Tuesday, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich will face off in the last mega-primary Tuesday. The “Acela” contest – named for the Amtrak that runs up the East Coast, will feature decisions in Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
And for several candidates, it may – pun intended – be the end of the line.
Tuesday’s contests are huge for Democrats; they have 409 delegates up for grabs, and with Bernie Sanders coming off a 16-point loss to Clinton in New York, it’s probably the last chance he’ll have to make a successful argument for his continued presence in the race (aside from just making it that much harder for Hillary Clinton). After a rough weekend, thinking deeply in Vermont (and, probably, occasionally crying into the depths of a quart of Ben & Jerry’s New York Triple Fudge Chunk), Bernie, who is running behind in every single contest, will likely face a strong defeat.
With Clinton already describing her “vision” for a running mate (everyone from Tim Kaine to Deval Patrick have been mentioned – and Elizabeth Warren, if she’s willing to share the peace pipe with Clinton after ignoring the elction altogether), and experts claiming Bernie Sanders should go back to lecturing undergrads on the value of socialized medicine, Wednesday could be a sad day in colleges and co-ops across the country.
For Republicans, Tuesday is likely to demonstrate whether we are looking at a straight shot to the nomination for Donald Trump. With 172 delegates at stake, Ted Cruz has the opportunity to make inroads into Trump’s delegate count the old fashioned way, but Trump is running away in the polls. He has a 37 point lead in Delaware, a 20 point lead in Connecticut, an 18 point lead in blue collar Pennsylvania, a 14 point lead in Maryland, and a 13 point lead in Rhode Island. Ted Cruz’s only hope at this point is that John Kasich, who fares better with moderates than Cruz, can hold Trump to single-digit wins across the Eastern seaboard, by picking off Trump’s more liberal supporters in the final days.
Regardless, it’s unlikely Trump – unless he wins massively in Indiana and California – will survive to hit 1,237. With Kasich and Cruz now mathematically eliminated, small gains for Trump means that we’re almost certainly headed for a contested convention.
For Ted Cruz, this means he’ll have to spend the next week beating back the narrative that Trump’s New York victory (and, likely subsequent Acela corridor victories) mean he’s not useful only as a stalking horse for an as-yet-unnamed Republican Presidential candidate.
Word is flowing from insider GOP circles that Cruz is being taken for a ride, and Heat Street sources close to the Cruz campaign say that moral is waning a bit as Ted Cruz and his team begin to grapple with the idea they’ve been used to keep Trump out of the nomination. The word “fading” has popped up in reference to the Cruz campaign on multiple occasions this week, and while Trump is already pre-complaining about the Pennsylvania selection process, Pennsylvania is the largest of the Acela primary states, and likely to give Trump a big boost into Indiana and California, the two remaining major primaries. Indiana bans public polling, but the private polls made available to the three Republican campaigns this week show Trump making gains. Just three weeks ago, Cruz led by almost double digits.
But the #Primary500, as Indiana residents are calling it, is still a ways off. And Donald Trump is making no plans. According to Bill Murray – yes, that Bill Murray – Trump is already scheduling a golf outing for “when this is all over.”
That sounds less like he’s enthusiastic about taking the White House with a big, splashy Republican National Convention speech and more like he’s planning to retire to his gold-plated salon and forget any of this ever happened.
Ted Cruz can only hope.
