Media: Hey, We Can Pretty Much Hand Hillary the Nomination Now, Right?
We've had three Democratic contests in their presidential primary, and so far we've been allowed to see the vote totals in one of them. Heck of a party you've got there, my friends. Yet Hillary Clinton's five-point win in the Nevada caucus -- where the vote totals are handled more securely and with more secrecy than classified information on Hillary's server -- was treated as a decisive turning point in a lot of corners of the media this weekend: The Slate headline: After a Much-Needed Nevada Win, Things Are Looking Way Up for Hillary Clinton The Daily Beast: "With South Carolina and Super Tuesday looming ahead, Bernie Sanders' campaign is fast approaching an expiration date." USA Today: Hillary Clinton's victory in Nevada halts the momentum of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who trounced her earlier this month in New Hampshire, and the win may begin a streak as the battle heads to a series of Southern-voting states that favor her. The decisive outcome, as opposed to her narrowest of victories in Iowa, mirrors her successful margin over then-senator Barack Obama in 2008. Saturday's win came as a result of a strong ground operation that's been in place since early last year and reflects her strength with the state's sizable minority populations. Recent polling had showed the two running neck-and-neck. Errol Louis, writing at CNN: Bernie Sanders and his followers have every right to feel energized by his second-place finish in Nevada: Only a few weeks ago, Sanders was more than 20 points behind Clinton, and yet he managed to build momentum, swiftly close the gap and nearly overtake her. But things didn't break his way, for reasons that could prove to be fatal to his presidential hopes: Economically hard-pressed voters in Nevada chose Clinton's experience and electability over the soaring hopes and class-warfare rhetoric of Sanders. Do you get the feeling some folks want to declare the Democratic primary over? Bernie Sanders won 47 percent on Saturday. I haven't seen the figure "47 percent" get this much bad press since Mitt Romney's comments to donors. Think about it, we've had one razor-thin Hillary win (Iowa), one Sanders landslide (New Hampshire), and one reasonably solid Hillary win (Nevada). Take a guess at what the delegate split is . . . (Play "Jeopardy" theme here.) "Mrs. Clinton has 502 delegates to Mr. Sanders's 70; 2,383 are needed to win the nomination." 
Goldie Taylor's piece at the Daily Beast has one good point in it: "More critically, one rationale for the Sanders candidacy dries up under scrutiny. Turnout numbers and the anticipated brief nature of the primary mean he has not and will not drive increased voter participation. The wave never arrived and there is no sign of it on the horizon." One minor defense of Sanders: Obama already drove up Democratic turnout in 2008's primary and in the 2012 general election. The bar's already pretty high. Maybe if Sanders hadn't been beating the drum for the People's Collective Democratic Republic of the United States, Democratic turnout would be even lower this year. Iowa: About 171,000 voters took part in the caucuses in 2016, down from 236,000 in 2008. New Hampshire: 250,974 people voted in the Democratic primary in 2016; 287,557 people voted in 2008. Nevada: About 80,000 voters took part in the caucuses this weekend, 33 percent lower than 2008's level. Ted . . .Ted, What Happened? I'm not going to join the "Ted Cruz doesn't have a shot" bandwagon. But it does seem fair to ask . . . how does a guy who seems so tailor-made for the South Carolina Republican electorate end up with just 22.3 percent of the vote? Yes, he finished two-tenths of one percent away from second place. Yes, it's ridiculous to say that the guy who finished first in Iowa, third in New Hampshire, and third in South Carolina is finished or should drop out. But remember that awesome Death Star of a turnout machine that propelled him to victory in Iowa? Fox News' Carl Cameron with the grim assessment Election Night: Well, again we gotta go back to last year, where several months ago he was the first to go into the Old South states and begin to campaign there aggressively. He was talking about the fact that he had an organization, literally thousands of people out there. He talked about the 12,000 people who were volunteering for him, just in Iowa's caucuses. That type of ground game doesn't appear to have materialized here very much at all." Our Tim Alberta: In a conservative, evangelical-dominated southern state -- much like those his campaign has promised to win on Super Tuesday -- he finished third behind Trump