Mercurial. That would be the one-word description I would use for the recently-deceased rock star whose given first name was Prince. Shiny, hard to contain, impossible to pin down, temperamental. I also choose it because of the word's reference to the Roman god Mercury (Greek name: Hermes), the flighty, mischievous, androgynous (or is it hermaphroditic?) messenger of the gods.
Prince's life does leave us a message: it is the triumph of sheer talent and bravado. When it comes to musical talent, he had every aspect of it, in abundance. He was a great songwriter, with well-crafted lyrics, simple but effective musical structures, and his songs told interesting, evocative stories. He paid great attention to recording standards, and he was a fabulous performer until the end. He could and did play all the instruments in the standard guitar-rock ensemble, and his voice was a flexible instrument. He had a broad range, not to mention his trademark emotional squawk, though I would say he might have overused his "sexy" falsetto. The only person to whom I can compare the range of his talents in the field of popular music is Stevie Wonder, and I would suggest that the arc of their careers (so far, for Stevie) are similar.
His earliest songs were among his best. "Little Red Corvette" is a hit with timeless qualities (like the car, I suppose), a song that sounded like a classic from the first time I heard it. Next came "1999"--a song that may have captured the true nature of the '80's better than any other. 1984 was, for me, his peak, with the album "Purple Rain", which produced several hits, and a hit movie. In it, Prince may have given us a glimpse about what made him tick: The story of the movie is a fictional one, about a bandleader like Prince, with a background like Prince's, and a lifestyle like Prince's was. The song that I have always loved best, and for which I will be forever grateful to Prince for doing, is "When Doves Cry"--the album version, please. It is a passionate plea--with Hendrix-like guitar riffs--to stop all the fighting, both domestically and, implicitly, more broadly.
He had a few more hits--"Raspberry Beret" being one of his better post-P.R. tunes, and "Kiss" is truly a high-water mark in the history of pop song seduction. He also contributed excellent songwriting that others capitalized upon, such as Chaka Khan with his "I Feel For You" and Sinead O'Connor with "Nothing Compares 2U". His singular achievement, which has been highly influential ever since the '80's, was the degree to which he successfully integrated rock and funk. The breadth of the tributes coming after his death shows the degree to which his formula has remained hugely popular, though hard to imitate.
Here, though, I have to kvetch a bit. The question a fan like me, interested but not intently following his career, has to ask is: What was he doing the last 20 years? It seems he was doing some good things behind the scenes, helping some out with their careers, some community service that he insisted on keeping out of the public eye, performing live shows when he felt like it. I have read--but cannot confirm--that he converted to Jehovah's Witnesses in 2001, gave up drugs and reduced his carousing behaviors. We could recall that Bob Dylan had a conversion experience at a similar age; the difference for Prince, unfortunately for his legacy, is that he did not live long enough to snap out of it and return to the level of creativity with which he began his career.
I would not speculate on the reason he died; we may eventually learn, and maybe it doesn't matter so much. As far as I know, he doesn't leave behind bereaved spouse or offspring, and I don't claim that he owed the public anything; he earned the right to be as weird as he often acted. I think his messages--when comprehensible--were always positive, in favor of tolerance, understanding, peace.
So, Rest In Peace, our Prince.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Tax Weekend Special
Sports: Back in the Swing
There's a brief period in February, after the Stupid Bowl, when the NBA takes its mostly unwatchable All-Star break, and there is next to nothing going on in sport. I suppose there is hockey, as it takes its even-more-ridiculous break a little earlier, though, as with pro football, I have a very low level of interest in the regular season. College basketball is in the middle of its conference season, but, as we have learned, the conference play means little in a real sense, diminished by the season-ending conference tournaments which determine the automatic tourney berths (with the single exception now of the Ivy League).
