Southbound, Clinton aims to build delegate edge over Sanders

COLUMBIA, S.C. –  The election calendar may have Democrats voting next in South Carolina, but Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are eyeing bigger prizes in March, a month that will determine whether the Vermont senator can keep pace in the White House race.
Clinton shook off some of the anxieties shadowing her campaign with a solid victory in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.
The results offered a glimpse of her strength with black voters. They are a crucial group in South Carolina, which holds its primary this coming Saturday, and in other Southern states with contests on March 1, Super Tuesday.
Sanders has yet to prove he can consistently expand his base of support beyond white liberals and young voters. His campaign cited progress with Latinos in Nevada, but his advisers are clear-eyed about the challenges on Super Tuesday.
They are mapping out plans to stay close to Clinton in the delegate count until the race turns to friendlier territory later in March.
"Because we can do the long game, once we get past March 1, the calendar changes dramatically," said Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager. "It's frontloaded for her, but we have the ability to stay in the long game."
More than half the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination will be determined in the 28 states that hold primaries and caucuses in March.
Clinton and Sanders should have enough money to stay in the race for weeks afterward, but the delegate tally at the end of the month could make the results inevitable.
For Sanders, strong showings in March are more important because of Clinton's lead with superdelegates -- the party leaders who can support any candidates regardless of how their states vote.
Clinton has captured the support of 451 superdelegates compared with Sanders' 19.
Underpinning Clinton's strategy are the painful lessons of her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama.
Clinton's campaign failed to account for the Democratic Party's system of allocating delegates proportionally in voting contests, then watched superdelegates, who can shift their allegiances, move toward Obama as the campaign stretched late into the spring.
Under the proportional system, avoiding overwhelming losses that can dramatically shift the delegate totals is almost as important as outright victories.
"Other than Vermont, I don't see a single state where Hillary Clinton is going to lose in a blowout. I see a lot of states where Hillary Clinton will probably win by a lot and that equals real delegate yield," said David Plouffe, the architect of Obama's 2008 campaign and a Clinton supporter.
"I know that's not sexy, but I think that's how the Clinton campaign has structured their campaign this time after some of the lessons from eight years ago."
Few observers had foreseen Sanders as a serious threat to Clinton. But he has energized young people, working-class voters and liberals with his impassioned calls for breaking up big Wall Street banks and making tuition at public colleges and universities free.
"I think the more people know our record, the better we do," Sanders said Sunday on CBS' "Face The Nation."
Sanders' prolific online fundraising has given him staying power and he has pledged to take his campaign into the Democratic convention in July.
While Sanders outraised Clinton in January, a new fundraising report showed he went on a spending spree at the start of the year and ended last month with about $15 million in available cash -- less than half of Clinton's cash on hand.
That's enough to stay competitive and Sanders' team is eying delegates in March 1 states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state.
He also hopes to flex his muscles in two other states with contests that day, Colorado and Virginia, and help him make the case that he is more electable than Clinton.
Sanders' campaign has cited entrance polls of Nevada caucus-goers showing him doing better than Clinton among Latino voters.
But the high margin of error in the polls makes it impossible to say with confidence whether either candidate held a lead among the group.
While Sanders was campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, he planned to be in Massachusetts for a college rally and campaign in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday.
Clinton also was spending time in Super Tuesday states. She flew from Nevada on Saturday to Texas, a huge delegate prize, for a late-night rally in Houston. She planned to raise money in California on the week and then campaign in South Carolina.
Beyond Super Tuesday, Clinton and Sanders are looking ahead to the March 15 contests in Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Big wins in those states for either candidate would put the nomination within sight.
Clinton's support among black voters could pay dividends because of the way Democrats award high-performing congressional districts with a greater share of delegates.
Many of the most delegate-rich states have large minority populations, including Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois and Florida, giving Clinton an inside track to accumulate delegates in March.

After South Carolina, can anybody take on Trump?

