Trump Candidacy Stoked by Clinton

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 31, 2016 The news­pa­pers, air­waves, and In­ter­net are alive with pre­dic­tions that the polit­ic­al tide has turned against Don­ald Trump and that he may end up a loser in Clev­e­land. I con­tin­ue to be­lieve that Trump will not be the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­ee, but it ob­vi­ously is a close call. If he falls only a couple dozen del­eg­ates short of the re­quired 1,237, he likely will be awar­ded the Re­pub­lic­an crown. My bet is that there will be enough del­eg­ates com­mit­ted to oth­er can­did­ates or un­bound to keep the real-es­tate mogul well short of the ma­gic num­ber. Both pub­lic and private polling in Wis­con­sin go­ing in­to Tues­day’s key primary show Ted Cruz with a double-di­git lead over Trump, with John Kasich well be­hind. The big ques­tion is wheth­er Cruz can cap­ture enough con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts with their win­ner-take-all del­eg­ate al­loc­a­tions to slow Trump’s pace. The New York­er has cap­tured 758 or 48 per­cent of the del­eg­ates chosen so far, even though he has won only 37.1 per­cent of the votes in primar­ies and