Continuing what I was talking about yesterday, South Carolina is one of the 4 “carve-out” states whose early position has somehow been assured. Unlike the other, proportional, three earlies, the Republican Party is allocating delegates along a mixed winner-taker-all scenario. 29 delegates are awarded outright to the winner of the statewide race while 21 are equally divided among 7 congressional districts. If a candidate finishes with a plurality of votes in a single district, he gets all 3 of their delegates.

What this means is that Donald Trump, with less than a third of the vote, can win 100% of the delegates.

In Nevada, it’s a collection of Democratic Non-binding Precinct Viability Caucuses. Seriously. These are followed by 17 county conventions in April, and a state convention in mid-May, at which point, someone will get some delegates. Turnout is notoriously low, as might be expected if you are electing delegates to a meeting which will elect delegates to a meeting which will elect delegates to a meeting where they and other delegates will select a nominee for President. Iowa votes somewhat along the same line: both have the 15% viability rule, for example. But unlike Iowa, you can’t poach from other groups, and it’s not the first contest in the country where candidates have been camped out for a year.   So, yawn?

For the purposes of our game this week, we’re going to keep it simple.

GOP-SC – Predict order and vote percentages of the top 5 finishers.

DEM-NV – Predict the order and percentages of the top 2 finishers.

Tie-breaker – Predict who –if anyone – other than the winner will win any delegates in SC.

~Primo

The state of the Republican race is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. I cannot recall a single instance where there were still so many people with a plausible path to nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.  And while you may think that the Democrats with their superdelegates are confusing the issue, just thank your lucky stars you’re not a Republican Presidential candidate operative.  You need Wikipedia, an abacus and a Ouija board to navigate this nonsense.

First of all, to get nominated at the convention, you have to have won 50%+1 of the delegates in at least 8 states. That rule (called Rule 40) will probably change if there are still more than two candidates standing by Cleveland, and none of them is RON Paul, whom the rule was designed to screw in 2012.

Second, not every state has bound delegates. A state needs to have some sort of caucus or primary to have their delegates be stapled to someone, rather than selected by a convention or other method the unwashed don’t participate in directly.  Also, there are a little over 100 super-type RNC delegates who are unbound.

Third, there is a mix of proportional and winner-take-all states. No state who goes after IA-NH-SC-NV and before 3/15/16 can award winner-take-all: they must be proportional according to some sort of scheme.  And the schemes all vary, including thresholds statewide, thresholds by Congressional district, no thresholds at all, a mix of some or all of the above and do you need a bicarbonate of soda yet?   If not, think about these 3/1 “Super Duper” Tuesday scenarios:

If you get 6% in Massachusetts you can have some bound delegates, and some in Virginia, but nowhere else. If you get 14% you can have some of Alaska’s 25 because their threshold is 13%, but you’re SoL for the 77 bound delegates in AR and OK (15% thresholds.)  You can get 19.5% of the vote and finish second to the Donald at 20.1% in GA, TN, TX and VT, but you needed 20% so you will get 0, and Trump will get EVERYTHING, which is about 300 bound delegates, or just under a quarter of what you need to be nominated (roughly 1250, for the GOP nom.)

Want that bicarb, now?

This nonsense continues until March 15, when things become winner-take-all-ish. Some states have winner-take-all, or winner-take-all over 50% statewide otherwise winner-take-all by district, or a mix of state-wide and district, or some plain old proportional with thresholds etc. etc. etc.

So what does all this mean? It means Donald Trump is looking REALLY GOOD right now.  But it also means that there is no reason for all of the leaders – Trump, Cruz, Rubio – plus Bush and Kasich, to drop out at this time.  So long as you’ve still got gas in the tank (money), you’ve got a narrative, and the game changes on (Just Plain) “Super” Tuesday, 3/15, when one good day can put you back in the race.

The trick is to pick your spots, based on the rules, and try to place your resources where only a small movement of the goalposts will enable you to declare a victory. So Jeb Bush may want to consider caucuses and low-threshold states, winning more delegates with fewer votes, waiting for a thinner field, but he has to outright WIN somewhere, as do they all, or Trump will be the obvious nominee after March 15, rather than a tottering front-runner.

As I see it, if anyone is going to knock him off and win outright, they have to have made it a two-horse race by the end of March. If the goal is just to deny him the nomination, and prolong the fight over a slow April (just 3 contests) then two other candidates have to emerge as winners in several states between now and March 16.  If Trump hits the Arizona primary on March 22 with a big lead and a fractured field, no one can stop him.  After that, you have just 18 races to make your 8 wins, or else be Rule 40ed in Cleveland, and hope Donald likes you as veep-nom.

Call for Speedy Alka-Seltzer!

~Primo

Justice Antonin Scalia was not even cold when Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley said that there was no way in hell that his replacement would be chosen by a black man. This immediately presents a win-win situation for Democrats in a Presidential election year, because all of a sudden, it’s turned into a national referendum on Scalia’s successor, as well as Obama’s.

Given this starting point there are only a few ways that this can play out, none of them very good for snacilbupeR. We know this part: Obama submits a nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Next, in its Constitutional role to advise and consent, the Senate can do three things: refuse to consider the appointment and leave the nominee dangling; conduct hearings but never move to a floor vote; or conduct hearings and hold a floor vote.

Here is how I see each of those scenarios playing out.