Donald Trump on Sunday expressed measured optimism about winning the nomination, compared to his bravado after his overnight South Carolina victory, saying he could “always be stopped.”
The front-running Trump won 33 percent of the vote in the Republican South Carolina primary, roughly 11 percent ahead of challengers Sens. Marco Rubio, of Florida, and Ted Cruz, of Texas.
The win is Trump’s second in the first three, early-state contests and now focuses the debate on whether any the four other remaining candidates can stop him, in part by taking the support for Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after a disappointing fourth-place finish on Saturday in South Carolina.
“I guess you can always be stopped,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday.” “I have very good competition. … They are very talented people.”
In his South Carolina victory speech, Trump said, “Let’s put this thing away.”
To be sure, Trump appears to be in a good position. Every Republican presidential candidate who has won New Hampshire and South Carolina has taken the party nomination. And he appears to have strong support in the Deep South as the primary season swings into the region next month.
Trump notably held a rally this summer in Mobile, Ala. that attracted an estimated 30,000 people.
Rubio and Cruz remain confident they can eventually get more votes as the GOP field continues to narrow, then overtake Trump.
The eventual winner will face either Democrat Bernie Sanders or front-runner Hillary Clinton, who on Saturday night won her party’s Nevada caucus over Sanders 53-to-47 percent.
She defeated Sanders in Iowa, but lost to him in New Hampshire.
Rubio told “Fox News Sunday” that he has a “real sense of optimism” after South Carolina. However, Rubio said he is not trying to get other candidates, specifically Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished fifth in South Carolina, to drop out, which could give Rubio even more of the so-called establishment vote now that Bush is out.
“The sooner we coalesce, the better we can do as a party,” he said. “It’s going to happen one way or another.”
Cruz told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump is a “formidable candidate” but polls show a majority of voters don’t think he can beat Clinton.
“You cannot come from him at the left,” Cruz said of his primary strategy. “You have to have a true conservative” to win.
Clinton’s Nevada win came just a week-and-a-half after she lost to Sanders by double-digits in New Hampshire.
"To everyone who turned out in every corner of Nevada with determination and heart: This is your win. Thank you," Clinton tweeted after the race was called.

The media's firewall against Donald Trump: The voters must be dummies or racists

Just when it seemed the media were starting to accept Donald Trump’s front-runner status after South Carolina, we had a newspaper throwing a temper tantrum.
New York’s Daily News, ticked off at the outcome, blamed the voters with this front-page screamer: “CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.”
In other words, TABLOID TO VOTERS: YOU’RE ALL LOSERS.
And the lead of the story was just as insulting: “The piggish voters of South Carolina gobbled up the slop that Donald Trump served up Saturday — handing the bloodthirsty billionaire his second straight Republican presidential primary win.”
I know the News, which is becoming a sad parody, despises Trump, having depicted him as a clown and, during his dustup with the Pope, the “ANTICHRIST.”
But that doesn’t seem much different than the Huffington Post reacting to Donald Trump’s first primary victory with a red-letter headline: “NH GOES RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC.”
And it illustrates how, when it comes to Trump, some in the media are moving from denial to anger.
I wonder if a New York Times piece on the eve of the South Carolina primary  is a more polite and sophisticated way of getting at the same point—that the voters are to blame for making a lousy decision.
The Times has on-the-record quotes to back up its story line, but the underlying assumption is that Trump is just bad news:
“Republicans in South Carolina have in recent years raced ahead of the national party in presenting an inclusive face to voters.”
But in the face of this admirable progress comes a likely Trump victory: “For party leaders and mainstream voters here, it may come as a kind of deflating climax…
“His results in the two early-voting states so far have alarmed more traditional Republicans, who fear that a Trump nomination would solidify for nonwhite voters an image of Republicans as an angry and intolerant party…
“The fear among Republican leaders here is that a smashing victory for Mr. Trump would say more about the party, and about the state, potentially undermining South Carolina’s image as a more welcoming place that is no longer defined by figures like Strom Thurmond.”
Got it? The Palmetto State is now a “welcoming place,” but for Trump to win the primary would make South Carolina look like it was back in Thurmond’s segregationist era.
As Trump has continued to gain strength, he’s attracting a different kind of bad press, which tries to blame others—the culture, the media, the Republican Party—for what these critics see as the awful phenomenon that is The Donald.
Slate, in the process of slamming MSNBC’s town hall with Trump, complains that “the media’s coverage of Trump has been soft, insufficient, and without substance” because it has failed to deal with “months of bigoted comments and almost pathological dishonesty.”
“It’s that the media’s relationship with Trump should worry Hillary Clinton, assuming each of them vanquishes their primary opponents. I would have said six months ago, perhaps naïvely, that a blatantly bigoted candidate would face such a sustained media firestorm (especially in liberal precincts) that he would be incapable of getting elected. That’s not yet the case. Indeed, there are no signs that the media’s sick, interminable honeymoon with Trump will come to an end anytime soon.”
Think about that. Trump is a bigoted and pathological liar, so any coverage that doesn’t portray him that way, or confront him with his many sins, is embarrassingly anemic.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry, a fierce Trump critic, says in Politico that Trump is defining decorum down:
“We’ve grown used to how Trump has treated Jeb Bush in the debates, but that doesn’t make it any less appalling a breach of political norms or basic decency.
The faces he makes while Bush talks, the constant interrupting, the petty put-downs — all of this would have been thought unworthy of the lowest political guttersnipe but have become an accepted part of the landscape thanks to Donald J. Trump…
“The key to Trump’s strength, which buttresses all his outrageousness, is that his supporters want someone to blow up the system. So there's almost nothing he can say or do that will discredit him in their eyes, and the least destructive scenario for his defeat — Trump blows himself up — will take some doing on his part.
“It’s all very entertaining — but so are demolition derbies.”
Now there’s an eye-catching metaphor.
National Review’s David French says both Trump and Bernie Sanders have risen from “the wreckage of a broken culture”:
“The conservative culture we do have is still a celebrity culture, and Donald Trump has taken it by storm.
“The secret of his continued dominance is that he does anger bigger and better than anyone else, and his fans are willing to forgive or even cheer any transgression against conservative principle or simple good taste as a result. All manner of cruelty and lies can be justified by fury at the Left, by rage at the ‘GOPe,’ or by the cry of ‘the other side does it.’
“Conservative leaders who were used to being the angriest and least politically correct people in the room now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of saying ‘no’ — of saying that some things shouldn’t be said and some ideas are genuinely offensive.”
Back to the left, Salon paints Trump as a Frankenstein created by a pathetic GOP:
“What makes Trump unique isn’t his shameless sophistry or his crass rhetoric; he simply does what most politicians – especially on the right – have always done, only better and without limits. He knows his supporters – a majority of whom are old and white – don’t care about policies (many of them have been voting against their own interests for years anyway), and so he goes straight to their sense of identity. Of course he can’t make Mexico pay for a wall, but promising to do so assuages their fears of a country in which white people will, eventually, be a minority. If they cared about their jobs, that rage would be directed at the corporations that shipped them overseas, not the brown people coming here to park cars and pick fruit…
“The GOP now consists mostly of old and angry white people who are rejecting a world they don’t like or understand. The nativism and hysteria animating Trump’s campaign has been at the center of Republican politics for a long time – Trump is simply capitalizing on it.”
Old angry white guys, blatant bigotry, confederacy of dunces. Not much attempt here to discern why Trump has won the first two primary states—and giving him more ammunition that the press treats him unfairly.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Donald Trump muses about Marco Rubio's eligibility to run for president

