Hillary lost to Obama in Wisconsin in 2008 by 193,000 votes in the Democrat presidential primary: Can she do it again?!

Total turnout in the Democrat presidential primary in 2008 was 1.11 million.

The question this year is whether Bernie Sanders will drive Democrat turnout there to a similar conclusion, or will Democrats cross over in large numbers to vote for Trump. The primary is open.

It would seem Sanders' natural voters are not the working class, in which case Democrats crossing over for Trump would come from Hillary's voters. It could be both: enthusiasm for Bernie among the young and far left boosting his turnout, and enthusiasm for Trump from the blue collars boosting Trump's. In which case Hillary and Cruz might be disappointed today in Wisconsin.

Fewer than 403,000 votes were cast in the Republican presidential primary in 2008, which was won by McCain with 225,000 votes. Huckabee ran second, and won in the western and central part of the state where Trump is supposed to be strong in 2016. Pretty odd. The ARG poll had picked McCain to win Wisconsin by 8, who won it by 17.8. This time around ARG is picking Trump by 10 against six recent polls showing Cruz by an average of 6.5.

ARG is also showing Hillary by 1 as polls open this morning. The Real Clear Politics poll average has Sanders ahead by 2.6.

Long lines of enthusiastic Wisconsinites at all Trump venues in recent days, despite the gaffes which upset polite society political correctness, argue for a stronger showing by Trump today than the consensus would suggest.

Delegate race update: Trump needs 53.76% of 930 available to win, Cruz 81.94%

Trump's delegate total tonight moves up to 737, Cruz' to 475.

Kasich needs 117.63% of the available delegates to win, in other words, MORE THAN ARE AVAILABLE.

Conservative talk radio is still lying to you: Ted Cruz' momentum steadily eroded in March by 44%

Ted Cruz ended the first week of March needing 57% of remaining delegates to get to 1237.

By March 10th he needed 61%.

By March 18th 77%.

As of March 23rd he needs 82% of remaining delegates to win.

The 25-point increase in his required future performance over three weeks represents a 44% slowdown in his momentum from the beginning of the month.

The voters are wasting their votes on Ted, as they are on Kasich.

Ted Cruz should suspend his campaign and begin negotiations with Trump. John Kasich should just drop out.

For the good of the party, and the country.

ARG Inc. poll got Michigan massively wrong, shows Trump +10 in Wisconsin tomorrow

The ARG poll had Kasich winning Michigan by 2 when Trump won it by 11.6.

Otherwise . . .

ARG has been pretty good this season.

It had Trump by 16 in NH. Actual: 19.5.

It had Trump by 12 in SC. Actual: 10.0.

It had Cruz by 1 in TX. Actual: 17.1. OK, way off but at least it got the winner right!

It had Trump by 25 in FL. Actual: 18.8.

It had Kasich by 6 in OH. Actual: 11.1.

Conservative talk radio in Wisconsin has been united for months in stopping Donald Trump, fawning over Ted Cruz

Which is why the voters in Wisconsin are unaware of Ted Cruz' flips on trade and immigration.

From the story here:

The Wisconsin talk radio conglomerate, which rallied conservative voters to help Gov. Scott Walker win three elections in four years, has now set its sights on stopping Mr. Trump by deprecating the delegate leader and elevating Mr. Cruz. ...

The most popular conservative talk show hosts here — Mr. Sykes, Jeff Wagner of WTMJ, and Mark Belling, Vicki McKenna and Jay Weber of WISN — are united in their disdain for Mr. Trump, with Jerry Bader, a radio personality at WTAQ in Green Bay, rounding out the group.

“The thing that’s been unique in this presidential race is, for some reason, the three who work here — Jay, Vicki and myself — and our competitors, Charlie and Jeff Wagner, all seem to despise Trump,” Mr. Belling said in an interview. “We all just kind of came to this conclusion independently. I think it’s just that we’re not as stupid as some of the people that are falling for Trump’s crap.”

Rush is reading from this right now on air: It must be the OxyContin part that finally ticked Rush off

Materialist Kevin Williamson for National Review, here:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale [Trump] communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Ted Cruz brags about his "poison pill" amendments to Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says higher Gang of 8 bill cap on H-1B visas was "not nearly high enough"

Here: "It's my hope to put in place common sense immigration reform".

Ken Blackwell of Club For Growth is delusional: 47% of Trump's supporters won't vote for Cruz if he's given the nomination by the convention

There's that number again, 47%.

Of Trump's popular vote to date, that's only 3.7 million Trump voters rebelling against the Republicans.

Remember Rush's Limbaugh's "4 million stayed home in 2012"?

Ken Blackwell, quoted here:

“As far as my objective of forcing this into a contested convention, I feel very optimistic about it," said Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who is working with a pair of anti-Trump groups, including Our Principles PAC, which paid for the Wisconsin billboards. ...

Blackwell said he wasn't concerned about a Cruz convention victory splitting the party, as long as the process was “transparent.” He also said the party could afford to alienate new voters Trump is bringing to the party—Blackwell referred to them as “undocumented Republicans”—because the traditional base would be motivated to stop Clinton.

“Folks will get over it,” Blackwell said. “The prospects of Hillary Clinton naming a liberal justice to the Supreme Court, expanding our welfare state and furthering our incompetence in international affairs will drive out the old base that didn't come out for Romney.”

