Donna Brazile
He won the Indiana primary and the media reaction was swift, declarative and breathless. David Brody tweeted a picture of a mock newspaper with the headline “The Fat Lady Sings.”
Carl Bernstein, whose reporting with Bob Woodward took down Richard Nixon, appeared on CBS News and declared Trump to be “a revolutionary.” (Pause, while President Washington spins in his grave over that characterization.)
Before the Indiana ballot machines were placed back in storage, my inbox was flooded with headlines from the nation’s most prestigious, iconic newspapers, every one of which declared Trump to be the Republican Party nominee. Most of these headlines came before Ted Cruz and John Kasich ended their campaigns.
Though Trump’s Indiana win sets him coasting to the nomination, he still has to win California’s and New Jersey’s June 7 primaries to reach the “magic number” of 1,237 delegates that would clinch the nomination. Despite the press declaration, it was Cruz’s and Kasich’s withdrawals that almost guarantee Trump’s nomination.
Press coverage was different on the Democratic side. The Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, was barely mentioned. “Sanders’ Win Keeps His Campaign Alive,” the Los Angeles Times declared.
CBS News summed up the Democrats’ Indiana primary with “Despite Indiana Loss, Clinton Intends to Rally Support Against Trump.” These kinds of headlines bumped heads with ones that say “Clinton Widening Her Lead Over Trump in Polls.”
Clinton is ahead in the number of delegates she needed to secure by this point — by 106 percent. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight forecasts the odds of Clinton winning California at 95 percent to Sanders’ 5 percent. Cruz finally realized his brand of hard-right conservatism is in the minority, and publicly acknowledged as much. Bill Kristol, editor of the mainstream conservatism magazine The Weekly Standard, bitterly tweeted, “If you’re for Trump, you functionally are for a man unfit to be president, and for the degradation of Am. Conservatism.” What went unreported is that Trump is no conservative.
As for Kasich, some are saying he wants to be Trump’s vice president. They are so wrong. Kasich’s personal distaste for Trump is far more intense than Americans’ distaste for Limburger cheese. Besides, Trump has asked retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson to be on standby to help him find a suitable mate.
For now, the GOP’s long and exhausting primary race is over. The Democrats will continue to battle it out for delegates until the final votes are cast on June 14 in the District of Columbia.
Sanders’ path to the nomination is tough, although he continues to talk about a contested convention and fired a new broadside charge against Clinton. Sanders accused her of “money laundering” state party funds to her own campaign, which is not true. Make no errors here, Sanders still has it in his craw to win, and believes he can.
In politics, a week is like a century. A casual remark, a devastating new revelation, an event that changes what issue matters most to the public, all these can stop a winning candidate. Having said that, barring the unforeseen, the November race will be between Clinton and Trump.
Indiana gave us a taste of what’s to come. Cruz blasted Trump as a “serial philanderer,” and dug up an out-of-context quote from a 2004 Howard Stern interview that Trump gave about “sleeping around.” The real news from the interview was Trump had his doctor check out all his dates for social diseases. Said Trump, “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
For his part, Trump reached into New York’s seedy tabloids to link Ted Cruz’s father, a minister, with JFK’s assassin. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, I mean before the shooting?” Trump bellowed on “Fox and Friends.” After Ted Cruz withdrew, Trump told CNN, “Of course I don’t believe it.”
With a man like Trump as the Republican candidate, the campaign tone is not going to get any better.
So the pivot to the fall election has started: Trump’s unconventional race and Clinton’s uphill climb. Can Trump unite his party and bring all the various conservative factions back to the table? Will the decisions of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush not to comment or participate in the upcoming election hurt Trump’s ability to consolidate the moderate wing of the GOP? And what about women voters? Will they embrace a candidate known for making disparaging remarks about females?
Sanders is going all the way to the convention to help reshape the Democratic Party to ensure his campaign message of addressing income inequality and getting big money out of politics are embraced by everyone.
With the GOP race all but over, Clinton will have to quell the Sanders’ insurgency while simultaneously looking beyond the convention at how to take on a most unique challenge in Donald Trump.
— Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.
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