Cruz Is Demanding Something Absurd Of Trump

Ted Cruz’s campaign manager is now saying that if Donald Trump doesn’t win the majority of delegates in the New York primary, he should drop out of the race. It’s true that failing to reach 50 percent in New York would be less than ideal for Trump, and Cruz, of course, has every reason to wish for an end to Trump’s campaign. But make no mistake: This is an absolutely absurd and borderline farcical request for Cruz’s campaign to make.

For all of the hubbub about Trump’s campaign being in trouble, let’s not forget that he’s still in first place. Trump leads the rest of the Republicans in national polls and, more importantly, has more delegates than anyone else. Including Cruz. It’s pretty brazen for the runner-up candidate to demand the withdrawal of the guy who’s beating him. One might even say that a serious candidate would never make such a ludicrous suggestion.

It gets even sillier when you consider that Trump could actually extend his lead over Cruz even if he fails to win a majority of delegates in New York. This would happen if he won a plurality of delegates: Cruz and John Kasich would split the rest, but Trump would nonetheless have expanded his lead, since he would have won more raw delegates than anyone else.

As it stands, it’s hard to predict whether or not Trump will walk away with the majority of delegates in New York. He’ll almost certainly win the statewide vote, but the state allocates most of its delegates based on the vote share in individual congressional districts. It’s impossible to say how he’ll do in each of those districts, especially the heavily-Democratic ones.

To be sure, there’s a legitimate argument to be made that Trump, for the good of the Republican Party, should drop out of the race. His hideous favorability ratings across all demographics suggest that he’d lose the election in a landslide, and many Republicans fear that merely having Trump on the ticket could hurt the GOP’s chances of winning down ballot races. Cruz, though, isn’t making these arguments. He’s simply insisting that, unless Trump really wallops him in New York, Trump should drop out. And that's ridiculous.

If the away team was trailing in the fourth quarter of a football game, and the home team had the ball, and the away team said to the home team, “You should forfeit the game unless you score a touchdown on this next play,” would you take them seriously? No, you would not. There’s no reason to take Cruz seriously here, either.