Donald Trump’s delegate momentum is slowing down.
That’s been the goal of the anti-Trump forces since Super Tuesday. No one else had to “win”; no one else had to pass Trump. The goal was to use the four weeks in March to pull Trump far enough off of his pace to hit 1,237 delegates that by the first week of April there would be a clear path to an open convention.
And that’s exactly where we are. With his organizational defeat in North Dakota over the weekend and his thrashing in Wisconsin yesterday, Trump is now further off the pace he needs to clinch the nomination than he’s been at any point since Iowa. Is the situation pretty? No. Is prospect of a Cleveland floor fight a good one? Not by a long shot.
But “pretty” and “good” left town a long ways back. Between the dithering of the Republican candidates and elites, the enabling from certain sectors of conservative talk radio, and the boosting of $2 billion worth of free TV time from the media, this is where we are. When the costs of defeating Trumpism were small, the Republican party wasn’t interested in paying them. Now that the consequences of Trumpism’s success have become clear, Republicans have begun to ante up-even though the cost is much, much higher.
So Trump is far from inevitable. He’s likely to fall further off pace in Wyoming, though he should then rebound somewhat in New York. As you look at the map and work the calculator, even if everything were to break right for Trump, it’s difficult to see how he clinches before the final day of the primaries.
All of which is to say that the momentum is finally on the other side. Trump’s campaign looks less like a surge and more like a desperate rearguard action. When primary voting began there were eleven candidates, Trump’s support stood at about 36 percent. Today there are only three candidates left and Trump’s support has climbed perhaps 4 points.
This puts the lie to the idea that Trump speaks for some “silent majority”-which is a slander of Republicans and conservatives. In reality, he is adored by a very loud third of the party. And he has leveraged this passionate adoration into a position from which he hopes to bully the rest of the party-the actual silent majority-into submission.
The real significance of North Dakota and Wisconsin is that the path to turning back Trumpism is now not only viable, but perhaps even probable. There is no longer any reason for people who have resisted Trump’s seduction to submit.
Just as there is no longer any excuse for people not to understand what Trumpism really represents.
