CI#4: Presidential Candiates

The 2016 Presidential primary race is coming towards its close.  The voting has started and the fields have shrunken. The question that remain are not about who the democratic nominee will be, the odds have always been in Hilary Clinton's favor, she has all but secured the nomination. The question is will Donald Trump win enough delegates to avoid a contested convention? 

For Donald to secure the primary he has to secure a total of 1237 delegates at the moment he has 673. That leaves another 664 for him to win uncontested.  The other two republican candidates are gaming for a brokeredconvention.

One of the three remaining candidates is John Kasich.  Kasich is the governor of Ohio and until the primary in Ohio, he had not won a single state.  By staying in the race he was able to slim beat trump in Ohio, which deprived trump of 66 delegates.  While Kasich does not even have a mathematically possible shot at securing the nomination even if he wins every delegate left available he will continue to run.  This is in an attempt to take delegates away from Trump. 

Kasich is considered the last establishment candidate in the republic race.  The establishment hates Ted Cruz but they also hate trump.  It is a strange mix of individuals left and republican elites do not know what to do.  It seems kind of cheap for Kasich to stay in the race when his only goal is to try to force a brokered convention. 

A brokered convention is when Republican Parties delegates decide who will be the nomination.  This is how a normal election works, but in the brokered election delegates are protected to change who they vote for from what the people they represent have already decided.  It is a vary complicated process apparently the party rules transcend the states rules so delegates do not have to follows the states decision once there is a contested convention. Delegates can even vote for someone who was not even running the primary, for example the name Paul Ryan has come up for a potential nominee if there is a brokered convention.  

These contested conventions have happened in the past but usually when there are two candidates who are neck and neck, not when there is just one candidate that everyone is trying to stop.  It would surely be political suicide for the Republican Party to deny trump the nomination if he continues to clearly be the front-runner but just falls a few delegates shy of the magic number.  

It is surely a strange election cycle this year on both sides.  While the political elites of the country do not like Trump the people have shown they support him more than the other candidates.  Even if there is brokered convention I think the establishment will just bite there tongue and go with Trump.

There is not much going on for the democratic side except for the fact of how much support Bernie Sanders has managed to gather.  It is clear he will not be the nominee but it still raises question will Bernie’s supports rally to get politicians like Bernie in office, or is this a short lived phenomenon.  This same question can be asked about the Trump phenomenon.  Has he actually changed the Republican Party or is he just running at the perfect time and was in the perfect position being a reality TV star and well known across the nation?

There is still a lot of drama to be had in this election cycle, but as the primaries just keep rolling it will be interesting to see if established politicians will start to embrace Trump or continue there Hail Mary of an attack against his everything.