The Upshot:
Bernie Sanders won the overwhelming majority of delegates in the most recent contests on March 26, but he still trails Hillary Clinton by a large margin in the delegate count.
Mrs. Clinton can win slightly less than half of the remaining vote and still earn a majority of the pledged delegates by June.
Nate Silver:
To reach a pledged delegate majority, Sanders will have to win most of the delegates from those big states. A major loss in any of them could be fatal to his chances. He could afford to lose one or two of them narrowly, but then he’d need to make up ground elsewhere — he’d probably have to win California by double digits, for example.
Sanders will also need to gain ground on Clinton in a series of medium-sized states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Mexico. Demographics suggest that these states could be close, but close won’t be enough for Sanders. He’ll need to win several of them easily.
None of this is all that likely. Frankly, none of it is at all likely. If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones, Clinton will probably gain further ground on Sanders. If they vote as state-by-state polling suggests they will, Clinton could roughly double her current advantage over Sanders and wind up winning the nomination by 400 to 500 pledged delegates.
Man it’s work running for president. Hard work. You gotta think about things. Protect your right flank. Walk stuff back all the time.
I wonder if the Donald still wants it? I mean, I know he hates to lose, but how much does he want to win? Looks to me like he’s screwing the GOP either way.
I brought it up yesterday, and today the pundits seem to agree.
He is an awful candidate. If I were Mark Kirk or Kelly Ayotte or Rob Portman, I’d be dreading running with him at the top of the ticket.
So will the party finally decide? Will they cut him loose and “lose with Cruz” after Wisconsin? That question may draw indies onto the R side of the WI primary. Stay tuned.
Bloomberg:
Helen Patenaude, a retiree from Oconto who attended the taping on Wednesday, said she is supporting Trump because “he tells it like it is.” “He's not a politician,” she said. But she said she was “confused” and “didn't really understand” what Trump meant during his exchange with Matthews on abortion. Others were skeptical of Trump's comments on social media, but argued that media reports were mischaracterizing his comments.
Jeanne Mancini, president of the pro-life March For Life, criticized Trump's comments in a public statement. "No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion," said Mancini, whose group organizes the largest annual pro-life march annually in Washington. "This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths of healing, not punishment."
Lidia Nonn of Green Bay, who said she is pro-life but thinks abortion should be legal, said Trump “should've thought the answer out more carefully.”
Tommy Christopher:
I've been trying to tell everyone that John Kasich is every bit the toxic slime pile that Trump and Cruz are, but now, he's proven it for me. Forget every racist thing Donald Trump has said this campaign, Kasich topped them all. In fact, what he said to Chuck Todd during Wednesday night's MSNBC town hall is one of the most racist things I've ever heard anyone say, period.
Todd asked him specifically about his efforts to reach out to the black community, and why his state ranks as the sixth worst place to raise a black child in. Kasich responded by saying he didn't believe the statistics, then decided to brag about his efforts to reduce infant mortality, and insisted that the "minority (black) community" needed to become better partners at helping their babies not die, which he knows because white people have gotten with the program. For realz.
NY Times:
Some of the country’s best-known corporations are nervously grappling with what role they should play at the Republican National Convention, given the likely nomination of Donald J. Trump, whose divisive candidacy has alienated many women, African-Americans and Hispanics.
An array of activist groups is organizing a campaign to pressure the companies to refuse to sponsor the gathering, which many of the corporations have done for both the Republican and Democratic parties for decades.
The pressure is emerging as some businesses and trade groups are already privately debating whether to scale back their participation, according to interviews with more than a dozen lobbyists, consultants and fund-raisers directly involved in the conversations.
Daniel Newhauser ($$):
When Rep. Tulsi Gabbard resigned from the Democratic National Committee vice chairmanship to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for president late last month, political observers in Washington and Hawaii were left scratching their heads.
Now that Sanders won 70 percent of Hawaii’s presidential preference vote against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, those same people are left with another question: Will the endorsement help Gabbard unseat someone in her own party in a race for higher office?
Sorry about the paywall, but I haven’t seen this written anywhere else. The blurb gives you the idea, though. Politicians make choices like this for a living. If they aren’t opportunists, they aren’t good politicians.
