After an unexpectedly protracted primary fight, Democrats are rallying around Hillary Clinton as their presumptive nominee at the same time Republican elected officials are publicly expressing their doubts about Donald Trump.
President Obama kicked off this reunification process by finally endorsing Clinton after trying to maintain a respectful neutrality during the heat of the primaries. Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., lent their support to Clinton shortly afterward.
“If Warren endorses, it’s all over,” a D.C.-based Democratic strategist told the Washington Examiner before the progressive darling made her announcement. His reasoning was that Warren appeals to the wing of the party that was most resistant to Clinton.
This is a major reversal in a relatively short period of time. Trump secured a majority of delegates before Clinton and his last major opponents for the nomination dropped out in May, while Bernie Sanders was still challenging Clinton and frequently winning states.
As recently as Tuesday night, Sanders beat Clinton in Montana and North Dakota while only narrowly losing South Dakota and New Mexico. Trump had notched an endorsement from the last holdout among Republican congressional leaders with the backing of House Speaker Paul Ryan.
But Sanders’ wins were overshadowed by decisive losses in California and New Jersey, the two biggest delegate prizes. The Associated Press had actually calculated Clinton had enough delegates to win the nomination the night before. She came out of Tuesday night with a majority of pledged delegates and a 3.7 million-vote lead in the popular vote to go with her huge advantage among superdelegates.
Meanwhile, Trump was being rebuked by members of his own party for comments he made about the federal judge handling the Trump University case. The backlash over his comments that Judge Gonzalo Curiel had a conflict of interest due to his Mexican heritage led some Republicans to rescind their endorsement and caused others to publicly reprimand him.
“This is something that needs to be condemned. That comment is beyond the pale. That’s not political correctness — suggesting someone can’t do their job because of their race or ethnicity, that’s not a politically incorrect thing to do,” said Ryan, who faced a new wave of criticism from anti-Trump conservatives for endorsing the presumptive GOP nominee. “That’s just a wrong thing to say, and I hope he gets that.”
Ryan had described Trump’s remark as a “textbook example of a racist comment” even as he maintained the businessman was still a better choice than Clinton.
“I think it’s time for him to act like a serious presidential candidate,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell has said it is obvious Trump doesn’t know the issues well, expressed concern he will alienate a generation of Latino voters and refused to rule out rescinding his endorsement if Trump didn’t change.
Sanders has pledged to remain in the race at least until this week’s primary in Washington, D.C. He hasn’t yet ruled out trying to force a contested convention on the Democratic side this summer in Philadelphia, but his recent public statements suggest he understands the end is near and is willing to work with Clinton for Democratic victory in November.
“We’ll never support a candidate who’s major theme is bigotry,” he said. “We will not allow Donald Trump to become president of the United States.”
While Trump’s nomination is a virtual certainty, some supporters of Ted Cruz and other candidates have seized on the recent controversies to revive rumblings about a contested convention on the Republican side. Since Trump now has easily cleared the 1,237-delegate threshold for winning a majority on the first ballot, most of these scenarios involve improbable rules changes.
But that this is being discussed reveals a problem for Trump. While he has made considerable progress among rank-and-file Republican voters since becoming the presumptive nominee, conservative and GOP elites remain deeply skeptical of his candidacy. Even those who have endorsed him seem poised to abandon him at a moment’s notice and #NeverTrump conservatives are still looking for opportunities to dethrone him.
Clinton’s edge in party backing will help her build a considerable fundraising advantage and will counteract Trump’s ability to flood the zone in earned media, as she uses relentless message discipline reinforced from as high up as the White House.
By calming some of their divisions and helping them warm to Trump, Republicans helped Trump come back from a double-digit deficit in the national polls to actually lead Clinton by a razor-thin margin. Democrats hope that Sanders voters coming home will achieve similar results for Clinton right as GOP fissures are re-emerging. Already, Clinton has reclaimed the lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average and her margin is growing.
Trump has responded by giving more prepared speeches and reining his rally barnburners slightly. He specifically condemned racism in his prepared remarks to a Washington, D.C., gathering of social conservatives Friday. He has reduced his criticisms of fellow Republicans and upped the attacks on Clinton. And he finally released a statement arguing that his “Mexican heritage” comments were not a categorical criticism of Mexican-Americans but specific to Curiel.
Republicans welcome the changes but worry Trump won’t have the self-control to continue it. Clinton has honed her message that Trump is too ill-tempered to be trusted with the presidency and is only interested in representing a narrow set of Americans.
Trump has vowed to hit back at the Clintons and their “politics of personal enrichment.” Whether skittish Republicans amplify that message to the same degree Democrats can be counted on to repeat Clinton’s remains to be seen.