Marco Rubio has joined Ted Cruz in Donald Trump’s crosshairs.
Fresh off his Saturday win in the South Carolina Republican primary, Trump said Sunday he didn’t know whether Rubio, a Florida senator who finished second, was eligible to run for president and that “the lawyers have to determine that.”
“I don’t know,” Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “I really – I’ve never looked at it, George. I honestly have never looked at it. As somebody said, he’s not. And I retweeted it. I have 14 million people between Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and I retweet things, and we start dialogue and it’s very interesting.”
Rubio brushed aside Trump’s assertions later on “This Week.”
“This is a pattern,” Rubio said. “This is a game he plays. He says something that’s edgy and outrageous and then the media flocks and covers that. And then no one else can get any coverage on anything else.
“And that worked where there were 15 people running for president. It’s not going to work anymore. I’m going to spend zero time on his interpretation of the Constitution with regards to eligibility.”
Trump was questioned on the issue after he retweeted a supporter Saturday who made the allegation and linked to a video from the Powdered Wig Society, a conservative news and commentary website. That video features an unidentified woman claiming someone can only be a “natural-born citizen” if the person’s father was a U.S. citizen.
The Constitution states only a “natural-born citizen” can be president, though it does not explicitly define that phrase.
Rubio, whose parents came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, was born in Florida in 1971. His parents were not U.S. citizens at the time.
Trump’s musings about Rubio’s eligibility is comparable to how his similar feud began with Cruz, a Texas senator, though that argument has since intensified.
Trump has argued that Cruz, who finished third in South Carolina, may not be a “natural-born citizen” because he was born in Canada, even though his mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of Cruz’s birth.
Numerous legal scholars have said both Cruz and Rubio are considered “natural-born citizens,” though Trump has said other experts disagree.
“I mean, let people make their own determination,” Trump said Sunday.
Similar questions of eligibility dogged previous Republican contenders such as John McCain in 2008, George Romney in 1968 and Barry Goldwater in 1964. McCain was born in Panama, Romney was born in Mexico and Goldwater was born in Arizona before it became an official U.S. state.

