Notwithstanding all the hullabaloo, the 2016 presidential race on the Democratic side is actually playing out pretty normally. An established party leader with center-left views has been challenged from the left by an underdog candidate – a Senator, not a total outsider, but still an insurgent – who draws in progressives and younger voters and starts polling better than expected. We’ve seen this movie before: Johnson/Kennedy, Gore/Bradley, Clinton/Obama. (Even Hoynes/Bartlet on The West Wing, for that matter.) Eventually one side wins, the candidates make up, and everybody moves on. It’s all good.
The Republicans, on the other hand…
If there was any doubt the GOP was fracturing over the presidential race, those doubts vanished on Thursday as Mitt Romney got up on stage and blasted Donald Trump – after announcing a “major” speech the day before, to make sure everyone was paying attention. Where will things go from here? Romney called for Republican voters to do whatever it takes to keep Trump from clinching the GOP nomination – but even if that strategy works, the best-case scenario is a brokered convention in July, where delegates will bicker and bargain on national TV with no clear outcome. Should Trump win the nomination, many Republican voters will likely abstain; if anyone else wins the nomination, many Trump voters will likely abstain – assuming Trump doesn’t try to run as an independent, which he’s already threatened to do.
And establishment Republicans could even run one of their own as an independent as well – Romney, say – in the event Trump gets the nomination. That would effectively concede the presidential race in the hope that anti-Trump Republicans (who might otherwise just stay home) would show up to vote – and cast ballots not just for President, but for the House and Senate and state races too. (Giving Hillary Clinton the White House in exchange for six more years of Richard Burr, in other words.) Regardless, Republicans in every race are now going to have to decide whether they’re pro-Trump or anti-Trump, and they’re going to severely alienate a lot of their potential base no matter how they answer.
All of which would be fascinating and exciting, if only it didn’t involve a candidate who’s spent the last year pandering to racists, stirring up fear and hatred, bullying and insulting his way through debates, and encouraging his supporters to beat up people who disagree.
What can we expect for the rest of the primary season, especially now that early voting has begun and North Carolinians finally have their crack at the polls? I spoke with Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, who’s been following the 2016 race as closely as anybody since it all began approximately three hundred years ago.
