Kasich’s positivity has had the added virtue of not getting him into a spat with Trump, who has swiftly dispatched almost every candidate who has gone after him. That positivity slipped over the last week as the two fought for Ohio—Trump aired television ads attacking Kasich as an absentee governor, taunted him on Twitter, and criticized him for having voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement while in Congress. Kasich, in turn, accused Trump of creating a “toxic environment” that was encouraging violence at his events. Trump has yet to come up with a cutting epithet for Kasich as he has his other antagonists—perhaps it helps that Kasich is neither especially low-energy, nor little, nor a liar—and whether he deigns to do so in the coming days could indicate how much of a threat the front-runner considers the Ohioan.

A surprising number of Trump supporters I have met have told me they also like Kasich, and the idea of Kasich as a ticket-mate for Trump has gained a small amount of traction. Asked about the prospect last week, Kasich did not definitively rule it out. In 2000, when he briefly sought the presidency but dropped out before votes were cast, Kasich was vetted for a slot on the ticket with George W. Bush. But he didn’t get that and was not offered a Cabinet position, a result he blamed on the fact that, when Dick Cheney was defense secretary in the 1980s, Kasich, then a congressman, opposed the B-2 bomber and succeeded in reducing its production.

This year, the Republican establishment has never flocked to Kasich, even though he has many qualities they ought to find attractive—the long political resume, the record of competence, the business-friendly platform. That might have been because there were so many other options, particularly the similar-on-paper Jeb Bush. (Early in the campaign, Kasich said he decided to run because of Bush’s unimpressive early performance.) It might have been because of his temperament, which is far from polite and refined. It might have been because they doubted that someone with his moderate tendencies could appeal to a base of voters thought to be further to the right. It might have been because the establishment was always too disorganized and few in number to control this year’s nominating process.

Kasich vowed Tuesday to “go all the way to Cleveland and secure the Republican nomination.” His campaign released a memo arguing, with little specificity, that no candidate would be able to win a majority of delegates, that most of Rubio’s former supporters would flock to Kasich, and that the electoral map was “shifting significantly in our favor.” With three candidates left, Kasich stands as the standard-bearer for an optimism that borders on delusion. The GOP’s other choices are Trump, whom many consider a dangerous demagogue, and Cruz, whom the former speaker of the House referred to on Wednesday as “Lucifer.” Given those choices, Kasich hopes delusional optimism will start to look pretty good.

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