Yesterday was another pretty good day for Ted Cruz. A handful of delegates were awarded, almost none of which went to Donald Trump. That’s Ted Cruz’s main goal at this point, which is to make it more and more difficult for Trump to reach 1,237. However, Cruz picked up another victory by finishing dead last in one of the contests – the D.C. primary.

Lots of candidates run against D.C. In fact, it’s pretty much standard fare in modern politics to run against the center of government. D.C. has been an all-purpose boogeyman since I’ve been alive. But seldom or ever has a Republican candidate been genuinely disliked by D.C. as much as Ted Cruz is. That’s the mark of a candidate who has a genuinely anti-D.C. record, as opposed to merely anti-D.C. rhetoric.

That having been said, the Cruz campaign has to recognize that they are in a precarious position, delegate-wise, relative to Donald Trump. As much as they’d like the PR value of being hated by DC, they realize they can’t just give away delegates to Trump at this point. Thankfully, Rubio and Kasich teamed up to make sure that didn’t happen.

In other words, D.C. gave Ted Cruz the best possible result: losing badly in D.C., while not surrendering delegates to Trump.

Generally speaking, it’s not actually possible to win in politics by losing, but this is one situation that might be the rare exception.