The PredictWise punters had all but written off Kasich and Cruz, but they're back again this week, baby! With 3% and 5% probabilities, respectively, so don't break out the party hats and confetti quite yet. Still.
In our standings, the Donald ramps up his yuuuge lead:
Query String | Hit Count | Change Since 2016-02-28 |
---|---|---|
"Donald Trump" phony | 2,090,000 | +1,687,000 |
"Hillary Clinton" phony | 693,000 | +477,000 |
"John Kasich" phony | 568,000 | --- |
"Ted Cruz" phony | 458,000 | --- |
"Marco Rubio" phony | 380,000 | +243,000 |
"Bernie Sanders" phony | 299,000 | +118,000 |
So what's going on, phonies?
-
Obviously, Mitt Romney drove Trump's hit counts through
the roof with his massively-hyped
speech.
For example:
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
Not bad, coming from a guy who always seems to be saying (in Jonah Goldberg's memorable characterization): What do I have to do to put you in this BMW today?
But in Mitt's defense, the vibe I get from Trump is much more downscale: he's the guy at the weed-infested used car lot trying to push me into a Ford Fiesta with 100K miles on it.
-
Hillary won most Super Tuesday primary states, usually acknowledged
to be driven by her African-American supporters. Her clever soundbite:
voter anti-fraud measures being
"a
blast from the Jim Crow past."
Cornel West, for one, ain't buying it:
West said that Hillary’s references to Jim Crow policies are “her attempt to be fake and phony, and try to mobilize people who want her to vote.”
West is a Sanders supporter, but he's right about this anyway.
-
Everyone "knows" that the mood of the American voter is alienated and
irritated. But that seems to have been accompanied
by
extreme
gullibility:
An imitation New York Times article is making the rounds on social media, duping readers into believing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has backed Bernie Sanders’s Democratic presidential campaign ahead of Super Tuesday.
With respect to gullibility: "As of late Monday evening, the imitation story had 50,000 shares, 15,000 of them on Facebook, the Times added." Hypothesis: We're experiencing a secular version of the maxim Chesterton (never quite) said: "A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything."
The article was apparently constructed via Clone Zone, a site that "lets you create your own version of popular websites", mimicking their look-n-feel, while dropping in your own content. Invaluable for spoofs! (Also, criminal fraud! But I digress.)