Cook Political-Trump Will Be the Nominee. Period. [View all]

[brooklynite]

Cook Political Report:

This election year has been rife with conspiracy theories. Most of them, of course, have been peddled by Donald Trump. The most recent - that Trump is somehow going to be denied the nomination in Cleveland - comes from establishment and inside-the-Beltway types who should know better.

In the wake of recent polling showing a “Trump slump” and record high disapproval ratings (he hit 70 percent unfavorable in the Washington Post/ABC News poll), the “establishment” Twitter-verse has exploded with the theories of how Trump will be dumped by his party before the RNC convention in July. I have heard the same version of this theory from otherwise rational, politically deft insiders on the left. I talked with a high-ranking Democrat the other night who joked, with a level of seriousness that surprised me, that Trump will be pulled from the ballot before the fall, leaving the GOP with a stronger candidate to face Hillary Clinton. Surely, goes the thinking of these theorists, GOP voters can’t look at these numbers and think that Trump can still win? Well, yes, actually, they do.

As someone who sometimes gets caught in the insulated allure of Twitter, it’s important for me and those of us who spend our days inside the campaign machine, to remember who and what “normal” voters are. Most voters don’t look at the RealClearPolitics polling averages. Nor do they spend their day digging through cross-tabs and the Electoral College map. More important, if we learned anything from this primary campaign season, it’s that a big chunk of the GOP base is voting against everything that the GOP leadership stands for. They didn’t accept the premise of the 2013 RNC Autopsy that “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform” – but actively and knowingly supported a candidate who argued that we should deport immigrants and build a wall to keep them out. They don’t like, trust, or believe what their leaders or the “MSM” has been peddling. Why would they listen to their entreaties now?


More important, as I have written many times before, an “Anti-Trump” campaign can’t succeed without a “Pro-Another Candidate” to replace him. The most obvious choices to oust Trump at the convention – Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz – have said they aren’t interested in putting up a fight. Leaders of the #NeverTrump movement have failed to produce a third-party option. You can’t have a coup without a replacement. Period.