Cruz admits: Brokered convention now his only path to the nomination

A win for Ted Cruz was never in the cards but, last night, Donald Trump absolutely demolished him. There's simply no other way to look at the results. It was an ugly, ugly, night for the Texas Senator. Heck, in at least one district, he came in fourth - having been beaten by the no-longer-running Ben Carson. Now, because of the loss, Cruz's outlook has gone from "grim" to "almost impossibly grim." He's been mathematically eliminated from winning on the first ballot so, as the AP reports, he only has one option left: A contested brokered "open" convention.

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Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention. Ted Cruz was mathematically eliminated Tuesday after Trump’s big win in the New York primary. There aren’t enough delegates left in future contests for either Cruz or Kasich to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. Their only hope is to block Trump and force a contested convention.

...And that's precisely why there's been so much talk of Ted Cruz wrangling delegates behind the scenes. Cruz is well aware that his hopes of taking a standard path to the nomination have been dashed. He's now looking forward to a "Battle in Cleveland" as his last chance to grab the nom. As Cruz told Philadelphia radio host Chris Stigall:

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“We are headed to a contested convention. At this point nobody is getting 1,237. Donald is going to talk all the time about other folks not getting 1,237. He’s not getting their either. Neither of us are getting the 1,237.” I’m going to have a ton of delegates. Donald is going to have a ton of delegates. And it’s going to be a battle in Cleveland to see who can earn the majority of delegates who have been elected by the people.”

Here's the problem for Ted Cruz: Amazingly, he might be less popular within the GOP than Donald Trump is. At best, it's a toss-up between the two. That may be an indicator of how weak the GOP has become, but it's the truth. Cruz is better at playing the political game, and that works in his favor, but we all know how disliked he is among the D.C. crowd. If you're going to make the argument that the party dislikes Trump, and isn't going to go for him on the second ballot, it's awfully difficult to make the argument that it will pick Cruz instead. It's not impossible that Cruz could pull this off, but it's not something I'd be willing to bet on. The far more likely scenario is that Trump gets close enough to 1,237 that it would be an intolerable PR disaster for the party to give the nomination to someone else. If he's within striking distance of the magic number, he'll probably be able to put a small number of unbound delegates into his corner and close "the deal."

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What that means going forward is anyone's guess. Hillary is, without question, going to be the Democrat nominee. Much as it was for Cruz, New York was probably the final nail for Bernie Sanders. Current polling shows a Trump / Clinton matchup will not go well for the Republicans. Still, polls can change. Hillary could be indicted. Trump could suddenly drop the boorish behavior and become more presidential. An unforeseen foreign policy wildcard could alter the race in favor of either candidate. We're still a little over six months away from Election Day. In a political climate where any given sentence could destroy an entire career, half a year might as well be a lifetime.

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