Let me speak here first and foremost as a proponent of sound, logical assessments and outlines of fact based reality that Dkos prides itself on. Two caveats: First, I am NOT saying Sanders should drop out. Second, I am not saying the Democratic primary is literally over, as Sanders will continue to be on the ballot, and I’m aware no one has technically come close to getting the delegates needed to put the nomination away. Okay?
So let’s move on first to the incredible goal-post moving with Massachusetts. Okay, that goal post moving isn't so surprising. Some Sanders’ supporters have put some damned good spin on Massachusetts. “Clinton brand is strong here. She won the state by 16 points in 2008 even with almost all the establishment backing Obama. What a fantastic victory.” It’s logical on the surface, but if there is a key flaw it’s making out 2008 to be an “anti-establishment vs establishment” race, and saying the dynamics of 2016 are both the same and that Clinton is getting support from the same groups of voters, when its very much different. Okay, in 2008, Obama was not anti-establishment, after South Carolina he consistently lead Hillary Clinton in getting superdelegates, loads of big establishment figures were in his corner, and the race was also not, as per revisionist histories, breaking down on liberal versus conservative, as Hillary Clinton got roughly the same percentage of votes with self-described liberal Democrats as she did overall in the primary. So here are the two links you need to read to catch up to the true significance of Massachusetts this time: 538, and NYT coverage of the primary results in the second link.
Sanders State by State Benchmarks
If you go to Nate Silver's post, it assesses what Sanders needs to get in each state in order to tie (not win) the popular vote in the Democratic primary. It takes an aggregate of national polling, and then adjusts each state according to recent state polling, demographics, fundraising and facebook data to adjust them accordingly. Silver’s chart should drive home just how impossible it is for Sanders to come back from a blow this hard. Silver’s assessment shows that Sanders needed to win MA by 11 points if he was tie nationally; he lost by 2. That’s a 13 point underperformance. The NYT article has more insight:
Massachusetts was perceived as a must-win for Mr. Sanders: If he could not win a progressive Northeast state that had half a million college students and bordered his home state of Vermont, his viability elsewhere would be seriously questioned. And so he poured in resources here, visited twice in the last week and matched the Clinton ground game.
2008 had a very different dynamic. Sanders is doing vastly better with young voters and college students than Obama did in 2008. He’s also doing much better with white liberals than Obama, and with blue collar white voters, and MA is still a part of his cultural region, particularly western MA, which borders Vermont and shares a very similar culture. Massachusetts had everything you look for in a Sanders state. A huge number of college students? Check. Large percentage of white liberals? Check. New England? Check. Even more important, Sanders poured so much effort into the state. Even after Hillary invested more money in the last week to try and save the state, Sanders still outspent her 2:1. Don’t forget, that Sanders outspent Clinton 3:1 in New Hampshire and the bulk of that media expenditure would have been in the Boston media market, which means he was hitting a huge number of MA voters the entire time he was outspending Clinton in NH. Simply put, if Sanders cannot win a state whose demographics by all analysis closely match to his strong suits, after outhustling and outspending the Clinton campaign by at least a 2:1 margin if not more, how can he win other primaries in tougher states? He’s not going to be able to outspend Clinton 2:1 in Ohio and Michigan.
While looking at Silver’s chart, you say Sanders slightly exceeded what he needed in both our caucuses, Colorado and Minnesota, and in Oklahoma, those states came at a dire, dire price. That price can be seen in all the southern states. Silver has Sanders needing a 20 point Clinton margin in Texas to tie the popular vote in the primary. He lost Texas by 32 percentage points and only won 3 counties where more than 200 votes were cast in the Democratic primary, and only one or tied 15 over all. In Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee, Sanders won exactly 4 counties, one of which was a ruby red rural Georgia county he won 36 votes to 32 votes. His high profile decision to cut off those states did not go unnoticed and likely cripples his ability to catch up in this race. Sanders didn’t even win big college areas, like Clark County Georgia, Washington County Arkansas, Knox county Tennessee, and only barely won Travis County Texas. Here are his underperformances:
Texas: -12 points ; Georgia: -19 ; Alabama: -22 (for a 59 point loss!, 78-18!) ; Tennessee: -30 ; Arkansas: -17 ; Virginia: -20 ; Massachusetts: -13
In exchange for overperformances of:
Oklahoma: +8 ; Colorado: +5 (in a super low turnout caucus) Minnesota: +7 (but in another caucus state, and still a good bit less than Obama’s massive drubbing of Hillary there in 2008) and lastly Vermont: +24
The proportional allocation of delegates means that scoring over 70% gives you huge delegate gains. So Sanders got a 27 delegate lead out of Colorado and Minnesota? Hillary got a 43 delegate lead out of Georgia alone. In terms of Democracy too, she got more votes in Georgia than Sanders got in Vermont, Colorado and Minnesota combined (because of low turnout, exclusive and archaic caucus systems that pretty much universally result in fewer people participating in the party nomination process and that hopefully all of us can agree need to be gotten rid of). In Texas? Clinton's margin was big enough to get a 74 delegate margin out of that state alone.
