������Ƶ

Once the New York primary results are in, unless voters of color in California stay away from their ballot boxes in droves on June 7, the Bernie Sanders campaign will have peaked. That is not a statement of preference on my part, it is a statement about mathematics.

At the same time, even if Donald Trump takes the overwhelming majority of votes in the upcoming New York primary, unless his supporters turn off “Wheel of Fortune” long enough to actually get out of the house to the polls in droves, his campaign will have peaked. That is not a statement of preference on my part because, as a Democrat, I’d rather we faced a Berlusconi like Trump than a Machiavelli like Cruz.

Both these insurgent campaigns are noted for their views, their messages. Neither one is noted for a level of “ground game” to match their primary rivals.

Cruz may represent nearly all that is atavistic and benighted, like climate denial and carpet bombing the Middle East, but his campaign is organization par excellence. Trump is show business — yes, highly successful show business, but there is a lot more to winning elections than show business, and that is beginning to tell.

Hillary Clinton may have more skeletons in her closet than Fibber McGee, but the Clinton machine has been humming away in the barrios and ghettos for 20-plus years, and no amount of good messaging by the junior senator from Vermont could have ever counter-balanced that fact.

In Philadelphia this summer, there’s little doubt that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination. While a number of his more ardent followers will possibly balk, Sanders will support the nominee. And he will continue to be the conscience of the left, having pushed Clinton much further in that direction that she had intended to go.

Over in Cleveland, the GOP faces a choice: heart attack, cancer or suicide. If Trump shows up with 1,237 bound delegates, it’s heart attack. If not, and Cruz’s leger-de-main with the state delegate selection process bears fruit, he will get the nomination – that’s cancer.

And if the Republican establishment, in horror at the prospect of either of these gentlemen at the top of their ticket, manages to maneuver the nomination of anybody else, it’s suicide, because while the Trump devotees may not actually riot in the streets (but don’t count it out), most of them will at least refuse to vote for the GOP nominee or maybe even run to a write-in or third party effort.

All three scenarios spell November doom.

So, with Clinton looking like the next occupant of the White House, what about the rest of the process? Here’s where it gets tricky. It all depends on whether the Republican defeat in the presidential race also entails the Democrats taking over the Senate. The House may shift to some degree, but Paul Ryan will still be speaker, because that august body is so gerrymandered in “red states” that the GOP is slated to stay on top for at least a couple of cycles to come.

If the Democrats take the Senate, Mitch McConnell’s “principled stand” against considering President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, will miraculously evaporate, and the Republicans will rush to confirm him, lest Hillary nominate a jurist with 21st century views.