The Universe of Discourse

I forgot there are party conventions

Yesterday I made a huge mistake in my article about California's bill requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. I asked:

Did I miss anything?

Yes, yes I did. I forgot that party nominees are picked not by per-state primary elections, but by national conventions. Even had Ronnie won the California Republican primary election, rather than Trump, that would not be enough the get him on the ballot in the general election.

In the corrected version of my scenario, California sends many Ronnie supporters to the Republican National Convention, where the other delegates overwhelmingly nominate Trump anyway. Trump then becomes the Republican party candidate and appears on the California general election ballot in November. Whoops.

I had concluded that conceding California couldn't hurt Trump, and it could actually a huge benefit to him. After correcting my mistake, most of the benefit evaporates.

I wonder if Trump might blow off California in 2020 anyway. The upside would be that he could spend the resources in places that might give him some electoral votes. (One reader pointed out that Trump didn't blow off California in the 2016 election, but of course the situation was completely different. In 2016 he was not the incumbent, he was in a crowded field, and he did not yet know that he was going to lose California by 30%.)

Traditionally, candidates campaign even in states they expect to lose. One reason is to show support for candidates in local elections. I can imagine many California Republican candidates would prefer that Trump didn't show up. Another reason is to preserve at least a pretense that they are representatives of the whole people. Newly-elected Presidents have often upheld the dignity of the office by stating the need for unity after a national election and promising (however implausibly) to work for all Americans. I don't care to write the rest of this paragraph.

The major downside that I can think of (for Trump) is that Republican voters in California would be infuriated, and while they can't directly affect the outcome of the presidential election, they can make it politically impossible for their congressional representatives to work with Trump once he is elected. A California-led anti-Trump bloc in Congress would probably cause huge problems for him.

Wild times we live in.

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