and Rubio. (The tally with 99 percent of precincts reporting: Trump 32.5 percent, Rubio 22.5 percent, Cruz 22.3 percent.) Cruz has labored to avoid being narrowly cast, à la Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, as a Christian candidate with limited appeal to the rest of the party. But while he is undeniably better-funded and better-organized than those candidates, Cruz's numbers thus far have been eerily similar. Look, Ted Cruz thought he had the right niche in this campaign: he's the guy who's not afraid to ruffle feathers or overturn the table, standing up for his principles. The straight shooter with the sharp elbows who's fed up with the way Washington has worked for decades. The outsider who's driven by a love of country, an impatience with business as usual, and anger about how ordinary Americans get the shaft . . . The problem is, Trump is doing all of that, too, and he's either doing it better or he's doing it well enough to eat into potential Cruz voters who prefer theatricality to a finely-honed analytical mind. Sometimes you run across an assertion of conventional wisdom that is either out of date or really ahead of the curve, as Gromer Jeffers Jr. writes in the Dallas Morning News: Rubio has a good argument. Even though he's winless to this point, the calendar favors his candidacy. That's because the March 15 Florida primary is winner-take-all, with 99 delegates at stake. Rubio is the Sunshine State's favorite son. Trump has led the last 17 polls in Florida. Most of those polls -- none more recent than January 21 -- had Cruz ahead of Rubio in the Sunshine State. That doesn't mean Trump is guaranteed to win on March 15; it's easy to imagine Bush supporters' gravitating to Rubio and giving him a bigger share. But if somebody's asserting Rubio is going to win Florida, either they've seen some new poll numbers or they're just assuming that the home-state senator wins. Because You Can't Spell 'Culture' Without C-U-L-T Jonathan V. Last, observing how easily we ignore the worst statements of the candidates we prefer: Nine months ago, if you had asked Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Jerry Falwell Jr., or Ann Coulter whether they would endorse a figure who takes the Code Pink, Michael Moore, MoveOn.org view of Iraq ("Bush lied, people died"), one suspects they all would have recoiled at the prospect. Yet in the hours after Trump insisted that George W. Bush intentionally lied the country into war, not one of the major figures who have endorsed him was willing to contradict his claim. Sarah Palin -- John McCain's running mate -- has been stonily silent on Trump's conspiracy theory. Contacted through his spokesman, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. declined to comment on it. Pressed by The Weekly Standard's Michael Warren, Scott Brown issued a mealy-mouthed non sequitur, saying, "I'm more focused on how we deal with terror challenges of today, not yesterday." And Coulter, who has reached the stage in life where she is capable of falling in love serially with Mitt Romney and then Donald Trump, actually tweeted out a quasi-defense of Trump: "Bush also said Harriet Miers=qualified & amnesty wasn't 'amnesty,' so he did lie." Five days later she changed course somewhat in a column where she allowed that "Trump is right about President Bush not keeping us safe -- though not about his 'Bush lied' argument that makes me want to strangle him." But don't worry, Coulter insisted that Trump didn't actually mean what he said, that he was just a "scamp" just "doing wheelies" and "taunting" the rest of the Republican party. Like so many of the people in thrall to Trumpism, Coulter believes that Trump is fully committed to everything he says. Except for when he's just posturing. It's not that different from John Kerry's insistence that Iran's "Death to America!" chant is not a specific objective or goal but just posturing for "a domestic political audience." We choose to believe they mean the statements we like, and that the statements we don't like are just lies of convenience or rhetorical flourishes. ADDENDA: If you ever thought Jeb Bush's campaign was in denial about some basic realities about running in the Republican Party in 2016 . . . well, here's some supporting evidence: Aides said an internal poll conducted last fall showed discouraging news: roughly two-thirds of voters had issues with Bush's family ties. "Bush stuff was holding him back" said one aide who saw the polling data. "We obviously knew it was an issue, but even still, the gap between it and other issues -- I don't think we thought it would be that big."  | 
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