Wednesday, May 04, 2016

Arcana Imperii

Or, How Trump Got His Butthurt On.

Colorado, along with a handful of other states and territories, does not hold a caucus or a primary to determine how many delegates go to which GOP candidates. Instead, the Colorado Republican Party started voting on delegates at the State Party Convention, which was held last weekend.

Here's how it worked (brace yourselves, it's gonna get NUTS):

Colorado has seven Congressional districts, and there are three delegates chosen for each. That's 21 so far. They also get to select another 13 statewide delegates.

With me so far?

So on Saturday about 8,000 Party faithful gathered to listen to 600+ delegate candidates speak (for 20 seconds each) in an effort to convince said Party faithful to make them a delegate. After the gabfest, it's time to vote, yay!

In this kind of foofaraw, fortune favors whoever has the best organization and the best ground game. For good or bad, that was Senator Rafael Cruz who toted away with all the delegates, leaving none for Donald (t)Rump and John Kasich(who?).

It wasn't a good weekend for Trumpy. His organization was a bit slipshod - many ballot lists were incorrect and new ones had to be xeroxed on the fly (and still contained errors). So you might expect that he dusted himself off, straightened his tie, basked in the fact that he still has a huge lead in delegates, and move on, right?

Come on. We're talking about Donald Trump here, dear readers.

Trump failed to make an appearance at any of the Sunday chat shows for the first time in about four months, leaving it to his Chief Fixer to blather on about 'irregularities' and 'Gestapo tactics' perpetrated by the Cruz campaign, up to and including alleging that the 8000 or so in Colorado had been threatened by the Cruzites.

There may, in fact, be something to this, but it's rather telling that in other states where Trump lost because of a sloppy ground game (Wisconsin, Louisiana) he and his staff started accusing other campaigns of dirty tricks. In fact, he's suing the Louisiana GOP. Just what we need; more frivolous lawsuits.

Now we hear that two of Trump's kids, the rancid fruit of his loins, failed to register to vote on time. They won't be able to vote for Big Daddy in the New York primary, which ought to make the next family get-together a lot of fun if Trump loses in New York.

***

Caucuses are not primaries; of the two caucuses are the least democratic.

In a primary, you go in and vote. In a caucus, you sit around and talk with people for a preset time limit - sort of like speed dating without having to buy dinner - at just be at a certain table at a certain time to get counted.

Name recognition seems to have the best chance here. Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore only got 12 votes in the Iowa caucus - eh? What's that? You never heard of Jim Gilmore, and didn't know he'd run for the GOP Presidential nomination? That's okay, neither did anyone else, it appears.

Clinton won in Iowa where the tall corn grows, and Sanders seems to do well in the western caucus states. Case in point: Wyoming, where he vacuumed up all the delegates.

This still leaves him lagging behind Clinton, and with a statistically reachable but still very hard goal in order to get the Great Green Weenie.

Clinton's task is a bit tougher, particularly because of her husband's predilection for occasionally letting his mouth override his ass.

Still, New York looms, with 291 Democratic and 95 Republican delegates at stake.

We shall see.

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