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Have we not all learned that this is a terrible year for broad pronouncements? The past months are littered with the failed assertions of oh-so-smart people who just knew they had everything figured out. Trump is a joke. No, wait, he’s inevitable. He’s out of control. No, now he’s more disciplined, He’s got this. No, he’s a loose cannon. Cruz has no chance to be the nominee. No, wait, now he has the inside track. His campaign operation has too many flaws. No, now they are the smart ones with the best delegate roundup skills. It’s the Year of the...

As her campaign chugs merrily along, Hillary Clinton and her people continue to walk the line between paying lip service to civil rights and standing by Clinton-era policies that were disastrous for the African-American community. Clinton has even gone so far as to admit that the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 had “unintended” negative effects in the same breath that she deflected the blame for it onto Bill. (I guess we’re supposed to forget that she stumped for it hard at the time and criticized Barack Obama for being too easy on crime as recently as...

Donald Trump no doubt had a big win in New York. He’s on track to claim nearly all of the state’s 98 delegates in a victory that saw him not only smash the 50 percent mark – which allowed him to gain extra delegates – but win nearly every region of the state. But according to the widely respected Nate Silver, writing for his political website, FiveThirtyEight, Trump is still also on track to come up short at the convention. The main question is, will he get close enough to required 1,237 that he can maneuver his way over the...

The mess the Republicans have got themselves into leaves them facing a likely landslide defeat regardless of whom they nominate for president. So while television, the press and party leaders focus on whether Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or a Sir Galahad to be named later emerges as their candidate, there is a greater, related question lurking. Does about the Republican Party have a future? Or is the Party founded in 1856 no longer Grand, just Old, falling apart, on its way to dissolution? In its 2016 campaign, the G.O.P. is squandering the political advantages of the recent tradition of changing...

Ted Cruz’s team knew that Donald Trump would run away with his native New York Tuesday. And they expect he’ll win the lion’s share of delegates at stake next week when a slate of northeastern states votes. So they’ve spent the last two weeks looking ahead, quietly laying the groundwork for a kitchen-sink campaign in a state they can’t afford to let Trump win: Indiana. The Hoosier State doesn’t vote until May 3, and Cruz certainly isn’t ignoring the contests in between. He spent time this week in both Maryland and Pennsylvania, the two states his campaign is confident will...

Sen. Al Franken dusted off his comedic chops over the weekend and took some jabs at his Senate colleague and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, declaring him “the lovechild of Joe McCarthy and Dracula.” “Republicans are in kind of a bind since their best hope for stopping Donald Trump is a guy who’s the lovechild of Joe McCarthy and Dracula,” Franken said at MinnPosts's annual variety show, MinnRoast. The event took place last Friday, with video posted on Wednesday. That wasn’t the end of it. He also quipped that “Cruz can be really hard to get along with, but I...

Republican Donald Trump’s top staffer in Iowa accused rival Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) campaign Tuesday of blatantly bribing delegates but backpedaled on the accusations when pressed for specifics. Asked on CNN whether the Cruz campaign has proved better at “gathering” delegates so far in the race, Tana Goertz, Iowa co-chair for the Trump campaign, responded they haven’t been ethically collecting delegates at all. “Oh, no, no, no, not gathering delegates, stealing, lying, and bribing people to become delegates. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear,” Goertz, a former contest on “The Apprentice,” responded with a smile. But when CNN hosts John...

Conventions were held in every Georgia Congressional district last week to choose 42 of the state’s 76 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Each district choses three delegates. In the Third District, which includes Coweta, Trump won overwhelmingly in the Presidential Preference Primary. He also overwhelmingly won Georgia. But Saturday, Ted Cruz supporters overwhelmingly were named delegates at conventions around the state. Though many of the delegates chosen Saturday are supporters of Cruz, they still have to vote for Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention on the first ballot. Under Republican party rules, the delegates are free to vote...

When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz came to the Bronx to campaign in the run-up to the New York primary, ridicule was not far away. After all, what is a Republican candidate doing in the staunchly Democratic, minority-majority northern part of New York City? What is he doing in New York State at all, when Donald Trump is nearly certain to carry the most votes and, according to market-based forecasts, has an 85 percent chance to win more than 50 percent of the vote? Why would Ted Cruz campaign in the Bronx? For someone like Cruz to campaign exactly...

“Cruz was the earliest to organize here and unquestionably had the deepest connections on the ground. His top local organizer, Bette Grande, has been supporting him for months, dating back to when Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, came to her house last September during a North Dakota campaign swing.” How do you not love this? Literally eight months ago, he was already having his father campaign in North Dakota. And not just doing events, but going to the house of top local organizers in, again, not Iowa, not New Hampshire, not South Carolina, but North Dakota. And it’s not like Ted...

