OPINION:
This is the year of the whiner. The Republican establishment whines that if only the folks in the grass roots would listen to the wise men the party could get on with choosing a serious candidate, like Jeb Bush, or John Kasich, or Paul Ryan, or, swallowing hard, even Ted Cruz. Donald Trump whines that the elites aren’t playing fair and the delegate selection is rigged. Mr. Cruz whines that the Donald insulted the missus. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton whines that nobody wants to come to a coronation. Bernie Sanders whines that the big bankers have rigged the game, and he’s going to Rome to tell the pope about it.
Whining was once only for losers, and Americans don’t like losers. But the whine has lately become the national anthem. A pessimist might argue that the campaign of aught-’16 merely reflects reality. Nobody has upset the game like Donald Trump, and to say that he has run an unorthodox campaign is the understatement of the year. He’s broken all the rules and so far it has worked. He has defeated contenders with more experience, more cash and resumes that put his own to shame. He has done it without an authentic campaign organization, armed with “free media” and seduced by the thrill of saying whatever pops into his head, and he has an instinct for saying what a lot of people think but are afraid to say. Now he has come to a late realization that “the rules is the rules” and he must play by those rules or lose everything in Cleveland.
His whining that the rules are unfair won’t change them. He has finally started hiring hired guns who know how the gunfight at the OK Corral actually works. He’ll have to persuade individual delegates, even his own if the convention goes beyond the first ballot or two, to stick with him.
This is nothing new. In 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, the president arrived in Kansas City and the convention with the most delegates. Mr. Reagan understood that the president had the delegates to prevail on the first ballot, and by naming a running mate before the convention — the moderately liberal Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania — the Gipper hoped to break Ford delegates loose or break the convention open.
Like Donald Trump, the Reagan campaign had respected the rules. The campaign didn’t even file enough delegates in a number of states, including Ohio. When Mr. Reagan saw his unforced error he went to work under the rules he inherited. When someone asked whether the rules were unfair, an aide replied that all Mr. Reagan asked was that the rules apply to both candidates.
The Donald may be learning. He has begun to court members of Congress. He apparently realizes that when he gets up to speak he can’t simply “wing it.” What he has going for him is his sure instinct for reading the mind of Joe Sixpack (remember him?). His message in Cleveland — “I won the most delegates, the most votes, the most primaries, and now they want to take that away from me” — will resonate with the average voter far greater than the establishment’s lawyerly explanation of why giving the nomination to someone else is fair and just. Whining doesn’t impress anyone, as the elites have learned to their puzzlement. If he just tells it straight there will be a hot-enough time in Ohio in July.
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