Well, it always was.  But it’s really, really double plus dead now. Obviously Trump is going to be the nominee and no establishment fairy dust nonsense is going to change that now.

Now, Trump will never be president.  He may even be fun to run against and watch meltdown in hilarious ways, like feeding peanut butter to a dog and watching them try to clear it from their upper palate for the next couple hours. But running against Cruz, a predictable ideological Christianist right winger who even pushes things like a flat tax (no “legitimate” GOP candidate has pushed that since Steve fucking Forbes!), would have been a breeze for Clinton.  Just a Goldwater debacle waiting to happen.  Josh Marshall called Cruz a Goldwater without the personal appeal.

Illustrative of how easy it would have been, he’s probably naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate today at 4pm.  I want that tee shirt.  It’s the unlikable leading the loathed. It would have been early Democratic Christmas (if Democrats believed in Christmas).

Cruz would have been a fat slow pitch right in the middle of the plate while Trump is, for better or worse, a knuckleballer.  We’ll beat him because his control of the pitch is TERRIBLE, there’s no catcher’s mitt big enough to catch him. But that element of unpredictability is uncomfortable.