Last night, Ed posed the question of whether or not Donald Trump would seal the deal and secure enough delegates for the GOP nomination in Tuesday's contests. (If you missed any of the results you can review the final tallies at that link.) I doubt many people were holding their breath in suspense. The polls have failed to prove catastrophically wrong this season and they all showed Trump with commanding leads. Georgia, Mississippi, and Washington put him comfortably over the 1,215 delegate threshold. Joe Biden similarly secured his own collection of delegates. So we're barely into the month of March and the primaries are over, right? Well... maybe. In any normal year, they would be, but we've long since left "normal" in the dust. In fact it's still entirely possible, though not probable, that neither man could wind up on the ballot in November. (NY Post)

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday clinched the 2024 Republican nomination for president, eclipsing the 1,215 delegate threshold after wins in the Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state primaries. 

The ex-commander in chief is also expected to win Hawaii’s GOP caucus, which was held Tuesday.

Trump, 77, dominated the GOP primaries and caucuses, losing only one state – Vermont – and the District of Columbia to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who suspended her campaign following her disappointing Super Tuesday performance last week...

The 2020 general election rematch will be the first since 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower squared off against Adlai Stevenson in a replay of the 1952 presidential contest. 

Going in reverse order, I would argue that Joe Biden's position as the "presumptive nominee" (as the Associated Press is now calling him) is anything but secure. Despite his angry, overly-caffeinated performance at the State of the Union, Biden's appearances in the days that followed have reverted to his normal, confused comments full of awkward pauses and verbal stumbles. (In Pennsylvania he asked voters to send him "to Congress.") He also didn't see any appreciable comeback in his poll numbers after the State of the Union address. His party is getting nervous and many Democrats have been openly ruminating about finding a way to steer him toward the exits. The DNC could still pull Joe off the ballot at the convention if they are convinced that he can't make it over the finish line.

And what of Donald Trump? It's true that his poll numbers are looking better than they have in a long time and he shows no signs of backing down. Attempts by the Democrats and their media stenographers to paint him as being as cognitively challenged as Biden have fallen flat. Also, as noted above, he has secured enough delegates already to sail through the convention. But Trump is still facing a large number of court dates thanks to the ongoing Democratic lawfare campaign. He's been handed two losses already and there could be more to come thanks to the strategic venue-shopping that the Dems engaged in. None of this has damaged him very much in the polls yet, but there have been indications that multiple convictions might put some wavering moderates and independents off.

Does that mean that Trump would simply quit and surrender his delegates? I don't believe it's in his character to do that. But just like Joe Biden, Trump needs to survive the convention and we've already seen plenty of other Republicans who would be more than willing to step into the vacuum if the chance presented itself. Between the two of them, I would say that the odds of Joe Biden not making it onto the ballot are considerably higher than Trump being removed, though neither situation is the most likely.

All of these factors are what make this such an unusual presidential election cycle. If forced to make a guess, I would say that it's currently at least 70% likely that we're heading for another Biden vs. Trump rematch. But in any "normal" year, those odds would be greater than 95%, allowing for the possibility of a sudden death or extraordinary disability of one of the presumptive nominees. The Post reminds us that such a rematch hasn't happened since Ike squared off against Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Here's to hoping that Trump outperforms Stevenson, who was trounced by fifteen percent and lost the electoral college in a landslide.