Cruz, Sanders Win Wisconsin

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Tuesday was a bad night for front-runners in both parties:

Senator Ted Cruz soundly defeated Donald J. Trump in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, breathing new life into efforts to halt Mr. Trump’s divisive presidential candidacy and dealing a blow to his chances of clinching the Republican nomination before the party’s summer convention.
With more than 80 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Cruz had received 48 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Mr. Trump. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio was a distant third with 14 percent.
Mr. Trump’s loss was his most significant setback since Mr. Cruz narrowly defeated him in Iowa, the campaign’s first nominating contest. And after largely dominating the Republican field from the moment he announced his candidacy last June, Mr. Trump now faces a fresh challenge: bouncing back in the face of searing attack ads by Republicans bent on stopping him, questions about his demeanor and campaign organization, and a single ascendant challenger in Mr. Cruz.
In winning Wisconsin so convincingly, Mr. Cruz, of Texas, showed he was capable of appealing to more than just the hard-line and religious conservative Republicans who have been the foundation of his campaign.
“Tonight is a turning point,” he told cheering supporters in Milwaukee. “It is a rallying cry. It is a call from the hard-working men and women of Wisconsin to the people of America: We have a choice, a real choice.”

Meanwhile, Hillary feels the Bern:

Bernie Sanders scored a decisive victory in the Wisconsin Democratic primary Tuesday night, racking up his seventh victory in eight contests against Hillary Clinton as the race barrels toward a critical showdown in New York.
Sanders’ victory kicked off a critical two-week stretch for the Vermont senator, who is trying to show he can become a genuine threat to topple the front-runner in the home stretch of the presidential primary and not merely dog Clinton until the July convention in Philadelphia.
Sanders relished the win at a rally in Laramie, Wyoming, ahead of the state’s Saturday caucuses, telling supporters he was written off as a “fringe candidacy” when he launched his campaign 11 months ago.
“With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have now won seven out of eight of the last caucuses and primaries. And we have won almost all of them with overwhelming landslide numbers,” he said. “What momentum is about is that at a time in contemporary politics when every major candidate has a super PAC, we have said no to the super PACs, said no to the billionaires who fund those super PACs.”

Whether Sanders can defeat Clinton or not, clearly her weakness — and the discontent of her party’s left-wing “fringe” — could spell trouble for Democrats, if Republicans can get their act together. The talk on TV this morning is that Republicans may be headed to an “open convention,” with no candidate getting enough delegates to win the nomination in the first round of balloting. As delegates would be released from their pledges on the second and subsequent ballots, anything could happen.

 

Thank God I made the strategic decision to stay out of this year’s GOP primary campaign. Everybody I know in the blogging world is going insane over this conflict, while I’m placidly continuing my research into radical feminism, which is a different kind of insanity, but one in which I have no personal stake, except to end it.

 


55 comments

  1. “…while I’m placidly continuing my research into radical feminism,….”
    That is so wrong, in so many ways. There ain’t nothin’ placid about it.

  2. Exciting news! And I am glad you didn’t get into the primary arguments. It has been such a minefield I had to get out of it on teh Facebooks. What will be will be, GOP.

  4. From CNN:

    In one exchange, Sanders acknowledged that he wasn’t sure exactly how he intended to break up the big banks, a proposal that has been a centerpiece of his Wall Street reform agenda.

    “If Hillary [Clinton] gave answers like this to [an editorial] board, she would be crucified,” tweeted Mark Halperin.

    This is the popular candidate among Democrats, folks.

  6. If they had anyone with national stature under 65 and he or she ran, that person would be running away with the Democratic nomination. Bernie’s mostly winning as being “not Clinton”.

  7. “Divisive presidential candidacy”? What exactly is that supposed to mean? I’m not being snarky, though it is a temptation, I’m actually asking, because I can’t think of a thing that makes sense. Is it a complaint that there isn’t an obvious, landslide choice, the rest mere window dressing for a coronation? Because that’s pretty much all I’ve got.

  8. He’s winning the “we hate people who are more successful than us” young hippie vote. Like I’ve always said about liberals, they’re all passion, no brains.

  10. OK, we know Wisconsin has a large supply of libtards. We would think that the libtards would vote for Bernie and Hillary and the less crazy liberals probably voted for the total piece of shit called trump. Who are the brainstems (14%) that voted for Kaisch????

  13. He’s representing their base which he is much closer to than Hillary. Ideally the contest would come down to Cruz vrs Sanders. This would give the starkest most clear choice to voters as to which direction this country should go.
    #NeverKasich

  14. Part of it is Democrats have lost big at the state level in the last decade. Its a big reason why Castro is considered a likely VP choice, despite not having any accomplishments or even being willing to run for a statewide office in Texas. There really are not many Democrats out there under 60 who have major accomplishments in the same way Republicans had a bunch of reformer governors and senators running this time with more serious resumes.

  15. You have one candidate tweeting out bad pictures of the other candidates wife and every time he loses a primary he accuses his opponent of cheating and committing felonies. I don’t ever remember a previous recent Republican primary where one of the front runners accused his opponents of only being able to win by cheating. Wives and children were generally considered off limits to attacks as well in recent primaries.

