MAY 11, 2016
Photo: AP
One of my favorite movie quotes is from the 1964 film “Becket” in which Henry II (Peter O’Toole), completely exasperated at the continued presence of Thomas Becket (Richard Burton), asks “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
For Hillary Clinton, “this meddlesome priest” is Bernie Sanders, who won Tuesday night’s West Virginia primary and refuses to go away, as much as she wants to turn to the general election fight against Donald Trump.
In a state where Clinton thumped Barack Obama in her end-of-primaries winning streak in 2008, she was on the receiving end of a thumping at the hand of Sanders, who took 51% of the vote to Clinton’s 36%. Given the makeup of the next few primaries, Sanders will likely win them all, but given the proportional makeup of the Democratic primary system, he’ll have to win by an enormous amount to garner enough delegates to chip in to Clinton’s almost-insurmountable lead.
Clinton’s undoing in West Virginia was likely due to her statement in a March town hall referring to her support of cleaner energy that…
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Oooh, not good in coal country. Though she quickly added that we’ve got to take care of the miners, the damage was done. The West Virginia loss does little to change Clinton’s formidable lead in delegates, but, as was the case with Obama in 2008, it’s a little embarrassing to end your march to the nomination with a string of losses, which is likely to continue for Clinton until the California primary on June 7.
There was also a Democratic primary of sorts in Nebraska on Tuesday, which was more of a beauty contest since no delegates were at stake. Clinton won 59% of that vote with Sanders nabbing 40%. But in the Nebraska caucuses in March, a contest that determines delegate allotment, Sanders garnered 15 delegates, with Clinton taking 10.
On the Republican side there was no contest, with Trump handily taking both West Virginia and Nebraska. As recently as a few weeks ago, it was thought that Nebraska was solidly Cruz Country. Though Cruz intimated on Tuesday that, if he actually won Nebraska, he’d consider un-suspending his campaign, the voters have apparently moved on as they voted overwhelmingly for the likely GOP nominee.
For all of our numbers fans, here’s the latest delegate count, according to NBC News:
THE DELEGATE COUNT
REPUBLICANS (1,237 needed to win)
Donald Trump 1,137
The Ghost of Ted Cruz 563
The Ghost of Marco Rubio 167
The Ghost of John Kasich 154
DEMOCRATS (2,383 needed to win)
Hillary Clinton 2,236
Bernie Sanders 1,475
Next Tuesday brings the Kentucky primary. This one is going to be interesting. The Clinton campaign, which had said that they were spending no more money on advertising for the primaries, suddenly decided on Tuesday to put money into ads in Kentucky. Either they’re concerned that Sanders could notch another big win or they want to see if they can finish off the Sanders campaign there. In either case…DRAMA! Be there or be square!
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