That period is, happily, now in the rear-view mirror. The NCAA men's basketball tournament was one of the best in recent years for your generic viewer (i.e., not tied to a specific team). It was open--as shown by the wild first- and second-rounds, full of upsets--but also narrowed down to something like normalcy, with the most reliable teams surviving to the end. I didn't make a pick for the champion, but I did name the four most consistent teams, and three of them made it to the Final Four (the fourth, Kansas, was beaten in the regional final by one of the other three, the eventual champion, Villanova). The one exception, which made the final rounds more fun, was Syracuse, a team which barely made the tourney field, and a #10 seed in its region. I have mixed feelings about the Orangemen, who are serial rule violators, who deserted the Big East Conference for what appeared to be the greener pastures of the ACC, but who play a consistently strong, streetwise brand of the game, drawing many of the best prospects New York produces. Their dreams ended at the hands of another ACC rule-violator, North Carolina. Then there was the championship game, with its thrilling finish--again, one of the best ever.
The NBA playoffs have now begun. The first round matches usually go fairly quickly, with a couple of exceptions. The ones this time appear to be the middle-seed matchups of Hawks-Celtics and TrailBlazers-Clippers, but also #2 Eastern seed Raptors vs. Pacers. The Pacers pulled off the road win in Game 1, and it did not appear an upset, either. LeBron and the Cavaliers should cruise to the Eastern Conference championship with little difficulty, but the Western Conference will be well-contested: the defending champion, all-time regular season record-breaking Warriors are favorites, but they will meet a tough opponent in the conference finals. Everyone would like to see the showdown against the Spurs--the matchup denied last year when the Clippers beat the Spurs in the conference semifinals. With the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge and the continued development of Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs are even more talented than in recent years, and could provide a worthy challenge to Golden State, but we can expect San Antonio to have its hands full in the semifinals against the highly-motivated Oklahoma City Thunder, as the league's top 1-2 punch (even better than LeBron and Someone, or Stephen Curry and Someone) of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant has what appears to be one final chance to fulfill their joint destiny there.
Lastly, on this topic, spring has sprung, and with it, the start of baseball's regular season. The American League has greater parity, but the National League has several excellent teams, ones that might even be viewed as better than the AL's best. I'm thinking of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, the New York Mets, the Washington Nationals and above all, the Chicago Cubs, broadly anointed as the best team in the majors this year. I am going to root for the Cubs for my father's sake this year: he has just reached his 90th birthday, has been a Cubs fan all his life, and deserves to see a world championship for his team. Of course, the playoffs are a bit of a crap shoot, but I'm hoping for a little magic comes to Wrigley this year.+
Celebration of the Lizard
A relatively slack period of four weeks in the Presidential primary season, with only one significant contest, comes to an end Tuesday. The winner of New York's primary in each party should be a foregone conclusion, though Bernie Sanders does seem to be closing the gap there, as he has done in the past--probably in part the result of superior field organization. In the Republican primary, the only question is whether Donald Trump will exceed 50% of the vote--a level he has not yet reached, and one that would allow him to get nearly all the state's delegates.
The one major primary in recent weeks was in Wisconsin, in which Bernie pulled off yet another victory, with a healthy margin over 12%, but one that barely put a dent in Hillary Clinton's delegate lead. The next few primaries are likely to be less favorable, and should erase any doubt, even among Sanders' most avid supporters, of the ultimate outcome. But Bernie will fight on, no doubt--I hope he has been planning the mode and style of his ultimate concession such that it will do justice to the fine campaign he has conducted.
Wisconsin provided Ted Cruz with his greatest moment--much more significant than the win in his home state of Texas on Super Tuesday--the only state he won--which provided some initial legitimacy in those days when the candidates were falling fast. Cruz overcame his reptilian, off-putting visage and patterns of human interaction, the Trump endorsement of the state's governor, and achieved a significant win in a populous, open primary. His exultation and his victory speech sounded tones familiar from other nights: I check all the boxes on the conservative agenda, I am not Donald Trump, you conservatives can somehow stomach me.
The next couple of weeks will be much less friendly for the TrusTed one: his comment about "New York values" will set the stage for a third-place finish in the Empire State, and the five primaries in other mid-Atlantic primaries the following week will be little better. Cruz has no chance at a first-ballot victory at the convention, though he may still have a chance as the leading Not-Trump candidate if the leader can be stopped, the key being a successful last-ditch stand by him and by Kasich in California on the last night of primaries, June 7. My bet on predictit.org is for Trump to have in the range of 1150-1199 of the 1237 delegates pledged as the party goes to convention, which will put him close enough to win the nomination if he can make a few of the deals for which he claims such expertise.
