After the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico primaries over the weekend, analysts started applying the islands’ delegate allocation rules to Hillary’s strong showing and said hey! who needs California? Bring me my datebook!
They then started calling superdelegates, several of whom for whatever reasons have decided to come down off the fence. They lined up in sufficient numbers that – lo and behold – shortly before 9 PM on June 6, 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton was named the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States.
As the news organizations dialed for delegates, they also measured the appetite these folks had for switching to Bernie. This is an ongoing process, not something that was cobbled together yesterday, and the propensity to flip is an important metric to the back room pros. The last time they got bitten by a call – Florida, 2000 – left them twice shy to make calls that could later be reversed.
Presumptively, they feel pretty solid about this call.
This turns my semi-regular “what’s-at-stake” pre-primary column into something completely different. Nothing that happens tonight is going to prompt superdelegates to go against the pledged delegate counts, the popular vote and the first woman nominee from a major party in order to promote Bernie Sanders to the nomination. We’ve spoken in the past about pledged delegates – there is nothing that is going to happen tonight to them other than that Hillary will expand her lead and finally lock down the majority of those folks, as well.
The naming of a presumptive nominee in this manner is rather anti-climactic, and happened contrary to the hopes of both campaigns. Hillary plans to make her dispositive closing statement with wins in both NJ and CA. Bernie is planning to try to win CA and continue with this feeble charade that somehow, some way, somewhere, people will come to their senses and nominate him instead.
The weak-tea, easily debunked narrative of electability based on polls is a little bit of artful misdirection. What some on Team Bernie are really playing for is the issue he cavalierly tossed away in an early debate: e-mails. As much as Bernie may say that Americans don’t give a damn about her e-mails (and, they don’t!), supporters are making the case to continue to obstruct the Democrats’ pivot to Trump on the off chance that some DOJ deus ex machina is going to descend from on high and snatch him up to the pinnacle of political power.
When it’s argued that superdelegates can change their mind in July, that’s the only thing that could make them do so. Any other explanation is either woefully hopeful, tragically misconceived, or craftily disingenuous.
On Hillary’s part, the campaign was hoping to celebrate a traditional election night victory giving her the nomination. When she took the stage after the news had broken, she acknowledged it indirectly by saying they were “on the brink,” although the brink was already in the rear view. They have a big winning rally planned in Brooklyn HQ tonight, and the bean counters stole a little of her thunder. New Jersey would have accomplished the same thing, and the celebration still would have started before California’s results were in. But this is awkward for all.
It’s hard to say what effect this would have on tonight. I was expecting Hillary to receive a bump from her speech last week that polls have not yet had a chance to measure. It’s hard to say how such a mealy-mouthed “game over” will affect turnout: Bernie supporters could be energized to more action, or demoralized to stay home. Hillary voters could be celebrating already, or determined to put a big bow on the nom for her. I suspect her superior ground game will help – but you can’t drag millions of voters to the polls one by one.
While a California loss would put a mild hitch in her giddy-up, PR-wise, it’s not going to resonate downstream. “She lost California… to Bernie!” is going to be a useless general election taunt from Trump who, incidentally, is also praying that the same deus will hop into his indictment machina and save him, too.
In the meantime, for today, let’s quietly enjoy the historic moment amidst the shards of the highest, hardest glass ceiling in the world. For tonight, let’s Democratic Party!
The next President of the United States… credit:NY Mag
I would like to end this letter in a more diplomatic fashion, but I think that you, of all people, understand why I cannot. I will not presume to speak on behalf of every American of Mexican descent, for every undocumented worker born in Mexico who is contributing to our country every day or, for that matter, every decent citizen in Mexico. But, I am sure that many of these individuals would agree with me when I say: ‘Mr. Trump, you’re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass.’
