harriet Tubman: https://t.co/YcsZC4ZrKg -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 20, 2016
Read more about the news here:
Updated
Here’s video of Ted Cruz at his Hershey, Pennsylvania, rally earlier today minimizing Trump’s New York win. See our transcription here.
Trump memo predicts 1,400 delegates
An internal Trump campaign memo projects that Trump will capture the nomination with 1,400 delegates voting in his favor in the first round of voting at the national convention in Cleveland in July.
“Our projections call for us to accumulate over 1400 delegates and thus a first ballot nomination win in Cleveland,” the memo reads, according to the Washington Post, which first obtained it.
It’s a highly optimistic projection, given significant challenges facing Trump in the upcoming winner-take-all states Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – and the fact that he currently sits on 845 pledged delegates, with only 674 left to go. To get to 1,400 pledged delegates he would have to capture 82% of the remaining delegates on offer. He might also hit the number by capturing unbound delegates, but that’s a tricky projection indeed.
The memo also predicts trouble ahead for Hillary Clinton, saying,
Hillary email scandal is going to loom large over the next several months. If anyone else had done what she had done, they would already be in prison.
Updated
Ted Cruz has urged John Kasich to get out of the race because he has no path to 1,237 delegates. But why, NBC News asked him, doesn’t the same logic apply to Cruz?
.@HallieJackson asked Cruz about squaring past statements urging Kasich to exit due to 1237 math vs. his own #s now. pic.twitter.com/gVbxOdOT8P
— Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) April 20, 2016
Trump’s hand gestures repertoire is impressively deep.
The funny-cuz-it's-true vid you must see:@MattNegrin names @realDonaldTrump's hand gestures https://t.co/bo4Qsbdy3Mhttps://t.co/G8VCthlzQt
— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) April 20, 2016
Sanders email: 'we still have a path'
A new Bernie Sanders fundraising email insists, “we still have a path to the nomination”:
Bernie Sanders fundraising email: "We still have a path to the nomination." pic.twitter.com/zl95wLc3IV
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) April 20, 2016
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver attempted to lay out that path in an appearance Wednesday morning on MSNBC, saying that a lot of delegates remain to be captured and arguing that superdelegates might switch to Sanders. At which the Washington Post’s Philip Bump points out that to pull off the kind of big finish Weaver envisions, Sanders would need to chalk up monster wins – even bigger than Clinton’s win last night – in states such as Pennsylvania where Sanders currently trails in the polls by double digits with less than a week to go.
So it’s a narrow path.
Update:
New @AP delegate math shows Clinton can lose every remaining contest and still win. by @llerer and @hopeyen1 https://t.co/ej7T7K1Qus
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) April 20, 2016
Updated
Stephen Colbert had House speaker Paul Ryan on last night, and took an entertaining shot at getting Ryan to admit that, adamant denials notwithstanding, he is running for president.
Ryan: Let me say it in clear English: No!
Colbert: How about clear German?
Ryan: Nein!
Colbert: Clear Russian?
Ryan: Nyet!
Updated
The importance of Indiana
Donald Trump’s authoritative win in New York’s primary Tuesday kept him on a path to notching the 1,237 delegates required to claim the Republican presidential nomination outright. But it’s a narrow path, and it increasingly appears to run through a Midwestern state not accustomed to a starring role in presidential politics: Indiana.
Indiana’s status this year as a presidential power-broker is owing to its placement on the calendar and its uniqueness as a tossup state among the 15 states yet to hold Republican contests. These comprise seven states where Trump is expected to perform very well, three winner-take-all western states Trump is expected to lose, four western states expected to divide delegates... and Indiana.
The analysis assumes that voting patterns over the next two months will roughly reflect demographic and geographical voting patterns to have emerged so far. But that may not be such an audacious assumption as it at first appears. It means Trump sweeps eastern states such as New Jersey and Connecticut, and states with a high proportion of less well educated white Republican voters such as West Virginia. It means Trump performs poorly in western and plains states with a high proportion of values voters – categories Ted Cruz has dominated – such as Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana. It means Trump splits as expected the western states that will award delegates proportionally – Washington, Oregon and New Mexico – with his rivals.
