As always on Wednesdays for Tuesday primaries, the best primary stories will be posted Thursday. what happened last night was a big Hillary win, effectively ending the race. It’ll be official in June, but Bernie won’t be the nominee.
Hillary won every borough in NYC, including Brooklyn, as well as Westchester, Rockland and Suffolk. That’s where the D votes are, much more than upstate. She’s going to capture another 30 delegates or so.
That’s not spiking the football. That’s reading the road map.
Donald Trump won similar areas but lost Manhattan (hey, we know him in Manhattan). He cleaned up everywhere else. Ted Cruz was simply crushed like a bug.
It’s going to be a Clinton-Trump race, folks. And boy, is the GOP in danger of splitting and losing big.
How Every New York City Neighborhood Voted in the Democratic Primary
One somewhat obvious observation: you can’t have a rational discussion with Bernie and Hillary supporters about where we go from here until Team Bernie accepts he’s losing and until Hillary people stop trying to spike the football. And I’m not going to laud the great things Bernie’s brought to the campaign (true that he has!) because if you do it too soon, it’ll be called patronizing and arrogant and condescending (ask me how I know). Bernie doesn’t have to drop out, he has to stop attacking Hillary. Bernie lost must-win NY and is behind in the polls in the states next week, and also NJ and CA. I’m looking to Jeff Weaver to acknowledge it and tone it down. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have a high opinion of him, frankly.
The glaring choice is between the D’s and the R’s. Both candidates need to emphasize that, and it’s no disrespect to Bernie to do so.
And look at the ‘won’t vote for’ numbers above. Let’s not exaggerate the very real differences between Hillary and Bernie. NY voters were anti-Wall Street… and voted for Hillary. Most think she’ll be the nominee (70% in last night’s exit polls) and will act accordingly.
This is more than snark. The tweet author co-wrote The Party Decides:
Jon Green:
The New Yorkers in question will almost certainly lose their case, and the provisional ballots they cast today will almost certainly be thrown out. New York has rules about who can vote in its primary. Those rules don’t seem to discriminate against anyone based on a protected class such as race, gender or religion. It’s hard to see a legal reason for the system to be changed today, simply because left-leaning independents and members of minor parties who want to vote for Bernie Sanders didn’t register as Democrats early enough.
But that doesn’t mean that Sanders supporters don’t have a point when they note that New York’s partisan affiliation deadline is positively bonkers. While it may be fine in principle for a party to limit participation in its primaries to people who are actually members of that party, it’s ridiculous to expect New Yorkers to have just ~known better~ and followed rules they didn’t know existed six months before they mattered.
The rules for a NY closed primary date back to 1911 and are designed, among other things, to prevent the major parties from swamping the minor parties (in the old days Liberal and Conservative, now Green and WFP) and choosing the nominee. It’s up for discussion for reform, but not until next time. A last minute lawsuit was thrown out yesterday. So, there’s a legitimate discussion here but it’s not as obvious as some would have you think, and Prof. Noel succinctly presents the other side to it in the tweet above: Meet The People Barred From Voting In The Primary of a Party They Refused to Join.
I’m for loosening the rules and letting people vote but not for this cycle, sorry. Closed primary, same day registration for me. OTOH, let’s see how interested people are and remain in this a month from now, when it’s not all about last night.
Want reform? Join the party or there’s no place at the rules committee table for you.
NY Times:
Young and energized African-Americans this election cycle are aggressively challenging longstanding ideas and policies, especially those carried out during the Clinton administration in areas like crime and welfare. But the activism is also laying bare a striking generation gap between younger and older African-Americans, whose experience, views of the former president and notions of how they should push for change diverge dramatically.
The parents and grandparents of today’s young black protesters largely waged the battle for civil rights in courtrooms and churches. They carefully chose people who were viewed as upstanding citizens, like Rosa Parks, to be the face of their movement, and dressed in their Sunday best as they sought to gain broader acceptance. Mr. Clinton endeared himself to these generations by campaigning in black churches and appointing more blacks to the cabinet than any previous president had.
But many of today’s activists — whose political consciousness has been shaped by the high-profile killings of black people by the police — do not believe that acting respectfully will protect them from being harassed or shot. They aspire not to become a part of the political system, but to upend it.
This is an interesting microcosm of Hillary vs Bernie voters, including attitude. For example, the late Eric Garner’s daughter is for Bernie and his mom is for Hillary. Both have powerful messages.
Benjy Sarlin:
If you want a taste of how confusing the political fallout of King v. Burwell will be if the Supreme Court knocks out some of the subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has you covered. In the run-up the court’s imminent decision, the likely 2016 contender is threatening to cut off Obamacare benefits in his state while boasting how he’s used the same benefits to reduce the uninsured.
In an op-ed for CNN, Walker announced on Wednesday that he will not move Wisconsin to its own state exchange if subsidies available under the federal exchange are struck down, instead calling on Congress to solve the problem. Absent a fix from Congress, that means hiking premiums on roughly 166,000 Wisconsin residents and setting the state’s individual insurance market on fire for subsidy recipients and non-recipients alike. The court could rule on the case as early as Thursday.