GOP refuses to consider the appointment and leaves the nominee dangling: this would be like just about every other open seat on the Federal bench. The Gerrymandered Old Party has gone into a four-corner game with a Blah Muslim Kenyan Communist Usurper President, except they are actually losing as they try to run the clock out.  Unlike the current plethora of open judgeships, the optics on this empty seat are SO BAD that it can actually affect the outcome of the November race for President, Senate and even Congress.

Right now, this is the default announced position of the party leadership. Like Wile E. Coyote at the edge of a cliff, they’ve dropped one (1) ACME Anvil towards Obama while they are still chained to it.  It’s gonna miss him entirely, but they’re gonna leave a GOP-shaped crater on the desert floor.  Winner: Dems.

GOP conducts hearings without a floor vote: Cracks have appeared among the moronic monolith, where idiots like Ron Johnson, soon-to-be-former Senator from Wisconsin, realizes he could increase that inevitability by being a complete douchebag, instead of only a regular douchebag. So he flip flops lugubriously on his prior “do less than nothing” approach.

I believe that the GOP is going to recognize the hardline approach will cost them more in the general, especially if they nominate Trump or Cruz. So we will at least get to hearings.  But refusing to pass a qualified nominee on for a floor vote would be the disaster scenario for them: they will piss off their base by not being hardline enough, while pissing off moderates and independents for still being too partisan by half.  Winner: Dems.

GOP holds a floor vote: this is the least risky set of plays for this Party in this Election, but it is still fraught with danger. To actually give a nominee an up or down vote is the bare minimum of acceptable governance for the majority of the American people.  Even if they vote an Obama nominee down by straight party lines, they will not have moved the needle much, and the pre-dead-justice narrative of the reactionary wing of the reactionary party will remain intact, without having overtly raped the Constitution.

However, I think it will still play badly in Peoria. How do you argue that the Presidential election is all about the Supreme Court, and then turn around and say, no, not really, the President doesn’t have much say at all?  Furthermore, the damage to your electoral chances was already done the minute McConnell opened his mouth.  Barring a complete disaster of epic proportions, the next President will STILL be a Democrat, and a Democrat elected on a liberal platform.  The Senate is now even more likely to flip, thanks to Wait-gate.  Winner: Dems.

If I’m a Republican Senator, and I want to actually have a chance to advise and consent, I want my party right now to dedicate itself to filling that seat with the President, and maintaining throughout the process that “it is our intention to fill that seat ASAP.” Otherwise, even the most considered and considerate hearing and vote will look like partisan obstructionism.  And if I live or die by the proposition that the NEXT President will be empowered by the American electorate to choose whomever he/ she wants to be the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, well then, I’ve just given her/him carte-blanche to put Alan Grayson (Harvard Law ’83) on the Supreme Court.

So really, the best play for Republicans is to drop the posturing nonsense, and hold hearings and floor vote(s) in complete good faith, and maybe, just maybe, do the right thing.  For once.

Winner: America!

~Primo

Good morning, salonistas! Miz Juanita Jean has been called away to deliver a symposium at Harvard’s College.   That’s Joe Harvard’s College of Beauty, which shares a post office box with Joe’s Headlight Scraping Service.   So right now, JJ isn’t looking in, but she is in looks, which is why she is highly sought after on the beauty and headlight-scraping lecture circuit.

And even if Miz JJ isn’t looking at the moment, she knows how to hit rewind on the security system she had installed after a bunch of wigs and weaves went missing, so don’t try nothing! (That was right before my cousin, Jesus Hachecristo, showed up on Halloween as a parti-colored Wookie.  Co-inky-dink?)

JJ should be back this weekend some time, with cleaner headlights, thanks to her Harvard honorarium. In the meantime, I’ll keep the shop open, and the coffee brewing, and the conversation perking.

~Primo

Last year, a woman of negotiable virtue ratted out a Columbus cop who had paid her for sex. He has admitted his sin, pleaded no contest, and will likely be sentenced to… John School.

Yes, John School, where the motto is “Semper Infidelis,” the staff lounge is the back seat, tuition is paid by the hour with a discount for all night and the team is called the Rampaging Phalluses. Competition to be team mascot is FIERCE, the bookstore can’t keep condoms in stock, prom is held at a strip club, and field trips have no chaperones at all!

Victims of human trafficking get to go to jail; the rarely-caught end users get sent to this diversion program. And cops – some of whom demand sex from detainees in order to let them go – well, they go to the Head of the Class. Check CraigsList for your syllabus.

~Primo

So it seems that Scalia was found murdered. It was inevitable, I guess, when reports started filtering out that a pillow was found “over his head.” Subsequent clarifications seem to indicate the pillow was “over”  in the sense of “above” his head, not “covering” his head. For god’s sake people! The man laid himself down because he wasn’t feeling well and never woke up from his nap. This happens SO OFTEN, that I have forsworn taking ANY naps unless there is a physician in attendance, because naps seem to be the leading cause of death for people not feeling well.

Speaking of “over his head” Donald Trump continues his “Balls and Innuendo” World Tour and comments on the “murder.” He takes his usual tack of not saying something, but implying much: I don’t know. Maybe there’s something there. I mean, it’s completely possible it’s a plot involving Hillary, Dick Cheney, and Ted Cruz’ secret Cuban-Canadian Troupe of Gymnastic Stunt Assassins, Cirque du Olé. Or maybe not.  By the way, the Clintons killed Vince Foster.  That was Yuuuuuge.

It’d be enough to drive me to drink, if I weren’t already there. I think I’ll lie down.

~Primo