REPUBLICAN

    verses    DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS

The two who performed well in Indiana were Republican Donald Trump who won soundly and Democrat Bernie Sanders who surprisingly clearly won as well.

As we have come to expect from Donald Trump, he had relentlessly vocally milked and hyped-up his poll lead in the Indiana Republican Primary before yesterday’s vote. Also he went further to predict that his win would finish his rivals and they would be gone – his dreams were partly answered, eh?

The half hearted pact to stop Trump between Ted Cruz and John Kasich operated here, with Kasich ‘off-stage’ to give Cruz a better chance of securing maximum Indiana delegates, which he failed miserably to do as he got zero (so far), but we had all long suspected that the ‘block-Trump’ game plan would not be effective, as ‘not actively campaigning’ isn’t the equivalent of full ‘tactical voting’, is it? The Indiana result amply demonstrated the disarray of the party traditionalists and the lack of quality of the 2016 Republican candidates for nomination, unfortunately?

Trump seemed to be politically naive to believe his own rhetoric that his win here would represent delivering a knockout blow that would demoralise his two rivals, wasn’t he? Well, it appears that he was right as Cruz, to the surprise even of Trump, immediately stacked, didn’t he? It seems inevitably though that this race will still go on unless he actually breaks through the winning tape – Kasich (Governor of Ohio) will probably carry on even if not seen as serious opposition won’t he?

Certainly, there seemed to be insufficient delegate numbers here (57) to really mean it was a make-or-break result, but it did didn’t it? Despite this latest and seventh straight win though, Trump is still nigh-on two hundred “bound delegates” short of being the outright winner. However, the chances now are that he does actually crawl over the line by the end of the Primaries in a month’s time, and so avoid facing a likely ‘anti-Trump’ contested Convention in July, doesn’t he?

It had been said that Cruz had run a ‘do-or-die’ campaign here, when moreover his real chances of winning the State were surely far-fetched, and so it turned out, didn’t it? In American politics, misplace over-confidence and blind faith seems to be endemic, doesn’t it? Notwithstanding that he got over a third of the vote , he got no more delegates for his troubles, so he gave-up on struggling further down the trail.

The expert pundits say that leaves Trump the presumptive nominee, but nevertheless if he doesn’t get over the freshhold before then, the others get a last throw of the dice in the large-scale Californian Primary on 7th June – that may well yet hold the key that decides the Republican Nomination, perhaps?

On the Democrat side the polls had predicted that in Indiana Hillary Clinton was as near a certainty to win as possible, while her rival Bernie Sanders was far-off success with his attempt to reclaim the momentum that he had lost. But the polls were wrong again and Sanders secured a good but shock win that will boost his supporters, but that may not be enough, eh?

The consequence of the Indiana result is that Clinton still picked up nearly half the delegates available so relentlessly trundles on towards securing the Democrat nomination and she is certainly within touching distance with well less than a couple of hundred delegates to gain, while Sanders (Senator for Vermont) still faces a sheer cliff to scale with nearly a thousand short.

[The Americans seem to agree that Clinton and Trump will be their respective party’s nominees, but as their American saying goes “it ain’t over til the fat lady sings”, is it?]

–ooOoo–

[The World is clearly very much paying attention to who just might be the next US President. Britain has particular concerns as well, because it has had a long-term predominantly close relationship with America

            The President of the United States