Conventional wisdom crumbles, yet again, in U.S. primaries

Sunday seems an appropriate time to pause and reflect for a moment on what a useless blessing conventional wisdom has been this primary season, even as we embrace the next consensus view. 

We've run through "Donald Trump can't last!" "Jeb Bush is inevitable!" "Marco Rubio's the one! "The party decides!"— wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

And we were betrayed again this week.

• Ted Cruz-John Kasich deal may hurt more than just Trump
• Trump's nomination could rest with wild card delegates
• Trump's 'tidal wave' of victories keeps nomination within reach

The five northeastern states of last Tuesday's so-called "Acela primary" were supposed to set up the next battle, Indiana, as the one to decide whether Trump can still be stopped.  

Instead Trump blasted through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware like the high-speed train for which their primaries are named. En route he gathered more delegates in his wake than were ever dreamed of in our conventional wisdom.

As a result, Trump's delegate lead is now comfortable enough that he can afford to lose Indiana on Tuesday. Ted Cruz, probably, cannot.

Cruz upstaged

Candidate Cruz is the thin reed on which hang all the remaining hopes of Republican insiders. Only through Cruz can Trump be held short of a majority of delegates in the primaries, thus sending the presidential nominating convention to a second ballot, which theoretically would eventually elect… someone else.

Cruz is not looking particularly up for the challenge.

He gamely tried stirring up the Hoosiers last week with a surprise announcement that, in the event of his nomination, he'd share the Republican ticket with Carly Fiorina as his vice-presidential running mate. 

Fiorina is an already failed presidential candidate who quietly dropped out of the race in February. Her resume includes another failed political bid — California senate, 2010 — and some time as a Fortune 500 CEO who's best remembered for managing the questionable merger of her company, Hewlett Packard, with Compaq Computer Corp., a corporate marriage one industry insider likened to "a slow-motion collision between two garbage trucks." 

Cruz had barely cut the ribbon on his VP surprise when the happy news was nearly drowned out by Trump's jet engines as he roared into Indianapolis and disembarked into the open arms of the state's legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight. 

Knight is a winner (three NCAA titles). Like Trump, he's outspoken, controversial and adored by his fans. He introduced Trump in a wandering, profanity-dotted speech to a crowd of thousands as, "the very best choice that's ever been made to take over as a president."

Even Trump has never laid it on that thick.

Soon over?

But that's how it's going in Indiana. The two-man race that Cruz says he has been itching for has momentarily materialized since John Kasich ceased campaigning there to clear a path for Cruz. 

The result is that Trump now leads in polls by five to eight percentage points and Cruz can hear the helium wheezing from his campaign balloons.

No, it's not over yet, but by Wednesday morning it might be.

Since his home state of New York voted, Trump has had a series of wins where he's polled north of 50 per cent support. His performance has outpaced poll projections, which hasn't often been the case.  

So something's changed and a search party has set out to find some conventional wisdom to explain it.  

'Lucifer in the flesh'

The New York Times data man, Nate Cohn, suggests a straightforward shift to Trump as the party consolidates behind him, but admits it's impossible to know for sure.

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com leans toward the possibility that Trump's slice of the pie has not grown so much as the pie itself has shrunk.

He points to voter turnout numbers in early states, such as New Hampshire, that trend steadily and dramatically downwards through the recent primaries along the Acela line.

He suggests the #NeverTrump movement has been discouraged from voting by the fast-fading chance that it will actually make any difference.

Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics.com thinks both those things are happening — a shift to Trump, though not as big as it looks, and a disengagement of #NeverTrump from campaign — plus he adds the possibility that Republicans just aren't thrilled by the alternatives to Trump.

Trende touches a lot of bases, so that's good cover for conventional wisdom.

• Trudeau won't pick fight with Trump
• Clinton's drawl, Trump's 'yuuge' N.Y. accent and campaign 'code-switching'

Plus, Cruz's low scores on the amiability index have been an underlying current in the campaign and back up the "no good choices" thesis. 

Just days ago former House speaker John Boehner called Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh," and said "I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Are you listening, Indiana?

What Indiana's Republicans have to consider Tuesday is whether they really want to cast a vote for a contested convention that risks tearing up their guts and bloodying their faces while a horrified country watches their humiliation on national television.

And at the end of all that, who? Ted Cruz?

The new conventional wisdom says "Trump 2016."