As for my opinion of Cruz, I will cite the impenetrable words of King Crimson (1969) as my advice to his supporters:
Senate Race Outlook
I think it is timely for me to give a brief update on the critical battle for control of the US Senate. The Democrats need to net a four-seat gain (if the Democrats win the Presidency) to regain control of the upper house, and they have a rich variety of state targets with which to do that. The do-nothing charge against the Republican-controlled Senate is reinforced by their refusal to consider President Obama's Supreme Court nominee; while party diehards may endorse the hardball constitutional stance, Independents will not.
Wisconsin, with Russ Feingold, and Illinois, with Tammy Duckworth, are the two best chances; the incumbent Republicans are inept (Ron Johnson) and ill-fitted (Mark Kirk), respectively. Those are both in the range of 80% chances for picking up seats. Ohio and New Hampshire are slightly better than 50-50, with strong challenger candidates and likely favorable headwinds from the states' Presidential contests (assuming nothing disastrous happens to Hillary). Arizona and Missouri are tougher challenges, but the Democrats have good candidates and the polls suggest the Republican incumbents (McCain and Blount) may be vulnerable.
There are two states in which we may presume the Democratic challengers will have a good chance, even though their nominees are not yet decided. Florida looks like at least a 50-50 shot for the Democrats to gain the seat Marco Rubio is giving up; the Republicans have a crowded field in the August primary but none of the candidates look very strong, while the Democratic nominee will be one of two Representatives: either a moderate establishment candidate, Patrick Murphy, or an extremely non-establishment one, the humorous, irascible, possibly indictable Alan Grayson. Grayson's emails are the best that I receive, but I am not convinced he would be the best shot to win the seat, which is an imperative--and he has a legal problem with his handling of an offshore hedge fund that he runs, a surprising and disappointing handicap. The other is Pennsylvania, which like Wisconsin, has a highly conservative Senator whose best hope is to run away from his policy positions in the general election. The Democratic nominee will be decided in the state's primary April 26: there is a very interesting three-way race between the candidate hand-picked by the party establishment, Kathie McGinty, a radical and interesting Sandersesque candidate, mayor Ron Fetterman of the town of Braddock, and the loner, former Navy Admiral, former Representative, and 2010 losing nominee Joe Sestak. Sestak is leading narrowly, probably reflecting higher name recognition.
If one adds up all these and factors in the correlation coming from a likely substantial Democratic victory in the Presidential campaign, it seems quite possible that the Democrats could pick up 5-6 seats from all the above opportunities, but there is one potential glitch: the seat in Nevada which Minority Leader Harry Reid is giving up. Democrats there have rallied around former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, while Representative Joe Heck seems the most likely candidate for the Republicans. This is a 50-50 race which will be very high-profile, and its outcome could decide control of the Senate. Cortez Masto might be the best single Senate candidate to support at this point. I am staying neutral in the PA and FL ones, and also in Maryland, probably a safe seat for Democrats to hold, but with a nomination battle which will be resolved April 26 as well.
Brief Obits
+ For the record, my picks:
There's a brief period in February, after the Stupid Bowl, when the NBA takes its mostly unwatchable All-Star break, and there is next to nothing going on in sport. I suppose there is hockey, as it takes its even-more-ridiculous break a little earlier, though, as with pro football, I have a very low level of interest in the regular season. College basketball is in the middle of its conference season, but, as we have learned, the conference play means little in a real sense, diminished by the season-ending conference tournaments which determine the automatic tourney berths (with the single exception now of the Ivy League).
That period is, happily, now in the rear-view mirror. The NCAA men's basketball tournament was one of the best in recent years for your generic viewer (i.e., not tied to a specific team). It was open--as shown by the wild first- and second-rounds, full of upsets--but also narrowed down to something like normalcy, with the most reliable teams surviving to the end. I didn't make a pick for the champion, but I did name the four most consistent teams, and three of them made it to the Final Four (the fourth, Kansas, was beaten in the regional final by one of the other three, the eventual champion, Villanova). The one exception, which made the final rounds more fun, was Syracuse, a team which barely made the tourney field, and a #10 seed in its region. I have mixed feelings about the Orangemen, who are serial rule violators, who deserted the Big East Conference for what appeared to be the greener pastures of the ACC, but who play a consistently strong, streetwise brand of the game, drawing many of the best prospects New York produces. Their dreams ended at the hands of another ACC rule-violator, North Carolina. Then there was the championship game, with its thrilling finish--again, one of the best ever.
