Some 2016 election tidbits

1.  Bernie Sanders keeps narrowing the gap with Hillary Clinton.    In the New York primary coming up tomorrow, he has gone from 48 points behind one month ago, to just 10 points behind now.   And, in one poll cited by his campaign, he's only 6% behind Clinton in the state she was elected U.S. senator.  But it's his state, too.   He was born and lived his first 18 years in Brooklyn and, according to a local journalist, Sanders is much more "New York" than Clinton.

2.  Sanders' national poll average (from RealClearPolitics) is now only 1.2% behind Clinton.   But then there are the delegates.     A much bigger difference there.

3.  Donald Trump has a big lead in the New York primary -- again, his home state.   RealClearPolitics averages:   Trump 52.2%, Kasich 23.2%, Cruz 17.8%.    New York is just not Cruz territory, especially after he insulted them about "New York values."

4.  Trump is enraged that he keeps losing out in the statewide delegate selection process.   State after state, where he won a majority of the votes, he's getting outmaneuvered by Cruz's better organization for lining up delegates.  Cruz's team is choosing delegates who will fulfill their duty to vote for Trump on the first ballot and then switch to Cruz, if Trump doesn't have the requisite 1237 votes.    Trump does not like to lose, and it's always someone else's fault.    The truth is that these are the GOP rules, but he didn't bother to learn them and prepare accordingly.   So now he's whining that it's rigged, it's unfair, he's being cheated.

5.  This is perfectly in step with the scenario advanced by Drew Magary in an article in GQ Magazine and subsequently discussed on All in With Chris Hayes.   His thesis is that Trump never meant to be president;  he just started it all for the fun of it.   But then his fan base became so committed that he had to keep going.   Now he wants a way out, so he's screwing up the delegate selection process so he doesn't get to 1237.  Then he can claim for the rest of his life that he really won, but the nomination was stolen from him by the corrupt GOP process.   And he can live out the fantasy that he would have been a great president -- without ever having to actually do it.

6.  It'll be interesting to see Tuesday night how the voter turnout actually is.   A lot of voters in New York are going to be surprised, when they get to the polls, to learn that they are not registered as Republicans.  And, if they're not, they can't vote in the New York Republican primary, even if they are eligible to vote in the November general election.   This is what Ivanka and Eric Trump found out.   The problem was that the deadline for registering as a Republican was in October 2015;  and back then there wasn't a lot of attention being paid to such arcane rules.    How much this may affect the polls quoted above remains to be seen . . . . . .  tomorrow. 

Ralph