For a long time, the smart money was on John Kasich eating his last campaign-trail meal in a lobster joint on the New Hampshire coast sometime in February, in a scene that even the rookie reporters would have found dingy and sad. But he has endured well into the spring, through the Bronx portion of the Republican contest, obligingly swallowing a monumental portion of Arthur Avenue cured meats. At first, the Party’s professionals tended to look kindly on Kasich’s oddball, lo-fi campaign, because his basic personal decency was a helpful force in an angry primary, but in the past month his sheer endurance, the accumulation of all those meals, has become a problem for them. As long as Kasich stays in the race, he makes it harder for those opposed to Donald Trump to coalesce around a single candidate. The Times devoted a long story, last week, to the Cruz campaign’s mounting exasperation with Kasich’s decision to stay in the race, even though the Ohioan has won only his own state and has barely seemed to compete in much of the country. Cruz said, “Someone is not electable if they can’t get elected.”

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