Unlike his opponents, Donald Trump seems to love to fly around the country and pop in to speak before large crowds at every contest. It didn't matter what his prospects of winning were, there was Trump, on the campaign warpath.
But the jet-setting Trump seems to have completely realized the importance of his home state, New York, and seems to now be changing his strategy to focusing on a New York sweep rather than scurrying around the country filling stadiums.
Sweeping the state isn't impossible, Romney did it in 2012 and McCain did it in 2008 -- but there's a twist. Both of these did it after their nominations were more or less assured and unchallenged, more of a rubber stamp than an actual contest.
Trump is locked into a real contest, and though he leads in the polls fairly handily, he has to win both statewide (14 delegates) and in each of the 27 congressional districts (81 delegates) to sweep the state -- all while holding his opponents under 20-percent or staying over 50-percent himself.
Most of the delegate calculators have Trump winning New England by fairly large margins, and still having to go down to the wire in California to determine whether a lock on the nomination has been achieved. Tinkering with a few of the calculators provides some interesting insights; especially, how critical the last 4 winner-take-all states will be in affecting the final outcome.
Delegate-rich Ohio severely hurt Trump's overall chances of grabbing the nomination before California. If he loses 1 or 2 of the remaining winner-take-all states a brokered convention is almost a total reality.
While New York is not a winner-take-all state, Trump's team is focusing on making it one -- to help skew the odds in his favor. This is why his campaign has added 17 additional co-chairs in New York, spread across the congressional districts to act as media surrogates and rally coordinators.
But with 10 days left before New York, it's still anyone's game--and the polls are definitely trending against Trump the longer the race progresses.
So, for the first time this campaign, Trump is acting like a real politician -- focusing on a ground game, developing a team, and working toward incremental goals. But this is also coming at a cost: Colorado's convention on April 8-9.
Trump is learning a hard lesson this week in politics that you just can't have it all. His focus on New York has forced him to almost totally ignore Colorado's convention with 37 unbound delegates up for grabs.
But that's what politics always comes down to: trade-offs.
Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com