There were a handful of precincts across the state of Michigan today that ran out of Democratic ballots. Turnout is apparently record-breaking for a primary here. Now I’m not at all convinced Hillary’s going to lose the nomination, but if Bernie keeps this type of campaign going, he’s making a strong case for being her running mate. I think Clinton-Sanders could be a pretty amazing ticket.
Sanders just declared winner in Michigan!
What an incredible night! With the proportional representation it doesn’t make much practical difference who barely wins, but obviously a win for Bernie would be a big game-changer as far as momentum and narrative.
The whole “Clinton is inevitable, so let’s get it over with and let her focus on the general” attitude goes away. The massive failure of the pollsters makes Bernie’s poor polling in other states look less discouraging. Of course, those things are also true if he just barely loses, given that polls had him down 20%, but winning tends to build more enthusiasm than almost winning.
Yee-haw!
Looks like Cruz may get the win in Idaho.
Rubio is in freefall. It seems as if his brash strategy of attacking Trump was ill-suited for him. I know it turned me off and he was a soft favorite for me. He just didn’t convince me that he could stand up to Trump and he looked awkward in doing it.
Well, the problem with going to war with pollsters is they’ve been right in most states, so evidence suggests there’s no real smart reason to assume they’re wrong in Illinois, Ohio, Florida and North Carolina.
Also this was a bad night for Bernie, under current projections his delegate deficits goes from 199 to 213, so he’s now further away from the nomination than he was before the day began. His differential versus the 538 50/50 nationwide tracker rose from -81 to -89.
Michigan is actually different from a lot of the other states that have been polled.
So let’s say Sanders replicates his performance in North Carolina, Ohio, and Illinois, but loses Florida as projected–if “all the polls are wrong” this is probably the most likely scenario, because Florida is materially different from Michigan (closed primary, requires 29 day prior registration change to be allowed to vote, Michigan is open primary), Florida is Southern (people say it isn’t but, there are people in Florida outside of South Florida and that part of Florida is quite Southern in character.) Just performing as expected in Florida and losing North Carolina, Ohio, and Illinois by 2% and Sanders will again move in the wrong direction on 3/15. At that point the election will start to look at lot like 2008: each win Hillary got would get her press, but people watching the delegates noticed a hard truth–she wasn’t gaining on Obama. That is reversed this year with Sanders in the Clinton role.
After that I think Sanders will need about 58% of all remaining delegates to win. Tonight he won by 2%, to hit his mark after 3/15 he’d have to win by 58-42 til the end of the primary, which is a 12% margin.
Not sure he would want it; he’s too old to be the next in line for 2024, and being a Senator gives him more actual influence. But I do think that a few more wins like this will, at the very least, force Clinton to pick a running mate from the left wing of the party. Sherrod Brown was mentioned on MSNBC tonight, but that would leave a Senate vacancy for a Republican governor to fill…not ideal.
Bernie is the epitome of the Democrats’ lurch to the far-left. If he gets the nomination, I’m voting for Donald Trump.
You know what? I like the status quo, and am down for some fixes. We don’t need a People’s Revolution, like that communist Bernie mentioned tonight.
I’ve said the same, while I still just don’t see a realistic path for Bernie, if he’s the nominee I’ll go back the party I’ve been a part of since the 1970s and vote for whomever comes out of the Republican convention. There is no mechanism by which I vote for a man who would destroy the American economy by cancelling our trade deals with China (undoing a policy in place for 20 years, leading to a trade war with China and losing them as a somewhat okay to deal with foreign power on issues like North Korea, Taiwan etc.) A vote for Sanders is literally akin to putting a gun to the temple of the country and pulling the trigger, our exports will collapse and our foreign relations with most of our important trade partners will go south.
Clearly not even Bernie was expecting this; he’s giving his victory speech in the hallway of a motel in Miami.
The most likely Republican nominee is the one talking trade war, last I heard.
Sure, but if Trump-Sanders I lose the option of a candidate who isn’t full on retard on trade. So I’m certainly not going to vote for the far leftist in that scenario.
It may give his movement validity however, if he were vice president. It would definitely shift the Overton Window even further, which may inspire other like-minded individuals to run for office across the country. I think that may be why he got into the race to begin with.
And a lone Democratic Socialist with an (I) behind his name from tiny Vermont serving in a Republican-controlled Senate? It’s not like he’ll be stomping heads and taking names until his imminent retirement in a few years. A vice presidency would be an amazing way to end his career.
Plus, large corporations are very in favor of free trade. I suspect Donald Trump in the Oval Office would make most of his decisions based on business interests for the Chamber of Commerce crowd. He’s a populist demagogue but I see little reason to assume he’d actually follow through and do anything that would be against mainstream business interests in the White House.
Nah, there’s no reason for Clinton to nominate Sanders Vice President. Him doing better in the primaries doesn’t make that any more likely, actually. I read an article about the failed liberal primary candidates of yesteryear and all of them were pretty similar in what they got–nothing if they refused to play ball, a nice convention speech slot if they did. That was it.
Well yes. It strike me that the folks comparing this to 2008 are right… but Hillary Clinton is in the Barack Obama role this time (he had a big lead in delegates after Super Tuesday, by especially winning large in Southern states, and she kept winning states like Michigan, which she did in 2008, by small margins. That kept her name in the conversation, but she never got super close in delegates. Same thing is happening now, just the other way around.
This primary has absolutely nothing to do with yesteryear. I’m not saying Sanders is a shoe-in as a running mate, but seriously, articles about how they did things in past elections doesn’t mean squat. Especially in this election. She should be considering him.
Yep, I’ve heard “this election isn’t like the last ones” every election since I was 18. That was 40 years ago.
It’s funny, his candidacy is only possible, I think, because people like you have been hyperbolically screaming “OMG LEFTIST SOCIALIST COMMUNIST STALINIST EVER!!!” towards centrist candidates for over a decade. The red scare is running out in the new generation. After everyone heard hoow Obama was the most super leftist communist ever, and that turned out pretty okay and, if anything, center-right, people are not only no longer scared by the prospect, but might be actually seeking out an actual leftist.