2. If no GOP can­did­ate gets the 1,237 del­eg­ates to clinch the nom­in­a­tion, Kasich’s play for the nom­in­a­tion isn’t all that far-fetched. Con­sider: He’s the only Re­pub­lic­an left who hasn’t slammed Trump, his sup­port­ers over­lap with Trump’s blue-col­lar base, he’s the most-elect­able Re­pub­lic­an against Hil­lary Clin­ton, and he has a home court ad­vant­age with the con­ven­tion in Clev­e­land. In ad­di­tion, his re­sume as big-state gov­ernor and Con­gres­sion­al lead­er may not be a polit­ic­al as­set, but should lend him cred­ib­il­ity among the del­eg­ates in a pos­sible floor fight.

He’d prob­ably need to ex­per­i­ence some luck: win­ning Ohio, hop­ing Trump flat­lines, and Ru­bio doesn’t win Flor­ida. Un­der that scen­ario, he could rack up del­eg­ates at the back end of the pro­cess and emerge with late mo­mentum. Con­ser­vat­ive Re­pub­lic­ans would cry foul if Kasich emerged as a com­prom­ise pick, but a Kasich-Cruz tick­et could sat­is­fy both wings of the party.

3. Food for thought: What if George Wal­lace had won the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­a­tion in 1972 with the Wa­ter­gate scan­dal hit­ting its peak dur­ing the elec­tion? That’s usu­ally a scen­ario of in­terest only to polit­ic­al day­dream­ers, but it isn’t too far from what’s hap­pen­ing now — a tox­ic Trump en­ga­ging in a hos­tile takeover of the party, with leg­al wor­ries for Hil­lary Clin­ton worsen­ing. (Bry­an Pagliano, who set up Clin­ton’s e-mail serv­er and was gran­ted im­munity from the feds, is do­ing a pass­able im­it­a­tion of Al­ex­an­der But­ter­field.)