Osler's Razor

Some Republicans are making their peace with Donald Trump as the party's standard-bearer. Others… well, not so much. They are thinking about third party candidates, vowing not to go to the Convention, and muttering about lost causes.

Meanwhile, Democrats seem to think they have this thing all sewn up, and are making inquiries about positions in the next Clinton administration.

I don't understand either group. Were they watching the primaries we just went through?

First of all, Trump was not a fluke. He faced a large and talented crowd of 16 primary opponents that included successful governors, accomplished senators, scions of business and medicine, and also Ted Cruz. Look, there were some fascinating people in that group; I was on record that I thought it was a deep bench. But Trump beat them all. Republican voters in primaries and caucuses liked him best. So how is it a tragedy that he won?  Were 11 million Republican voters wrong?

The Republicans who are announcing their disgust at this outcome are distancing themselves from that plurality of Republican voters, a group that is mad. And they are mad in part because Republicans convinced them to be mad-- at Obama, at the economy, at government. So, yeah, now they are mad. And Trump went right to that. Yes, he made xenophobic appeals and overstated the threat of immigration-- but that has been a characteristic of many Republican candidates (and some Democrats) for decades. In fact, the need to address that tendency within the Republican Party was part of the conclusion in the RNC's "post-mortem" in the wake of the 2012 loss to Obama.  It's like the Frankenstein monster-- they are scared of what they have created.

And as for the Democrats…

A year ago, no one except Donald J. Trump thought Trump could win the nomination. They were all wrong. Isn't that a pretty good warning not to think this thing is in the bag?

Here is what can go wrong for the over-confident Democrats (aside from an indictment of Hillary Clinton, which I think is a possibility):

First of all, those mad Republicans have a lot in common with the mad Democrats who have supported Bernie Sanders in droves. At base, mad Democrats AND mad Republicans throng to someone who blames someone else (immigrants/banks) for their problems. In the general election there will be one candidate-- Trump-- who will speak to them and for them.  That's a problem for Clinton.

Moreover, both Sanders and Trump talked about about a concrete, very real issue in the same way: foreign trade. They both argued that deals like NAFTA took away American jobs. (Economists say they are right, too, though such trade deals are just one of many factors).  That plays well in states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida-- key swing states. In some very important ways, Clinton/Jeb Bush/wealthy donors on both sides vs. Trump/Sanders/working class America is a cleavage point.

There is a lot left to happen, and a lot on the line.