Politico on opinion from the anonymous insiders the Sanders campaign is least likely to listen to:
A Nevada Democrat suggested the Sanders camp should focus on “doing what’s necessary for a Democratic victory in November,” but said Weaver “made a fool of himself by declaring on MSNBC that Bernie would take the campaign to the convention even if they were behind in delegates and popular vote.”
Some insiders suggested a graceful exit could help Sanders — the independent junior Vermont senator — become a major player in Democratic politics in the years to come.
“The primary is over. There is no path, and there is no math,” added one Florida Democrat. “The sooner he lands the plane, the better chance he has at building a real legacy from this.”
And a number of Democrats sounded a note of exasperation with Sanders’ campaign — and the senator’s supporters.
“If any adults actually supported Bernie, they would tell him to get out next Wednesday morning,” said a New Hampshire Democrat. “But he doesn't have any adult supporters. So he will stay in.”
Jon Favreau (Obama’s speech writer) with a good read:
Hey, Berniacs: I Learned to Love Hillary and So Can You
An Obama 2008 veteran, who’s been on a campaign that was in a position similar to Clinton’s and that had to reconcile with Clinton, offers his thoughts.
Philip Bump:
Before the New York primary on Tuesday, WNYC reported that more than 120,000 people were dropped off the voter rolls in Brooklyn. Some people had moved, some had been labeled as "inactive" -- but the scale of the change prompted a lot of concern. Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) released a statement pledging to address voting issues that were reported on Tuesday. The board of Elections suspended the chief clerk at its Brooklyn office while they investigated what had happened.
I was curious how much that purge may have affected the results in the city on Tuesday. So I pulled some numbers.
How best to see if Brooklyn's turnout changed? Well, we can compare it to the other boroughs. After all, all five voted in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, just as all five did in 2000, 2004 and 2008. We can see how much of that total turnout came from Brooklyn and how much came from the other boroughs.
As it turns out, Brooklyn was a higher percentage of the voting than any of the other four on Tuesday -- and grew as a percentage of that turnout since the last contested Democratic primary eight years ago.
Brooklyn was also a Hillary borough (60-40) like all the others, so it’s unlikely that local incompetence changed the election. Let’s look into it. But please spare us voter fraud, disenfranchisement, and stolen election diaries unless you have proof of more than incompetence.
Hartford Courant:
It was a Catch-22. Sanders believed he had to attack once he became a real threat, and that hurt him with the fence-sitters. "I felt Bernie could improve my life," said Weagraff, a retired human resources manager, "but I don't think that now."
None of this is to say Sanders' army of young, idealistic and angry followers will abandon ship. We'll see no shortage of die-hards if Sanders comes to New Haven Sunday, as appears to be happening, though the evening event on the green was not confirmed Thursday. What is clear is that the gradual migration toward Clinton is underway, as Democrats see her in control of the nomination.
Some will go more willingly than others, and some will never make the switch.
Even the hard core Reddit Bernie people are coming to grips with the delegate numbers and the polls (Politico):
Bernie Sanders’ supporters are experiencing the five stages of grief after a devastating 16-point loss in New York Tuesday night, a drubbing that greatly narrowed the Vermont senator’s path moving forward.
After holding out hope, some are beginning to accept the disheartening notion that the Vermont senator is now unlikely to win the party's nomination.
…
Bernie needed NY and he didn’t even come close,” Stonum wrote. “He would need PA too and he’s not going to come close there either. I wish it weren’t true, but it is.”
Just as in New York, Sanders faces another closed primary on April 26 in Pennsylvania, where he currently trails by double digits in the polls. He also faces tough battles that day in Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.
As Sanders supporters processed the New York loss and the upcoming map, Stonum wasn’t alone in his resignation.
On pro-Sanders message boards on Reddit — an online community where impassioned discussions of Sanders’ campaign vastly outweigh any talk about Clinton — expressions of surrender began bubbling up after the New York loss.
“It's the reality of the situation, the chance to win the nomination has passed,” wrote one user, who posts under the username “Sieziggy” in a pro-Sanders forum. “It's time to shift the energy of his campaign and groups like this subreddit to local and state government, which will have a lasting, meaningful impact.”
This is a pundit round-up. And this is what the pundits are saying. Your vote matters, don’t change your vote if you don’t want to, and none of this is disrespect to Bernie voters. But be aware of the situation. Hillary is the presumptive nominee now and the rest follows.
