5 Thoughts on the Democratic Primary Race

1. Prediction Status: I said over a month ago that Hillary would wrap it up mathematically before the end of April. She won't. The gap did not expand as much as I thought it would, prior to NY, so instead of a 500 pledged delegate gap before the end of April, it's looking more like a 375~400 delegate gap. Nonetheless, it's a foregone conclusion: Hillary will win. Feeling the Bern increasingly means seeing the improbable as possible, or as Lloyd Christmas would say, "So you're telling me there's a chance? YEAH!"
2. Popular Vote: As of right now, Hillary leads the popular vote by a 2.67M gap. As a percentage of all votes cast so far, she's ahead of Bernie, 57.3% to 42.7%. Despite winning the previous 7 states (excluding tonight's NY race), he hasn't really made up much ground. Those were small states with much smaller numbers of ballots cast. Put it this way: Hillary received as many votes in NY's race as were cast in total in the last 7 states (Wyoming, Wisconsin, Alaska, Washington, Hawaii, Utah, and Idaho) for both Hillary and Bernie.
3. Demographics, Part I: There aren't exit polls for all states, but what we do know about Bernie Sanders' wins is that he does better in states where white people make up 90%+ of the participants, and typically only with the very youngest of voters (this also happens to be true at the county level in states where he loses). Here's the problem with that strategy: The Democratic Party is a coalition of various groups, and whites are just one faction in the Party while the youth vote is highly unreliable and small. A look at NY's exit polls illustrates this problem. Even though Sanders won with White males and the 18-29 age group, he lost the primary by a wide margin (~17 percentage points), White males and 18-29 represented just 25% and 17% (respectively) of voters in the NY Democratic primary.
4. Demographics, Part II: Sanders previously said that they were crushed in the South but would do better in the North, and that's now obviously untrue. He lost in Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and now New York. His supporters and his campaign have said that he does well in blue states, but those states (MA, OH, IL, NY) are blue states, with MA and NY diehard blue. Essentially, his campaign is surviving on disaffected, young White males, and that won't carry him all the way to the nomination. Besides, if your campaign heavily relies on disaffected, young White males, do you realize how that makes everyone else feel about your campaign?
5. Two-Way Street: I read and hear Bernie supporters saying that they won't support Hillary if she wins the nomination. Well, that sentiment is a two-way street. In the NY exit polling, more people (19% to 14%) said that they wouldn't vote for Bernie if he were the nominee, compared to Hillary. If this isn't merely sour grapes, these particular Bernie supporters are not just infantile, but also illogical. Demanding that Hillary's supporters (voters and super delegates) throw in the towel and get behind Bernie, in spite of her huge lead in delegates and the popular vote, is antithetical to Democracy. One more unicorn in Bernlandia.

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ADD: Counting superdelegates, Clinton merely needs to win 27.5% of the remaining pledge and super delegates, in order to clinch the nomination. That's how easy it is for her, now that she crushed it in NY.

On April 26 there will be 5 states holding primaries with 384 total delegates up for grabs. She leads in all these states and it would not be surprising if she sweeps. There is one particular scenario where she could definitely reach the nomination before the end of April. By winning 72.4% of the pledge delegates on April 26, and with the collective 175 remaining uncommitted super delegates joining ranks, she would reach 2,383 delegates.

Again, it's a foregone conclusion that she'll get the nomination, but it would be a spectacular statement if she grabbed it before the end of April.