Month: April 2016

Congratulations to the winner of the New York Primary and the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Democratic Presidential Primary is over. Going forward, in order to promote unity, I will not insult or otherwise attack or criticize Bernie Sanders or his supporters in my comments. And I understand some of you are still in denial and will enter a primal scream phase soon enough, if you are not already there, so I will not engage you over that. Some of you no doubt will proclaim that you will vote for Trump before you vote Hillary. That's fine, I will not engage, I will let you work through it. And I am sure I am insulting some of you right now because you think this little speech is condescending. So I apologize for that. What I will do, however, is still post excerpts of the punditry that is relevant to our politics. Some of that may not speak of Sanders in glowing terms. Indeed, there is a Jonathan Chait piece below that some will find unpleasant. But I won't offer my usual asides and commentary.

In response to Sanders’ statement about Clinton winning in the “most conservative part of this country,” Nate Silver notes that she is winning the states that look like the Democratic Party.

The most representative state by this measure is New Jersey. We expect its primary electorate to be about 57 percent white, 26 percent black, 11 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian or other, quite close to the national Democratic electorate. New Jersey won’t vote until June 7, although Clinton was well ahead when the last poll was released there in February. After New Jersey comes Illinois, which Clinton won narrowly — and then Florida, where Clinton won going away. Then there’s New York, which votes Tuesday, and where Clinton is 15 percentage points ahead in our polling average. Virginia, another Southern state, ranks as the next most representative; Clinton won it easily. Then there’s Nevada, another Clinton state, before we go back to the South to North Carolina, also won by Clinton. The next group of four states (Maryland, Tennessee, Arkansas and Michigan) are roughly tied and include some further representation for the South, along with, finally, one state (Michigan) that Sanders won. In other words, Clinton has won or is favored to win almost every state where the turnout demographics strongly resemble those of Democrats as a whole.