All of which would appear to leave Trump somewhere between 150 and 200 delegates short of the finish line (at 845 delegates, Trump must win 58% of the remaining pledged delegates to get to 1,237, versus the 49% he has won so far). Two question marks would remain: California, which is among the last states to vote on 7 June, and Indiana, which votes about a month earlier, on 3 May.
Indiana’s status as a bellwether stems in part from the fact that it votes first. The outcome in Indiana is likely to determine the stakes in California.
But Indiana’s significance also stems from its manner of awarding delegates, which favors the statewide winner in a way that California does not. California awards only 13 delegates to its statewide winner, versus 30 in Indiana. The rest of the delegates in each state will be awarded per congressional district.
A strong performance district-to-district in California would be more valuable than a strong performance district-to-district in Indiana. California has 53 congressional districts compared with Indiana’s nine. But California’s congressional districts, which range from the heavily Democratic Bay Area to the heavily Republican Orange county, are much more diverse than Indiana’s, making a sweep by any one candidate less likely.
A final factor elevating Indiana’s aura as kingmaker is a basic ignorance, thanks to an utter lack of polling, of what the state’s voters are thinking. In lieu of poll numbers, analysts have turned to demographic and regional comparisons and observed the actions of state elections officials as they prepare to run the primary. Both gauges look bad for Trump.
The closest regional and demographic analogue to Indiana is its neighbor to the northwest, Wisconsin, where voters handed Trump a resounding 13-point defeat earlier this month in favor of Cruz.
The news is worse for Trump where local officials are concerned. Multiple potential delegates from Indiana have spoken out publicly against Trump, and at least one has reported receiving death threats from Trump supporters for doing so. According to local reporting, the delegates slate in Indiana appears to lean heavily toward Ohio governor John Kasich, which likely reflects the will of party officials and could reflect the larger drift of voting Republicans.
The delegate calculus as it now appears could be thrown off by unexpected developments in the race or by significant anarchy attending the rules for awarding delegates in states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where voters will have to elect dozens of delegates directly from unfamiliar lists of names instead of simply voting for a candidate. But again those factors appear to favor Cruz, who has thrived in such shadows, where Trump has proven endearingly inept.
The world will have to wait until California votes to know whether Trump has cleared the 1,237 hurdle (and even if he does not he may snag the nomination on unpledged delegates). But the die may be cast a month earlier in the humble Hoosier state.
Updated
Cruz minimizes Trump New York win
At his Hershey, Pennsylvania, rally, Cruz argues that Donald Trump’s New York win was insignificant compared to Cruz’s recent wins.
“You may have heard there was an election last night,” Cruz says to applause:
Donald Trump won his home state. Truly a remarkable feat. Upon winning his home state, Donald, with a characteristic display of humility, declared this race is over, Manhattan has voted, and if the rest of the voters would quietly go home now and allow him to give the general election to Hillary, all would be better.
[What they don’t want you to know is], the state of Wisconsin – I won 13,000 more votes in Wisconsin than Donald Trump did last night in New York. The state of Texas – we won more than twice as many votes in Texas as Donald did in New York. There’s a reason Donald wants all of the lapdogs in the media to say that the race is over. Because in the three weeks that preceded yesterday, there were a total of five states that voted... in all five, we won a landslide. 1.3m people voted in those five states... You want to talk about different states, you have the mountain West [Utah]... upper midwest and industrial blue collar [Wisconsin], a state like Colorado, a libertarian-ish purplish state that just legalized pot...
“You look at the diversity of those states, and in every one of them the one consistent pattern is we won an overwhelming landslide.
Ted Cruz has just begun a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Lots of clapping. “I’m thrilled to be here with so many patriots who love our nation,” Cruz says.
Let’s listen:
Trump: 'all [Cruz] can do is be a spoiler'
In reply to Cruz’s argument that Trump can’t get to 1,237 delegates, Trump tweets that Cruz can’t get to 1,237 delegates – which the Cruz camp tacitly admits. It’s not the most dynamic intellectual tug-of-war.