The NBA playoffs have now begun. The first round matches usually go fairly quickly, with a couple of exceptions. The ones this time appear to be the middle-seed matchups of Hawks-Celtics and TrailBlazers-Clippers, but also #2 Eastern seed Raptors vs. Pacers. The Pacers pulled off the road win in Game 1, and it did not appear an upset, either. LeBron and the Cavaliers should cruise to the Eastern Conference championship with little difficulty, but the Western Conference will be well-contested: the defending champion, all-time regular season record-breaking Warriors are favorites, but they will meet a tough opponent in the conference finals. Everyone would like to see the showdown against the Spurs--the matchup denied last year when the Clippers beat the Spurs in the conference semifinals. With the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge and the continued development of Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs are even more talented than in recent years, and could provide a worthy challenge to Golden State, but we can expect San Antonio to have its hands full in the semifinals against the highly-motivated Oklahoma City Thunder, as the league's top 1-2 punch (even better than LeBron and Someone, or Stephen Curry and Someone) of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant has what appears to be one final chance to fulfill their joint destiny there.
Lastly, on this topic, spring has sprung, and with it, the start of baseball's regular season. The American League has greater parity, but the National League has several excellent teams, ones that might even be viewed as better than the AL's best. I'm thinking of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, the New York Mets, the Washington Nationals and above all, the Chicago Cubs, broadly anointed as the best team in the majors this year. I am going to root for the Cubs for my father's sake this year: he has just reached his 90th birthday, has been a Cubs fan all his life, and deserves to see a world championship for his team. Of course, the playoffs are a bit of a crap shoot, but I'm hoping for a little magic comes to Wrigley this year.+
Celebration of the Lizard
A relatively slack period of four weeks in the Presidential primary season, with only one significant contest, comes to an end Tuesday. The winner of New York's primary in each party should be a foregone conclusion, though Bernie Sanders does seem to be closing the gap there, as he has done in the past--probably in part the result of superior field organization. In the Republican primary, the only question is whether Donald Trump will exceed 50% of the vote--a level he has not yet reached, and one that would allow him to get nearly all the state's delegates.
The one major primary in recent weeks was in Wisconsin, in which Bernie pulled off yet another victory, with a healthy margin over 12%, but one that barely put a dent in Hillary Clinton's delegate lead. The next few primaries are likely to be less favorable, and should erase any doubt, even among Sanders' most avid supporters, of the ultimate outcome. But Bernie will fight on, no doubt--I hope he has been planning the mode and style of his ultimate concession such that it will do justice to the fine campaign he has conducted.
Wisconsin provided Ted Cruz with his greatest moment--much more significant than the win in his home state of Texas on Super Tuesday--the only state he won--which provided some initial legitimacy in those days when the candidates were falling fast. Cruz overcame his reptilian, off-putting visage and patterns of human interaction, the Trump endorsement of the state's governor, and achieved a significant win in a populous, open primary. His exultation and his victory speech sounded tones familiar from other nights: I check all the boxes on the conservative agenda, I am not Donald Trump, you conservatives can somehow stomach me.
The next couple of weeks will be much less friendly for the TrusTed one: his comment about "New York values" will set the stage for a third-place finish in the Empire State, and the five primaries in other mid-Atlantic primaries the following week will be little better. Cruz has no chance at a first-ballot victory at the convention, though he may still have a chance as the leading Not-Trump candidate if the leader can be stopped, the key being a successful last-ditch stand by him and by Kasich in California on the last night of primaries, June 7. My bet on predictit.org is for Trump to have in the range of 1150-1199 of the 1237 delegates pledged as the party goes to convention, which will put him close enough to win the nomination if he can make a few of the deals for which he claims such expertise.
