As crazy as the snacilbupeR race is, it’s not, really. If you replaced all their names with letters – candidate A, candidate B etc – any rational observer would say that, based on the trends and the polls, candidate A with 316 delegates is well on his way to becoming the party nominee for President.

Except, nobody in the Party LIKES candidate A. Also, nobody likes candidate B very much, the only other guy who has won a few. Candidate C, who won Minnesota in the middle of last night, everyone likes simply by virtue of that fact that’s he’s not B, and most emphatically not A. He’s also not the most adroit politician to ever execute an aqualunge, but candidates D and E are less adroit still.

So what this leaves us is Trump, with one quarter of the votes needed to win the nomination, being treated as a pariah by the very party for whom he is their standard bearer. As party leaders try to find an alley door to shove him out of, all his voters just keep voting for him. BUT: they rarely raise him above 40% in a race, and he racked up all those Super Tuesday wins while still failing to achieve a majority in a single race. No Republican has, yet, in 2016, and that’s a record.

Never in the history of Republican Primaries have we gone through Super Tuesday without several – sometimes many – state races won with a majority of votes. They number in the dozens going back through 1984, when Super Tuesday was invented, and continue back through early primaries in the 1970s, when the modern primary system came to be. Two candidates, 3 candidates, 4 candidates, even 5 valid candidates gaining votes early on in races such as this, have always produced winners – sometimes several – who broke the 50% mark.

Here are the number of Republican contested primaries (or caucuses) won with >50% of the vote, by year, thru Super Tuesday of each contest:

Note: 1984 and 2004 were left out because they were virtually uncontested incumbents.

So while, on the one hand, it may appear that Republicans are denying Trump true front-runner status, on the other hand, there’s never been a front-runner who deserved it less.

~Primo

Last night’s Super Tuesday races shaped up about as we discussed. Bernie blew the doors off in Vermont. Shrodinger’s cat was indeed alive in both Colorado and Minnesota, and the race was indeed close in Oklahoma, where Sanders won, and Massachusetts, where he lost.

But Hillary ran up impressive victories across the South. Her 78% in Alabama nearly matched Sander’s 86% in Vermont, and the remainder of all her other states showed at least 30-point wins across the board, with some margins running 2-1 or even 3-1. But it was the tiny win – MA – that was the dagger.

By any measure, including compared to Donald Trump, Clinton did extremely well and, among pledged delegates, maintains a 544 to 349 lead over Bernie, or almost exactly the 200 delegates we discussed yesterday.

By virtue of winning almost all the states he tried to compete in, Bernie maintains a narrative that the race is not over. He can claim viability, and, in fact, in a race where 2,383 delegates are needed for victory, no one is yet close to winning.

However, there is the small matter of unpledged delegates, aka Super delegates. Sanders has 22 of them, which rockets his total to 371. Clinton has 457, which gives her 1,001 delegates, or 42% of the total needed for the nomination.

The SuperD’s are, of course, a bone of contention, but even if they disappeared tomorrow, and the race were to be decided by pledged delegates alone, Sanders would have to average 54% for the remainder of ALL the primaries. In other words, if only white people come out from now on he has a shot at a hypothetical victory. But if Hillary loses every remaining contest averaging 47%of the vote, she still wins the pledged delegates.

In order to even build the case that the SuperD’s should not be used to tip the result, Bernie needs a game changer. In the next 2 weeks, roughly another thousand delegates will be awarded, the bulk of them in states where Hillary is posting poll numbers like the SEC primary last night. He’s got to cut into this lead, to re-challenge Hillary’s inevitability narrative.

In poker, you’re said to still be in the game if you’ve got just “a chip and a chair.” Bernie still has plenty of money, and a narrative. But unless he starts winning, and winning soon, and winning big, he’ll be ready to cash out in two weeks. The hole will just be too deep.

~Primo

7 P.M. Eastern

people’s lives gonna start changing.

~Primo

by Primo Encarnación Chip Collis

In my many election seasons, I’ve seen a few polling places. I’m sure you all have, too.  But as I was just catching a glimpse of MSNBC, I saw another one.  It looked like a conference room, perhaps in a hotel, or conference center.  There was a certain sameness to it that reminded me of all the different ones I’ve seen: mostly empty, a line of tables to sign in, the booths, as far from the tables and everything else as they could be.  It’s a comforting similarity.

But even more comforting are the differences. Add this conference room to the class room, the gymnasium, and the foyer of the middle school, or cafeteria of the high school.  I’ve seen church halls and church basements; fire stations and police stations; senior homes and private homes; Elks Clubs, VFW Halls, KofC bars, Masonic Temples and the Loyal Order of Moose!; the library, the park district building, the City Hall, the County Courthouse; the junior college and the university – and just plain wherever an odd corner could be found, and people could gather.

Every single space could be found in every conceivable shape that architecture could dream, and engineering could design, and The Common Men and Women could build. And that They could also staff, because just regular folks all adapted all these different places to a common goal: political freedom, in the service of our country, and each other.

And that, my friends, is the Hope of Politics.

So vote! Today and tomorrow and each and every time it’s offered.  Because, for once, for truly:

Freedom.

It’s a very exciting day!  There are many during a campaign cycle, but chasing the first big chest of delegate treasure on a national (and international!) day of voting will feel a lot like November, what with the many states being called, and political fortunes hanging in the balance.

Super Tuesday is the first chance for a campaign to show that they’ve got the chops for the long haul.  You may be able to pull your people to the polls in onesy-twosy primaries; you may have shown support after moving to Iowa or New Hampshire for all of 2015.  But Super Tuesday is where the narrative hardens, the race clarifies, and dreams die.

We are not having an actual contest today, but feel free to post what you think/hope/imagine could happen out there.  Here are all the polls to date.

Also, all you people in Fort Bend County – get your BUTTS to the polls, dammit!  Below is a hint of whom I think we should support for the Democratic Chair.

~Primo