What Went Down In The New York Primaries

During a live blog last month, a commenter pointed out that Sanders is doing quite well in counties named Clinton throughout the country. He has won Clinton County in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Michigan. And tonight he won Clinton County, N.Y. The streak lives! There’s a Sanders County in Montana, which votes on June 7. We’ll see if Clinton can get her revenge then.

On MSNBC just now, Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, was asked whether his candidate would stay in the race even if Clinton had the pledged delegate and popular vote lead at the end of the primary season. He said yes. Steve Kornacki then asked Weaver if he would use the weeks between the California primary and the Philadelphia convention to “flip” super delegates. Weaver said yes. On the one hand, what do you expect a campaign manager to say? But it was still somewhat stunning to hear Weaver put it in such stark terms.

I’m not sure what to say, Micah. As Dave said at the beginning of the night, we’re talking degrees of certainty for Clinton on one tail of the probability distribution. She was already above 90 percent to win the Democratic nomination before the night began, in my view, and now she’s somewhat further above 90 percent. Whether it’s 95 percent or 99.5 percent, I’m not quite sure. Tonight’s victory might have been emphatic enough that the media might stop implying that the Democratic race is highly competitive, but I’m not sure how much that matters either, given how poorly “momentum” has predicted results on the Democratic side so far.