As for my opinion of Cruz, I will cite the impenetrable words of King Crimson (1969) as my advice to his supporters:
Wake your reasons' hollow voteIn other, more comprehensible words: your cause is doomed to fail, get ready to dump your saurian candidate, bolt the party and its nominee, and sail off into the sunset on your lonely misanthropic adventure.
Wear your blizzard season's coat
Burn a bridge and burn a boat
Stake the lizard by the throat.
Senate Race Outlook
I think it is timely for me to give a brief update on the critical battle for control of the US Senate. The Democrats need to net a four-seat gain (if the Democrats win the Presidency) to regain control of the upper house, and they have a rich variety of state targets with which to do that. The do-nothing charge against the Republican-controlled Senate is reinforced by their refusal to consider President Obama's Supreme Court nominee; while party diehards may endorse the hardball constitutional stance, Independents will not.
Wisconsin, with Russ Feingold, and Illinois, with Tammy Duckworth, are the two best chances; the incumbent Republicans are inept (Ron Johnson) and ill-fitted (Mark Kirk), respectively. Those are both in the range of 80% chances for picking up seats. Ohio and New Hampshire are slightly better than 50-50, with strong challenger candidates and likely favorable headwinds from the states' Presidential contests (assuming nothing disastrous happens to Hillary). Arizona and Missouri are tougher challenges, but the Democrats have good candidates and the polls suggest the Republican incumbents (McCain and Blount) may be vulnerable.
There are two states in which we may presume the Democratic challengers will have a good chance, even though their nominees are not yet decided. Florida looks like at least a 50-50 shot for the Democrats to gain the seat Marco Rubio is giving up; the Republicans have a crowded field in the August primary but none of the candidates look very strong, while the Democratic nominee will be one of two Representatives: either a moderate establishment candidate, Patrick Murphy, or an extremely non-establishment one, the humorous, irascible, possibly indictable Alan Grayson. Grayson's emails are the best that I receive, but I am not convinced he would be the best shot to win the seat, which is an imperative--and he has a legal problem with his handling of an offshore hedge fund that he runs, a surprising and disappointing handicap. The other is Pennsylvania, which like Wisconsin, has a highly conservative Senator whose best hope is to run away from his policy positions in the general election. The Democratic nominee will be decided in the state's primary April 26: there is a very interesting three-way race between the candidate hand-picked by the party establishment, Kathie McGinty, a radical and interesting Sandersesque candidate, mayor Ron Fetterman of the town of Braddock, and the loner, former Navy Admiral, former Representative, and 2010 losing nominee Joe Sestak. Sestak is leading narrowly, probably reflecting higher name recognition.
If one adds up all these and factors in the correlation coming from a likely substantial Democratic victory in the Presidential campaign, it seems quite possible that the Democrats could pick up 5-6 seats from all the above opportunities, but there is one potential glitch: the seat in Nevada which Minority Leader Harry Reid is giving up. Democrats there have rallied around former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, while Representative Joe Heck seems the most likely candidate for the Republicans. This is a 50-50 race which will be very high-profile, and its outcome could decide control of the Senate. Cortez Masto might be the best single Senate candidate to support at this point. I am staying neutral in the PA and FL ones, and also in Maryland, probably a safe seat for Democrats to hold, but with a nomination battle which will be resolved April 26 as well.
Brief Obits
- (April 12) Gianroberto Casaleggio, 61, Italian entrepreneur, co-founder of Five Star Movement. This is a major loss for the independent, anti-Establishment political movement in Italy. Casaleggio was the strategist for Cinque Stelle from the beginning, with former comedian Beppe Grillo the (loud) mouthpiece. The Movement was suffering in recent months, possibly in part because of Casaleggio's prolonged illness, but came within an eyelash of becoming the largest party in the country in the two previous legislative elections, when the economy was in the dumps and leadership was lacking. Now, their time may have passed, with the anti-immigrant Lega Nord (Northern League) emerging as the loudest voice of populist outrage against responsible government.
