Looks like 54-46 Clinton in yesterday’s non binding WA primary (not all votes counted, 650K votes in). But no delegates won, those were decided by the WA caucus on March 26, which Bernie won handily (73-27 with 230K voting).
That’s an observation, not a complaint. Rules are rules and Bernie won his delegates fair and square. But it’s a great argument to dump the caucuses for next time. If you’re serious about more people voting, you’ll opt for primaries.
A win for Clinton is also good for the “optics of it”, which no one but a cable pundit cares about.
In any case, perhaps more pundit stories tomorrow about WA, but it wasn’t a huge story.
Bustle:
And what does this distinction at each contest say about support for each candidate? Caucusing takes more effort because you have to go out and actually be there and rally for your candidate; voting is easy and can be done by mail or in two seconds at a polling center. Since Sanders overwhelmingly won the Democratic caucuses, you could argue that his supporters were more politically active than Clinton's in Washington.
However, that theory is quickly debunked when you consider that more than 650,000 votes were cast in the primary, but only 230,000 in the caucuses. The unequal voter turnout makes you wonder why, then, the Democratic Party would continue to solely count results from the caucuses when far fewer people showed up for it.
In any case, congrats to Clinton for pulling off a victory in a presidential primary that quite literally had no effect on her campaign. Cue John Oliver criticizing primaries and caucuses, which is all I can think about now, especially in cases like Washington state where they seem to intentionally make things more difficult for us to understand.
Ron Brownstein:
Even from its first flurries, it’s already clear that a presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will radically accelerate the ongoing transformation in the identity of the two major political parties.
One of the key trends in modern American politics is what I’ve called the class inversion—the shift since the 1960s of working-class whites from the Democratic Party to the Republican, and the parallel movement of more white-collar whites from the GOP to the Democrats since the 1980s. A Clinton-Trump race that could prove more competitive than many expected threatens to finally uproot the last vestiges of the class-based political alignment that defined U.S. politics from Franklin Roosevelt through the 1960s.
John Sides:
Here’s a quiz question for you: What percentage of Democrats identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual? Here’s another: What percentage of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year?
Got your answers? Now keep reading.
It’s pretty well known that Democrats and Republicans like each other less than they used to. And it’s pretty well known that being a Democrat or Republican can bias how we view virtually everything, including objective facts such as the state of the economy.
Now new research illuminates a key source of partisan animosity: Our internal pictures of the opposite party are terribly inaccurate. When asked about the groups historically associated with each party, we think these groups make up a vastly larger fraction of each party than they really do. In other words, we think each party is essentially a huge bundle of stereotypes — and this tendency is particularly pronounced when we’re characterizing the opposite party.
The research, by political scientists Doug Ahler and Gaurav Sood, can be tidily summarized in this graph. It shows people’s average guesses for what percentage of each party is in each group, as well as the true percentage.
Michael Lind with a different perspective on realignment. Long read, but worth it:
Today’s Republican Party is predominantly a Midwestern, white, working-class party with its geographic epicenter in the South and interior West. Today’s Democratic Party is a coalition of relatively upscale whites with racial and ethnic minorities, concentrated in an archipelago of densely populated blue cities.
In both parties, there’s a gap between the inherited orthodoxy of a decade or two ago and the real interests of today’s electoral coalition. And in both parties, that gap between voters and policies is being closed in favor of the voters — a slight transition in the case of Hillary Clinton, but a dramatic one in the case of Donald Trump.
During the Democratic primary, pundits who focused on the clash between Clinton and Sanders missed a story that illuminated this shift: The failure of Jim Webb’s brief campaign for the presidential nomination. Webb was the only candidate who represented the old-style Democratic Party of the mid-20th century — the party whose central appeal was among white Southerners and Northern white “ethnics.” Even during the “New Democrat” era of Bill Clinton, white working-class remnants of that coalition were still important in the party. But by 2016, Webb lacked a constituency, and he was out of place among the politicians seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, which included one lifelong socialist (Bernie Sanders) and two candidates who had been raised as Republicans (Hillary Clinton and, briefly, Lincoln Chafee).
On the Republican side, the exemplary living fossil was Jeb Bush.
A reminder: a conversation with a Bernie Sanders voter who is the 18% that disapproves of Obama is very different than a conversation with a Bernie voter who is within the 82% who approve.
Sean Wilentz:
Donald J. Trump has astounded the world, as he would be the first to tell you, leaving the Republican leadership to make the best of a terrible situation. Only months ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a professed maverick Republican, was berating Mr. Trump for inciting the fringe “crazies.” Now he backs the presumptive nominee. “I believe that the Republican Party must maintain its viability as a party,” he said.
But what if the Republicans are no longer a viable national party? What if the schism between Mr. Trump and establishment holdouts like Mitt Romney deepens, and other schisms follow? What if Mr. Trump’s achievement turns out to be not just hijacking the party of Ronald Reagan, but catalyzing its disintegration?
Any piece that talks about Whigs in proper context gets my attention.
Yep. Bernie wins the delegates, fair and square. Them’s the rules. We might dump the caucus next time, but this is the result this time.
