FORECAST

The Republican contest for the presidential nomination is playing out more or less exactly as I described it last December 22nd.  This was not a prediction, mind you.  It was simply an attempt to interpret the rules laid down by the Republican National Committee and the several state republican Committees, and then to calculate Donald Trump's chances of winning the nomination on the assumption -- not prediction -- that Trump gets  35-40 % of the vote and Rubio and Cruz between them get 40 - 50 % of the vote.  My calculations showed that under those assumptions and with those rules, Trump would have the 1237 delegates needed to win the nomination before the July Convention.

My principal error was in failing to keep in mind that Texas, Florida, and Ohio are the home states of three of the candidates.  But because I underestimated the number of delegates Trump would win [a misinterpretation of the rules governing superdelegates], my error does not undermine my conclusion that Trump will get the nomination.

Will this be the end of the  Republican Party as we have known it for the past half century?  Lord, I hope so.  It may well be that the Long Con -- the success of the rich in conning poor Whites into supporting their self-serving economic policies -- is coming to an end.

I remain convinced that Sanders is a stronger candidate for the Democrats against Trump, as well as being preferable on ideological grounds, but I fear he will not get the nomination.