As we note every Wednesday after a Tuesday, the best primary stories will be out Thursday.
CA especially was a very late night, and in the end not close (Clinton 56-43 with 92% counted as of this writing, and AP just called it for Clinton at 6:13 am ET). But we have a historic presumptive nominee and her name is Hillary Clinton. And we are proud, proud, Democrats this morning, looking forward to calling her Madame President.
In the meantime, let’s try and understand where we are. What a contrast with Donald Trump (see other front page for Paul Ryan’s hypocrisy). And note: Trump’s pedestrian speech did nothing to fix his racist problem. Chris Christie embraces the racist, Mark Kirk withdrew support, and Paul Ryan is still voting for the racist. Let’s see what happens next.
LA Times:
Bernie Sanders was trailing Clinton by 14 points in California with nearly three-quarters reporting. After winning at least one state earlier in the night, Sanders at first sounded conciliatory in his remarks to adoring fans in Santa Monica, but the Vermont senator made clear he intends to campaign through D.C.’s primary next week. In between then and now, Sanders will sit down with President Obama (at his request) to continue a conversation about the "significant issues" the senator has raised during the campaign.
Sanders won the rural, northern part of California while Clinton was performing strong in Southern California.
What we do know is there likely will be millions of ballots left uncounted statewide, given California for the first time allowed people whose ballot was postmarked by Election Day to vote. It could be the end of the week before we have a clear idea of the actual vote total.
Annie Karni:
Hillary Clinton’s “glass ceiling” speech, the most memorable moment of oratory in her political career, once decisively marked the end of her presidential hopes; now, her supporters see it as an inspiring prelude.
Eight years to the day after she declared that, thanks to the number of Democrats who voted for her, the highest, hardest glass ceiling of sexism had "about 18 million cracks in it," Clinton is set to make history as the first woman to become her a major party nominee.
Some important data points on Bernie Sanders voters, first from NBC Politics:
Why Does Sanders Do Better Than Clinton Against Trump?
Throughout the Democratic primary race, Sanders has repeatedly said he wants to move the party to the left and has openly challenged the party to adopt his left-leaning policy platform in their July convention. This has led many pundits to suggest that very liberal voters would abandon the Democratic Party in November and it leads to the question of whether Sanders but not Clinton voters are mainly left-leaning liberals. Surprisingly, 57 percent of Sanders but not Clinton voters identify as moderates. This is a stark and surprising finding. It means that Sanders' margins over Trump are being driven by large numbers of moderate voters….
Voters who chose Sanders but not Clinton resembled consistent Trump supporters in their hatred of Clinton. Four in 10 said they hate her and another 49 percent said they dislike her. Among Trump's base, 40 percent said they hate her, and 52 percent said they dislike her.
Monkey Cage Blog:
No, Sanders supporters are not more liberal than Clinton’s. Here’s what really drives elections.
But regardless of which we employ, the differences in policy preferences between Sanders and Clinton supporters are quite small, averaging just two percentage points. All of these results are quite consistent with Hare and Lupton’s own summary of our findings: “respondents who prefer Sanders held roughly the same positions as — or were more conservative than — Clinton voters, overall.” ...
The real and perceived success of Sanders’s campaign, by comparison with typical progressive insurgencies in Democratic primaries, seems to rest substantially on his overwhelming support from independents — and they are mostly not in it for the socialism.
We saw this in states like OK and West by God Virginia, where exit polls show more conservative voters preferred Bernie, maybe because they disliked Hillary. Point is, all Bernie voters are not built the same. And they are not all up for grabs, even if most are. Get the ones you can get. The rest are not worth going after. If they, in the end, vote D, Trump will win them for us. It’s not what we say or do.
LA Times:
In a political season filled with promises of revolution, something revolutionary happened: A woman has won a major party’s presidential nomination.
That historic occurrence, overshadowed somewhat by everything else that has happened in an election year that has wildly defied expectations, will shape the general election clash to come. It sets up a November battle between presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump that will tread heavily on issues of gender.