But Trump has his eye on the general election, a fight that he has been inviting the Republican party for months to prepare for by unifying around him. Would a Trump nominee who cleanly cleared the 1,237 hurdle be stronger against the Democrats than a Trump nominee who kicked the hurdle down in a stumble to the finish? Trump may have larger difficulties in a general election fight against Clinton than the taint of a messy nominating race.
Ted Cruz is mathematically out of winning the race. Now all he can do is be a spoiler, never a nice thing to do. I will beat Hillary!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 20, 2016
Cruz: 'Trump had a good night'
Ted Cruz has taken to Philadelphia radio this morning – Pennsylvania votes next Tuesday – to address the results in New York, where he came away with a glistening goose egg, delegates-wise.
Cruz’s basic case is that Donald Trump won’t get to 1,237 delegates, the convention will witness a contest and he will emerge as the victor thanks to his campaign’s success at seeding delegate slates with loyalists eager to vote for him in a second round of convention action, no matter whom they might be bound to in the first round.
Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune tweets Cruz’s argument from this morning:
.@TedCruz on Philadelphia radio: "Last night Donald Trump had a good night. He won his home state." Everyone expected him to.
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) April 20, 2016
“We are headed to a contested convention. At this point, nobody is getting 1,237.”
@TedCruz suggests those supporting Trump “might as well put a Hillary sticker on your car.”
“Donald is going to talk all the time about other folks not getting to 1,237. He’s not getting there either.”
Here’s a novel take from the Cruz camp on the state of the race on the morning after Trump scored the most authoritative win in any primary yet:
.@tedcruz spokesman: @realDonaldTrump campaign is 'one hot mess after another' pic.twitter.com/MHev3R7udt
— POLITICO (@politico) April 20, 2016
Here’s how the Republican delegate count stands:
Updated
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton scored very big victories in New York on Tuesday – every bit as big as the candidates hoped for and their adversaries feared – to significantly advance their respective nomination quests.
Trump captured at least 89 of the 95 Republican delegates at stake, although he lost on his own Manhattan turf, in congressional district 12, to John Kasich. Clinton won at least 139 of the 247 Democratic delegates at stake, although Bernie Sanders beat her soundly in most upstate districts.
With 98.4% of districts reporting, Clinton led Sanders 57.9%-42.1% statewide, while Trump sat at 60.5% to Kasich’s 25.1%. Ted Cruz was on 14.5%. For granular results, visit our interactive maps page here.
Average poll had Clinton winning by 12 points. She won by 16 points. Average poll had Trump by 32. He won by 35.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) April 20, 2016
Appearing at a victory rally in midtown Manhattan, Clinton said: “Tonight, the race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight.”
Trump appeared at Trump Tower in Manhattan and managed to overestimate his resounding victory. “It’s just incredible,” he said. “I guess we’re close to 70%, and we’re gonna end at a very high level, and get a lot more delegates than anybody projected, even in their wildest imagination.”
The question now is: what’s next? It is difficult to make the case that a viable path remains for Sanders to swipe the nomination from Clinton, barring some extremely unusual twist. Sanders was returning to Vermont on Wednesday for a meeting with his advisers.
The Republican race is a bit more difficult to assess, because there’s an active debate over whether to follow rules requiring a candidate to hit 1,237 delegates in order to win the nomination outright. While Trump’s win boosted him toward that magic number, most models of the race had such a win baked in, and the big question marks – how he performs in Indiana and California and beyond – had not changed.
Better than 70% of New York Republicans, however, told exit pollsters that the candidate with most delegates at the end of the state contests should win the nomination, and that sentiment is shared by a majority of Republicans nationally. If the 109 unpledged Republican delegates in the race, plus delegates shaken loose, tip toward that view, the race could be Trump’s.
It's funny watching CW pendulum swing from def-contested after WI to inevitably-Trump after NY. We're all better off waiting til Indiana.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) April 20, 2016
What do you make of the New York result? Thanks as always for reading and please join the debate in the comments!
We're screwed https://t.co/8SNfkGiy63
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 20, 2016
