The thing, with regards to Cruz’s comment that he didn’t think through, is that much of the media is based in New York, and, rightly or wrongly, he just p*ssed them off. So he just created a lot of anger in a group that have the potential to do him harm. These are the kinds of things that a Trump instinctively understands but that Cruz doesn’t until he ends up suffering the negative consequences.
Cruz definitely made a misstep with the New York values insult. Setting one group of Americans against another is a classic Obama/Alinsky tactic, and Cruz shouldn’t have gone there.