- (April 2) Gato Barbieri, 83, Argentine jazz saxophonist, pneumonia. Barbieri was one of the best protagonists of the international jazz-fusion movement of
- Andrew Grove, 79, Hungarian-born American electronic executive, CEO and chairman of Intel Corporation, Parkinson's disease. Grove was one of the most successful US job creators of the past quarter century; Intel was a consistent leader in the development of ever-improving semiconductor chips, the key component in the digital revolution, and Grove's company chose to keep its factories in the US. Famous for the quote, "only the paranoid survive", his influence on the corporate culture of the '90's and '00's can hardly be overstated.
Taxes
Like the weather: everyone complains about it, nobody can do anything about it. I will only say that, partly due to the overseas assignment I had in 2015, mine are obscenely complicated.
Fortunately, my employer is paying for someone competent to prepare them, and that I won't be penalized for filing late.
+ For the record, my picks:
AL West--Houston, Texas, Seattle, Oakland, LAA,
AL Central - Cleveland, Minnesota, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit
AL East - Toronto, Boston, NYY, Baltimore, Tampa Bay
Wild Cards - Boston, Texas
NL West - Arizona, LA, SF, SD, Colorado
NL Central - Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati
NL East - NY Mets, Washington, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta
Wild Cards - Washington, Pittsburgh.
The leagues learn the trick to keeping St. Louis, Kansas City, San Francisco from wreaking their postseason magic: keep them out entirely!
World Series: Astros defeat Mets. A variation on the classic 1986 NL championship series (venue and outcome, but with similar extra-inning heroics).
Sunday, April 03, 2016
Trump: BFJ, Not Funny
And the joke is on all of us. Turns out Trump did do this thing as a lark,
thinking that he would finish in The Middle of the Pack in Iowa and then be
free to return to his regular gig. But
no, he crushed his performance—which we’ll come back to defining in a
moment—and methodically knocked out candidate after candidate—“And you’re
fired!”
The amazing thing was, some of the guys he knocked out
came back to him. Ben Carson, Chris
Christie. Other people so deeply into
character (Sarah Palin) that they could not leave the show. Some new characters in the farce: The Campaign Manager with the nasty streak;
the woman with the imagination to do the American thing and file charges.
Please, Trumpistas, listen.
He’s been toying with you. He’s
been pulling your strings like a sitar virtuoso. The sounds resonate for you, and you come away
from your encounters with his pitch convinced.
This is not a used car, though; not only do you have to kick the tires a
bit more before you buy, but you’re hiring him to drive it, too. And Trump has shown, over and over again,
that he is not prepared to be President. Even worse, if we refer to our countrys
experience with St. Ronnie Reagan, he doesn’t seem to have the sense to hire
people who are more responsible, more professional in their professional
demeanor than he is.
#NeverTrump Update
More significant than the “Drumpfengaffen”—this week, the ones on abortion “punishment” for women, on Japan and South Korea’s response to North Korea’s aggressive nuclear policy, to the “unaffordable” cost of leading NATO’s protection of European freedom and prosperity, all of which just reinforce the known narrative of Trump’s limited understanding of the few issues the Republican campaign has addressed—more important than the outcome of the primary in Wisconsin (a solitary event in the extended blabfest of Act II, Scene 4, after the critical mid-March primary results, which firmly established Trump and Clinton as the frontrunners for the parties’ nominations), there is a quiet movement finally forming within the Republican parties’ meeting rooms (in olden days they would have been smoke-filled) which have the objective of blocking Trump’s first-ballot selection for the nomination.
More significant than the “Drumpfengaffen”—this week, the ones on abortion “punishment” for women, on Japan and South Korea’s response to North Korea’s aggressive nuclear policy, to the “unaffordable” cost of leading NATO’s protection of European freedom and prosperity, all of which just reinforce the known narrative of Trump’s limited understanding of the few issues the Republican campaign has addressed—more important than the outcome of the primary in Wisconsin (a solitary event in the extended blabfest of Act II, Scene 4, after the critical mid-March primary results, which firmly established Trump and Clinton as the frontrunners for the parties’ nominations), there is a quiet movement finally forming within the Republican parties’ meeting rooms (in olden days they would have been smoke-filled) which have the objective of blocking Trump’s first-ballot selection for the nomination.
