Response to Pretty Much Settled

(See: Just Above Sunset: Pretty Much Settled)

Two observations -- one trivial, one not so trivial:

First, there's something I noticed the other day while watching video of Donald Trump giving a speech: It's like he's doing stand-up! He thinks he's a comic!

The next time you get a chance to see him behind a podium, insulting someone, look carefully and watch his technique! He's emulating a comedy club comic.

It's not that he's all that funny. In fact, the fact that he's not may be the reason that so many people haven't noticed this, but he thinks he's a stand-up comic, running for president. He's got the timing, the gestures, and a "Hey, what's up with that?" schtick going with the audience that's sort of a combination of Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles and Andrew Dice Clay, but without a trace of the humility of any of them. But it is strange, especially that it seems to be working, even though -- as I said -- he's not actually funny.

In fact, Trump's never going to be good enough to do this for a living, but from what I understand about his financials, he doesn't really need to keep his day job.

And second, here's Josh Marshall, apparently written sometime Tuesday night:

Each state tonight looks like it has Trump at or near 60%. How big does his margin need to be? Are we going to start talking about his 75% ceiling?

Good question! Why does Trump's so-called "ceiling" keep getting higher? I have a theory.

Remember back when there were seventeen dwarves on the stage, and Trump was garnering about 25% to 30% of the popularity, didn't we all assume they collectively were hogging all the anti-Trump votes, and that once the group got whittled down, all the anti-trump votes would concentrate in fewer and fewer candidates, and, if we were lucky, just one candidate would be left to face Trump, and that candidate would beat him?

Well, while that sounded logical, it turns out it didn't turn out that way.

I'm thinking that, even if so many non-Trump candidates are now out of the race, there's still nobody that most Republicans find worth voting for -- which means that, even as the pie keeps getting smaller, Trump keeps ending up with a larger percentage of the pie.

For example, let's say some random voter really liked Carly Fiorina. But then Fiorina dropped out, so after some deliberation, that person switched his allegiance to Chris Christie. And so when Christie dropped out, the voter finally just gave up and lost interest, since he didn't like anyone left in the game.

Even when Christie came out for Trump and Fiorina reemerged as Cruz's running mate, our voter stays put, since he doesn't like either of those guys.

If that voter ends up voting for Hillary in the general election, that would be great, but it doesn't really matter, just so long as he doesn't end up voting for Trump.

And this whittling-down of the voters, rather than just the candidates, may help explain something else that few, if any, of the pundits seem to be discussing, which is that, consistently, more Democrats than Republicans are voting in these primaries.

Not only that, but the winner of the Democratic races all are getting way more votes than the winner of the Republicans! In fact, according to these results from AP in the New York Times, there are some cases (e.g., Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island; see below) in which even the losing Democrat gets more votes than the winning Republican.

Compare the bolded numbers under each party to see what I'm saying:

Connecticut Primary Results

Republicans:

213,212 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 123,367 57.9% 28
John Kasich 60,481 28.4 —
Ted Cruz 24,969 11.7 —
Other 4,395 2.1 —

Democrats:

328,322 votes, 99% reporting (700 of 701 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Hillary Clinton 170,075 51.8% 27
Bernie Sanders 152,410 46.4 25 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)
Other 5,837 1.8 —

Delaware Primary Results

Republicans:

69,892 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES
Donald J. Trump 42,472 60.8% 16
John Kasich 14,225 20.4 —
Ted Cruz 11,110 15.9 —
Other 2,085 3.0 —

Democrats:

93,633 votes, 100% reporting (313 of 313 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 55,950 59.8% 12 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 36,659 39.2 9

Other 1,024 1.1 —

Maryland Primary Results

Republicans:

434,572 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 236,623 54.4% 38

 John Kasich 100,089 23.0 —

 Ted Cruz 82,038 18.9 —

Other 15,822 3.6 —

Democrats:

846,039 votes, 99% reporting (1,973 of 1,989 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 533,247 63.0% 61

Bernie Sanders 281,275 33.2 33 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Other 31,517 3.7 —

Pennsylvania Primary Results

Republicans:

1,573,338 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 892,702 56.7% 17

Ted Cruz 340,201 21.6 —

John Kasich 304,793 19.4 —

Other 35,642 2.3 —

Democrats:

1,652,947 votes, 99% reporting (9,123 of 9,168 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton 918,689 55.6% 104 (Hillary got more votes than Donald, above!)

Bernie Sanders 719,955 43.6 81

Other 14,303 0.9 —

Rhode Island Primary Results

Republicans:

61,179 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Donald J. Trump 39,059 63.8% 10

John Kasich 14,929 24.4 5

Ted Cruz 6,393 10.4 3

Other 798 1.3 —

Democrats:

121,253 votes, 100% reporting (146 of 146 precincts)

CANDIDATES VOTE PCT. DELEGATES

Bernie Sanders 66,720 55.0% 13 (Bernie got more votes than Donald, above!)

Hillary Clinton 52,493 43.3 11

Other 2,040 1.7 —

It seems to me that this probably tells us Democrats something good about the upcoming general election, although I suppose I may be overstating the importance of this: Despite most the newsworthy craziness on the Republican side, it's the Democratic races that are attracting most the voters. 

What makes this a little scary is, after the Democrats finish their shake-out, it's just possible that voters might decide that there being "nobody worth voting for" might also mean Hillary, given that she has negatives that rival Donald's -- and that means Trump really could make some history by ending up America's first bad-standup-comic president.