Prediction: Trump will win more than 50% in New York

Although I have doubts about whether Trump can win 1237 delegates, I have little doubt that Trump wins at least 50% of the vote in New York. All recent polls show him above that, and New York will be a state, like Arizona, where Trump outperforms the polls.

In the unlikely event that Trump fails to win 50% in New York, then Trump is doomed. In addition to having to share delegates if he is unable to win 50%, it will also show that he’s too weak to win enough delegates in other states.

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The image is a screenshot from my portfolio at PredictIt.org.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, latest Trump post

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, agrees that Trump had a really bad two weeks.

Where I was wrong was forgetting that social media runs the world now. And social media has no 2D game at all. It is pure emotion. And it is not on Trump’s side.

So I will update my description of Trump bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight by saying I forgot the audience have their own torches. Collectively, those torches are bigger than Trump’s flamethrower. And the audience left their seats and attacked, using pure emotion, persuasion, and repetition. Trump is surrounded and outnumbered.

Adams thinks that Trump will be able to use his Master Persuader powers to recover, but he’s not sure how he will do that.

The Cruz monster grows stronger

There’s a WaPo article about Cruz’s new successes getting his people selected as delegates in Colorado and North Dakota. Cruz isn’t just outmaneuvering Trump, he’s outmaneuvering the GOPe people who think that by stopping Trump, that allows them to get a moderate Republican nominated. (People are talking about Paul Ryan this week but it could any of a number of moderate Republicans, even Susana Martinez.) The GOPe is going to discover that by stopping Trump, they only enabled the Cruz monster. Nate Silver, although he has always been wrong about Trump, agrees with me that the GOPe won’t be able to stop Cruz at a contested convention. Nate Silver is clueless about the mindset of blue collar whites who support Trump, but I’m sure he understands the political inside game very well.

In yesterday’s WaPo, there’s an article explaining why they believe Cruz will be righteously schlonged by the Democratic candidate if he wins the Republican nomination. Cruz is starting to be noticed by the MSM. Until this week, the MSM assumed he had no chance of winning the nomination so covering him closely wasn’t that important. That has changed.
For example, you will hear more about Cruz’ belief that women who were raped shouldn’t be allowed to have an abortion.

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Cruz was very smart to refuse to put on a cheesehead hat. Nothing ruins a candidate’s image of gravitas worse than wearing a stupid hat. Dukakis lost the election to Bush 41 because he wore a stupid-looking helmet while driving around in a tank.

Anti-Trump super PACs and Wisconsin

There was a massive amount of anti-Trump advertising in Wisconsin. In addition to $1.4 million spent by Cruz, $2 million was spent by anti-Trump Super PACs. And there was also probably a big wave of last-minute ads not accounted for in yesterday’s news.

Where is the anti-Trump money coming from?

The “Club for Growth” is a super PAC with the goal of keeping Republican Party policies friendly to huge corporate interests and the super-rich. Of course they have the usual claims about why having low taxes on the richest Americans trickles down to Joe Schmoe, in reality they don’t care about Joe Schmoe. Why are they wasting their money on trying to take down Trump? Besides the ickiness of Trump’s PROLE demeanor, they are probably afraid that he might actually get elected, implement his anti-immigration policies, and significantly increase labor costs (which would be a big boon to Joe Schmoe but hurt the super-rich).

And then there the Our Principles PAC, which is run by a lot of Republican insiders who previously worked for Jeb Bush, Romney, etc. A big source of funding is Marlene Ricketts, wife of billionaire J. Joe Ricketts who became a billionaire by owning discount brokerages which eventually became Ameritrade and then T.D. Ameritrade.

The other big-player in Our Principles PAC is billionaire Meg Whitman, who was the CEO of eBay and then became CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

So we see that Our Princples PAC is also backed by super-rich Big Finance and Silicon Valley types. In both cases, they probably want Hillary to win to prevent Trump from implementing his anti-immigrant policies. Plus there are some Republican types who are either duped into thinking they are “helping” the party, or they are just so familiar with the Republican Party that bends over to huge corporations and the super-rich that they can’t imagine any other way.

Wisconsin results

It looks like Cruz crushed Trump much WORSE than the polls showed. I’ve noticed this effect in many previous contests where polls showed Cruz tied with Trump or ahead. Cruz always seems to beat the polls in those situations. On the other hand, Trump beat the polls by just as big of an amount in Arizona.

