by
N. Peter Kramer
‘What a Super Tuesday’, she said at a victory rally in Miami. Donald Trump rode the same day a powerful tide of voter fury to victories across the US, ending the campaign season’s most momentous day of balloting as the unrivaled favourite for the Republican presidential nomination. But opponent Ted Cruz still sees glimmers of hope after winning 3 states including the biggest, Texas. And not everybody in the Grand Old Party is happy with Trump’s triumphal march in the direction of the Republican Convention
Minority voters for Hillary
The contests on Super Tuesday were well suited to Hillary Clinton’s strengths: her popularity with minority voters, her political kinship with Southern Democrats from her two decades with Bill in Arkansas and her success in delegate-rich Texas in 2008 when she beat opponent Obama. She won sizable victories in ‘her’ Arkansas as well as Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, with especially big margins in counties with many blacks.
While even the poorest showing would not stop Senator Sanders from the presidential race, Mrs Clinton was looking already past her party rival to the leading Republican candidate, Donald Trump. She said being ‘very disappointed’ that he initially refused to disavow support from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. ‘We can’t let organisations and individuals that hold deplorable views about what it means to be an American be given any credence at all’ she told reporters in Minnesota, ‘I am going to continue to speak out about bigotry wherever I see it or hear about it’.
Trump owns Super Tuesday, but Cruz sees glimmers of hope
The billionaire’s Super Tuesday rout extended from New England to the Deep South, but he resoundingly lost the crown jewel Texas to Senator Ted Cruz who also defeated Trump in Oklahoma and Alaska.
Super Tuesday results exposed some vulnerabilities from Trump: he lost late-deciding voters in many states by wide margins to rival Marco Rubio, a sign that the Florida senator may have had some impact with his withering assault on Trump’s character. In Virginia, one of the biggest of the 11 states holding primaries or caucuses on Super Tuesday and a critical election battleground, Trump’s win was much narrower than the latest polls indicated.
Cruz’s three victories breathed new life into his beleaguered campaign after a string of defeats. Meanwhile, Rubio won Minnesota’s caucuses, giving him his first victory. Delegates in Tuesday’s contests were awarded proportionally and by congressional district: now inner takes them all!
What’s next in the race
For the Republicans Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine are on in a few days, followed by Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi three days later. But the most consequential events will come on March 15. Voters will cast ballots that day in five large states: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Important is also that on March 15 Republican Party rules shift so that states awarding all of their delegates to the winner. The end of that day it will be clear: is Donald Trump really on his way to the Republican nomination in Cleveland (18-21 July).
The Democrats have the same time important states as Michigan, Florida, Kansas and New York on the roll. Clinton’s strategy is clear; her most urgent and trickiest task now will be not to tear down Mr Sanders but to show him respect so that his legions of young voters and lower- income white supporters will ultimately embrace her candidacy. But this goal will met with sustained criticism from the Sanders camp about Hillary’s heavy paid speeches in Wall Street.
Democrats falling in line; Republicans falling apart
The steady and seemingly inexorable unification of the Democratic Party behind Hilary Clinton stands in striking contrast with the widening schisms within the Republican Party over the dominance of Donald Trump.
Mrs Clinton has won already most of the super delegates, the party- establishment; that could be a deciding factor in the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia (25-28 July). On the contrary the establishment of the GOP doesn’t show much happiness at the moment but has been blind too long for Trump’s success. The negative reactions now are not only late but also weak. His serious opponents Cruz and Rubio stay in the race; so anti-Trump votes are divided, it will profit him. It looks that ‘The Donald’ is unstoppable; unless all of a sudden a new candidate will rise: Bloomberg maybe?
