John Kasich To Drop Out, Leaving Trump as GOP Nominee (vox.com)

Multiple outlets are reporting that Ohio Gov. John Kasich plans to suspend his run to be the GOP presidential nominee. The move, if happens, would make Donald Trump the presumptive nominee for the GOP. The report comes hours after Kasich abruptly cancelled a planned press conference (could be paywalled; alternate source) in Virginia on Wednesday morning. LA Times reports: Kasich, the Ohio governor, had pledged to continue campaigning as a Trump alternative who could deny the billionaire needed delegates. But on Wednesday, he canceled a news conference in Washington and planned an announcement for later in the day in Columbus, Ohio, to drop out. Vox has more details.

Comments

Kudos for "could be paywalled"

[NotInHere]

And to linking to an alternate source. Kudos to the editors.

An interesting election cycle is coming...

[ErichTheRed]

I guess the question now is whether Trump will be willing to tone down the rhetoric, make some comprehensive, real-world arguments on important stuff like foreign policy, and basically be more presidential. Also, he'll have to pick an amazing VP candidate and show himself as open to selecting people who can fill in the experience gaps he has.

Like her or hate her, Clinton was the Secretary of State. Anyone actually watching the political side of this (debates, etc.) and not voting based on stump speeches and commercials can see there's an experience gap, and I think that'll be clear in a general election debate unless Trump does some serious studying between now and then.

All in all, a fun political season is coming. You've got the establishment that wants things as-is, angry workers who have no jobs because they've been offshored, outsourced or automated, angry conservatives who want smaller government, and angry liberals from the Sanders camp who want more. Personally, I'd be amazed if Trump could pull off a trade war with the rest of the world. Coming from the Rust Belt, it would be great to see factories running 3 shifts of thousands of workers again, but I doubt that can be pulled off.

Re:An interesting election cycle is coming...

[Archangel Michael]

Why, we NEVER had any streets, schools or a standing army before we had taxes on everyone's income. Which by the way, was ONLY supposed to be the "Bernie Sanders 1%" type tax program in the beginning*. The fact that you think these things were not possible before the average person began to be raped by taxes is just ignorance.

*The Federal Income Tax program originally targeted the "Very rich" (1%) of the people, and labeled "Progressive". But like all "Progressive" taxes, slowly changes over time to become increasingly regressive (all taxes are regressive, but that is a different point). Just after The big earthquake in California, the liberal progressives instituted a 1/4 cent increase in the sales tax, that was supposed to be "temporary" to help SF bay area recover from the Earthquake. Many people objected from the beginning, that it would become permanent, and it did.

The idea that we cannot do things without Taxes is largely a progressive myth, just like all their other tax myths they use to establish more and more confiscation of people's hard earned money. This has largely been the reason why the Federal Government has crept into every aspect of American life, and now looks to include our bathroom options. And progressives think all of this is a "good thing" because they like this form of tyranny.

This is the state we're in

[NotDrWho]

He and Bernie Sanders are the only ones even CLAIMING they'll take on H1-B's, outsourcing, and big business. Is it likely that Trump will actually follow through with this? Nope. Is it likely that he's going to represent the same interests of his rich business friends just like ever other politician? Yep.

But is there any other choice that's even POSSIBLY going to stand up for the little guy? Not on the Republican side.

Re:This is the state we're in

[khallow]

I'ts not H1B, its not outsourcing, it's not even globalization. It's capitalism

No. It's a failed response to globalization. We'll see this in your next paragraph.

The secret about capitalism that people don't think about - it REQUIRES growth. As people/companies engage in "creative destruction" something must be built to compensate. But what if the economy isn't growing? what if it's just satiated? You still have the destruction, and you still have the cost-cutting. Do you want to have your cost cutting as H1Bs? Or as prison labor? or as call centers in India? it's all just symptoms of the same root need.

While it isn't true that capitalism requires growth, let's consider the problem at face value. You imply that there isn't growth and hence, capitalism is the problem. But why isn't there growth? "it's just satiated".

But do we have satiation? Is every need of humanity being met? Are we living as long and as healthy as we want to? Do we have all the stuff we want? Do we have the opportunities or the society we want? No, we don't. And thus, we have lots of room for growth, indicating that we are no where near being satiated.

Thus, it is not satiation which inhibits growth today.

Well, what else could it be? You mentioned H1-B, outsourcing, and globalization. Globalization brings up an important point. The world is growing rapidly in the economic sense. We're not in a regime at the global scale where capitalism would be a problem by your assumption about growth. The lack of growth is a local problem not a global one. The mention of H1-B and outsourcing is further confirmation that this is a US-centric problem not a global problem.

At this point, we should be asking why the US has such problems with lack of growth while other countries which also implement capitalism do not.

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Im a liberal/progressive/whateverTheyCallMeThisWeek. Im reluctantly supporting Hillary. Bernie "wins" only if he denies certain Democratic voters as illegitimate. The fact that the groups he needs to deny tend to be black should make you cringe a bit. Besides, his platform is too unclear, and depends on "and then a miracle happens" a bit too much (yeah, i'll get flamed for all that, but it's my opinion). Hillary doesn't promise the moon, but she's more likely to get her agenda done.

