Sunday, March 13, 2016

II

Super Tuesday II, March 15, is coming, and it's no longer obvious that Donald Trump is going to clinch the nomination. In terms of delegate count, Trump currently leads second-placer Ted Cruz by only 90 delegates: 460 to 370, or a factor of 1.24 to 1.

Up for grabs on the 15th:

Florida: 99 delegates
Illinois: 69 delegates
Missouri: 52 delegates
North Carolina: 72 delegates
Ohio: 66 delegates
Northern Mariana Islands: 9 delegates

That's a total of 367 delegates. Republicans need 1,237 delegates to win the nomination. Trump is more than a third of the way there. Is he bogging down now, finally, or is he, if anything, only just getting started? We'll know more by Wednesday. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, is looking tired and sounding increasingly bitter: in a recent interview exchange, now going viral, he was recorded as saying that supporting whoever the GOP nominee is would be increasingly difficult.

Dr. Vallicella, meanwhile, argues that if you're planning to abstain, you're basically throwing your vote away for Hillary to capitalize on. He can keep his game-theory analysis; as far as I'm concerned, voting is an exercise of conscience, and my conscience tells me that neither Trump nor Hillary deserves my vote in November.


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