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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Last Night Showed This is not a Tied Race; no Even Close

Thank goodness CNN was wrong. They're exit polls released at 9:00 pm last night showed her up by only 4 points, 52-48.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-very-tough-night-for-bernie-and-cnn.html

If that had held up, while it wouldn't have been a help to him delegate wise, it would have given her a lack of closure.

The idea that Bernie has 'momentum', that he is catching up would have continued or intensified. To be sure, even those exit polls in a sense didn't show him catching up. They had showed him down 50 points with black voters, and 14 down with Latinos, but had shown him winning the white vote.

To lose the black vote by 50 points is not consistent with the recent national polls showing this a tie race or close. But, nevertheless, a 4 point win in her own adopted state where she had campaigned very hard the Democratic party campaigned very hard for her would have been far from the knockout punch she needed, narrative wise.

Turns out, CNN was dead wrong. It was right about the black vote-they voted for her by 50 points. But the Latino vote actually supported her by more, 63-37, and the white vote ended up more like 50-50.

This confirms my suspicion that this is not a close race but a landslide. Nationally she has a double digit lead. NY confirmed it last night.

I'm sure in three weeks a national poll will now show New Yorkers 50-50. But last night while polls show a tied national race, NY showed her with a 16 point blowout. I trust that result not these national polls with a ton of independents in them.

As Joy Reid said last night on Chris Matthews, NY is a very good gauge of where the Democratic primary is. It's a state that really looks like the Democratic party, demographically. It's very diverse,  a big urban state-black voters, Hispanic voters, Jewish, Democratic women, white Democrats rather than young college white liberals.

And she won it in a landslide.

So where do we go from here? Some are now absurdly claiming that if the national polls continue to be close or even show him ahead this is a problem for her-it questions the legitimacy. I don't buy that for a second.

In 2008, she led nationally in terms of votes, but Obama won in terms of delegates-which is what matters. He got the nomination. He also needed the SDs to get him to the required delegate haul. Did Hillary use these talking points to try to highjack the nomination?

Hardly. She told her supporters to forget 'PUMA'-'Party unity my ass'-and get behind Barrack Obama.

Going forward, I think Bernie needs to be careful not to destroy any goodwill he might have in the party. The question for him now is how much is he able to shape the convention and the platform.

If he continues to hit her as hard as he has in NY, attacking her character, going as far as accusing her of campaign violations-when she was actually raising money for the party-there is no incentive for her to bother with him at all.

It's not clear what he thinks he's gained from his increasingly negative campaign. He threw everything at her but the kitchen sink-and he lost by close to 20 points. What makes him think this is effective?

As for momentum, I think it's mostly pundits being fooled by the schedule. He happened to have a lot of states close together that obviously favored him-the white caucus states, Wisconsin, etc.

But in the states closet to being a bellwether for the national party-'looking like the Democratic party'-NY, Arizona, Ohio, she has won each by double digit landslide numbers. 

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