National

Obviously, Sanders absolutely crushed Clinton last night, getting a 20 point victory and necessary momentum. No way to spin this for Clinton, it was a loss, and a challenge. At the same, Sanderistas shouldn't get too excited, just as Clintonistas shouldn't get too depressed. What is next is a long primary, one that I expect Clinton to win. Bernie Sanders absolutely had to have this win, and he had to win it by the margins he did to have any chance going forward (because if he had won only in the single digits, that would have been spun as a Clinton victory). So Sanders gets his day in the sun and he should enjoy it. For a couple hours. Because then it is onto South Carolina and Nevada and then all the states in Super Tuesday. So he has a lot of work to do. And you can take it or leave it from me, but he is still behind the eight ball. If you include the superdelegates, who can of course change their commitments at any time, Clinton is now ahead with a 394-42 delegate lead. But unlike in 2008, when superdelegates did change their mind and go with Obama, do you think that would happen in 2016? Nope, not in a million years. Not unless Hillary dies or drops out. Sanders is not Obama. He does not have a shot in the general election like Obama did. He is not even a Democrat, and does not support Democratic candidates. That's important to superdelegates. So there is no way they will abandon Hillary to go with Sanders. To beat them, he will have to sweep the primaries coming up. And that may prove to be a tough task. The last poll out of South Carolina had Clinton up 64-27, and in Nevada, Clinton was up 50-27. So Bernie has a long way to go. But still, good win.

In 2007 Joe Biden, an esteemed senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted in favor of Bush's vanity war in Iraq. It was a craven vote for a transparently corrupt war intended, ironically, to safeguard his future electoral viability. To their credit, Democratic primary voters remembered that vote and denied Joe Biden the presidency. Votes have consequences. Americans do not favor giving pusillanimous politicians the keys to the White House. Does anyone doubt that Biden would have sailed to the nomination and the Presidency is he had only asked, "What's the REAL reason for this war?" and then voted as his heart and head both advised him? Instead, he (and Jeb Bush) are the only American politicians to ever pay a price for that war, and that price was astonishingly small compared to the price Iraqis continue to pay. Between 2001 and last spring, Bill and Hillary Clinton were paid $153 million for speeches delivered to a range of oligarchs and big banks, including Goldman Sachs, the very company that profited so wildly from pushing the country to the brink of economic ruin. Like the Iraq war vote, these speaking fees are an affront to decency and common sense that Democratic primary voters appear unwilling to forgive. No US bankers have been jailed for their crimes against this country. For their outright attack on our economy that wiped out retirement accounts and life saving, they only got bonuses. Hillary Clinton may now be the only person in the upper reaches of power to pay a price for the reckless criminality of the US financial industry. Is that fair? I don't know. But there is a heart beating within the US electorate and that heart years for the scales of justice to somehow be set right.

Ed Kilgore says New Hampshire has a long history of Primary Night Surprises.

The Granite State has a long tradition of thumbing its nose at the preferences of Iowa, its first-in-the-nation twin. The last time the New Hampshire Democrats voted for the same candidate in a competitive primary was in 2000 with Al Gore; you have to go back to 1992 to find a similarly harmonious early-state outcome for Republicans. But high-impact results in New Hampshire go all the way back to 1952, when voters there were first allowed to directly vote for candidates rather than just delegates. President Harry Truman's ambitions for a second full term expired when he lost to crowd-pleasing Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver. (Truman's successor Dwight D. Eisenhower, meanwhile, began his climb to the White House by beating "Mr. Republican" Robert Taft.) In 1964 Republicans surprised probably even themselves by giving a write-in candidacy on behalf of ambassador to South Vietnam (and former Massachusetts senator) Henry Cabot Lodge a victory over Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater. In 1968, Democrats showed that meeting expectations could matter as much as order of finish, as President Lyndon Johnson was all but pushed out of a reelection race by a shockingly narrow victory over Gene McCarthy. The same thing happened to 1972 Democratic front-runner Ed Muskie, who underperformed in a win over eventual nominee George McGovern (one of two consecutive long-shot Democrats to be lifted into contention by New Hampshire, the other being Jimmy Carter in 1976). The reverse phenomenon occurred in 1992, when Bill Clinton became the "comeback kid" with a better-than-expected second-place finish immediately following the Gennifer Flowers scandal.

That said, Hillary will not win in New Hampshire tonight. If she does, the primary is over. What is important is the margin. If the margin is 15-30 points as the polls suggest, Bernie gets the win and momentum. If the margin is in single digits, Hillary gets the "win" and momentum.

The news regarding fundraising for the various federal and statewide offices has trickled out over the past month, and I decided to put together one post where we can find that information and see the schedule of upcoming campaign finance reports.

DR Tucker \at the Washington Monthly:

The suggestion that most Sanders-supporting progressives will refuse to vote on November 8 if Sanders isn’t the Democratic nominee defies all logic. Sure, there may be a few disgruntled Bernie-backers who will either skip the polls or pull the level for presumptive Green Party nominee Jill Stein if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, but ask yourself: considering the stakes involved, do you honestly believe that the folks who have been attracted to Sanders’s message would, in essence, concede the election to whichever radical from last night’s debate wins the GOP nomination? Remember the nonsensical “PUMA” movement in 2008? The idea that large numbers of Clinton supporters would actually refuse to vote for Barack Obama in the general election was laughable—and the idea that most Sanders supporters will throw a tantrum in the event the Vermonter is vanquished is just as silly. [...] To accept the premise that most Sanders supporters would go on a general-election strike if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination is to accept the right’s premise of progressive irrationality. In order to buy the idea that the “Bernie or Bust!” movement is real, one would have to believe that most Sanders supporters: * are unmindful of the importance of the United States Supreme Court, US District Courts of Appeal, and US District Courts, and the judges appointed to each division; * are perfectly willing to allow a situation whereby a Republican President, Republican House and Republican Senate are finally in a position to obliterate Obamacare; * would have no problem with four years of nothing being done to stem the bloody tide of handgun violence; * would give the Christian right the opportunity to reinstate coathangers as the only reproductive option for women facing unplanned and unwanted pregnancies; * would tolerate a Republican president fomenting a culture of racial and religious intolerance; * would ignore the prospect of the GOP gutting President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and successfully sabotaging the 2015 Paris climate agreement; and * would gamble on the idea that a Republican president could be thrown out of office in 2020 in favor of, presumably, Democratic presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren. In other words, to buy this idea, one would have to buy absolute absurdity. Members of the progressive family are simply having an argument over who will be the best individual to lead the country into the next decade. Yes, the language in this argument is sometimes raw, crude, personal. However, does anyone really believe that at the end of the primary, the progressive family will not set aside its differences and come together?

Indeed, those Sanders supporters who say they will not vote for Hillary are the type of voter that have never voted for the Democratic nominee in the first place. They vote Green, Working Families, Socialist, Communist or not at all. So if you want to see how large their numbers are, look at prior vote totals for those parties.

The New Castle County Democratic Committee will be holding a "Candidate Forum Night" for the positions of Insurance Commissioner and Lt. Governor. The Forum will be on February 17, 2016 at 7 pm at the Local 74 Executive Banquet & Conference Center, 205 Executive Drive, Newark, Delaware 19702. During this forum there will be an interactive question and answer session with the audience. Meanwhile, the News Journal and WHYY have formed a coalition with various community groups to hose four debates for the candidates for Wilmington Mayor.