Random thoughts and musing on the state of the Democratic race:
- Hillary Clinton won seven states, Bernie Sanders won four. While not the best-case scenario for Sanders, he came just a few points from realizing that (losing narrowly in Massachusetts). Clinton was never going to knock Sanders out today but she could’ve dealt him a mortal wound. Instead, by giving his supporters real reasons to cheer, Sanders keeps the donations coming and lives to fight another day.
- On the flip side, the value of Clinton’s victory in Massachusetts cannot be overstated. It was a state tailor-made for Sanders—massive student population, relatively white (75 percent non-Hispanic white, when the national average is 63 percent), more affluent and educated. Oh, and it enjoyed the same next-door-neighbor status as New Hampshire. Sanders even had recent polling leads! The delegate allocation might’ve ended up effectively tied, but this denied Sanders his first big-ish state win, and killed that silly “Clinton can only win in the South and red states” argument.
- Sanders supporters need to stop with that “South doesn’t count” argument. Seriously. Stop it. For starters, Southern Democrats deserve our respect and admiration for fighting the good fight deep in enemy territory. They have it harder than blue state Dems, by a longshot. They also donate, make calls, and help out in myriad ways. And—and this might be the most important point—Southern Democrats are disproportionately people of color. So by arguing that they don’t matter, you are arguing that a critical component of our party’s base doesn’t matter. So given Sanders’ existing difficulties with nonwhite Democrats, there’s no reason to exacerbate those problems. Really, don’t go there. You just come off as a dick.
- Another lame attack on Clinton’s victories are the notion that they don’t matter because red states don’t matter in the general. We saw this nonsense in 2008 when Clinton partisans claimed Obama’s victories were illegitimate because he was winning small states and caucus states, while she was winning the “big” states that “mattered” (like Ohio and Pennsylvania). It was a stupid argument in 2008 coming from Clinton, and it’s a stupid argument today coming from the Sanders side. Reality? Clinton has won Iowa, Nevada, Virginia—all critically important swing states with 25 electoral votes. Sanders has won two swing states, Colorado and New Hampshire, with 13 electoral votes.
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As I write this near midnight, Tuesday night, the delegate count is as follows. Numbers will likely shift, and I’ll update accordingly. Delegate totals updated Wednesday morning.
State |
Clinton |
Sanders |
AL |
44 |
9 |
AR |
19 |
9
|
AS |
4 |
2 |
CO |
24 |
35 |
GA |
70 |
28 |
MA |
45 |
43 |
MN |
28 |
46 |
OK |
16 |
20 |
TN |
41 |
22 |
TX |
138 |
61 |
VT |
0 |
16 |
VA |
61 |
32 |
TOTAL |
490 |
323 |
- In February, Clinton got 91 delegates and Sanders got 65, giving her 581 delegates to his 388. That’s a 193-delegate deficit. I don’t care about superdelegates because they won’t overturn the will of the voters.
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There are 4,051 pledged delegates, so 2,026 are needed for a majority. Clinton, with her 581 delegates, has 28.7 percent of what's needed to win. Sanders, with 388, has 19 percent.
- As expected, Sanders has a definite advantage with caucuses, and that won’t end. Lucky for him, this weekend features four contests, three of them caucuses—Kansas, Maine and Nebraska. Sanders should win them easily. Clinton will have a Louisiana victory to keep her happy this weekend as well.
- Despite the above, that doesn’t mean that the map now becomes more favorable to Sanders. The three caucuses mentioned above look good for him, sure, but they only have 83 delegates combined. Louisiana, meanwhile, has 51, and then next Tuesday Michigan (130) and Mississippi (36) both get to vote. Clinton leads comfortably in both those states as of now. Then a week later, on March 15, Florida (214), Illinois (156), Missouri (71), North Carolina (107), and Ohio (143) all get to vote, and all available polling shows Clinton leading comfortably.
- By March 15, 1,734 delegates will have been awarded, or 43 percent of the total. If Sanders can’t win some of those delegate-rich states, his deficit will be too deep to claw out of, particularly with strong Clinton states like New York and Pennsylvania and another seven Southern states with heavy African American Democratic electorates still on the docket. In other words, Sanders can’t wait and wait for Washington and Oregon to arrive. He needs to win elsewhere, and soon.
- California won’t bail Sanders out, not given his continued inability to win people of color. In Texas, Clinton won the Latino vote 67-33. In Georgia, Clinton won the black vote 85-14. That’s not to say he couldn’t win California, and it would be cool if my vote actually mattered, but at best it wouldn’t offer him a delegate windfall.
- Sanders can’t win Latinos, I say? But what about Colorado, you ask? Lots of Latinos live there, right? And Sanders won big! Except that it was a caucus state, and just 118,000 Democrats voted out of a population of 5.36 million (or a pathetic 2 percent). And while we don’t have entrance polls to know who voted, I’d bet it wasn’t very many low-performance Latinos. But let’s extrapolate from geography: The two most Latino counties in Colorado are Conejos (59 percent Latino) and Costilla (68 percent Latino). Clinton won those two counties 58-40 and 57-20, respectively. Seems pretty cut-and-dry.
- And the biggest WTF of the night, other than that bizarre Donald Trump “news conference” instead of rally with supporters? From the Massachusetts exit polls:
Should the next president change to more liberal policies?
Sanders 68, Clinton 32.
Makes sense, right?
Should the next president change to less liberal policies?
Sanders 60, Clinton 38.
Boy, talk about a group of people who would really be disappointed by a Sanders presidency!