Good and fair piece by Dan Kennedy on Hillary’s emails:
No doubt Bernie Sanders spoke for many last October when he said he was sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails.” But if Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination, you can be sure we’re going to hear more—much more. Indeed, the ongoing saga of why Clinton used a private email server for official government business when she was secretary of state is likely to emerge as her biggest obstacle in the general election campaign this fall.
With an eye toward settling in my own mind whether or not the email story—I hesitate to call it a scandal—could derail her candidacy (or worse), I spent some time on Monday reading two in-depth accounts of exactly what occurred and whether it could lead to legal trouble. The whodunit, a 5,000-word piece that was published in The Washington Post on Sunday, was reported and written by Robert O’Harrow Jr., an investigative journalist. The only-slightly-shorter legal analysis was written by former Department of Homeland Security lawyer Richard O. Lempert and appears in The American Prospect.
I wish I could tell you that I now understand what happened. In fact, I don’t, although I know more than I did before.
Steve Benen:
No matter which candidate you like or dislike, I think it’s fair to say Team Sanders has generally run a strong campaign, exceeding everyone’s expectations, and positioning the senator as one of the nation’s most prominent progressive voices for many years to come. Sanders isn’t the first presidential candidate to run on a bold, unapologetic liberal platform, but he is arguably the first in recent memory to do in such a way as to position himself as a leader of a genuine movement.
But whether or not you’re impressed with what Sanders has put forward, his campaign’s latest pitch is an unfortunate mess.
As a matter of arithmetic, there’s some truth to Devine’s assessment: when it comes to pledged delegates, Clinton leads Sanders by about 250. Add together Clinton’s net delegate gains from Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and Arkansas, and it’s about 250.
But as a rule, presidential campaigns don’t get to lose a whole bunch of key primaries by wide margins and then declare, “Yeah, but we weren’t really trying.” If these eight nominating contests have left the Sanders campaign at a disadvantage they’re unlikely to overcome, it’s actually incumbent on his top aides and strategists to explain why they didn’t make more of an effort in these states.
I mentioned yesterday that Hillary seemed less than committed to Wi (the new MU Law poll has Bernie up 49-45). My comment raised a few eyebrows. But note there are no scheduled events in WI this week for the Clintons, none that I see before the primary but she promised to be back. She spent yesterday in NY, where she’ll be all week. Bernie is outspending her in WI by a lot.
At the same time, a small win/split in the state may not be enough. Fivethirtyeight gives Bernie a delegate target of 48 to Hillary’s 38 in WI. There will be even more clarity after April 19 and April 26, but keep in mind this is a delegate race not a ‘win the state’ race.
Politico:
No Supreme Court nominee in history has waited that long for the Senate to take action. If the court vacancy lasts a year or more, there will be some real costs to leaving the court shorthanded. A court with eight justices will often deadlock in contested cases, and therefore fail to execute the court’s major function: providing resolution on constitutional issues where the lower courts disagree.
But that problem is tiny compared to the real threat that the current situation poses—one we’ve barely begun to consider. That bigger threat is this: The stalemate isn’t time-limited and it isn’t stable. It could last a lot longer than the present election cycle, and if it does, the conflict over Justice Scalia’s successor could escalate far beyond its current dimensions. This is because the Supreme Court’s role in American government rests on a set of conventions for avoiding all-out political conflict—and once those conventions start to crumble, there’s no way to tell how it will end.
If the same party wins the White House and the Senate in November, the biggest dangers will be averted: The president will appoint a new justice, whether it’s Garland or someone else, and the Senate will vote to confirm him or her.
But suppose Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and the Republicans keep control of the Senate.
Our job to see that doesn’t happen. And if Hillary wants to use George Clooney to raise money to prevent that, good for her. I wish Bernie would raise some down ballot money, too (if he is and I missed it, post some links, and thank you in advance!)
In addition to Hillary for America, which is Clinton’s main campaign committee, the Hillary Victory Fund also includes the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees.
You need the Senate to get the the SCOTUS you want.
not looking good for Republicans
Dan Balz:
For months, the GOP candidates maintained a patina of cohesion as their dialogue fell further and further from any sense of civility. Everyone remembers the moment in the debate in Michigan when, after nearly two hours of slinging mud, the candidates were asked whether they would support Trump as the nominee. Those on the stage said they would. Their pledges came months after all the candidates were asked a similar question, and Trump’s opponents all said yes.
Those pledges fell apart on Tuesday night, during a round-robin series of interviews at a town hall in Milwaukee hosted by CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper.
