Political pundits have already decided the outcome of today’s five-state presidential primary contests. It goes something like this:
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton will widen their leads, leaving their competitors (Bernie Sanders, John Kasich and Ted Cruz) that much further from securing their party’s nomination.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton drinks a bubble tea drink during a campaign stop at a restaurant in New York on April 18, 2016. (Reuters)
Election season in America is a taxing months-long, 24/7 exercise, requiring a lot of stamina, and fuel to keep on keeping on.
Sampling corn dogs, milkshakes, burgers, five-alarm chili and apple pie in state after state is a campaign must for every candidate.
Why?
Because breaking bread with the locals, whether in a small Idaho town or the big city of New York, is a sure way to connect with the voters.
Today, we offer you a glimpse of American campaign “cuisine.” We’ll check in on the latest thinking about the candidates, and Trump’s alleged pivot away from his raw and rowdy campaign style.
Will the Real Trump and Clinton Please Stand Up?
Darrel Delamaid – MarketWatch
Trump came under fire last week after his new campaign guru, Paul Manafort, promised members of the Republican National Committee that the candidate would start acting and sounding more presidential….
But it was Charles Koch — the billionaire industrialist, fossil-fuel magnate and climate-change denier — who said it best in an interview this weekend with Politico, averring that he might find it preferable to support Hillary Clinton for president rather than Republican hopefuls Trump or Cruz.
There was only one tiny little proviso: “We would have to believe her actions would have to be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump eats a pork chop during a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa on Aug. 15, 2015. (Reuters)
The Donald Trump Pygmalion Project
The Editorial Board – The New York Times
Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s new campaign chief and an old-guard Republican strategist, has eclipsed the abrasive Corey Lewandowski and his nonnegotiable “Let Trump Be Trump” approach…
But Mr. Trump has reverted to bad habits. He’s still telling lies, and earned four Pinocchios last week for saying that ISIS is “making a fortune” on Libyan oil the terrorist group doesn’t control. On the trail last week, he showed crowds that he hasn’t forgotten or doesn’t regret what he said about Mexicans and Muslims.
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Trump Primary Criticism Misses the Point
Donna Brazille – CNN
Trump seems to be a beneficiary of the system, not a victim.
Fivethirtyeight notes that Trump has won only about 37 percent of the total vote, averaged, in all his primaries. Yet, he has 45 percent of all the delegates awarded to date. As a result, Trump has 22 percent more delegates than his share of the popular vote suggests he should have….
There is reason enough for Americans to lose some faith in what has been a dysfunctional Congress. But while the primary system has its own kind of dysfunction, it is not of the nature that Donald Trump claims. The last thing we need is for him to exploit voter distrust by making allegations of a rigged convention as a cover for his campaign’s poor management in contesting for delegates.
- Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, his wife Jane (L) and musician Michael Stipe eat hot dogs in Coney Island, New York April 10, 2016. (Reuters)
What Bernie Sanders Wants
Jules Witcover – The Baltimore Sun
Not out of the question is that he may pick up more delegates in the primaries Tuesday featuring five Northeastern states, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, even as Ms. Clinton moves closer to sewing up the nomination.
If he loses the nomination and returns to the Senate as expected, he will have earned through his strong showing in this year’s Democratic primaries a much greater voice in the party ranks. His very entry into the presidential nomination contest demonstrated his determination to move the party to a much more progressive posture….
One contribution he may already have made, among younger American voters at least, has been to remove some of the curse attached to the word “socialism.”
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich eats a pickle at PJ Bernstein’s Deli Restaurant in New York City on April 16, 2016. (Reuters)
Cruz and Kasich’s Sorry Plan to Stop Trump
Amy Davidson – The New Yorker
It is sad,” Donald Trump said in a statement Sunday night, “that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.”
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz samples ice creeam with his daughters at a campaign event in Columbus, Indiana on April 25, 2016. (Reuters)
It’s telling that Trump referred to Senator Ted Cruz and Governor John Kasich, who had made him sad by forming a tactical stop-Trump pact, as “grown politicians,” rather than “grownups”—no one is pretending that there are any of those left on the Republican side of the race—and to himself as a political toddler.
He is always on the verge of a tantrum, and they, by announcing on Sunday that they would not compete with each other in three upcoming primary states, are desperately and belatedly trying to patch something together that is already badly broken.
