Why the biggest story of the New York primaries was Ted Cruz's devastating loss

Whoa, you mean Donald Trump won New York's Republican primary by an enormous margin?

Well, duh: Of course he did.

If he'd lost, as Marco Rubio managed to do in his home state of Florida — now that would have been news. But the frontrunner solidly winning his home state? That's to be expected. It means exactly as little to the broader race for the nomination as Ted Cruz's victory in Texas and John Kasich's (sole) win in Ohio.

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Which is why the biggest take-away from Tuesday's vote isn't Trump's win or its size but the magnitude of Cruz's loss — finishing in third place with around 15 percent of the vote and on track to pick up zero delegates in the state just two weeks after winning 48 percent of the vote, and beating Trump by 13 percentage points, in Wisconsin.

If we had reason to consider New York an aberration, a speed bump on the way to more solid Cruz victories in the remaining contests, then we could dismiss the New York results as the combination of Trump's home field advantage with a demographic uniquely unfavorable to the Texas senator.

But the polls tell us something very different.

Next Tuesday, on April 26, voters will cast ballots in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. At the moment, polls show Cruz roughly tied for second place in Pennsylvania, coming in second or third in Maryland, and finishing third in Connecticut. (There have been no recent surveys in Rhode Island and Delaware.)

Add to that Trump's solid leads in California and New Jersey — the two biggest states to vote on June 7, the final day of the primaries — and we're left with a vision of Cruz as a deeply, and perhaps fatally, flawed candidate.

It would be one thing if, after a faltering start to the primaries, Cruz finally hit his stride in Wisconsin, setting up a string of decisive victories at or near the majority threshold in the contests remaining on the calendar. Then he'd be well placed to make a compelling case for himself at the convention, arguing that although he finished behind Trump in the popular vote and delegate count, the outcome was the result of a field that stayed deeply divided longer than anyone anticipated. Once the field had winnowed, a majority of Republicans settled on Cruz as their preferred candidate — with the implication being that if the states that voted early were permitted to vote again in light of subsequent developments, Cruz may well have prevailed outright over Trump.

But the results in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and California aren't likely to support such a story. They're likely to show Cruz continuing to be favored by far fewer voters than Trump — and in at least some states (like New York) by even fewer voters than Kasich.

I don't care how many delegates Cruz's campaign has lined up to defect to his camp on a second ballot at the convention (which of course may not even be necessary). If Cruz ends up a couple million votes and a couple hundred bound delegates behind Trump, while also showing no sign of building momentum through the last two months of the primaries, his case for being named the party's nominee is going to be extremely weak.

No one should be surprised at that weakness.

Cruz is easily the most right-wing candidate to seek the nomination this year, and arguably the most right-wing candidate to run for president in American history. He wants to scrap the IRS, and shutter the cabinet-level Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development, and do away with 25 additional agencies, bureaus, commissions, and programs. He would abolish the progressive graduated income tax, replacing it with a far more regressive 10 percent flat tax on income and a 16 percent value-added (sales) tax. He would also get rid of the payroll tax, the inheritance tax, and the corporate income tax. On immigration and foreign policy, Cruz gives Trump a run for his money, promising to crack down hard on undocumented immigrants and lash out ruthlessly against ISIS.

Then there are Cruz's personal charms — or lack thereof. In less than four years in Washington, he's managed to antagonize just about everyone, but none more than those with whom he worked most closely, in the Senate. In a town full of self-aggrandizing attention-seekers, Cruz has distinguished himself by displaying uncommonly ruthless ambition, consistently seeking to advance his own position even when it clashed noisily with the wishes of more senior members of his party. Add in a tone of voice and speaking style that wavers between smarmy condescension and oleaginous insincerity — and well, we have the candidate that nearly every analyst predicted would have very little appeal with voters.

Of course Cruz has done better than just about anyone thought he would, outlasting Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and everyone else to become the party's anointed alternative to Donald Trump. Yet it's important to keep in mind just how little popular support Cruz really has. The #NeverTrump crowd likes to point out that (before the New York results rolled in) the Manhattan mogul had won only about 37 percent of the popular vote. That is certainly on the low end by historic standards. But Cruz? Before New York, he came in at 28.3 percent — and that's going to go down after all of Tuesday's votes are tallied.

That's right: The man serving as the GOP's Great Anti-Trump Hope is winning a little more than a quarter of Republican primary votes.

Maybe things will change. Maybe Cruz will win Indiana in a landslide on May 3, and then sweep Nebraska and West Virginia on May 10, and Oregon on May 17, and Washington on May 24, setting up a massive upset for the history books in California on June 7.

Or things could continue roughly the way they've been going for most of the past three months, despite the various short-lived media-fueled counter-narratives that continue to obscure it.

Trump is winning, and Cruz is not.