  17. Yeah, but Walls…what if we all end up Feeling the Bern? Which is what would happen if Trump ran 3rd party?

    I don’t want either Sanders or Clinton. Or Trump. Would enough voters get behind Cruz if he were nominated? Not sure that would happen.

    A doddering old dude like Sanders should not be a communist at his age. That’s a sign of mental illness. He’d destroy what’s left of this country – not in the slow, boil-the-frog BHO fashion – but quick, fast, and in a hurry.

  19. In the first place if Sanders were to run against and beat Cruz that would indeed be a moment of clarity. If that didn’t get Americans to get off the porch, well then we are well and truly boned. On the other hand if Trump were elected there’s always the hope that Susan Sarandon is right, broken clock yada yada. While I could never vote for Bernie, I’d much rather see him elected than either Kasich or Hillary. The problem with electing the lessor of two evils we never seem to realize how little difference there is between electing the Devil or one of his Henchmen.

  22. During our lives we have often had people intoning “we are watching history in the making.” While true it’s trite. OTOH, we are watching the fulfillment of prophecy and the US is not found in prophecy. I have the feeling we are watching the run up to the last federal election.

  23. The main reason Trump has been running away with things to this point is that he is the “Not GOPe” guy. This election is basically a negative election.

  26. What I would like to see happen (fwiw), if Cruz is not able to make it to 1271 outright by the convention, is for Trump’s delegates to vote for Trump on the 2nd ballot and for everyone else’s delegates to vote for Cruz; in that scenario, I don’t see how Trump would have any cause to complain–not that he wouldn’t, mind you….

    2¢

  28. Sore loser laws will make it impossible for Trump to get on the ballot as a 3rd party except maybe in a dozen states or so.

  29. If you’re quoting ThinkRegress, you’ve lost all credibility before you’ve even made your argument.

  30. Hopefully you’ll join the fight against Hillary once Ted Cruz gets the nomination in Cleveland, Stacy.

  32. I think it is found in prophecy, as one of the daughters of Babylon, facing destruction. There is no denying that this country deserves judgment, stat, between the actions of the heathens and the apostate church.

    I agree about the last federal election. Honestly, I thought 2012 was going to be the last one.

  33. The fate of the US is that of any other sinful group. It certainly isn’t explicit. If the US had an open part in the end times, It would have been mentioned.

  34. stop being a small minded TWIT
    do you complain about lewrockwell too ?
    did i endorse TP ??? nope

  36. Cruz won’t make it to 1237 unless suddenly Trump decides to drop out. Which he might since I don’t think he actually wants to win, I think he just wanted the attention he got and to able to brag about it all for an ego boost.

    Cruz is hitting up delegates hard all over the country, while Trump barely understands how the delegate process works so your second scenario is very possible.

  37. People who haven’t spent much time there discount the power of the reality distortion field that surrounds Cleveland. This convention isn’t going to be pretty. It isn’t going to be fun. It isn’t going to be entertaining. If it doesn’t replace 1968 in the national consciousness, I’ll buy all y’all a Bud Light and pierogies at the Sokolowskis.

  38. The problem with Think Progress is its reputation. They may publish something correct now and again, but those “now and agains” are fairly well separated in time. Lew Rockwell is better but he buys into a lot of conspiracy theories and anything he publishes needs to be taken with a rather large grain of salt and vetted elsewhere.

  39. “Everything is going great.”

    Only if someone wants the democrats to win.
    Even if Cruz gets the nomination, everything trump has done so far has improved the democrats chances of winning.
    Even if (and that is the biggest if of the 21st century) trump decides to campaign for Cruz, there will be millions of trump supporters that won’t support Cruz.

    trump has hosed the Republicans this year.

  40. That means that he’ll be on the sidelines with everyone else.

    Cruz’s phony “controlled opposition” shtick will get him nowhere. The party elite hate him, not because he disagrees with them ideologically, but because he’s an unlikable lying creep who’s successfully scammed his way into their club.

    They have no problem supporting him over Trump now but they’ll shoot his fundament to the grease, either at the convention or in the general election.

  42. Nope, all Trump is doing is the classic business move of finding unsatisfied customers and addressing their needs and concerns. The GOP “Elite” filth-pigs have had the last 10 years to show some common sense and a spine. They chose to do neither in favor of being “Me toos” to Obama and the Democrats.

  43. Well, the end times are focused on Israel, right, so what we explicitly see are nations that have a major part in her ultimate destiny.

    Plus, I don’t know that I can necessarily see ancient Babylon not only being rebuilt, but turning into a (if not the) major world hub and seat of the final Antichrist’s government. So I’m wondering if we aren’t actually Babylon the Great, center of depravity, apostasy, heresy, greed and every other vile thing, all of which we happily export around the world, and use to entice others into sin. I’d say we’re pretty much at that point now. And if we are, then we are explicitly mentioned in Revelation…”Babylon the Great has fallen”. And I mean the US in particular, not, say, Australia, Brazil, Canada or just any old sinful place in general.

  44. You’re full of shit regarding Cruz and you can’t point to one single thing he’s lied about. Trump lies every bloody day.

  48. Thank you for proving that you’re fucking clueless and just regurgitating links that other idiot Trumpbots have passed around like a cheap hooker. Your out-of-context quote proves nothing.

  50. If the cops get to beat up idiot Trumpbots, I’ll sit back with some popcorn and a tasty beverage and enjoy it thoroughly.

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