Essential Politics: California on their minds, candidates head west

The races to the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations are now in the home stretch, with candidates on both sides increasingly focused on the final day of the contest, June 7, and its big prize, California.

On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has pretty much stopped arguing that he can actually win the nomination and is instead hoping that a high-profile win in California could strengthen his hand in negotiations with Hillary Clinton over the Democratic Party platform.

The race remains more real on the Republican side, where opponents of Donald Trump don’t have much to show for their efforts of the last couple of weeks. Their last hope is now to beat Trump in enough California congressional districts to keep him from winning a majority of the delegates to the Republican National Convention in July.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

THE GOP’S CALIFORNIA WEEKEND

The week began with a focus on Pennsylvania and four other mid-Atlantic and New England states that held primaries on Tuesday. But after Trump and Clinton dominated the night, the focus quickly moved west.

That’s particularly true on the Republican side. As Phil Willon and Javier Panzar noted, this weekend’s California Republican Convention had been expected to be a drowsy affair. Then, all three GOP candidates announced they would be showing up.

Suddenly, Burlingame has become the most important place in GOP politics, at least for a few days. Our reporters will be there throughout the proceedings, starting today. Keep track of all the latest news and analysis throughout the weekend.

Before heading to the convention, Trump held a rally in Costa Mesa. As Michael Finnegan, Ruben Vives and Matt Pearce reported, it was a raw and boisterous performance, heavy on the themes that have formed the core of Trump’s appeal to his most loyal followers -- the evils of illegal immigration, the need for a border wall, support for using torture against terror suspects and references to “Crooked Hillary.”

The tone contrasted sharply with Trump’s foreign policy speech earlier in the week in which he sought to create a more sober image. The contrast points to an unresolved question about Trump’s campaign, which Kate Linthicum looked at: For Trump, how much does appearing “presidential” actually matter?

To gain a majority of the delegates to the GOP convention, Trump will need to win a majority of California’s delegates -- how big a majority will depend on what else he wins over the next five weeks. But as Finnegan wrote, Trump faces a lot of challenges in California. Voting by mail starts May 9, and Trump is far behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in organizing in the fight for delegates in each of the state’s 53 congressional districts.

Meanwhile, one important group of California Republicans appears to have largely stopped paying attention to the presidential race -- the party’s big-dollar donors. As Seema Mehta, Kurtis Lee and Anthony Pesce reported, many of California’s biggest GOP contributors have decided they’ve had enough of presidential politics this year and are directing their money elsewhere.

NEXT UP, INDIANA

Even as they descend on California, Trump and his rivals are preparing for Indiana’s primary on Tuesday.

Indiana is particularly crucial for Cruz, who hopes that if he can beat Trump there, he’ll be able to revive a campaign that enjoyed a moment of triumph in Wisconsin on April 5, but has flagged for most of the rest of the month.

The need to win Indiana caused the Texas senator to reach a deal with John Kasich in which the Ohio governor agreed not to campaign in Indiana in return for Cruz giving him a free path in Oregon and New Mexico. Indiana is also where Cruz unveiled his putative running mate, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina.

Will all that frantic activity put Cruz over the top? Indiana hasn’t had a lot of polling, but the surveys that have been taken show Trump ahead. If he wins on Tuesday, he’ll still need to prevail in California, but his road will be much less steep.

Tuesday night, we’ll bring you all the results and analysis of the primary on Trail Guide and on our Politics page.

And as the race unfolds, keep watch on the delegates in both parties with our Delegate Tracker, which shows where each candidate stands and where each has won support.

Do you have questions about how convention delegates are selected and elected? Check out this explanation of how the delegate process works, by Melanie Mason.

THE DEMOCRATS LOOK FOR A PATH TOWARD UNITY

Over on the Democratic side, Sanders spent tens of millions of dollars in failed efforts to defeat Clinton, first in New York and then in Pennsylvania. In both states, he heavily outspent her but lost badly. Now Sanders is laying off campaign workers and focusing his remaining resources on California.

Meantime, in a long-distance sort of way, the two rival camps have begun the dance that ends -- almost always -- with the defeated candidate announcing his support for the winner. At issue, always, are the terms of surrender. The losing campaign tries to extract concessions in return for its support.

There have been no formal talks between the campaigns yet, but each side has begun to publicly signal what it’s looking for. Look for that process to intensify over the next few weeks.

Some defeated candidates want help retiring their campaign debt -- not an issue for Sanders. Others angle for the vice presidential spot -- also not something that appears to be at issue.

Sanders seems most focused on putting his stamp on the party’s platform and on winning changes in the rules for future nominating contests; he opposes closed primaries, for example, which don’t allow independents to have a say on the Democratic nominee.

Clinton, for her part, wants Sanders to actively work to persuade his backers to support her, much as she did for then-Sen. Barack Obama eight years ago. In that quest, she has a powerful ally -- Trump, whose every utterance reminds most Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents of how badly they want to win the November election.

That could be particularly important with younger voters, who have formed the core of Sanders’ support and don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about Clinton, but are deeply at odds with Trump and his beliefs. A new poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which has been tracking millennial generation voters for several years, shows those younger voters moving toward the Democrats and away from Trump.

A general election matchup between Trump and Clinton would feature two candidates who start the race disliked by unusually high percentages of voters. In Trump’s case, the negative level is unprecedented.

As Cathy Decker explained, both candidates are trying to improve their images, “but they are so well-known, and operating in such a polarized political environment, that their efforts may only serve to tinker around the edges.”

In Trump’s case, at least, his efforts to improve his image keep running up against his tendency to sabotage his own cause. The latest incident came this week when Trump declared that “if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote.” As Decker noted, Trump’s unpopularity with women runs both very broad and very deep.

Trump backers that they believe that his problems with women can be offset by a large number of white, mostly male, working-class voters who could be attracted to him. Lisa Mascaro took a look at some of those so-called Trump Democrats in Pennsylvania, one of the key states in which voters of that sort could be important, if enough of them exist.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Young versus old, female versus male, minority versus white -- all elections turn heavily on key demographics. What’s distinctive about this election, Ron Brownstein and Leah Askarinam write in the Atlantic, is how early the demographics patterns took shape and how consistent they have stayed.

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide at our politics page and on Twitter at latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.