Donald Trump's final push for the GOP nomination starts Tuesday in New York, where the front-runner is heavily favored over rivals Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The burning question is not whether Trump wins New York — if he doesn't, it will be among the biggest polling surprises ever — but whether Cruz and Kasich can pick up enough delegates to derail his nomination before July's convention in Cleveland. Since Trump's last victory in Arizona's March 22 primary, Cruz has won a competitive race in Wisconsin, as well as a series of sweeping victories in North Dakota,...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/04/19/new-york-primary-polls/83199858/

Donald Trump’s national field director quit late last night as the billionaire businessman made changes to his campaign apparatus on the eve of an important primary vote in New York. Stuart Jolly is a retired Army Lieutenant who came to the Trump campaign as a close ally of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski . They both worked at Americans For Prosperity and joined the Trump campaign during it’s infancy. The New York Times interprets the shake-up as a bad sign for Lewandowski: But the resignation was seen as a sign of distress among those loyal to Mr. Lewandowski about recent changes...

To refresh your memory: Washington State has 44 delegates, winner-take-most (majority takes all) proportional primary (20% threshold), with statewide and CD delegates. Closed primary (deadline to switch is next week; deadline for first-time voters is next month), but it’s all mail-in. …And, just think! Five months ago, I would have had to write another three or four sentences to explain all of that. Now I can just assume that most of you folks will be able to follow along. It’s an ill wind, huh? Anyway, it turns out that Ted Cruz has already done the work – before the deadline...

It’s safe to say each of the CNN Town Halls this week painted the remaining Republican presidential candidates in a positive light and that’s a good thing for those of us who see the number one priority as the need to defeat Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders) in November. Instead of #NeverTrump, we were reminded that #NeverHillary is a much more important objective than the need to settle scores, even if there’s good reason to carry grudges in the first place. Ted CruzAnd while it’s somewhat likely the Republican candidates’ favorability ratings could get a boost courtesy of CNN’s idea...

Donald Trump won North Carolina’s Republican primary last month, but many of the state’s GOP convention delegates elected so far prefer the second-place candidate: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. That could spell trouble for Trump if he doesn’t arrive at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July with the 1,237 delegates required to win on the first ballot. For the first round of voting, North Carolina’s delegate count must proportionately match the state’s March 15 primary results: 29 votes for Trump, 27 for Cruz, nine for John Kasich, six for Marco Rubio and one for Ben Carson. Any delegate who...

Donald Trump's campaign is going all out to win delegates in Nevada, offering to cover transportation and lodging costs for Nevada supporters who travel to Reno in mid May to participate in delegate elections. Trump's Nevada activities contradict his claim that he has deliberately declined to invest resources in the election of delegates to the Republican nominating convention in Cleveland because the process is "corrupt." "With overwhelming success throughout each county, we're in a strong position going into the state convention being held in Reno on May 14th and 15th," Charles Munoz, Trump's Nevada state director, wrote in an email...

Donald Trump could be in "big trouble" if he doesn't cinch the GOP presidential nomination on the first ballot at the party's convention in July, GOP pollster John McLaughlin said Sunday. In a "Cats Roundtable" radio interview with businessman and former GOP mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis in New York, McLaughlin said the front-runner "should win this on a first ballot." The remarks begin at about the 42:37-minute mark. "If he doesn’t, he’s in big trouble, because he’s been out-organized” by the campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, McLaughlin said. “You’ve got the Cruz campaign putting in people that may be...

In addition to winning more primaries, more convention delegates and 2 million more votes than any other Republican presidential candidate running this year, billionaire developer Donald Trump has won a significant national following with his repeated pledge, as a shrewd negotiator, “to beat China, Japan and Mexico at trade.” Trump offers a simple explanation for the problem: “Their leaders are much smarter than our leaders.” But they’re not smarter than the no-nonsense negotiator Trump: “I beat China all the time.” If that is true, then why has candidate Trump been so publicly and griping about his campaign’s having been cheated...

Virginia's 10th Congressional District Republicans today nominated their three delegates and three alternates to the Republican National Convention in July, and all three main delegates are backers of Sen. Ted Cruz (R). State Sen. Dick Black, Mick Staton (Black's son-in-law) and Beau Correll were elected as delegates, while two supporters of front-runner Donald Trump – former Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio and past 10th District chairman Howie Lind – were elected as alternates. Blaine Dunn, a Cruz supporter, was selected as the third alternate. Trump narrowly won March's GOP Primary in the commonwealth -- although Sen. Marco Rubio comfortably took...