Greg Sargent:
The sky-is-falling chorus let out a sustained wail this weekend, as new national polls showed the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tightening. One survey suggests part of the reason may be that Bernie Sanders supporters are reluctant to back Clinton — raising the stakes around the question of what Sanders will do to swing his followers behind her if and when she wins the nomination, and whether he’ll draw this battle out all the way to the convention floor.
But Sanders himself knows he enters the post-voting phase of the primaries with a weak hand. This was made perfectly clear in an important exchange on CNN’s State of the Union.
We are not Democrats if we are not flop-sweating over polls. But I read them like this: if/when Bernie voters don’t come around, Hillary has a small win like 2012 and if/when they do, she has a big win like 2008. Sure, you as an individual can declare you’ll never vote for her. But the PUMA phenomenon in 2008 should have taught us what happens in the end when faced with a choice of Clinton and Trump. November is a long way away from May.
Mark Blumenthal and Jon Cohen:
Trump Polls: You Can’t Wish Them Away
But as we should all realize by now, it’s not enough for Trump’s opponents to wish him away. It’s important for political professionals to actually explore what is buoying Trump — even if they find his rise unfathomable.
Let us be clear: We believe it’s always dangerous to make predictions about the election more than six months out, especially at a moment when one party’s nomination contest is resolved, and another remains contested. Polls are a snapshot in time, not rarified glimpses into a crystal ball.
Our latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey online election tracking poll, which found Clinton leading Trump narrowly among registered voters (48 to 45 percent), is just such a topline glance. Any individual poll — certainly including ours — merits close scrutiny.
Marc Ambinder:
The Times write-up of the poll reminds readers that, at this point in 2008, only 60 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Barack Obama. By the election, virtually all of them were on board. Remarkably, the Democratic Party is more unified today than it was at the same point in the last competitive cycle. These three paragraphs are incredibly important and worth quoting in full:
Mr. Trump is hampered by a high level of contempt among important voting blocs. Only 21 percent of female voters view him favorably, while 60 percent view him unfavorably. A mere 14 percent of voters 18 to 29 view him positively, while 65 percent of such young voters have a negative opinion about him. And just 12 percent of nonwhite voters view Mr. Trump favorably, while 68 percent view him unfavorably.
Mrs. Clinton fares little better. Just 23 percent of white voters view her favorably, while 63 percent of whites have an unfavorable view. Men dislike her almost as much as women dislike Mr. Trump: Only 26 percent of men view her favorably, and 58 percent hold an unfavorable perception of her.
One factor working in Mrs. Clinton's favor, though, is that the current Democrat in the White House is enjoying a modest rejuvenation. Fifty percent of Americans now approve of President Obama's job performance, his highest rating in more than three years. [The New York Times]
No, Trump isn't winning. Yes, the election will be competitive. And Nate Silver: You are still worth reading.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:
Donald Trump's entire worldview, as can be determined from his entire life and public record, is pretty much of one thing: the worship of strength. Hence the obsession with status, wealth, and fame. Hence the misogyny, the racism, and the bullying.
Of course, the worship of strength is what fascism is all about. The Nazis touted "the triumph of the will." Aryans are strong, they said, and therefore had the right and the duty to dominate the world. Everyone else, including Jews, gypsies, gays, the handicapped, are weak and must be eliminated.
I would argue that Trump's constant lying is itself evidence of his deeply-held fascism. When you worship strength and domination, you are liable, as Pilate, to ask "What is truth?" Truth, in Trump's eyes, is but a tool. Or, as Mussolini put it, "If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable."
Drew Altman:
Gallup polling released last week showed majority support–58%–for replacing the Affordable Care Act with a federally funded health system. The same poll found 51% support for repealing the ACA. There is a basic point that often gets lost in reaction to poll findings like these: They measure the public’s initial response to ideas and words, and proposals such as single payer or ACA repeal that people associate with candidates–but they don’t tell us much about the likely level of support for a policy if there is a real debate about legislation before Congress, with winners and losers laid bare.
Jon Ralston (yes, that Jon Ralston) with a fantastic must read about his own kid and being a good dad:
The Child I love
But the truth was I had no idea. Or I was in denial.
Slowly but surely, I have come to not just accept it but to embrace it. I have learned a lot about transgender issues through my job. I have read a bit.
But I don’t want to talk about bathrooms or locker rooms. I don’t want to debate the public policy issues in North Carolina or whether the president was right to sue. There will be plenty of time for that.
My first instinct, as ever, has been to protect my child, to make sure Maddy is safe and happy. That’s all most parents ever want for their children.
Life is difficult as it is. But with so much ignorance out there breeding so much fear, so much visceral recoiling from the concept of transgenderism, I fear this will make Maddy’s life that much harder.
Amber Phillips:
To the casual observer, it would seem that gay rights falls neatly on the political spectrum. Democrats champion bills that aim to protect LGBT people from discrimination, and Republicans increasingly propose and pass ones aimed to protect the religiously devout.
But there's growing evidence that Republicans in Congress and across the country are sidestepping the more controversial religious protection and bathroom bills and, in some cases, embracing LGBT non-discrimination laws instead. Some, like GOP Reps. Charlie Dent (Pa.) and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), are even leading the way.
Ros-Lehtinen and her husband, a former U.S. attorney, recently launched a bilingual campaign to advocate specifically for transgender rights in honor of their transgender son, Rodrigo.