Even before Ted Cruz thrashed Donald Trump in Wisconsin, there was incessant buzz in political circles about the possibility of a contested convention in Cleveland. Since Wisconsin, the buzz has ramped up substantially, consuming hundreds of hours of bloviation on cable news networks. I’ve been gratified to see that, after months of effort by me and others, the term “brokered convention” has largely been dropped. There will be no brokers in Cleveland capable of delivering the nomination.
Now, at last, some of our best analysts are weighing in with plausible scenarios, including Francis Wilkinson and Josh Putnam. Here are my own scenarios for what might happen next:
Trump gets 1,237 delegates by June 8.
The last contests are on June 7, and no one will be able to garner a majority before then. Only Trump has a plausible path to accomplish that goal when the last results roll in. It will be difficult for him, but far from impossible. If the experience in the GOP so far holds—namely that every time Trump stumbles through his own gaffes or bonehead moves, or by a defeat in a state, and a slew of pundits proclaim his candidacy over, his voters stick with him—he might sweep New York and win a succession of victories in the rest of April, getting close enough that he looks like the winner. And that could mean more voters gravitate to him as the biggest prize in California looms. If that happens, expect many of those lawmakers and party nabobs who are trashing him now to find gold amidst the Trump dross and slag, virtues where they now find only vices and thuggery. But a lot of others will be appalled and angered, and try to figure out how to distance themselves from him or at least find a way to preserve majorities in the House and Senate.