The first being he has nearly universal name recognition, he's made such a spectacle of himself over the last few decades that virtually everyone knows who he is and at least at the beginning, had comparatively few strong negative views. Trump parleyed that into a platform and began accumulating the disenfranchised horrible racists that the Republican party likes to tell everyone they don't have and he was off to the racists.
The other way he fixed it was that he actually went out and bought some campaign infrastructure, he hired people when other campaigns went down, and spent a good deal of money getting at least something set up in almost all states. His weakness didn't really end up hurting him in the way people thought it would.
But it is hurting him.
See, there is more to the primaries than just voting, many states have a few unpledged delegates, some states have no pledged delegates whatsoever, and most states unbind their delegates after the first ballot at the convention, what this means is that in any contest that is looking close, not only does your campaign have to get out the vote, but you also have to be able to woo the delegates themselves.
This can be hard, every state has a different way of selecting their delegates, but at it's base you need people willing to be delegates for you, and then you need to work the selection rules or committees to make sure they choose your delegates, this is important even if they are bound because once they stop being bound you still want them to vote for you.
Trump has failed miserably so far at this subtle yet important part of the primary. In Colorado Ted Cruz has secured basically all the available delegates and even Kasich is being more competitive in this arena than Trump is. What you need to keep in mind is that the primary isn't exactly just a popularity contest, a common phrase used is "The party decides" and it's true, the party does decide, by way of the delegates and thus far the delegates are unimpressed by Trump, mostly because he hasn't bothered to submit lists of delegates favorable to him to the groups that select them.
A contested convention becomes more likely every day, and those unbound delegates just might decide the nomination and need to be paid attention to. Hell Rubio still needs to be placated, remember he still has a hundred and fifty or so delegates bound to him, and he hasn't released them yet. Now he will not get the nomination, but that's a lot of delegates to swing the balance of power if it comes down to that, so who is he likely to go for? The man who spent the last month of his campaign calling him "Little Marco". The other choice is Ted Cruz, so it's still a close call on that, but if I were Trump I would start getting concerned.
And he is! I mean mostly he is just yelling about the system and encouraging protests about it, oh I guess he is also threatening to sue the Colorado GOP because they are subverting the democratic process, but the primary isn't a democratic process, like at all, and anyone who tells you otherwise is incredibly uninformed. So Trump, the man who makes the best deals and who gets mad at protesters, is now complaining because he got out dealt and is endorsing protest.
What will happen at a contested convention? I feel like there are a few options:
- Trump wins on the second ballot, demoralizes half the base, democrats wind in a landslide not seen in thirty five years.
- Trump is ratfucked and it goes to Cruz, Trump runs third party/mail in and a worse result nails a bunch of down ticket races as well.
- Trump is ratfucked and it goes to someone else, Kasich, Payl Ryan? This scenario has the CPD putting their new riot gear to good use as the highest possibility.
- Chaos reigns at the convention after Trump supporters open fire on the RNC elite and then do battle with everyone else forever.
I can't wait for the convention.
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