So what some Sanders supports are saying. This was Hillary's one time perfect storm. Pretty much everything left on the map is Sanders turf and he still has ample opportunities to catch up and make up those delegates in favorable turf to him. Well, first, unless Sanders is sitting on a bunch of states where’s going to get 70% of the vote, this is extremely hard. Proportional allocation prevents what we see in the Republican primary, but it also means that its very hard to catch up. To put it in perspective, Hillary gained a larger delegate lead out of Arkansas today than Sanders did out of Colorado. Basically, even a string of 55-45 victories won’t go very far in helping Sanders catch up in delegates. What’s more, Obama just barely beat Hillary in 2008. Barely. Had the delegates of Michigan and Florida counted, Hillary might have even tied him in non-superdelegate counts (superdelegates backed Obama 2:1), and she actually won the popular vote of the Democratic primary 48 to 47.3, or by 300,000 votes, was only 100 delegates behind Obama largely because of his skillful gaming of the system where he racked up votes in caucuses and small states, so please Sanders supporters, by all means keep attacking the superdelegate system when it doesn’t favor your candidate. Sanders needed to hold all the 2008 Obama states. Instead he's gained two very small Clinton states, one, Oklahoma, by getting the anti-Obama votes of rural conservative Democrats (locked out of the Republican primary) who backed him 2:1 and made up a substantial percentage of that electorate. But he’s lost 4 Obama states so far, and they are states Obama won by a huge margin, but Sanders lost by even yuuuger margin.
The problem with this scenario of “Oh, well the south is done” Hillary now has to fight in tougher turf. Except the south isn’t done. Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi and the huge prize of Florida are still out. Plus border states with large minority populations, like Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. And this seems to ignore that in much of the turf remaining, the big delegate areas, Clinton did quite well in back in 2008. The “We’re going to sweep California and sweep New York” argument falls flat when Clinton won 58% of the vote in New York in 2008, and won California by 8 points. Both states are states with strong fundamentals for Hillary Clinton; big urban centers, large minority populations in the Democratic primary, and in New York’s case, her background as a popular former Senator. As Hillary Clinton found out in 2008, its almost impossible to overtake an opponent who has gotten a big lead in pledged delegates from the voting. And Sanders will be running against an even stronger headwind and without any momentum. The next races are the Kansas and Nebraska caucuses along with the Louisiana primary, this Saturday. Kansas and Nebraska should go for Sanders, and relatively easily. These are heavily white caucuses dominated by a liberal, mostly white Democratic base, and Obama absolutely crushed/demolished Hillary in these states back in 2008. A loss in either one is an extremely dire sign for Sanders. But if Hillary keeps both states closer this time, say 60-40 Sanders, and wins Louisiana comparably to say Georgia and South Carolina, then she will grow her delegate lead even more this weekend. The Michigan race next Tuesday will be critical, as it is the same day as Mississippi and a week before the second huge delegate dump (Illinois, Florida, and Ohio being the main prizes that day), and losing both would be hitting a brick wall in terms of being able to compete the next week with momentum and paths to victory at that point being virtually non-existent.
Basically, Sanders so far is Obama + New Hampshire and Appalachia, but minus the deep south and southern border states that ensured Obama’s coalition. Maybe his disdain for the mutli-ethnic, identity driven coalition of Obama in favor of a classist coalition mainly driven towards bringing in more white voters who have trended rightward, wasn’t the smartest move. Maybe abandoning huge states like Georgia and Texas wasn't as strategic as it sounded. I imagine they thought “Okay, we can drop these states for now and be assured at least, around 38% of the vote.” Then Hillary pushed those states hard, Sanders’ vote collapsed very quickly, and he ended up with 23-25% in those states and not a whole lot of extra delegates in Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota to show for it (he also outspent Hillary 2:1 in Minnesota; basically Sanders is showing he has to massively outspend Hillary to win a state, and he simply doesn’t have the resources to outspend her 2:1 everywhere). Also, people of color aren’t just voting big for Hillary in the south; in Massachusetts Hillary was saved by strong support from black and Hispanic voters around the Boston metro that came in huge for her. That makes New York even harder for Bernie.
So while the primary is ongoing, where as prior to Super Tuesday Hillary Clinton had a 97% chance of winning according to Nate Silver’s model, now that percentage is at 99.5%. It’s not over in a literal sense. But in terms of graphing out current trends, remaining states, polling, and catching up in delegates, there really isn't a probable or realistic model for a Sanders victory and that is a simple, reality-based assessment in no way meant to disrespect Sanders and the incredible campaign he has run. It’s just the honest facts. We still need to have more primary season, more debates, more ads, more campaigning; it strengthens our message and organization for November. But I can’t ignore any users that try to spin away the underlying significance of yesterday’s primaries, and hope we can finally see the visceral, non-stop anti-Clinton diaries filling up 8 of 10 of the recommended diary list, usually being relentlessly rec'd by the same group of 300-900 intensely anti-Hillary users who then project a very one-sided representation of how the site feels and how much of the left is divided on this primary between two uniquely appealing candidates with merits and flaws each. Now is the time to start focusing on positive arguments for our candidates, unity, bridge-building, and for November against a Donald Trump candidacy.
Update: Corrected annoying, stupid typos. Apologies for leaving them in.