Peter Alson:
Why Bernie Sanders Didn’t Fold: A Poker Player’s Perspective
So let’s play Bernie’s cards. His holdings are weaker than Hillary’s; he trails in delegates, superdelegates and the popular vote. His path to the nomination at this point is narrower than a militiaman’s view on gun laws. If he refuses to drop out of the race, and it results in a contested convention, what is his expected net gain versus what he might lose?
Conventional wisdom would have dictated him suspending his campaign weeks, if not months, ago. If he did so, he would have been commended by Democratic elites for showing his loyalty and demonstrating an understanding that unifying against the GOP opposition was more important than furthering his personal ambitions. But Bernie is an unusual candidate. His personal ambitions seem secondary to his sense of mission. If we don’t conflate the two, then we might conclude that the best way for him to further his mission is by keeping his candidacy alive, which enables him to continue galvanizing support for his views.
YouGov:
Many Sanders supporters continue to say they would not vote for Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, and most would like to see their candidate make an independent run.
The Week with a fascinoma (medical term for fascinating situation). This is a must read:
Trump is ranting about Curiel's bias not because doing so is part of any kind of rational political strategy, but because he is going to lose the case. And if he loses, it must be somebody else's fault. He's not just talking about himself instead of something that actually matters to voters. He's talking tohimself, telling himself a story of how big a winner he is, no matter how often he loses. And he's doing it in front of the entire country.
In a very basic sense, this is the emotional connection that Trump forged from the beginning of his campaign. Trump sees himself as a winner whose occasional setbacks are the result of other people's unfairness or incompetence. He has connected with a slice of the voting public that sees America's problems in similar terms: the fault of corrupt, incompetent, and disloyal elites….
Which is why that cynical operative should despair. He's made his peace with Trump, and is now focused on highlighting his distinctive strengths and controlling the damage of his distinctive style of politics, so as to get the best result for the party come November. But Trump isn't interested in getting the best result for the party. He's got a whole host of strategies for convincing himself that he's a winner even when he loses, because the loss is always somebody else's fault. And he's got a whole host of strategies for making sure that, monetarily and psychically speaking, the bulk of his losses hits somebody else's balance sheet rather than his own. Historically, those have been his priorities, and from the look of things, they still are.
So if Trump looks like he's in real trouble after Labor Day, what makes anyone think he's even going to try to win — as opposed to assuring himself (and his supporters) that someone else is to blame for his loss?
And if he does lose, who do you think he's going to make sure gets blamed?
Jonathan Bernstein on Republigeddon:
Donald Trump is having his third consecutive terrible week.
Over the weekend, Republicans who have endorsed him slammed him for his bigoted comments about Gonzalo Curiel, the judge who is overseeing the fraud case against Trump University.
Then Bloomberg Politics reported on a conference call Monday between Trump and his surrogates in which Trump dismissed the criticism of his attack on Curiel and blasted his own campaign for (sensibly) telling them to change the subject away from why "Mexicans" can't be fair judges.
Added to all this are more details (via MSNBC) on how Trump barely has a campaign, something I mentioned last week.
I don’t think the Republicans who chose to accept Trump as a done deal in April are at a panic point yet, but it's worth noting: All it would take to dump him in Cleveland would be a vote to free the delegates, followed by having at least half of the convention oppose him on the first ballot.
Politico:
If ever there were a moment for Republicans to jump off the Trump train, now would be as good of a time, according to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Graham wants fellow Republicans who have endorsed Donald Trump to take it all back in the wake of his repeated claims that Judge Gonzalo Curiel's heritage make him unfit to preside over lawsuits against him.
Rick Wilson (non Clinton-voting Republican #NeverTrumper) on the sad reality for Republicans:
After Judge Curiel, What Will Endorsing Donald Trump do To GOP Candidates?
Imagine it’s the Fall of this year and you’re a U.S. House or Senate candidate in a swing district or state. Your Democratic opponent is running a low-risk campaign, having pivoted to the slightly-center-left with aplomb. Regardless of their actual beliefs, they’ve got their masks bolted on tight, staying relentlessly on message as technocratic middle-of-the-lane moderates. Barack Obama’s approval numbers keep creeping higher and higher as a kind of “at least he’s not crazy or obviously corrupt” vibe sets in with the public. It makes your “Obamacare, Benghazi, tranny bathrooms” message cluster feel less promising than it did last year when you were planning this run, doesn’t it?..
