Trump: “I tell you, with the evangelicals, they get it. They get me. They understand me. I’ll be the best thing that ever happened to them. I mean that. 100%.”
The resurrection had its run. Times change.
This on the other hand is highly accurate (emphasis added) …
He became hostile about two weeks ago and it didn’t work. See, hostility works for some people, it doesn’t work for everybody. Okay? No, but he became very hostile. You know what, it doesn’t work for him. He was better. He would have been better off had he kept the original pitter patter going, but this didn’t work
There’s still a bunch of Wayne County (Detroit) still to report. But Clinton’s margin is not very big there. If her margins stays where it is right now I suspect she loses. Really depends where in the county these votes are from. And I don’t know the answer to that. Meanwhile, Sanders’ margin is bizarrely stable at this point. It’s been almost identical from 1% reporting to 40%. Right around Sanders 51% to Clinton 47% almost the whole time.
Late Update – 10:12 PM: The first big chunk of votes in Wayne County came in a few minutes ago and it tightened the race a lot in Clinton’s favor. Sanders’ lead is now down to about a point and a half. We now have around half the votes in from Wayne and Clinton has a margin there of about 20 points. If that percentage holds that could put her over the top. But there are other parts of the state still to come in where Sanders has sizable margins. This is going to be very close.
10:15 PM: Sanders is pushing his margin up again.
10:31 PM: Clinton’s going to get a big chunk of votes out of Detroit at some point tonight. But Sanders is building up a pretty solid margin, maybe too big a margin for her to overcome even with a lot of votes in Detroit.
10:47 PM: There are a lot of Clinton votes almost certainly still to report in Wayne County. But Bernie Sanders has crept back to almost the 5 point margin he had earlier. That’s a big margin to overcome, even with a very lopsided turnout in the last 15 or 20 percent of the vote. A bit hard for me to see her pulling this out. The only wildcard here is that we don’t know which parts of Wayne County have reporter. So maybe there’s a surprise … a bit more of the vote just came in in Wayne and Clinton’s margin has already gone down a bit. I just don’t see this happening for her. Possible. But requires heroic margins at this point.
I have a hard time remembering another political upset quite as big as Bernie Sanders totally unexpected victory last night over Hillary Clinton. Ironically, the best analogy I can remember is Hillary Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire over Barack Obama in 2008. To bring us back to that moment just over eight years ago: Barack Obama had just scored a not totally unexpected but still stunning victory over Clinton in Iowa. The New Hampshire polls swung heavily in Obama’s direction. It looked very much like Obama was about to all but knock Clinton out of the race. It was a string of days with immense drama and a mounting mood of poignance as Clinton soldiered on in the face of what seemed like the shattering end of her presidential ambitions.
With news out now that the Trump Group has plain clothes security officers circulating through the crowd to identify and remove potential protestors, how close a look you figure 20-something African-Americans get?
West Virginia lawmakers pass ground-breaking law legalizing the sale of raw milk, celebrate by cracking open a big keg of raw milk, promptly get sick.
9:16 PM: I must say these questions are pretty barbed.
9:22 PM: This is more like an interrogation than a debate.
9:23 PM: There’s clearly some level of shift in Sanders’ opinion on the immigration issue, which broadly matches the shift in labor-liberal opinion on this issue. But saying Sanders is somehow a hypocrite about being pro-immigrant for opposing a guest worker program just doesn’t wash.
9:40 PM: In their debate exchange over immigration, Clinton and Sanders are basically bending over backwards to find something to disagree about on immigration.
9:42 PM: This is the issue they were jousting about over the ‘Minutemen’ vigilantes.
9:46 PM: Admittedly tough position that Clinton has wondered into needing to figure out what on earth the Trump Taj MaWall actually is.
9:55 PM: That was a pretty tough question but I think Clinton answered it about as well as she could (the honesty question).
9:59 PM: We’re in the midst of a profound moderator fail here – both insisting on interrupting a good exchange and also not being able to do so.
10:14 PM: Sort of a silly question on establishment/career politicians. But very good answer from Sanders.
10:17 PM: Moderators are just terrible. If you ask a question, don’t arbitrarily call time is up in the middle of a sentence. The point of a debate is to have the candidates debate, to keep them on top, to press them on incomplete answers. If you’re constantly interrupting the candidates when they’re in the midst of answering your question you’re doing it wrong.
10:25 PM: Clinton and Sanders are in a good exchange here where both are enunciating their key agendas very clearly. Hopefully the moderators won’t make them stop.
10:28 PM: Sanders is wrong when he says that Republicans are climate deniers because they’re “afraid to take on the fossil fuel industry.” They’re a lot of things. But if you think that, you fundamentally misjudge contemporary politics. They’re not parroting fossil fuel industry talking points because they’re afraid they won’t get political money. They’re doing that because they’ve completely embraced anti-environmental, anti-science politics and made it a central part of conservative political identity. Climate change isn’t true because the liberals and the scientists say it is true and government action, especially government action that may impose any costs, is always wrong. Money is obviously a big, big part of it. But it buttresses something that is deeply embedded in conservative ideology and would remain there, even if in a weakened form, if there was no money from the fossil fuel industry at all.
10:43 PM: Man, that was a cheap shot question – how is your socialism different from Cuba’s and Nicaragua’s socialism? (And yes, I’m having a flashback to the lefty mags I read in high school.)
10:50 PM: That Cuba/Sanders video and that exchange is something that scares a lot of Democrats. You can talk about red-baiting and swift-boating type politics. And I’m sure there’d be no end of that. But Sanders comes out of what is a very counter-cultural strand of late 20th century American politics. I know because I sort of come out of it too, at least I grew up in it. There’s a lot that is very standard in that world that sounds very alien to a lot of American voters. This is a fact. Agree with it or not, it is a fact. I think many Democrats quite legitimately worry that by going through this history of statements Republicans would be able to disqualify Sanders with a significant number of voters.
10:56 PM: As important as this debate is, here’s a picture of Marco Rubio today talking to a nearly Florida stadium.
I thought both candidates in tonight’s debate did fairly well for themselves, which is to say they were able to convey their key political strengths, touch key points for their supporters, and so forth. In that sense it was probably a wash in electoral terms. Each candidate’s supporters were confirmed in their support. And I did not have the sense that either stood out dramatically from the other in a way that would push late deciding primary voters in one direction or another. The only point I would add to this is that coming off his upset win last night in Michigan, Sanders seemed much more in this election than he did a few days ago. So he seemed much more like an equal sharing the stage with Hillary Clinton. That matters.