Invisible, Disperse, and Not Up Close

The Race for Delegates is Taking Place Behind the Scenes

I won't be describing it, because I cannot see it or keep track of it, but it is right now determining the Republican nominee.

There is the delegate race we see on TV, where voters or caucus attendees pick their nominee.   Then there is an allocation formula we see on TV news shows where networks put two numbers on the screen, the vote total percentages and the delegates won.

So that's that.  Right?

No.

The delegates won are supposedly allocated to people who will go to the national convention and vote for the candidates, for example 20 to Trump, 8 to Cruz, 3 to Rubio.  There is the issue of what happens to the Rubio votes.  Are they free to switch?

 And more important is the selection of the actual delegates who are supposedly there to vote for Trump, in this example.   Those people may hold the slot dedicated to Trump, but are actually people who favor Cruz.

That is happening in real life.

Things like this are happening in multiple states

It is a wide consensus of observer opinion that Cruz is much more organized and tied to long term party officials in the state parties than is Trump.   Trump is the outsider with nothing but votes and media attention, but not local party people with long term loyalties.   A Trump supporter in Louisiana, Kay Katz described the state process to an MSNBC reporter this way:

“I do not know Mr. Trump, I do not know his staff people,” she said. “Quite frankly, we don’t have much of a campaign in Louisiana. All we have is voters.” 

If the Republican race were a landslide for Trump it would not matter.  But the Republican delegate race is likely to be close, with the actual selection coming down to who was formally pledged to vote a certain way, during which ballot, and what rules govern who is seated.   The further the process gets from voters and the more it gets into party loyalty and alliances and relationships the less good for Trump and the more good for the alternatives to Trump.

Winning at the ballot box, losing behind the scenes

Elections have legitimacy.   The people voted.   

But in fact they are voting for people who will nominate and select other people who will then go to Cleveland to vote.   That process has some legal legitimacy through the fact that supposedly each state has rules for how that process works, but the rules are changeable and they are the rules of  people who choose other people who sometimes choose yet other people who then vote: the legitimacy is the rule of backroom dealmaking, and backroom dealmaking has almost no legitimacy whatever.   Indeed, from a public opinion perspective it has negative legitimacy, a system certain to be corrupt.   People who assert that "rules are rules" will be claiming the legitimacy of "the rule of law" for a process that is understood to be dishonest: a tough sell.   

People who voted for Trump thought they were voting for Trump, not a person who actually hates Trump and loves Cruz.  If their votes are ignored, or "stolen", the words already being used in the conservative press, then the selection of a nominee will be unlikely to create unity.  Quite the opposite.

No one is covering closely what is going on in Louisiana and Arizona and the other delegate selection process because it is complicated and boring.   (I listened to the rules of the various convention delegate selection process for becoming an Oregon delegate for the Philadelphia convention myself and ran out of time and energy.)

But whether or not it is interesting or understandable or newsworthy there is a serious selection process going on right now.   It is not democratic, it has questionable legitimacy, and it will likely determine if Trump gets the votes he needs in Cleveland.  If he does, it is a Trumpian Republican Party.   If he does not then Trump may lose because delegates that Trump won on election day will in fact go to Cleveland and vote for Cruz, which I predict will create a crisis within the GOP.   

Such a crisis might be fixable if Trump were to announce that the rules are the rules and he lost fair and square by the complicated rules and that Lying Ted is an honest guy after all and everyone should unite behind Cruz.   Nothing I have observed about Trump makes me think he would do that.   

Here are a sample of news stories that describe the delegate selection process.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-delegates-republican-convention-221274

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-behind-the-scenes-delegate-fight-could-stop-donald-trump