When you endorsed him, you bought all the problems Trump has with the voters and none of the assets. That’s why you’re awake at night, staring at the ceiling wondering what the madman will tweet next. You’ve had a tough summer, with endless questions from the press in your not-too-conservative state. Every time he opens his mouth, you’re flooded with questions. You wake up every day trying to stay on your message, but each morning your guts get watery when the Google alert with “your name + Donald Trump” pops on your iPhone. It’s why you can’t go on your Twitter or Facebook or do town hall meetings; because the whole election is about Trump, not you.
CNN:
Doug Elmets' home sits as a proud time capsule to his Reagan-era roots: Framed pictures adorn the walls of a 21-year-old Elmets gripping the hand of his political hero, President Ronald Reagan; a two-foot tall bronze statue of the 40th President sits on an end table; his signed letter of congratulations to Elmets and his wife, both former White House staffers, hangs in the bookshelf surrounded by nonfiction books written by Republicans.
The Elmets of the Reagan era would never have predicted what he's now saying about the 2016 presidential race.
"I've never voted for a Democrat in my entire life. And I'll vote for my first Democrat when the ballots come out in November," said Elmets, who remains a registered Republican. "I could live with four years of Hillary Clinton before I could ever live with one day of Donald Trump as president."
It's an astonishing statement for the Republican consultant and former operative who began his career as a White House staff assistant to conservative powerhouses Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater in 1981 at the dawn of the Reagan administration.
Emma Roller:
In conversations I had with more than a dozen Sanders supporters, many of them told me they were either disillusioned with or apathetic toward politics before this campaign. Mr. Sanders, a 74-year-old democratic socialist from Vermont, energized them unlike any candidate before. Now, depending on how the Democratic primary turns out, they’ll either resign themselves to voting for Hillary Clinton, redirect their efforts to local campaigns or drop out again.
While a few die-hard Sanders supporters have vowed that it’s “Bernie or bust,” a Quinnipiac University poll from late May found that three-quarters of Sanders supporters would vote for Mrs. Clinton if it came down to a Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton race in November. Alex Sheehan, 29, an digital media entrepreneur in New York, said he thought that when faced with the prospect of a Trump presidency, most Sanders supporters would end up voting for Mrs. Clinton — and “If not, we deserve the catastrophic failure that follows,” he said.
So do I. My late mom (union organizer and yellow dog Democrat) would have crawled through glass to vote for Hillary. She would have been every bit as proud as Ann Richards.
Steve Schale with unsolicited advice for Bernie, and an excellent read:
Help her win, then take credit for it: Right now, the sense is the Democratic Party is not united. You often say that you can't make your followers do what you want, but we all know this isn't true. Just like Hillary Clinton made it easy for her supporters to join up with Obama, you need to do the same. And when she wins in November, driven by a united Democratic coalition, the campaign obits will all give you credit for it, and all of the sudden, you will find yourself in charge of an incredibly powerful movement - with a President who can help you get things done.
5. Think long term. Change doesn't happen in Washington, change starts in local communities. Encourage and help your activists run for school boards, city commissions, and state legislatures. Your campaign has been a moment - but you can build a movement by inspiring a generation of young activists that a life in public service is an honorable one, and look back in 15-20 years and see what real change looks like.
The biggest thing you should do Wednesday is get some sleep. Go back to Burlington for a day or two, get your team off the television, and take a day or two to catch your breath. At some level, I've been there. After three months in the barrel for Joe Biden, it was hard to stop fighting. But with space and rest, the path will become clear.
And Senator, remember leadership isn't just about inspiring a movement, it is also about knowing when to lead your team off the mountain before you are trapped in a storm. Your job now is to give your movement the best chance to succeed in the future. Your loudest supporters will want you to push on -- but your job is to help them understand why it is time to move on.