But Trump - no one really figured he'd get here. Im a bit wary. What people haven't realized up to now is it's not about Trump it's about the voters. The fact that we have a large number of people voting for Trump with no experience and no real plan (I bet Trump would hire a dude off the street with no experience but yuuuge hair for CEO in a second) just because of anger. It's making me rethink our electorate. Could he win? I thought there's no chance he'd be here. I thought that once we got away from Trump and the 16 dwarves where Trump dominated the headlines we'd back away from Trump. But no, he was strengthened once he got close. I really wonder.

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[Registered Coward v2]

I agree with don't count on it.

But the only person who "manufactured" this scandal is one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The reason that she isn't being indicted isn't because she's some innocent little angel, but because she has the leverage over the current administration and the so-called "independent" attorney general has given her a get-out-of-indictment free card.

In addition, government officials form both parties have used private email addresses as well, so there is no upside for either side to drag this into court.

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[Altus]

In what way is bernie sanders denying black voters as illegitimate? I'm not even quite sure what that means.

Re:what if no one get's 270?

[__aaclcg7560]

what if no one get's 270?

That's an extremely unlikely scenario based on the 2016 electoral map, which is identical to 2012 and 2008. Hillary needs 28 electoral votes to win. Trump will need 168 electoral votes to win.

And here's the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.

The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/republicans-have-a-massive-electoral-map-problem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[tnk1]

You don't understand. A pardon is irrelevant for the campaign. It could even be worse than an indictment. It's not about whether she goes to jail or not, it's whether she can get elected with her credibility broken by an indictment which would then have been nullified by a pardon, without answering the actual charge.

And it would prove the charge that she will have gotten away with something that nobody who worked for her could have gotten away with, just because she is who she is. A pardon would be as close to political suicide as she could get without actually going to jail.

Trump/Sanders 2016?

[DarthVain]

It is crazy I know, but would you put it past Trump?

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[number6x]

She won't need a pardon.

The office that has the final decision on what state department information is or is not classified is the secretary of state who, at the time, was Hillary Rodham Clinton. I know this almost sounds like Nixon's reasoning 'If the President does it, it's not illegal', but not quite.

As long as Hillary didn't send anything that could be truly treasonous (like sending terrorists secret pass codes to sneak into government facilities and blow them up), she can just declare that the information in her emails was not classified at the time she sent it, and 'poof' it's not classified. Since the executive branch has consolidated so much power to itself and its cabinets throughout the 20th and 21st century, there is not really much that congress can do about this except whine and pout.

The only solution is for we, the people, to re-allign the power balance between the branches by electing congressmen and senators who will do their jobs and lead the country. The houses of congress should be our governmental leadership. The president should really be considered more like the head butler, the chief public servant.

We have made our presidents into de facto kings, when we should be treating them as hired help. Respect them, treat them well, but remember that they work for us.

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[Straif]

She could classify or declassify information that was initialized by the State Department but that's not what this whole mess is about.

There are relatively few State Dept. emails that the IGs sited as being a problem, there are however several dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from outside intelligence agencies as well as foreign governments which have been identified as being classified at various levels. As SoS she had no authority to modify the classifications of those emails.

The State Dept. itself has spent the last couple of years begging other agencies to change the classifications of data contained in her emails and not because they believed it was truly non-classified but purely out of a need to ass cover (both hers and theirs). It's the same reason they've been brought to task repeatedly by federal judges for dragging their feet and making blatantly false statements about how some data is irretrievable (which they later found could be retrieved by simply looking for it) or they simply don't have the ability to do something by court mandated deadlines (while at the same time doing complete reviews of former SoS emails in their 'spare' time).

It's the IRS all over again. "We lost all of Lois Lerner's emails and can't possibly retrieve them!!" Meanwhile years later it turns out they were just sitting on the back up server, exactly where they should be just no one bothered to look.

Re:And the election was handed to Hillary Clinton

[DaHat]

although it appears none of the material was classified at the time it was sent but has been deemed classified later

False, so much so that only people still making that claim are either members of the Clinton campaign or it's most braindead supporters.

Given she turned over the emails and much of the traffic would have been available anyway since it originated from a government server the whole issue is nothing but a cheap political attack.

Sounds almost like something we've (falsely) heard from Hillary herself...

Any chance you are one of the paid Clinton shills who have been sent out to 'correct' the record?

How not to play Prisoner's Dilemma

[Daetrin]

Cruz and Kasich (and the others while they were still in) were playing iterative rounds of something resembling the Prisoner's Dilemma. Choosing to stay in the race increased their odds of being the nominee by a large factor _if_ there was a contested convention. However staying in the race, and thus dividing the non-Trump votes, also increased the odds that Trump would win outright and there _wouldn't_ be a contested convention.

If one of them had decided to drop out much earlier the other one might have been able to stop Trump from getting enough votes to lock in the nomination and steal it away from him at the convention. (This makes it slightly different from regular Prisoner's Dilemma in that cooperating involves the two players choosing different actions.) Given that going by the number of delegates the one who probably should have dropped out early was Kasich, it's kind of pathetic that he drug his heels long enough to quit _right_ after Cruz. Good job you two! Your arrogant electoral mutual suicide pact has all but guaranteed a Trump nomination!

(I wonder if there were any backroom negotiations going on to try and convince Kasich to drop out in exchange for a vice presidential slot? That's not something that's usually done but this was a pretty unusual case.)