Last night Hillary Clinton won Kentucky by 1 point, splitting the delegates at 27 a piece in a state demographically favored for Sanders, and she did much better than expected in Oregon, losing to Sanders by only an 8 point margin, 54-46, when the Sanders campaign was expecting a 30-40 point victory more in line with their performance in the Washington state caucus. In Oregon, Sanders wins 28 delegates to Clinton’s 24, so he gains a net total of 4 on the night.
Clinton is now 92 delegates away from clinching the nomination. Given the upcoming slate of primaries and the expected performances by the candidates in them, Hillary will likely clinch the nomination the second polls close in New Jersey and she is declared the projected winner, before we even get to California.
She will score landslides in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and New Jersey. She will likely get 7 of the Virgin Island’s 12 delegates. She will likely get 40 of Puerto Rico’s 67 delegates (both results based on a conservative estimate of a Hillary 60-40 win in both). In New Jersey, early models of the vote show a landslide for Hillary.
New Jersey – We haven't seem demographics like this since Maryland. Blowout. Clinton 64% – Sanders 36%. pic.twitter.com/3Yrdsd8lHE
— Benchmark Politics (@benchmarkpol) May 18, 2016
Assuming a 64% win in NJ, Hillary will win 97 of the state’s 142 delegates. And that puts her over the top at 8 pm on June 7. Hillary should plan on declaring victory that night. Concerns for the feelings of Sanders supporters, and for Sanders himself, after the unpleasantness of the last few days and Sander’s tantrum last night, are over. Sanders alone is responsible for lying to his supporters by suggesting that the primary has been stolen. Sanders alone is responsible for lying to his supporters by suggesting that he can win the nomination. Sanders alone is responsible for talking his supporters down from the violence and outright terroristic and misogynist behavior they have engaged in over the last few days. He will concede to Hillary without precondition or concession in mid June like Hillary did in 2008. And then we will talk about reforms to the primary process in 2020 and beyond, where we eliminate caucuses, closed primaries and super delegates. Then we will talk about the platform. But not before.
Josh Marshall on the horrible nastiness of the Bernie Sanders campaign comes from Bernie Sanders, not any underling:
The tone and tenor of a campaign always come from the top. It wasn’t obvious to me until now. This might be because [Sander’s] temperamentally like that. There’s some evidence for that. It may also be that, like many other presidential contenders, once you get close it is simply impossible to let go. I don’t know which it is. That would only be my speculation. But this is coming from Bernie Sanders. It’s not Weaver. […]
Sanders speech tonight was right in line with his statement out this afternoon. He identified the Democratic party as an essentially corrupt, moribund institution which is now on notice that it must let ‘the people’ in. What about the coalitions Barack Obama built in 2008 and 2012, the biggest and most diverse presidential coalitions ever constructed?
Sanders narrative today has essentially been that he is political legitimacy. The Democratic party needs to realize that. This, as I said earlier, is the problem with lying to your supporters. Sanders is telling his supporters that he can still win, which he can’t. He’s suggesting that the win is being stolen by a corrupt establishment, an impression which will be validated when his phony prediction turns out not to be true. Lying like this sets you up for stuff like happened over the weekend in Nevada.
Markos went ballistic on Sanders after yesterday’s condemnation of violence with a BUT from Sanders:
[J]ust excuse after excuse after excuse, even though every one of those bullet points has been debunked. That is, you have a major presidential candidate trafficking in conspiracy theory.
So to recap, your supporters create so much havoc at the state party convention that convention hall officials shut down the event out of security concerns. Sanders responds with 1) stump speech and then more stump speech, 2) arguably valid point about painting too broad a brush about his campaign, 3) condemnation of poor behavior!, but 4) unfounded insinuation that other side started it with acts of violence against his campaign, 5) a litany of debunked claims about what transpired at the convention, and 6) the end. It’s everyone else’s fault, so while such violence is wrong, well, who could blame them?
I do find it funny that Sanders supporters decry the unfairness of this caucus system when the bulk of Sanders’ delegates comes from unfair caucuses. These things are pieces of shit, no doubt. All of them! The ones Clinton won and the ones Sanders won. They need to end or be reformed. Honestly, all this confusion and even attempts at mischief-making could be avoided with a saner system. BUT, that’s all a separate argument, apparently for a different time. Because right now, we can’t even get a clean, unmitigated condemnation of violent rhetoric, actions, and harassment from Bernie Sanders!
And I still can’t fucking believe it.