As I wrote yesterday, Wisconsin is only 6% black. That explains why Sanders won and Trump lost. That, and midwesterners don’t seem to like Trump very much. I look forward to Trump crushing Cruz in New York.

Wisconsin primary!

Polls close at 9:00 PM EDT (8:00 PM local time). I wish Trump good luck, and I hope I’m wrong but he may only win 2 out of 8 CDs. Very bad loss for Trump if that happens. Maybe yesterday’s ARG poll showing Trump with a 10% lead over Cruz indicates that opinion changed? But probably the poll is just wrong because of a small sample size.

Map of Wisconsin CDs.

Live Wisconsin results at CNN Election Center.

Trump most like Eisenhower, not Hitler

While the MSM is overwrought that Trump is the next Hitler, it occurs to me that the past politician Trump is most like is actually Eisenhower. Eisenhower was, strangely enough, the last president who wasn’t a professional politician before becoming president. Eisenhower cracked down on illegal immigration just like Trump says he wants to do.

So Trump can’t possibly be like Hitler when he’s actually like the general of the army that DEFEATED Hitler.

Trump-haters will try to point out that Eisenhower said nice things about Muslims, but that was before Muslim terrorism existed. You can be damn sure that Ike wouldn’t have let any Muslims into the country if they were blowing stuff up back then like they do today.

Not enough blacks in Wisconsin for Trump to win

There have been six recent Wisconsin polls, and every one of the six polls shows Cruz beating Trump. Furthermore, Cruz has shown that he gains support in actual voting when polls are close. (On the other hand, Trump far outperformed the polls in Arizona, but that’s a state where Cruz was never close in polling).

The problem in Wisconsin is that there just aren’t enough blacks in Wisconsin. Trump won in Illinois and Michigan which are both 14% black, and he essentially tied with Cruz in Missouri which is 11% black, so 11% is probably the threshold figure for Trump. Wisconsin is only 6% black.

I thought that Wisconsin was a Rust Belt state and that Trump is strong in the Rust Belt, but Trump isn’t strong enough to counter the absence of black people.

This is bad news because Indiana is another state in doubt. Indiana is only 9% black which is below the 11% threshold, and Indiana lacks other characteristics which would make it pro-Trump. If Trump loses both Wisconsin and Indiana, he will not have enough delegates to reach 1237.

Rotten on Cruz (#LoseWithCruz)

The commenter “Rotten” wrote this comment (which I think is worthy of being highlighted in its own blog post):

Cruz is running as Romney, but with a different equally creepy religion.

Romney lost because he started out with 47% of the country against him, he could not effectively respond to Democrat smears, and because there are no evangelicals in the swing states he needed. This year, demographics are worse for the Republican and there is no reason to believe Cruz will win any states Romney wouldn’t. He’s a weaker candidate.

Cruz has not gotten any negative attention at all from Democrats so far, which is why polls are bogus. They will destroy him.

Those voters who stayed home? Cruz narrative is that they were TrueCons repulsed by Romney. He’s wrong, those are the Trump voters.

Look at Wisconson vote tallies. Supposedly the Dem race is also competitive, so this will give a good indication of the strength of Rep vs Democrat. Trump’s polling numbers are sky high for a Republican among independents and Democrats, and if he could get a Republican backing, then he could win the state. Cruz will win the republican opposition vote that always loses in a state that has gone Dem in the last 6 elections (and the demographics keep getting worse).

As for lose with Trump, a lot of that is just blue pill thinking. “You can’t win unless you do things a certain way.”

Mitt Romney’s religion is definitely weird, but Romney did an excellent job of not talking about it and keeping it out of the mainstream media (which finds it icky to talk about people’s private beliefs as long as they maintain a proper patrician attitude about it). Cruz, on the other hand, preaches his religious beliefs like a preacher.

Scott Adams, HBD believer

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, writes in his blog:

We have some control over our intelligence, ambition, and character, but not much. On the whole, dumb people stay dumb, lazy people stay lazy, and sociopaths (for example) stay evil. Biology is hard to overcome.

. . .

I was born ambitious. I have no memory of being any other way. Consistent with that observation, I have met lazy people who seem to have been born that way. Does my genetic luck with ambition give me the right to shame the people born without it? I don’t think so. I just got lucky on that one dimension.