PPP on MD:
On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton looks to be headed for a resounding victory, with 58% to 33% for Bernie Sanders. Clinton's key is that she's winning African Americans- who are likely to be close to 40% of the Democratic primary electorate- 70/25. She has a more narrow lead with white voters at 50/41. Clinton has large leads with both men and women, and this is an unusual state in that she's even up 48/43 with voters under 45 to go along with her 66/27 advantage with seniors. One other thing to Clinton's advantage is that 86% of her voters say they're firmly committed to her, compared to 65% of Sanders' who say the same for him. Clinton leads in every party of the state except Western Maryland, although it's closer in the Baltimore suburbs.
Clinton and Sanders both dominate general election match ups in the state. The Republican who comes closest to them is Kasich but he still trails Clinton 54/33 and Sanders 52/32. Trump (25/70 favorability) and Cruz (17/69) are incredibly unpopular and trail both Clinton and Sanders by more than 30 points. Clinton's up 61/28 on Trump and 58/24 on Cruz, while Sanders is up 60/29 on Trump and 62/24 on Cruz.
Either one wins.
Brookings:
One of [Rep. Tom] McClintock’s proposed changes to the House Rules is meant to address what he and his allies see as one of the major drivers of unsustainable levels of federal spending: spending on mandatory programs, like Medicaid and welfare. Cutting them, however, is not simply a matter of passing spending bills with lower amounts than the previous year. Individuals who qualify for these programs are guaranteed their benefits (hence their commonly-used moniker, “entitlement programs”), so reducing the amount spent on them requires making changes to the existing laws that outline the underlying eligibility criteria. Given the challenges of building a legislative coalition in the contemporary Congress, “must pass” spending bills would seem like a logical legislative vehicle for these sorts of reforms (though one surely to be met with vigorous opposition from the Democrats who champion these programs). Thanks to House Rule XXI, however, appropriations bills are prohibited from “changing existing law.” That’s where McClintock’s proposal comes in. First, change House Rule XXI to allow appropriations bills to include “changes in direct spending programs that reduce expenditures.” Then, write a spending bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services that makes the kinds of changes to mandatory spending programs that conservative Republicans favor. Finally, hope that the “must pass” nature of the bill gets it across the finish line.
If McClintock and his allies were successful at both adopting their proposed rule change AND leveraging it to pass cuts to mandatory spending programs, they’d achieve something that’s been high on their list of policy goals since Republicans retook the House in 2010. But doing so would come at the cost of one of their central process-oriented objectives. House conservatives have pushed for committees to play a greater role in drafting major legislation, but changing Rule XXI would undermine those efforts by giving the House Appropriations Committee more power at the expense of the other panels that authorize programs.
EJ Dionne on Ted Cruz and NY values:
A dislike of New York in the GOP is nothing new. In his fine book about the three-term New York governor and two-time Republican presidential nominee, “Thomas E. Dewey and his Times,” Richard Norton Smith noted that Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the party’s conservative hero during the Roosevelt-Truman era, had seen his presidential hopes “ground up in the relentless machinery of the Eastern Establishment, those New York liberals who prefer victory to ideological purity and to achieve it are willing to accept the New Deal.”
Taft and his loyalists felt about the Big Apple the way Red Sox fans feel about the Yankees. Smith wrote, “New York newspapers, New York banks, New York arrogance — the very city Taft’s America loves to hate — all have become synonymous in Old Guard eyes with the man one Taft partisan calls ‘that snooty little Governor of New York.’ ”
But by going after Trump’s home state, Cruz handed Trump a political promissory note that will be cashed in Tuesday in New York’s primary.
Tweeted after Hillary ended with a Sandy Hook shout-out.
Vann R. Newkirk II with a terrific piece on hot sauce and pandering:
Blowback from pandering may not be a real issue for Clinton; while there is an age and regional schism in black support for Clinton versus Sanders, it seems likely she will still capture the bloc as a whole with ease. The vocal social-media opposition to some of her actions likely represents a minority viewpoint among people of color. Backlash may not be an issue for other candidates, either. But especially for the groups fighting for more political power, genuineness is a major currency. The fragile and inherently fractious coalition of the Democratic Party relies on trust between a broad range of diverse groups. In a race to woo the underrepresented groups at the heart of the party, optimism is still a major driver of support. This candidate finally gets me.
Clinton was likely just offering a real, personal answer to a personal question. This deep into a race as each candidate becomes a petrified, marketed, packaged set of ideas and archetypes, it is a refreshing change of pace. But Clinton’s answer doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and this time it raised an old specter that has dogged the campaign for some time. Sometimes hot sauce isn’t just hot sauce. And sometimes, that’s all it is.
And that’s Clinton in a nutshell. Some people give her the benefit of the doubt and — guess what? — some don’t.
This John Hodgman endorsement of Hillary was recommended to me last night by a Bernie supporter:
This is going to disappoint some of my friends, and maybe that’s why I’ve been quiet about this until now.
Also, who cares what I think?
But here is what I think: Hillary Clinton for President.
I think Sen. Bernie Sanders has been an inspiring, provocative, necessary, and admirable public servant for decades.
I respect the personal moral and practical math that has led each of his supporters to turn out for him. And I’m grateful to and a little in awe of the movement for keeping issues I care about at the center of this race.
But I have done my own moral and practical math, and I have decided that I would really, actively like to see a Hillary Clinton presidency.
This is where the Democratic Party is, too.
