Mike Murphy, the sleepy Joe Stalin of May 1941, is no doubt haunted this morning by his boomingly confident words of last August. "Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem," said the once-celebrated guru of Jeb Bush's immense super PAC. Let others — namely, Great Britain and the United States — worry about Adolf; the man was no threat to the East and its self-satisfied establishment. "If other campaigns wish that we’re going to uncork money on Donald Trump," said Murphy, "they’ll be disappointed."
Thus began a rolling, asymmetric front. As the NY Times reflects in the wake of The Donald's South Carolina Barbarossa, "In a presidential campaign during which 'super PACs' spent $215 million, just $9.2 million, or around 4 percent, was dedicated to attacking Mr. Trump." Even Barney Fife was Murphy's superior strategist: One must nip these things in the bud; and by last August, Trump was far more than a mere seed of destruction for Bush & Establishment. But they slept, confident that Trump would overreach — and go under.
Now, concedes Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, "Unless further rivals immediately quit the race, 'it’s very difficult to see how he is stopped on his way'" to November's Stalingrad.
Schmidt's feared segmentation is expected to persist. According to polls, Trump is the likely loser against either Cruz or Rubio head to head. Yet neither Cruz nor Rubio will drop out in the interest of anti-Trump unity, so Trump will continue to benefit from base fragmentation — which is more severe than just Cruz and Rubio's battling camps. Last night on CNN, Michael Smerconish wondered why Ben Carson is pledging to remain in the race. To sell more books? he asked. My guess, the evangelical Carson is staying in just to screw the evangelical Cruz, who screwed Carson in Iowa. And establishmentarian Kasich will continue to drain votes from establishmentarian Rubio.
Switching gears — How to ensure a Republican Stalingrad in November? That's in Bernie Sanders's hands. He should withdraw. Last night he demonstrated the titanically demonstrable. He is, in the primary season's long run (as well as the short), doomed. The young, the white, the soaringly idealistic and the hopelessly unpragmatic simply cannot defeat the diverse and traditional Democratic coalition. Only Clinton can reassemble that coalition in toto; and, with an already bluish electoral map, go on to crush any GOP opponent.
The longer Sanders remains in the race — disparaging the frontrunner and dividing the coalition — the more imperiled a Democratic victory becomes. Sanders's illusory perfection remains the enemy of the good, as pious perfection always does. The greatest danger to Democrats is the selfsame harm that Republicans are inflicting on themselves: unstrategic divisiveness — and it is time for Sanders to stop it.