As always, the best primary stories will come tomorrow (I say that every Tuesday; no one’s ignoring Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders wins). Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, the delegates were a close split last night (maybe Bernie picked up net 10 or 11 but trails by ~280 or so) and most of the analysis you hear on cable (I was listening last night) was just plain stupid (details available on request, but start with anchors and reporters who waste our time reading Trump tweets about Hillary and therefore aid and abet his campaign).
Bernie lost KY (the margin was razor thin) to Hillary and had an awful media day about NV. Bernie takes OR in a close race. Bernie gave a good speech about the enemy being Donald Trump. Good for him.
But you know what Bernie’s biggest problem is? This guy:
OTOH, Josh Marshall thinks it’s this guy:
For months I'd thought and written that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was the key driver of toxicity in the the Democratic primary race. Weaver has been highly visible on television, far more than campaign managers tend to be. He's also been the one constantly upping the tension, pressing the acrimony and unrealism of the campaign as Sanders actual chances of winning dwindled.
But now I realize I had that wrong.
Actually, I didn't realize it. People who know told me.
Over the last several weeks I've had a series of conversations with multiple highly knowledgable, highly placed people. Perhaps it's coming from Weaver too. The two guys have been together for decades. But the 'burn it down' attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in that statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself. Right from the top.
NY Times:
Raising the prospect of lasting fissures in the Democratic Party, Senator Bernie Sanders rebuffed mounting pressure on Tuesday to rein in his supporters after they disrupted a weekend Democratic convention in Nevada, throwing chairs and later threatening the state party chairwoman in a fight over delegates. The uproar comes as Hillary Clinton is struggling to turn her and the party’s attention to the general election.
Mr. Sanders’s supporters showed no sign of backing down on Tuesday. In interviews, several threatened to disrupt the party’s convention in Philadelphia in July with protests and nonviolent disobedience over a nominating system that they say has treated Mr. Sanders unfairly. In emails, on social media and on websites, his supporters have traded advice about protest tactics and legal services in case of mass arrests.
Not at all clear that will happen. But Bernie is going to be bleeding support from Democrats in increasing amounts, and all the nonsense talk about winning the most pledged delegates does harm if it convinces his more — erm — passionate supporters that if he doesn’t win, it’s a rigged system. He’s lost because more people voted for the other candidate.
There are some terrific diaries from Sanders supporters on this site. Do yourself a favor and read those. Sometimes you play by the rules, so does your opponent and you still lose. That’s what has happened here.
Jon Ralston has a must read on what really happened in NV:
The sour grapes revolution that rocked the Paris Hotel
NBC News:
For Donald Trump to win the White House he must find a way to attract more women voters to his candidacy. The presumptive Republican nominee faces many other demographic challenges -- most notably with Latino and black voters -- but his biggest hurdle is in trying to close the gender gap, according to public polling and past election results.
Women voters present a particularly difficult challenge for Trump in two ways. First, the Democratic edge with women is consistent. The party's nominee has won women in every presidential election since 1992 - and usually by double digits. Second, women have made up more than 50 percent of the electorate in every presidential race since 1984. That's a lot of votes.
WSJ:
White nationalists are hailing Donald Trump’s elevation to presumptive Republican presidential nominee, while also trying to boost their own political profiles and activity.
Although Mr. Trump has spurned these extreme groups’ support, the level of interest within them for the White House candidate rivals that for segregationist George Wallace,who won five states in the 1968 election, and for conservative Republican Pat Buchanan,who denounced multiculturalism in the 1990s.
Mr. Trump is being heralded by these groups for his proposals to bar Muslim immigrants, deport millions of people living illegally in the U.S., and build a wall along the southern border.
“White men in America and across the planet are partying like it’s 1999 following Trump’s decisive victory over the evil enemies of our race,” wrote Holocaust denier Andrew Anglin, who calls Mr. Trump “the Glorious Leader” on his Daily Stormer website, after the candidate all but sewed up the GOP nomination on May 3.
Vox on that electoral map at the top:
Instead of precise borders, each state is represented by a square. The area of each square is proportional to the number of electoral votes that state has. And the squares are arranged geographically, so you can still find your state fairly easily.
But alternatives like this haven’t really caught on. Change is hard, and pundits have gotten used to dusting off this visual aid every four years to assist in their pontifications. It’s hard enough to cut through all the factually dubious campaign rhetoric. We don’t need maps that lie, too.
Fivethirtyeight on whether Sanders staying in the race hurts Clinton:
natesilver: It’s also interesting to me how, when you see comments from Sanders supporters online or at rallies, etc., they’re quick to frame things in terms of people being biased, being sellouts, etc. All candidates’ supporters are annoying in their own way, but it’s a different vibe than what you usually get.
clare.malone: Sour grapes-y.
harry: The idea that you are always being unfair.
We see it here. Nothing in the chat will surprise you.
Jonathan Capehart:
Another commencement, another opportunity for President Obama to urge the nation’s graduates to participate fully in the political process. He cannot say it often enough, especially during a presidential campaign when two candidates — one from the left and one from the right — brazenly use the frustrations of the electorate to peddle quick fixes that will only feed its cynicism.
“Passion is vital, but you’ve got to have a strategy,” Obama said May 7 at Howard University. “And your plan better include voting — not just some of the time, but all the time.” Sunday, at Rutgers University, the president repeated that message. He, again, lamented the low turnout of young voters. But this time he hammered home how their lack of participation contributes to the lack of progress on issues they care about.
Trib Live has a whole series on Coal’s Collapse, relevant re KY and WV vote:
Shuttered mines, laid-off workers, bankrupt companies and dying towns from Pennsylvania to Wyoming tell the story of a nationwide collapse in the coal industry.
Greg Sargent:
Can Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in part by laying out a programmatic economic agenda that is designed to make a concrete difference in Americans’ lives? Or does that risk being too conventional an approach that fails to reckon with the unpredictable nature of Trump’s appeal?
In an interview with me, Clinton’s chief strategist, Joel Benenson, previewed some of the Clinton team’s lines of attack on Trump. In so doing, he brushed off much of the conventional wisdom about the race, arguing that no matter how creatively Trump has employed his celebrity and business alpha-prowess, he’d succumb to an attack revealing that he isn’t actually on the side of ordinary Americans, and that ultimately, voters would choose Clinton over him on the economy for the simple reason that her policies and priorities are better.
Nate Cohn with a polling update:
Hillary Clinton’s lead in general election polls has faded over the last few weeks. One reason might be that a growing number of Republicans are coalescing around Donald Trump’s candidacy.
Another part of the explanation? Fewer live-interview telephone polls.
So far this year, live-interview telephone surveys have tended to show Mrs. Clinton leading by a slightly larger margin than those conducted online. There hasn’t been a live-interview telephone survey since Mr. Trump beat back all his rivals early this month. So Mrs. Clinton’s seeming lead has seemed to shrink particularly fast.
Shane Goldmacher:
Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn “millions and millions” of new voters into the Republican Party. “It’s the biggest thing happening in politics,” Trump has said. “All over the world, they’re talking about it,” he's bragged.
But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true.
