On Super Tuesday Two: Too Super, Too Tuesday

Last night, as I headed to bed, a storm rolled in. It was one of those occasional Spring storms which lives out its whole course in a single ten minute span, the cacophany and fury of the event being totally unrepresentative of the amount of time it lasts.

I mention this because today is, once again, a huge day in American politics. And like that storm the pressure has been building over the past few weeks for an event that has the potential to be a last stand for at least two of the Republican candidates seeking to delay Donald Trump, or a clearing of the air.

As the primary race starts to shift to the winner takes all states starting with Florida and Ohio, alongside Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, gone are the days when the votes cast lead to a proportional delegate breakdown; we're now into a situation where one good win can net scores of those crucial delegates in one go.

Last week your retired Third Grade Teacher, Bernie Sanders, scored a major upset over rejected Skynet prototype, Hillary Clinton, by winning Michigan. So far Sanders has been struggling in the more diverse states, despite boasting the endorsement of Killer Mike,one half of rap duo Run the Jewels, and very probably the only non-white person Bernie Sanders has advising him. Despite his weakness among the strongly Democratic African-American base, Sanders has succesfully cornered the market on the kind of white, middle-class, socially conscious liberals whose comfortable lifestyle means they face little real adversity and who are therefore unconcerned about the impracticality of Sander's reform agenda.

In winning Michigan Sanders overturned a 20 point polling deficit to open up the Rust Belt, the states which were once the manufacturing heartland of America, and are now more akin to the Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King.

Not pictured: actual Hyenas.

This upset has the potential to keep the race going at least until the convention, especially if Sanders can pull off further victories tonight (watch Ohio and Illinois, two big states that could unexpectedly swing for Sanders), even though the delegate math still says that he has no real chance of winning.

On the Republican side a torrid two weeks have seen Donald Trump spend a debate reassuring the world's last great superpower that he has a big dick. Opposition to Trump has finally switched to Ted Cruz from Marco Rubio, whose once sparkling campaign got Cinderella syndrome and revealed itself as comprised of a few fat mice and a pumpkin.

For a candidate who was meant to be the Establishment wing's '1812 Overture', Marco Rubio has at times seemed more like he's orchestrating a movement of Sad Trombones. Watching his political aspirations die in real time, to the point where he told his own supporters to vote for John Kasich, the least interesting man in the race, has been sad. Not, admittedly, upsetting sad, but more the kind of sad where someone's trousers fall down, and as they bend to pull them up their underwear splits and they topple over and roll down the stairs, while the Benny Hill Theme plays out. That kind of slapstick sad.

It's left American conservatives to weigh up the evil of two lessers; men who in any typical year would be among those knocked out in the opening rounds of the electoral destruction derby. When the Republican Establishment is forced to swing behind someone who was once described, by his own colleague, as being so disliked that if he were "shot on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the senate" nobody would ever find the murderer guilty (source), you know that they might be in trouble.

The problem is that nothing seems to be slowing Trump down. Even an explosion of violence at his rally's over the last few days has only cemented his position as the 'says it like it is' candidate. The threatening rhetoric, hate speech, and race-baiting he's displayed have only endeared him to the significant reactionary sections of the Republican Party who sincerely believe that conservatism means a return to the days of white's only drinking fountains. There have been better articles than this about the way that Trump uses racially charged language, subtly calculated to appeal to the exact people who he's currently sweeping - here's one, And here's a video.

When Donald Trump deliberately travels to cities that are being torn apart by issues of racial identity, they cannot express surprise when their brutally racist tone causes a reaction.

It's hard to even express at times the utterly shocking way that Trump's vile ideas have suddenly gone mainstream. It's worth remembering that even now Trump is yet to win over a majority of the voters in the Republican Party, and certainly there's an increasingly vocal cross section of Republicans waging a guerrilla war for the soul of their party, with reports of party officials drawing up ways to run Senate and House races campaigning against their own presumptive nominee.

But so far, despite all the back room chatter, disquiet and outright attacks, there have been few Republican leaders prepared to stand up and distance themselves, unequivocally, from Donald Trump. When asked if they would support Trump if he were the nominee, Kasich, Rubio and Cruz all said yes. At this point it's difficult to imagine what Trump has to do for them to say he's gone too far, and that they wouldn't vote for him.

If he wins, as it seems more and more likely he will, it will be the fault not of good men doing nothing, but selfish, hypocritical men choosing their party's interest over that of their country.