Monmouth poll finds 54% of Republicans say Trump should be nominee even without the necessary 1,237 delegates

Here:

"A majority of all Republican voters (54%) say that the party should get behind Trump as the nominee if he has the most delegates but not enough for a first round ballot victory. Another 34% would like to see the convention nominate someone else in this case."

Germany has a bigger "NPR" problem than we do

From the story here:

. . . the [ironic] message of the video appears to be that critics of multiculturalism must be shut down.

Regardless of equipment, or radio and television usage, all households in Germany must pay a blanket fee of €215.76 per annum which funds public broadcasters ZDF and Deutschlandradio, as well as the nine regional broadcasters of the ARD network.

Now that fascist Trump has kids pledging to HIM never to take drugs or smoke cigs, and go easy on the alcohol

The horror.

Here.

I wish Gavin McInnes would tell us what he really thinks about Michelle Fields

Here:

For the record, I think Michelle Fields is full of shit. I think Ben Terris placated her because she’s pretty and he’s a horny beta male. I think her bruises are self-inflicted. She didn’t look down at her arm in the video, which is the first thing you do when someone inflicts pain. I think she’s an attention whore who wants to dominate the news more than she wants to report it. She has a book coming out and all this hype is good for sales. She also has a history of histrionic complaints.

What, she's not a psycho?

Ted Cruz: "We should expand legal immigration, double the caps, and increase high-skilled workers"

Here.

Byron York walks the line of those waiting to see Trump in Wausau: 5 minutes of video later he hasn't reached the end of it

See it here.

And the venue was already half full.

Wisconsin's and Ohio's middle classes have shrunk the most since 2000, don't expect establishment types who support free trade and open borders like Cruz and Kasich to fix it

Wisconsin heads the list of states where the middle class has shrunk the most since 2000:

Wisconsin (Gov. Scott Walker 2011-), down 10.4%

Ohio (Gov. John Kasich 2011-), down 10.2%

New Mexico, down 10%

Georgia, down 9.8%

North Dakota (despite the oil!), down 9.7%

Vermont (Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders), down 9.5%

Maine, down 9.1%

Nevada, down 9%

Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz both stand for more disastrous wage-leveling job-destroying trade agreements

Scott Walker has no fire in the belly for tougher immigration enforcement in Wisconsin

Reported here:

Gov. Scott Walker says he doesn't think the state Senate will pass a controversial "sanctuary cities" bill, and he says he's "just fine with that."

The bill, which passed the Assembly last week, would prohibit local ordinances or policies that keep police from asking about someone's immigration status.

Same as he ever was, except when he was running for president against Donald Trump. 

Since the 1990s 144,000 manufacturing and related jobs lost in Wisconsin due to free-trade agreements

Reported here:

Wisconsin has lost more than more than 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s and the first of several controversial trade pacts with Mexico, China and others took hold.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified about 76,000 Wisconsin workers in various fields as having lost their jobs due to either imports or the work they do being shipped overseas. ... 

Caterpillar has laid off about 600 of its 800-plus workers over the past two years because of a business slowdown. ...

Wisconsin’s heavy manufacturing sector, once one of the country’s strongest, has been taking a lot of punches in recent years. General Motors, General Electric, Chrysler, Joy Global Surface Mining and Manitowoc Cranes have all cut jobs or closed operations in recent years for a variety of reasons.

Hometown companies such as Kohler, the plumbing supply manufacturer; and Trek Bicycles have offshored jobs to India, China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Madison, the state capital, will lose 1,000 jobs over the next two years as the 100-year-old iconic Oscar Mayer meat processing plant shuts down. And just east on I-94 in Jefferson, Tyson Foods will cease operations at its pepperoni processing plant, cutting 400 jobs.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, experienced a temperature anomaly of 5.0 degrees F above normal in March 2016

Temperature averaged 40.6 degrees F, according to the preliminary monthly climate data. The cumulative reported anomaly year to date is +9.3 degrees F.

The very long term mean average temperature in March, however, is 34.0 degrees F using the full NOWdata, so NOAA is saying the normal average is 35.6 degrees F based on a smaller data set which does not incorporate the full record available. Otherwise the anomaly would be 6.6 degrees F, not 5.0. For the year to date, the anomaly from the long term mean is +13.9 degrees F.

Precipitation was 2.57 inches above normal, coming in at 4.94 inches. The very long term mean precipitation average is 2.46 inches in February, however, not 2.37, meaning precipitation was 2.48 inches above the long term normal.

Snowfall was 10.1 inches, 0.9 inches above the mean average of 9.2 for the month calculated going back to the beginning of the record. January is typically the snowiest month at 18.5 inches, followed by December at 15.9 and then February at 13.1. For the season so far, which is effectively over, snowfall has come to 51.7 inches, 11.8 inches below the long term mean average for the season so far (63.5 inches), or 18.6%. Snow is still expected in April.

Heating degree days in March at 749 were 21.4% below the very long term mean of 953. Cumulatively for the season HDD are running 1031 below the normal of 5857, about 17.6%, thanks to the El Nino.

Erick "kamikaze" Erickson attacks Trump's voters

Not unlike Romney attacking the 47% "takers" and Obama attacking the "bitter clingers".

Hey Erick! Try PERSUADING the voters instead of writing them off.