It has been a very exciting primary season so far, a primary season which has seen a Sanders insurgency fail in its coup d’etat against front runner and party stalwart, Hillary Clinton. After a narrow loss in Iowa, but a convincing win in New Hampshire, a costly series of blunders in Nevada led to a devastating 6 point loss when Sanders needed the most.
An autopsy on what went wrong with the Sanders Campaign will most certainly point to his immigration policies, but also his unforced error antagonizing the previously neutral Culinary Union, his campaign’s attack on popular DREAMer, Astrid Silva, as well as his over reliance on canned talking points during a Nevada Town Hall that wanted an emotional connection with the candidates, as the most likely reasons behind his near 2-1 loss among Hispanics in Clark County.
Sanders’s failure to connect with Hispanics left his campaign winnowed and wounded heading into South Carolina, which resulted in a humiliating, near 50 point rejection by a Democratic voting electorate roughly 62% African American. It was a stunning defeat for the junior senator from Vermont, as 84% of African American voters supported Clinton and denied him a desperately needed victory. More telling, those African Americans who actually lived during the civil rights struggle rejected Bernie Sanders, and his revolution, by a whopping 96-3 margin. Brilliant African American activists and bloggers can speak to the reasons for this far better than I can, but I will say that Sanders, and his surrogates, attacking a president who is a beloved figure in the community damaged his campaign in ways that it was never able to recover from.
And now, on Super Tuesday, we have two campaigns...one ascending beyond her opponent’s reach, the other drowning under the weight of unforced errors. The Clinton Campaign is retooling for the general election race, while the Sanders Campaign has made the risky gamble to pull its resources, abandon the SEC states, and concentrate its focus on less diverse states where he has a better chance of winning.
I’m going to be watching three states very closely today...Texas, Georgia, and Alabama. If polling is accurate, Clinton is on track for +45 point wins in each, and they will serve as bellwethers for Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, which means Hillary Clinton will most likely wake up Wednesday morning with a commanding +200 delegate lead.
I will also be watching the race in Massachusetts, a loss there or in Minnesota will serve as a dagger right through the heart of the Sanders campaign, and will call into question its continued participation in a race where winning is permanently out of reach.
I remain incredibly proud of the brilliant campaign Hillary Clinton has run, her command of the issues, her tireless defense of women’s rights and civil rights, and her commitment to the progressive causes that affect us all.