NY Times:
Hillary Clinton’s advisers and allies have begun extensive discussions about who should be her running mate, seeking to compile a list of 15 to 20 potential picks for her team to start vetting by late spring.
Mrs. Clinton’s team will grapple with complicated questions like whether the United States is ready for an all-female ticket, and whether her choice for vice president would be able to handle working in a White House in which former President Bill Clinton wields significant influence on policy.
While the nomination fight is still fluid, Mrs. Clinton is confident enough of victory that she has described a vision of a running mate and objectives for the search, according to campaign advisers and more than a dozen Democrats close to the campaign or the Clintons.
WaPo:
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview broadcast Friday that he would wait to see what Hillary Clinton includes in her platform before deciding how actively to campaign for her in the fall if she is the party’s nominee.
The senator from Vermont, who has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic convention, was asked by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC whether he would try to persuade his young supporters to back Clinton in the same fashion that she supported President Obama after losing the nomination to him in 2008.
“Well, first of all, I’ve got to find out what her platform is, what the views are that she is going to be bringing forth, to what degree she will adopt many of the ideas that I think are extremely popular and I think very sensible,” Sanders told Mitchell.
Philip Bump:
Exit polls get a bad rap. I don't have a dog in this fight, but it's true. Exit polls provide remarkably quick data on elections that comes with a smaller and smaller margin of error as an election night passes, telling us who came out to vote for which candidate and why. It's essential, but like so many other polls, we only notice when the data is wrong.
When polls closed in New York on Tuesday, exit poll estimates showed Bernie Sanders trailing Hillary Clinton by only four points. That eventually got adjusted, but it was the most recent example of a poll showing a number that ended up being way off the final result.
To figure out why, I reached out to Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research. Since 2003, Edison has been conducting polling for the National Election Pool (NEP), a group of six media organizations that includes Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and the Associated Press. Once upon a time, each of those organizations would have run their own exit polling; now, it's centralized through Edison.
To explain what happened in New York, it's best to start at the beginning: How exit polls work, from start to finish. The interview below has been condensed and lightly edited, but you knew that because you seen these things before.
Interesting bit, here: Early exit polls oversampled Bernie supporters and undersampled NYC. Later it was corrected, but that’s why Hillary only led by 4 in the beginning. In many case, they’re more for demographics than results. Check them out the next day for better demographic accuracy.
Tara Setmayer:
Want to Change the System, Trump and Sanders Supporters? Learn How It Works First.
Our democracy has rules for a reason. And ignorance of them is damaging our democracy.
Morning Consult:
Legislators in several states are slowing down their work on measures to ban transgendered people from using certain bathroom facilities and so-called “religious freedom” bills after the public outcry over versions passed in North Carolina and Georgia [since vetoed] sparked protests and political pressure.
In Tennessee, the sponsor of a transgender bathroom measure withdrew her legislation in order to make changes, and to wait for inevitable legal challenges moving forward in other states. State Rep. Susan Lynn (R) said she wanted to watch how lawsuits against other states’ versions play out.
South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright (R), the lead sponsor of a bathroom bill in his state, did not seek to advance the measure during a Senate General Committee meeting on Wednesday. The bill has to pass the Senate by May 1 to stay alive this year.
In Missouri, the state House delayed a vote on a controversial religious freedom measure that would give state residents the chance to enshrine those protections in the state constitution. Democrats who oppose the bill say the delay is likely a sign that majority Republicans are having trouble corralling the necessary support.
And South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) vetoed a transgender bathroom bill earlier this year, saying local school districts should be able to make their own accommodations for transgender students. State Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) said he will bring up the bill once again next year.
The delays follow loud protests from business groups in North Carolina and Georgia, where bills opposed by gay rights groups passed earlier this year.
These were politically stupid bills, and NC is paying a price just as IN did. Didn’t anyone talk to Mike Pence?
Stat News on Prince’s death:
It’s not currently known what caused the singer’s death; an autopsy is expected to be conducted Friday. But if Prince had recently been infected with influenza, it could very well have been the cause of death, experts said.
People often dismiss the threat of the flu, likening it to the common cold. Most know it can kill elderly people with weakened immune systems, but they don’t generally see it as a danger for young adults or people in middle age —people like Prince, who was 57.
Mostly, they are right. But sometimes they are wrong.
“It’s certainly true that otherwise healthy people can die of flu, although it’s rare,” said Dr. John Treanor, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
“The bulk of the serious illnesses occur in young children and older adults. But that doesn’t mean that there are no deaths in otherwise healthy young adults.”