Michigan was a great win for Bernie Sanders, giving his supporters a new wind but already since South Carolina and Nevada there has been a sense that while still awesome in every way, the Sanders campaign can't possibly win. Of course that is where they started so nothing much is lost.
So let's see the numbers that say Bernie is doomed. Firstly the Delegates. Sanders has won in Michigan, Maine, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Vermont. That's nine states compared to Clinton's 13: Mississippi, Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, American Samoa and Arkansas. What really matters though is how many delegates you get from each vote. The delegates are awarded proportionately according to share of the vote. But very populous states like Texas have a lot of delegates to share while tiny places like Vermont don't. Clinton got 147 delegates in Texas with 65% of the vote while in Vermont, Sanders got 16 delegates with 86% of the vote.
So the current standing is 766 delegates for Clinton and 549 for Sanders, with 2736 left to be won. From that point of view it would seem to still be in play. But then of course there are the super delegates. These are people who are important in the Democrat party, officials and politicians and basically a lot of cronys, who get a vote at the convention. Many of them have made an endorsement already, 472 for Clinton and 24 for Sanders, so many commentators are adding the super delegates to the pledged delegates. But endorsements are not pledges. All 714 super delegates are still free to vote how they like in the Convention (and they will vote for the most likely person to give them a job in the administration).
So really its not over yet. The establishment view is that South Carolina and Nevada showed that Sanders could not win the African American or the Latino vote. But Michigan (lots of African Americans). Even when Sanders had said the stupid thing about white people not knowing what its like to be poor. Even when Clinton had taken time off from New Hampshire to go to Flint, she lost Michigan. 'Its the economy stupid!' So we'll see now what happens in Florida. I think maybe its going to be a North - South thing. But I am working on 'reasons to support Clinton' in the back of my mind.
How about the Republicans? Its like watching a train wreck really. At least this week after the dirty 'hands' talk in the last debate there has been some first responders arriving to see if there is anything they can do to save the Grand Old Party. But it is still very very sick.
Unfortunately the GOP does not have any super delegates - that would be too easy! Drumpf has 485, Cruz has 359, Rubio has 151, Kasick 54 and Carson 8. Carson is out but it sounds like he will endorse Drumpf soon, possibly looking for VP. There are 1030 delegates still to be allocated. So Drumpf is still outnumbered by all the rest if they could be put together.
I do hope that Rubio does Ok in Florida, his home state - for the Republicans its a 'winner takes all' state so he really has to win. It is a closed primary meaning that only registered Republicans can vote - no independents. If Rubio and Kasick can stay in, there are still options for a 'brokered convention'. That is when the leadership all make a backroom deal (you can picture it with the cigars and bunny girls etc) and the delegates switch their vote to find a candidate 'for unity'. But I don't think that can happen if there are only two candidates left - it will look too undemocratic if the loser wins. For it to work Drumpf has to have less than 50%. Of course Drumpf will run as an independent. We all know that he will but that will just split the Republican vote. That is how the Republican party will break up and it will be very interesting to watch for several decades to see what emerges from the debris.
But if they have to rally around Cruz to stop Drumpf - well from my point of view he's actually worse. Cruz is much more dangerous and apparently hated by anyone who has ever worked with him. I would rather have Drumpf vs Clinton and hope that the anti-Drumpf Republicans would either vote for Clinton or not vote at all. Bloombnerg has said he is out as an independent.
Its hard to understand why the corporate interests wouldn't prefer Clinton to Trump - maybe in the end they will - but the Republican activists really hate Clinton with the same vehemence that they hate Obama. It doesn't make any rational sense, you would go crazy trying to understand it. They believe all the stuff about Benghazi and the emails. But they can't really explain how it can be so bad. For so many Sander's supporters she is so 'Republican lite' you would think that she would be the perfect candidate to stop Drumpf. This is where the incoherence of the Republican no-idea-ology throws its spanner into the works, making the whole thing unpredictable. Hopefully they will just all be too confused to vote.
