The Atlantic (Opinion)
By David Graham
March 1, 2016
They
call it Super Tuesday, but for everyone other than Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump, March 1 wasn’t a great night. The Democratic and
Republican frontrunners racked
up wins Tuesday, along with delegates, as each consolidated a lead.
Could
it have been a better night for either of them? Absolutely. As
expected, Clinton lost Vermont to favorite son Bernie Sanders, but she
also lost in Oklahoma, Colorado,
and Minnesota. Trump was the big winner among the Republicans, but he
lost states he was expected to win and saw his margin of victory slip
below what polls had predicted in others.
Even
as the election results were rolling in, a debate raged over just how
good a night it was for Trump. It’s undeniable—despite the protestations
of anti-Trump pundits—that
winning more states is better than winning fewer. As the clock struck
midnight on the east coast, Trump could claim victories in Georgia,
Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arkansas. He even
squeezed out a win in Vermont, where John Kasich came
in a close second. Proportional-allocation rules for delegates,
however, mean that although Trump will win the most delegates, his
rivals will also take quite a few. According to New York Times
projections, Trump was likely to take more than 200 delegates,
trailed by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. That would give Trump more than
400 delegates, but he’s still a long way short of the 1,237 needed to
lock up the nomination. The problem for the other candidates, and for
the many Republicans who find Trump unacceptable,
is that none of his rivals is close to him.
It
was a pretty good night for Cruz, who won his home state of Texas and
scored a victory in the neighboring state of Oklahoma, too. Or at least
it was a good night, scored
against the expectations Tuesday morning. It wasn’t that long ago,
however, that Cruz’s advocates were touting the many contests in
Southern states—the “SEC Primary”—as his firewall, where he would clean
up in states heavy on evangelical voters. Judged against
those expectations, it was a disappointing evening for the Cruz team.
Looking ahead, he faces a stretch of states that aren’t likely to be as
friendly to him. Still, Cruz used his remarks in suburban Houston to
paint himself as the only hope for stopping Trump.
“God
bless the Lone Star State. And God bless the great state of Oklahoma,”
Cruz said. “So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to
the nomination remains
more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for
conservatives, and for the nation. After tonight, we have seen that our
campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that
will beat Donald Trump.”
Without
naming Rubio or John Kasich directly, Cruz called on both of them to
leave the race. “The candidates who have not yet won a state, who have
not yet won significant
delegates, I ask you to prayerfully considered coming together,
united,” he said.
As
those comments suggested, things were bleaker for Rubio, who had a
roller-coaster evening. Early in the night, analysis—or was it wishful
thinking?—suggested Rubio
might be able to win in Virginia, a state with a high concentration of
well-educated, wealthier, establishment-friendly Republicans in Northern
Virginia. In the end, though, Rubio couldn’t pull out the win there.
The Florida senator finally notched a win in
Minnesota late Tuesday—his first victory of the campaign. But in
several states, Rubio was in danger of failing to cross the 20-percent
threshold the party imposes to win any of the statewide delegates
allocated on a proportional basis.
Yet
when Rubio came out to speak, early in the night, he once again struck
the same triumphant pose he has employed time and again, as his campaign
finished second or
third in contest after contest. “When I am president of the United
States, we will not just save the American dream, we will expand it to
more people than ever!” he said.
The
most telling moment in his speech, however, came a few moments later.
"Five days ago, we began to explain to the American people that Donald
Trump is a con artist,"
Rubio said, alluding to the onslaught of opposition research, insults,
and barnyard jokes he has directed at the GOP frontrunner, starting with
Thursday’s debate. Why did that take so long, though? It may have been
too late to save the Republican Party from
Trump, and if it wasn’t, it may have been too late to save Rubio. His
case as the Trump alternative depends not on beating Trump outright, but
on depriving him of an outright victory with delegates ahead of the
Republican convention, then wresting the nomination
from him there. Rubio’s moment of truth comes on March 15, when Florida
votes. If he can’t win the Sunshine State, his campaign is likely over.
Trump
leads in polls there so far, and he taunted Rubio by holding his
election-night celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Backed by a meek Chris Christie,
Trump boasted, joked, meandered, argued, and cajoled, taking questions
from reporters and taking shots at Rubio. While Trump could have won
more states, and he could have won by larger margins, the victories for
both Rubio and Cruz mean neither man seems likely
to leave the race. So far, division among Republicans has served Trump
well.
Sanders
called it an early night, capitalizing on his victory in Vermont. He
gave a speech that almost sounded like a requiem for his impressive run.
“This campaign is
not just about electing a president; it is about transforming America,”
he said. “It is about making our great country the nation that we know
it has the potential to be. It is about dealing with some unpleasant
truths that exist in America today and having
he guts to confront those truths.”
Yet
Sanders aides promised to fight on to the convention, and later results
showed that he had won several states. In addition to Oklahoma, Sanders
won in Colorado and
in Minnesota—a state he’d campaigned in heavily, as he did in the
Sooner State. But he lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state
where he’d concentrated his energies.
Clinton,
meanwhile, didn’t quite pull off the clean sweep of non-Vermont states
that she’d hoped for, but she scored wins across the South, including in
Georgia, Virginia,
Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. She is projected to take roughly double
Sanders’s delegate total. Clinton has turned her attentions to the
general election and to Donald Trump.
“[Our]
work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being
great. We have to make America whole,” Clinton said. “I believe what we
need in America today
is more love and kindness.” She delivered some fiery lines as well. "If
you cheat your employees, exploit consumers, pollute our environment,
or rip off the taxpayers we are going to hold you accountable.”
The
story of the night remains the Republican side, though, and Trump’s
strong showing. As the dust clears Wednesday, there will be renewed
calls for both John Kasich
and Ben Carson to leave the race. Kasich insists he has no plans to go
anywhere until at least the March 15 elections, when he promises to win
Ohio and hopes Rubio loses Florida. Pressure on Kasich and Carson to bow
out is nothing new. Rubio, however, will
have to work hard to prove that he’s still a viable candidate after a
not-so-super Tuesday.
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