Leading this quiet, not-quite conspiracy, in the sense that
there is no agreement on the strategy, only on the intention, are the canny,
hardened party pros working on behalf of Ted Cruz who work, state by state and
district by district, to deny Trump committed delegates. Some are ideologically committed to Cruz,
others recruited merely out of the desire to keep the party’s control out of
the hands of amateurs. Where they can, they work within the rules of the states
to pick up Cruz-pledged delegates, but it is enough to get delegates who will not
be pledged for Trump on the first ballot.
The success in the theft of a few in Louisiana caught the frontrunner’s
attention, but there are also maneuvers afoot in Tennessee, in Georgia, in
Missouri. Then there is John Kasich’s
candidacy, which exists to deny both Cruz and Trump access to his small share
of delegates, though so far it does not seem able to add to his chances to
promote a viable bid for the nomination.
The Kasich and Cruz campaigns had some initial discussions on
cooperating, surely the most effective approach, but Cruz rebuffed the
overtures and his campaign and associated PAC are attacking the Ohio governor
vigorously in Wisconsin; except for the cirumstances—his weak placement in the
horserace—Wisconsin would be a great state for his prospects, but he stands to
finish a distant third because of the focus on the two leaders’ contest.
The Real Kicker
With all the chitter-chatter of a possible contested convention--one to which Trump does not bring a majority of delegates committed to voting for him on the first ballot--the story that has gotten very little attention, but which I predict may be decisive in the contest, is the fate of the delegate slots won by Marco Rubio, numbering 159 at the time he dropped out of the race just after his massive failure in his home state of Florida (the 159 are about 6.5% of the total). Rubio “suspended”
his campaign, which normally would have released his delegates, but he did not
formally release them, and in fact he has followed up with letters to the
states where he won delegates to say specifically that he was not releasing
them. I did find one somewhat authoritative
voice to address the question in the aftermath of Rubio’s retirement from
active campaigning, the lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who said that the results would vary based on individual
states’ rules.The Real Kicker
I predict that the Republican convention's (Republi-Cons, for short) Rules and Credentials Committees will have to deal with questions of the possible enforcement of pledges of “Rubio delegates”, even in the probable absence of Rubio actually being nominated on the floor, and possibly of voting to decide among competing delegate slates, and that the outcome of these challenges could be decisive (as they were in the last competitive convention, in 1976—the result of those contests put Ford over the top prior to the first ballot).
Finally, in this unofficial anti-Trump conspiracy, there is
the notable example of the behavior of Speaker Paul Ryan, Congressman from
Wisconsin, who has spoken scornfully of Trumpian rhetoric, but has noticeably
not endorsed his chief rival, Cruz, in the lead-up to his state’s primary. One can only speculate on the reason, but I
suppose it is a combination of three possible but not mutually exclusive ones:
a) Ryan detests Cruz as much or more than he does Trump,
b) secretly he is hoping Kasich’s candidacy can survive, despite lacking Ryan’s significant endorsement, and/or
c) he believes that they may come to him in the end, as his Congressional colleagues did when they were stuck for a viable candidate for Speaker of the House, and he is leaving the door open for that if the convention delegates can not agree on Trump, Cruz, or Kasich.
In any case, his lack of endorsement does provide for a fair
three-way contest this week and leaves his options completely open.
Act II, Scene 4 will be the Wisconsin primaries in both parties, the results of each should provide for entertaining viewing this Tuesday. In terms of Predictit.org, Cruz and Sanders are heavy favorites, with secondary markets on the margin of the winner: will the Republican winner have a margin or greater than or =8% (currently the market is at 56% Yes, up from 52; I'm betting Yes on Cruz' momentum or Trump's lack thereof. Secondly, will the Democratic primary winner have a margin greater or equal to 5% (market is at 55%, down from 64%, at which point I bet No)..
Scene 5 will be the series of primaries in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states, which will have various storylines (Trump and Clinton’s home state of New York, the outcome of the vote of the “two Pennsylvanias”, the urban centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and their suburbs, vs. the Appalachian-flavored rest of the state, the Atlantic seaboard battles for Kasich to make headway), and then the final scene, which will be the California primary on June 7, which will either clinch the nomination for Trump, or for Clinton, or possibly set the stage for a drama in Act III, the tale of the Two Cities of Cleveland and Philadelphia. Those scenes’ scripts have not yet been drafted.
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