5 takeaways from Trump nominee

5 takeaways from the night that made Trump nominee

Third-party possibility, Sanders’ exit terms and Clinton’s heavy baggage.

By Glenn Thrush

The comb-overthrow of the Republican party is complete.

It was only right and proper that Indiana — the flyover state with the biggest shoulder chip about the coastal dopey elites — should ratify Donald Trump’s nomination as the GOP populist standard-bearer. A week ago, Trump — who had been languishing in the 30s and 40s on most primary nights — finally did what a normal front-runner was supposed to do, consolidate his support into a solid majority hitting the 50s and 60s.

Alas, there will be no “Stop Trump” candidate, not after his 15-plus-point win in Indiana. Gone is the great transformation of unlikable Ted Cruz from tea party arsonist to the establishment’s friendly neighborhood fireman of last resort. The whole damn thing just burned down — Cruz’s Hoosier firewall crumbled, and his campaign folded.

But at least the Texas senator didn’t have to watch it by his lonesome. He had his imaginary running mate Carly Fiorina there by his side.

Bernie Sanders narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in Indiana — which matters not one little bit despite what the cable networks and his campaign will hype.

Here are five takeaways from a Tuesday that essentially sealed this fall’s Trump-Clinton showdown.

1. (Third) Party like it’s 1912? Once upon a time (six months ago), the animating spirit of the Republican Party and its affiliated oligarchs was a desire to destroy the political aspirations of Hillary Clinton. Trump’s unexpected ascent has scrambled those priorities in ways that might have been unthinkable when Jeb Bush seemed on a glide path to the nomination. Charles Koch, whose family has spent untold millions battling Clinton and other Democrats, mused that it was “possible” she would be a more palatable alternative than his fellow billionaire, Trump — and longtime John McCain pal Mark Salter flat-out threw his backing behind the former secretary of state on Tuesday in a tweet.

Most Republicans can’t or won’t go that far. In that case, they would need an electoral halfway house first floated by, you guessed it, The Donald himself: a third-party candidate of the Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose variety that allows them to oppose Trump, cast their votes for a vetted conservative of their liking and avoid the unacceptable fate of having to go the Full Hillary.

But the most compelling argument for Not-Republican-Republican campaign is that it gives down-ballot candidates a way out of running under the sequined Trump banner — to support a “true conservative,” whatever that means. The alternative has been floated for months. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, the first Republican of stature to suggest the idea, has been mentioned as a possible candidate — as has former Texas governor and two-time presidential loser Rick Perry.

There are, of course, major hurdles to mounting a third-party bid this late — but expect talk of Trump alternatives to grow. There’s already a counter campaign emerging, urging the GOP to take a one-time hit in order to hasten a bright post-Donald future. This, from The Wall Street Journal, the battered bulletin of the party establishment: “Better for [Republican leaders] to navigate issue-by-issue around the Trump black-swan candidacy while demonstrating their own convictions and independence.”

2. It ain’t over till the Hewlett-Packard lady sings. McCain’s 2008 selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is seen, in retrospect, as his struggling campaign’s self-inflicting coup de grace. As an act of damaging desperation, Cruz’s selection of Fiorina as his mythical vice-presidential pick wasn’t in the same league (although the former computer executive’s impromptu on-camera outburst of song ranks as a singularly bizarre moment in a "Twin Peaks" campaign) because Cruz was probably doomed pre-Carly.

But it was weird (not a good thing when the main meme about your candidate involves his resemblance to sketches of the Zodiac Killer). Moreover, it reflected the prevailing sense of selective, unicorn reality that descended over a campaign that was, up to that point, the most cannily run in either party (Jeff Roe, Cruz’s genial campaign manager, has emerged as a star operative in a year of meh campaigning).

3. How does Hillary buy off Bernie? No unnamed Clinton staffer said this — I did — so stand down, Sanders fundraising team. … Despite his narrow victory in the Hoosier State, Sanders is more or less cooked as a viable presidential contender (barring, as must always be said with the Clintons, some unforeseen cataclysm). Mitch Stewart, one of the logistical wizards behind Barack Obama’s 2008 landslide, posited that the Vermont senator would have to win something like 70 percent to 75 percent of the delegates to make a dent in Clinton’s insurmountable 300-plus lead in pledged delegates.

He didn’t. But he’d also committed to staying in through the convention (his wife, Jane, doubled down on that pledge early Tuesday) to maximize his leverage over the platform and to give Clinton and her pet plutocrats some serious agita. But what specific deliverables would be required to compel Bernie’s Army to take up arms against Trump?

Earlier this year, Sanders’ top strategist, Tad Devine, suggested that Clinton might consider the democratic socialist as her running mate — a trial balloon the candidate himself quickly punctured. People close to Sanders and his ally (in anti-Wall Street spirit) Elizabeth Warren tell me they want assurances Clinton will appoint the right people to key Treasury Department and oversight-agency posts. Sanders hasn’t been talking about his terms of surrender yet (at least that’s the official line), but he would clearly like to score a major policy shift from Clinton — his dream would be to make breaking up the big banks part of the Democratic platform, I’ve been told — but he’ll almost certainly garner more widespread support in pushing campaign finance reform and structural changes to the primary process.

“Whatever it is, he’ll need assurances that it’s not just a fig leaf but a real shift in the party’s position,” said a top Sanders ally not in the decision-making chain of his campaign. “He’s earned his place at the table.”

4. Donald Duh. Trump has a stranglehold on about half of the 25 percent to 30 percent of (white) Americans who vote in Republican primaries. The rest of the nation, well, he’s still pissing lots of them off — and the smarter political types in his orbit fret about his unprecedentedly high disapproval ratings.

His longtime war consigliore Roger Stone likens Trump to Ronald Reagan, but the candidate himself spent Indiana week convincing the country he was Don Reckless.

Trump continued his ill-advised attack on Clinton’s use of the “gender card” — which helped her anemic online fundraising operation clear a blockbuster $2 million-plus in a couple of days. Even though Cruz was already headed to a campaign loss, The Donald decided to go all Oliver Stone on his father, anti-Castro Cuban immigrant Raul. “I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”

The Clintons are terrified about Trump — who conspicuously lunched with their fact-challenged-biographer Ed Klein to preview the knee-capping he intends to deliver this fall. But his capacity to savage himself shouldn’t be underestimated.

5. When will Clinton release her Goldman Sachs transcript? Sanders — often through the scowling personage of his tough-guy campaign manager, Jeff Weaver — has continued (to the very great chagrin of the Clinton camp) to hammer away at the issue of the front-runner’s lavishly compensated Wall Street speeches. Clinton has said (to widespread ridicule) that she’ll release them once her foes do likewise.

With Sanders’ campaign now testing the statistical outer limits of “viability,” the pressure for Clinton to dump them to reporters — in an effort to cut off the challenge from the left — has greatly diminished. But Trump looms, and he’s already signaled he’ll continue Sanders’ attacks in the general election as a way to question 1) her character and 2) her alleged slavishness to big-money donors.

The news trough between the early-June California primary and the late-July convention in Philly seems like a logical time to drop the (presumably) unflattering transcripts — if she decides to release them at all.