What a difference a week makes.
Last Tuesday, Bernie Sanders’s stunning victory in the Michigan primary upended the Democratic establishment’s expectations and placed Hillary Clinton’s inevitable ascendancy on hold.
But the established order reasserted itself on Tuesday night — this time, probably for good. Clinton laid a goose egg on Sanders, winning five out of five contests across a diverse swath of America and permanently putting to rest her rival’s contention that she’s a “regional candidate” who struggles outside the South. Though the Sanders campaign shows no signs of quitting the race anytime soon, the Vermont senator’s empty-handed finish seems to augur the beginning of the end for his “political revolution.”
The criticism of Clinton as a regional candidate held a kernel of truth. Clinton did win the South, completing her sweep of the old Confederacy with easy victories in Florida and North Carolina on Tuesday. But she also won all three states at play in the Midwest — a surprise, given their economic and demographic similarities to Michigan. The Sanders campaign had hoped the Wolverine State would be the domino that toppled the rest of the Rust Belt. To that end, they sent the senator on a barnstorming tour through Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, where he reminded voters of Clinton’s past support for NAFTA and the TPP while touting his own opposition to free trade. But Clinton nevertheless eked out narrow victories in the latter two states. And in Ohio, arguably ground zero of the nation’s manufacturing slump, she won by 14 points despite being outspent.
Michigan may have temporarily rekindled Sanders’s hopes for a successful comeback. But after Tuesday night, his victory there will likely be remembered as little more than an aberration and a political footnote.
Exit polling and county-by-county data show the extent of the Sanders campaign’s collapse in the Midwest.
Exit polling and county-by-county data show the extent of the Sanders campaign’s collapse in the Midwest. Clinton won the majority of union voters in Ohio 54 to 46, and, astonishingly, won voters who thought free trade takes away U.S. jobs by a similar margin. She held a commanding lead in the lakeshore counties of the state’s northwest, where the Rust Belt is at its rustiest. The vote was much closer in Illinois and Missouri, with many union and anti-trade voters breaking for Sanders. But large swaths of Democrats there put a premium on electability, too, perhaps fearing Donald Trump’s dominance on the other side of aisle. And those voters overwhelmingly backed Clinton.
Cognizant of her now-commanding lead, Clinton was nothing but gracious toward her opponent during at a Tuesday night victory rally in South Florida. “I wanna congratulate Senator Sanders for the vigorous campaign he’s waging,” she said, the only mention she’d make of her Democratic rival all evening.
#share#After a week of escalating attacks on Clinton’s Wall Street ties and past support for free-trade deals, Sanders also stuck to a relatively restrained tone at his own rally in Arizona. But he did offer one veiled shot at Clinton. “Do not settle for the status quo when the status quo is broken,” he said, perhaps pleading for another chance with a Democratic electorate fast abandoning his insurgent candidacy.
Clinton’s lead now looks insurmountable — even excluding her massive advantage in superdelegates, she outpaces Sanders by well over 300 pledged delegates. Much of that is due to her absolute blowouts in the South, a run that continued unabated Tuesday night with her 17-delegate margin in North Carolina and a massive 64-delegate pickup in Florida. The Clinton campaign sent an e-mail late on Tuesday night reminding reporters that at this point in the 2008 cycle, Barack Obama’s delegate lead over her was slimmer than hers is over Sanders.
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Sanders’s communications team fell back on the refrain they’ve gone to so often after tough nights, saying the map looks better for them going forward. That may be true — the Vermont senator polls well in western states such as Washington and California, and Democratic strategists believe he could pick up a few more wins on the East Coast in places such as Maryland. But given the Democrats’ proportional system of allocating delegates, Sanders would need to win three-quarters of the remaining votes to catch up to Clinton, an almost impossible hill to climb. And again, that doesn’t even account for superdelegates, who overwhelmingly support Clinton and are even less likely to budge after her strong showing Tuesday night.
Still, veteran party operatives warn against trying to push Sanders out of the race too forcefully. “I don’t think [the Clinton campaign] should spend a lot of time talking about their delegate lead. Everybody knows they have it,” says Bob Shrum, a former Democratic presidential strategist. “They need to be mindful of the fact that if she does win the nomination, she’s going to need Bernie Sanders to help turn out millennials, [and] maybe to help her talk to these blue-collar voters.”
#related#Like many in her party, Clinton is already looking past Sanders to the next challenge: Donald Trump, the night’s other big winner. She lambasted the Republican front-runner throughout her speech in Florida. “When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong,” she said. “We should be breaking down barriers, not building walls. We are not going to succeed by dividing this country between us and them.”
“Tonight, it’s clearer than ever that this might be one of the most consequential campaigns in our lifetime,” she warned her audience in an ominous reference to Trump’s rise. It’s not yet clear how a Clinton-Trump campaign would unfold. But after Tuesday night, it is looking more and more likely that we’ll find out.
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.