One of the moldiest political tropes around is the one that says a presidential candidate needs to run to the base during the primaries and then pivot to the center once he or she locks down the nomination. It makes some strategic sense, for sure, and we’ve seen it in action many times although it doesn’t always work. But Donald Trump is not one for standard campaign strategy so despite the fact that he’s the defacto nominee of the Republican Party for president, he’s not making any kind of pivot to the center. If anything he’s embracing the MAGA base ever more tightly, despite the fact that there is a substantial minority of his party that’s rejecting him in these primaries. Over the weekend Trump bagged some more wins in caucuses in Michigan, Idaho and Missouri, all three of which were the result of amateur hour mistakes by local and party officials that messed up the usual primary system. Even so, from what we can gather there still exists an anti-Trump vote among Republicans and GOP leaning Independents. We’ll see on Super Tuesday if that phenomenon (which I wrote about last week) continues, even as it’s obvious that Trump is the nominee. Nikki Haley won her first primary on Sunday in the District of Columbia, which Trump claimed he lost on purpose and immediately disparaged as nothing more than a win for “the swamp”, calling her “Birdbrain” and the “Bird” in a series of furious posts on his Truth Social…