- Just face it, Republicans: Donald Trump has taken over your party. It’s his party now. After a big win in New Hampshire, Trump has again put up a double-digit victory in a six-candidate race for the South Carolina primary, forcing Jeb Bush out of the race.
- Jeb (!) isn’t worth much mention on here, because he was never a serious candidate to begin with. But it is important to note that, even in spite of the awful (and mostly true) things that Donald Trump said about George W. Bush in the most recent GOP debate, the state of South Carolina went against the Republican establishment. It’s kind of fitting, in a way. The state that helped propel his father and older brother to the presidency became the final chapter of the Bush family. The GOP has moved on.
- As for the Democrats, I won’t lie that Hillary Clinton’s +4.5% win surprised me a bit. But that’s also to say that Nevada shouldn’t have been anywhere near as close as it was. Bernie Sanders mentioned in his concession speech that it was only five weeks ago that Hillary led the state by 25%. That’s an extreme amount of progress.
- As TYT points out, Sanders did extremely well (as one would imagine) with voters in the 18-29 (82%) and 45 and under (roughly two-thirds of the vote) demographics. He also, contrary to what the media tells us, did well among latino voters. This isn’t totally unlike something I wrote less than a week ago, when I said:
Next they said, yeah, Bernie has a following, but he isn’t electable. A tie in Iowa and a lopsided 60.4%-38.0% finish in New Hampshire later and… now the media says those were white states and he’s going to get crushed in Nevada and South Carolina because, oh no, Sanders hasn’t proven he can attract the necessary minority support. All I’m saying is I’ll believe it when I see it.
- So, yes, it’s promising that minority voters are coming out to support Sanders. And it’s also, to some extent, discouraging that the incredible progress Bernie has made over the last few months has yet to get him over the proverbial hump. With South Carolina all but wrapped up for Hillary Clinton, it puts a premium on him cleaning up on Super Tuesday.
Future Bets 