One way to deal with gadflies, rogues and bullies is to give them exactly what they want on the theory that they will eventually do themselves in. Since his Colorado debacle, Donald Trump has been arguing that the delegate attribution should reflect the percentage earned by each candidate in each primary/caucus.

But under these new “Trump rules,” his total delegate count today would be 564 (table below), well below his official current total of 755. Cruz would suffer a smaller downward adjustment, ending up with 495 delegates to date instead of his current 545. The gap between the two would fall from 210 to 69, less than 3 percent of the total delegates.