Bernie Sanders’s quixotic tilt at the White House needed an upset in the Nevada Caucuses tonight. But Hillary Clinton won. Now the Former First Lady, after a wobbly few weeks, is very much back in what Americans call the catbird seat.
Sanders’s populist success has been staggering, but he has never quite threatened to destroy the Democratic elite in the way that Donald Trump is trampling all over the moribund Republican establishment. It’s been well-documented that he is struggling to win over enough Black and Hispanic Democrats, who tend to be more loyal towards the party machine than their white contemporaries. The entrance and exit polls from Nevada suggested that Bernie, after a late surge, had earned a majority of Hispanic votes, but it remains to be seen if that was true. There can be no doubt, however, that the Sanders campaign is making inroads into Hillary’s popularity with minority voters. That must disturb the Clinton campaign operation.
The real trouble for Sanders’s campaign is that today’s result deals a near devastating blow to his momentum, following his trouncing of Clinton in New Hampshire earlier this month. Hillary Clinton looks all but certain to win big next Saturday in South Carolina — a state with a large black vote. Then she looks supremely poised ahead of ‘Super Tuesday’, on March 1. Hillary is currently polling ahead of Sanders in 10 of the 12 states voting for their Democratic nominee that day. Never understimate Mrs Clinton’s ability to make people dislike her. For now, though, it’s hard to see how she loses.
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