Clinton, Trump add to delegate leads with Arizona victories

[webfact]

Clinton, Trump add to delegate leads with Arizona victories
By STEVE PEOPLES

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under a fresh cloud of overseas violence, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton added to their delegate troves on Tuesday with victories in Arizona as the 2016 presidential contest turned into a clash of would-be commanders in chief.

Long lines and high interest marked primary elections across Arizona, Utah and Idaho that were largely an afterthought for much of the day as the world grappled with a new wave of bloody attacks in Europe. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a series of blasts in Brussels that left dozens dead and many more wounded.

Yet there was a frenzy of activity in Utah as voters lined up to caucus and the state Democratic Party's website crashed due to high traffic. In Arizona, voters waited two hours to cast primary ballots in some cases, while police were called to help with traffic control and at least one polling place ran out of ballots.

Trump and Clinton both enjoyed overwhelming delegate leads heading into Tuesday's contests.

Trump's Arizona victory gives him the all of the state's 58 delegates, a setback for his underdog challengers. On the Democratic side, Arizona's delegates are awarded proportionally.

Arizona and Utah featured elections for both parties on Tuesday, while Idaho Democrats also held presidential caucuses.

Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich hoped to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners. Anti-Trump Republicans are running out of time to prevent him from securing the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination.

As voters flooded to the polls, the presidential candidates lashed out at each other's foreign policy prescriptions, showcasing sharp contrasts in confronting the threat of Islamic extremism.

Trump, the Republican front-runner, charged that the United States has "no choice" but to adopt his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country to prevent the spread of terrorism. He described as "eggheads" those who respect international law's ban on torture, the use of which he argued would have prevented the day's attacks.

"We can be nice about it, and we can be politically correct about it, but we're being fools," Trump said in an interview on CNN. "We're going to have to be very strong, or we're not going to have a country left."

Clinton and Trump's Republican rivals, meanwhile, questioned the GOP front-runner's temperament and readiness to serve as commander in chief, and condemned his calls to diminish U.S. involvement with NATO.

"I see the challenge ahead as one where we're bringing the world together, where we're leading the world against these terrorist networks," Clinton said Tuesday at a union hall in Everett, Washington. "Some of my opponents want to build walls and shut the world off. Well, you tell me, how high does the wall have to be to keep the Internet out?"

Cruz seized on Trump's foreign policy inexperience while declaring that the U.S. is at war with the Islamic State group.

"He doesn't have the minimal knowledge one would expect from a staffer at the State Department, much less from the commander in chief," he told reporters. "The stakes are too high for learning on the job."

The debate between the two took a detour late Tuesday night as they engaged in an unusual Twitter exchange about their wives.

The billionaire warned Cruz he would "spill the beans on your wife" after an anti-Trump outside group ran an ad in Utah featuring Trump's wife, Melania, in a photo shoot that ran in GQ magazine more than a decade ago.

Cruz shot back with a tweet of his own, saying in part, "Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought."

Trump's brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote — and with it, all 40 of Utah's delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded based on each candidate's vote total.

Trump supporter Easton Brady, 19, of Provo, Utah, cheered the billionaire's brash style, even as he acknowledged Trump doesn't play as well in Utah as other parts of the country.

"I think Trump says a lot of dumb things, but he's human," Brady said. "I don't care."

On the Democratic side, Clinton's delegate advantage is even greater than Trump's.

The former secretary of state is coming off last week's five-state sweep of Sanders, who remains popular among his party's most liberal voters but needs to improve his performance if he expects to stay relevant. The Vermont senator, now trailing Clinton by more than 300 pledged delegates, has targeted Tuesday's races as the start of a comeback tour.
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Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Everett, Washington, Jonathan Lemire in New York, Jill Colvin in Washington and Michelle Price in Orem, Utah, contributed to this report.

-- (c) Associated Press 2016-03-23

[ALLSEEINGEYE]

and only 8 more months of this circus left to go. Unless Trump wins then the circus will be another 4 years.

[Ulic]

Absolutely the best reality TV show on the planet.

[Chicog]

Well on the bright side about 95% of today's news has not involved Trump or Clinton. Well that's on Fox anyway.

[DogNo1]

I wonder how Trump's declaration that no more Muslims should be admitted to the USA for a while seems now after the events in Belgium. More security seems necessary after the terrorists have found more soft targets, ie., the check-in area at the airport and on the metro. The next step woulld be either checking everyone before they enter a crowded public area such as a central shopping area, a metro station or an airport or getting much more agressive about monitoring the communications and movements of suspicious people. To me, the latter would be much less intrusive than the former so Apple, unlock that phone! We'll have to live with big brother constantly looking over our shoulder if we want to be safe. The terrorists who committed the attacks in Brussels were known to the police but apparently weren't monitored closely enough. One had been jailed for a while for shooting at police but then released. This gives new meaning to the refusal of the US Congress to close Guantanamo and release the people who are being held there. If they had been being held in US-based prisons, some of them surely would have been released by now. It only takes a few to do tremendous damage. I'm sure that some posters will have contrary thoughts. Please post them.

[kamahele]

I wonder how Trump's declaration that no more Muslims should be admitted to the USA for a while seems now after the events in Belgium. More security seems necessary after the terrorists have found more soft targets, ie., the check-in area at the airport and on the metro. The next step woulld be either checking everyone before they enter a crowded public area such as a central shopping area, a metro station or an airport or getting much more agressive about monitoring the communications and movements of suspicious people. To me, the latter would be much less intrusive than the former so Apple, unlock that phone! We'll have to live with big brother constantly looking over our shoulder if we want to be safe. The terrorists who committed the attacks in Brussels were known to the police but apparently weren't monitored closely enough. One had been jailed for a while for shooting at police but then released. This gives new meaning to the refusal of the US Congress to close Guantanamo and release the people who are being held there. If they had been being held in US-based prisons, some of them surely would have been released by now. It only takes a few to do tremendous damage. I'm sure that some posters will have contrary thoughts. Please post them.

I have contrary thoughts. Donald Trump to put it simply, is an absolute moron. He makes grand, general statements and has no plan for implementation or the aftermath if implemented. Want to radicalize American Muslims? Start treating them like Muslim citizens in Europe are treated. High unemployment and stigmatization of Muslims, makes Muslims in some European countries, easy targets for recruiters. While life in America may not be perfect for Muslim Americans, on a per capita basis they are more highly educated than white, Christian Americans. Guantanamo Bay has been an absolute disaster for the US. It has brought down our standing on the world stage and is used as a recruiting tool for terrorists. Its only purpose was to subvert the American constitution by holding prisoners overseas instead of in American prisons. Republicans have scared their flock of sheep into thinking that bringing suspected terrorists to US prisons would be a danger for Americans when the real reason is that if brought to America, they would have to be given a fair trial. The US prison system already safely holds people convicted of terrorism. None of them have ever escaped or been released into the US and caused any incident.

[boomerangutang]

Notes from Sander's campaign. .. . . . .

Thousands of people didn't get to cast their ballots in Arizona because they couldn't afford to wait that long. Scenes on cable news showed hundreds of people in line at 11:30pm in Phoenix – more than four hours after polls closed.

One reason it is so hard to vote in Arizona is because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. There were 70 percent fewer polling places this year than in 2012 in Phoenix's county. In just one AZ county with more than 4 million residents, there were just 60 polling places. That's one polling place per 67,000 people (granted, not all are voters).

One woman said she had to stand in line for 5 hours to vote. Imagine the number who didn't have the patience (or weren't able) to stand in line for many hours.