A Brief Review

March 25, 2016

The presidential race is down to five with a chance. It’s time for a brief review.

Republicans have a clear frontrunner in Donald Trump and two also-rans, Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Cruz and Kasich are mostly interested in preventing Trump from getting to the GOP convention with a majority of delegates; they have little chance of winning outright.

So far it’s working. Trump leads in popular vote by a huge margin but has not won 50 percent of the delegates. In order to reach the necessary majority, he’ll need to win nearly 60 percent of the remaining available delegates, a significant but not impossible challenge.

The “GOP establishment,” whoever that is, perpetually gathers in hushed meetings at exclusive resorts to figure out a way to stop the Trump mini-juggernaut. Their biggest fear is not that Trump is a vulgar bully without any apparent understanding of much of anything other than the ability to garner attention, it’s that he isn’t a true conservative.

Trump’s current incarnation sounds like a conservative. In fact, on many issues he sounds like Cruz, the supposed darling of “true” conservatives.

They are both opposed to immigration reform, want to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants and, of course, build a wall, though both previously supported immigration reform. Both want to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, and replace it with something on which the details are foggy. Both have pledged to bomb ISIS, though neither seems to know exactly where they are (in a recent interview with the Washington Post Trump sounded considerably more non-interventionist).

Both are pro-life, though Trump was prochoice not that many years ago. An argument can be made that Cruz is likely smarter, a more devious campaigner and less inclined to say something bizarre.

Neither have a solution for Social Security or Medicare.

John Kasich has become the de facto Republican moderate by virtue of the fact that he has not yet hurled insults at his opponents, and, as governor of Ohio, he accepted expanded Medicaid, a key element of the ACA.

Actually, he was considered one of the most conservative members of the House while in Congress and has been nothing close to a moderate as governor of Ohio.

He’s an adamant advocate for overturning Roe v. Wade (he has signed nearly a dozen pieces of legislation attempting some form of abortion restriction). He’s not yet suggested we build a wall or bomb anybody but has promised a “robust” military and a continuation of our presence in the Middle East.

He has no solutions for Social Security or Medicare.

The race is all but over on the Democratic side, though Bernie Sanders still has a mathematical chance to win. Hillary Clinton is nearly halfway to the needed delegate majority.

Clinton has amassed a 300-delegate lead as a result of primaries and another 500 so-called super delegates, so her actual lead is more than 800 delegates (Democrats have a cute system in which they’ve added 715 of these super people, elected officials and party bigwigs who are independent of the primary process and can vote for any candidate they choose come convention time).

She favors comprehensive immigration reform, maintaining and expanding the ACA, more limited military action, pay equity for women... the basic Democratic platform with some modifications.

She’s offered no reasonable solution for Social Security and Medicare.

Bernie Sanders is on a mission he and his supporters believe is the beginning of a political revolution. He’ll have to pull off a minor political miracle to get that started because he continues falling farther and farther behind Clinton. He’s hoping to stay close enough that primaries on the west coast, especially California, will matter.

He is for comprehensive immigration reform, favors cradle-to-grave single-payer health care, free public college, significantly increased Social Security benefits, paid parental leave... a cornucopia of new and expanded benefits. He intends to pay for it by taxing the rich, taxing hedge fund operations, taxing big banks and Wall Street firms and taxing almost everybody else.

He proposes expansion of both Social Security and Medicare.

The various proposals of all five current major candidates include budget deficits or long-term increases in the debt. All of them would have us spending more blood and treasure in the Middle East, though Sanders would like us to get out more quickly than the others.

Unless Clinton is arrested or Trump finally says or does something so outrageous even his supporters can’t ignore it, they are likely to be their partys’ nominees.

Republicans now hoping for a convention in which Trump can be stopped do so at the risk of their party. They ignore the ferocity and loyalty of his already distrustful supporters.

It’s how third parties get formed and how presidential races are lost.