Indiana paves the way for the 'Biff Tannen presidency'

A couple of weeks ago it seemed more likely than not that the Indiana primary would be the win that kept Ted Cruz's campaign alive. Today, it pretty much slayed it. It wasn't even close.

Fox News projects that New York businessman Donald Trump will overwhelmingly beat Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Hoosier state’s Republican presidential primary, with Fox exit polls and early vote tallies giving the businessman a 20-point lead. The victory significantly improves Trump’s chances of amassing the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination this summer in Cleveland. With just nine states remaining in the nominating process, the stop-Trump wing of the Republican Party appears to be rapidly running out of options.

It's the delegate count, of course, that impacts the nomination - not Trump's percentage margin. Indiana apportions delegates on a winner-take-all basis to the winner of each congressional district. But with Trump running a margin this large, it's entirely conceivable that he'll win all nine districts and all 57 delegates.

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Even if he doesn't, Indiana was the state where Cruz needed to seriously cut into Trump's lead if he had much realistic hope of keeping Trump under 1,237 before California. That hope is now kaput, and barring a Trump collapse no one sees coming or some sort of parliamentary trickery at the convention, Trump is going to be the nominee. At least I can enjoy the fact that Cruz knows how to quote my favorite movie. There ain't much else left: It is not easy to explain how the Republican primary voters who were so insistent on a "true conservative" nominee have rejected Ted Cruz so decisively. He's about as true conservative as you're ever going to get. But it looks like the voters have made their choice, and I'm left to get my why-Hillary-is-worse arguments in prime time condition. I too have nothing else left.