Two Days Before Super Tuesday 2016

It's a three-way race for the GOP nomination as we head into Super Tuesday.  According to the latest polls, Donald Trump is way out in front and favored to win the most delegates on Tuesday.  When it's all over, he could have a total of 277 delegates, if my math is correct, more than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined (275 total).  After March 1, delegates will be awarded on a Winner-Take-All basis.  Since Trump is leading polls in upcoming states, including mega states like Florida (99 delegates), New York (95 delegates) and California (172 delegates), Trump should win the GOP nomination with the minimum 1237 delegates that are required.

Unless Rubio and Cruz team up after Super Tuesday.  If that happens, either through one of the two of them dropping out of the race after Super Tuesday, which is unlikely, or by their cutting a deal at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 18-21, which is very likely, then Trump will be the GOP candidate for president.

And here's the interesting part: If Hillory Clinton is the Democratic nominee, as many predict -- according to the polls -- only Rubio would beat her.  Trump versus Clinton and Cruz versus Clinton contests are, at this point anyway, too close to call.

Sources:
Polls
Super Tuesday explained
Delegates leading up to Super Tuesday
How GOP primaries work in 2016

How Judge Scalia's Death May Spell Death of Gun Rights in America

On Saturday the United States buried one of its most outspoken Supreme Court judges in decades, Justice Antonin Scalia.  May he rest in peace.

Justice Scalia was the deciding ballot in a 2008 5-4 Supreme Court vote against gun control.  In Scalia's opinion, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had intended for individual citizens to be able to keep loaded firearms in their homes for protection.  Four other judges evidently agreed.  Justice Stevens, arguing for the opposing judges, felt that the Framers had intended only for the people's militia to bear arms, not for the people, themselves.  And that the Framers would have been horrified if automatic weapons (machine guns) had existed and had been included as legitimate arms for self defense.

So, people, we have Justice Scalia to thank for a gun-crazed America in recent years.

Which brings me to my next point.  That's why it's incredibly important that President Obama gets to nominate a liberal judge to the bench and why the United States Senate needs to confirm that nominee.  Then, when a gun control case is next brought to the Court will it result in what the majority of Americans want: gun control.  Something legislators, especially Republicans, who are beholden to their benefactors, are loath to implement.

Then, maybe, will we stop hearing about people harming other innocent people, like this deranged man did on Saturday in Michigan.  The day Justice Scalia was being laid to rest.

May God have mercy on his soul.

Trump Wins SC - Polls Were Right

Well, unlike Iowa, where the polls were off, they came through for Donald Trump Saturday night and this blogger has to admit he was wrong. Ted Cruz did not win as I had predicted.  The question now is whether Trump is going to be the GOP nominee for president.  Super Tuesday will likely answer that question.

If Trump does become president, how effective would he be?  I mean, if his own party despises him, and if he can't work with the Democrats, what policies could he possibly advance?  If you thought Obama had it tough bridging the divide between the Democrats and the Republicans, imagine how difficult it would be for an outsider like Trump to force Washington to do his bidding.

Can Americans and the Free World stand another four years of dysfunction?  Has the United States become ungovernable?  How did it come to this?

Ted Cruz to Win South Carolina

According to this week's polls and experts, Donald Trump will win in South Carolina tomorrow.  Depending on whom you ask, he is ahead of the next closest candidate, Ted Cruz, by 5 to 18 percentage points.

I'm not so sure.

For one thing, the polls that have been taken are based on small sample sizes -- typically around 500 supposedly registered Republican voters in a state where around 650,000 of them voted in the last primary, in 2012.  That means their margin of error is huge, around 5 to 7%, statistically, all other things being equal, which means, in turn, that the lead could flip in the final contest tomorrow.

For another thing, Trump supporters are more likely to brag about their support for him, wearing their support of a non-politician, an outsider, as a badge of honor.  Since polls rely on a telephone respondent's willingness to "take a short poll", I believe that Trump supporters are more likely to wish to share their support of this straight-shootin' non-politically-correct disruptor of establishment politics.

Finally, in case anyone missed social studies class, South Carolina is a southern state. Ted Cruz is a good ol' southern boy (regardless of where he was born).  He's one of theirs.  Donald Trump is a bombastic New Yawka; a Yankee.  He might as well be a foreigner to some South Carolinians. Whom do you think voters are more apt to trust?

I predict Ted Cruz will win South Carolina tomorrow.

p.s. I am a Democratic supporter.