I find it interesting that Bernie Sanders plans to win over the remaining super delegates and get Clinton’s to switch to him. Still. If I was a super delegate, after seeing what happened in Nevada, I would immediately endorse Hillary today. Committing the crime of terroristic threatening through vandalism and evil phone calls to super delegates does not actually win over the support of super delegates.
If [Nevada] state party officials were, in fact, responsible for genuine abuses at the convention, perhaps some of the outrage would at least be understandable, but Jon Ralston, Nevada’s top political reporter, published a piece late yesterday saying that the opposite is true.
Despite their social media frothing and self-righteous screeds, the facts reveal that the Sanders folks disregarded rules, then when shown the truth, attacked organizers and party officials as tools of a conspiracy to defraud the senator of what was never rightfully his in the first place.
Instead of acknowledging they were out-organized by a Clinton campaign chastened by county convention results and reanimated to cement the caucus numbers at the Paris, the Sanders folks have decided to cry conflagration in a crowded building, without regard to what they burn down in the process.
The Nevada Democratic Party also took some time yesterday to publish a piece explaining that, despite the near-riot on Saturday, and death threats that have followed, the convention was actually fair to Sanders and his supporters.
Last night, the state party also lodged a formal complaint with the Democratic National Committee against the Sanders campaign. It concluded:
“The people who fostered, encouraged, and gained from the unsettling scenes at the Nevada State Democratic Convention bring dishonor and discredit to our state and national parties. Having seen up close the lack of conscience or concern for the ramifications of their actions – indeed, the glee with which they engaged in such destructive behavior – we expect similar tactics at the National Convention in July.”
That last point, of course, is of particular interest. As the New York Times report noted, Democratic officials hope “that what happened in Las Vegas stays there,” but there is the possibility that Sanders supporters will pursue a similar confrontation in Philadelphia over the summer. The Vermont senator himself has vowed more than once that he wants a convention fight, though it’s not altogether clear to what end.
What happened in Nevada is that a lot of Bernie’s delegates did not show up. That’s Bernie’s fault. That is Sanders supporters’ fault. Not the Party. Not Hillary. Another 8 delegates were disqualified or denied credentials because they were not members of the Democratic Party. Listen up self righteous independents, if you want to participate in the Democratic Party process and convention, you must be registered as Democrats. That is in the rules. It is the first rule. If you are not a Democrat, you will not be voting in any Democratic convention. Simple as that. That is not corruption. That is not a rigged system. That is not stealing the election. Indeed, Hillary won Nevada by 5 points, entitling her to 20 delegates and Sanders to 15, and that is what they both got after the convention. It is as if Sanders supporters are upset that they were not allowed to steal the election themselves, and are mad that the Democrats followed the rules and followed the results of the caucus election in February.
Indeed, the M.O. of Sanders supporters everywhere seems to be that if they are not allowed to steal the nomination for Sanders, they will burn it all down, even though they have already lost the Democratic Primary to Hillary Clinton. They are 3.5 million votes behind her. They are 300 pledged delegates behind her. They are over 700 delegates behind her when super delegates are factored in.
They. Have. Lost.
Bernie. Has. Lost.
It is far past time Sanders stops lying to his supporters and tell them that they have lost.
“Democrats hold a registration advantage over Republicans in four of seven battleground states likely to play a central role in the presidential election, even as Republicans and independents have made gains,” Bloomberg reports.
“The party that now controls the White House is ahead in registered voters in Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Republicans hold the lead in Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Politics. Three other likely battlegrounds — Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — don’t register voters by party.”
“There’s that guy who’ll walk into the bar and say anything to get laid. That’s Donald Trump right now to a T.” — Mark Cuban, quoted by Business Insider.
Donald Trump alleged that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos uses his ownership of the Washington Post to secure tax benefits for his company, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Every hour we’re getting calls from reporters from The Washington Post asking ridiculous questions and I will tell you, this is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos, who controls Amazon… He’s using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed.”
Politico: “As Trump moves to work in closer concert with the Republican National Committee apparatus, some campaign aides and allies are pushing him to block lucrative party contracts from consultants who worked to keep him from winning the nomination, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.”
“The blacklist talk — which sources say mostly targets operatives who worked for Never Trump groups, but also some who worked for Trump’s GOP presidential rivals or their supportive super PACs — strikes against a Republican consulting class that Trump has assailed as a pillar of a corrupt political establishment. It’s a sweet bit of turnabout for Trump aides and consultants who in recent months were warned that their work for the anti-establishment billionaire real estate showman could diminish their own career prospects.”