Rubio Cartoon

America, we could be looking at a Trump, Clinton contest

For the first time in months, it wasn’t just a big night for political outsiders.
After a virtual tie in Iowa and a blowout in New Hampshire, Hilary Clinton needed to show that she could turn out voters, that her message was resonating and that there was an end – or at least a pause – in Bernie Sanders’s momentum.
In Saturday’s Nevada caucus she certainly showed that.
With polls showing a tightening race in the past few days after she led by over 25 points just six weeks ago, it was possible that Sanders could’ve pulled this out. But the Clinton “firewall” of African-American voters was out in full force as they voted for her three-to-one -- an excellent sign as she heads to South Carolina where over 50 percent of the electorate is black and she is heavily favored to win.
No one has doubted the strength of Sanders’s message focusing on the rigged economy, reining in Wall Street, offering universal health care and tuition free college with liberal voters. Saturday in Nevada the Vermont senator still won with those who identified themselves as liberal and voters under 45 who went for Sanders three- to-one. He also far surpassed expectations with Latinos, showing that his message can resonate with minority voters.
But Clinton won handedly with moderates, which adds to the argument that she’s more electable come November. And she won, critically, with women – a voting bloc that she has been rapidly losing over the last few months. This is especially significant after the comments by Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem just two weeks ago that exposed a large gulf in the way that younger women look at feminism – and Clinton herself – as compared to women of Clinton’s generation.
Furthermore, Clinton showed that she has figured out a winning formula for how to be associated with Obama successfully: she won over 75 percent of voters who want to continue his policies. This also certainly helps her to keep the black vote as we go through the primaries.
Sanders isn’t stopping anytime soon, but Saturday really couldn't have gone better for Clinton.
And the same could be said for Donald Trump who won the South Carolina primary decisively.
Hot off a feud with the pope and a few polls showing his lead under 10 points in South Carolina and even narrowing nationally, there was talk that Trump would win, but not by as much as had been projected.
But the South Carolina voters had something else in mind.
Trump won with retirees, military personnel and veterans and Evangelicals amongst other groups.
We must consider how astounding it is that Ted Cruz couldn’t win in a state like South Carolina with such a large born-again Christian voter base. And that of the entire field of GOP candidates – including Cruz and Carson, two devout Christians – that Jerry Falwell, Jr. endorsed Trump.
Or that Trump could go after President George W. Bush in a state where Bush has over 80 percent favorability and who campaigned for his brother on President’s Day and not be hurt whatsoever.
Saturday night also brought the news that Jeb Bush, once the frontrunner, has dropped out of the race. The question now is if the establishment will finally accept that Trump is on the path to become the Republican nominee. The rest of the primary states are much more favorable to Trump than New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he won handedly.
We could very well be seeing a Trump/Clinton general election match-up.
Now won’t that be fun?

Bush suspends campaign, bows out of 2016 race

Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush suspended his once front-running campaign for the White House on Saturday, following a poor showing in the South Carolina primary. 
“I’m proud of the campaign that we have run to unify our country,” Bush said. “But the people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision. So tonight I am suspending my campaign.”
Bush was mired in single digits in South Carolina returns and had failed to place in the top three in any of the early contests. Bush, the former Florida governor, entered the 2016 presidential race as an early favorite, but steadily fell in the polls, despite having had a couple strong debate performances in recent weeks.
“The presidency is bigger than any one person,” Bush said during an emotional speech. “It is certainly bigger than any candidate.”
He added that he firmly believed "the American people must entrust this office to someone who understands that whoever holds it is a servant, not the master."
But Bush’s campaign seemed to struggle out of the gate. He first promised to run as his “own man” and distanced himself from his family but later relied on the Bush family name on the campaign trail.
The son of George H. W. Bush and brother of George W. Bush entered the race to huge expectations in June, and quickly fueled them with fundraising. Working with a super PAC that has supported his candidacy, Bush and allies raised more than $150 million by the end of 2015 -- far more than any of his GOP rivals.
However, Bush's presence in the race and fundraising potential wasn't enough to dissuade more than a dozen other Republicans from entering the race, including fellow Floridian, Sen. Marco Rubio.
Fundraising reports filed Saturday night show how dire Bush's financial situation had become.
His big-money super PAC raised just $379,000 in January, and most of that was from a single donor who'd also given the same amount to rival Marco Rubio. The group, Right to Rise, had blown through more than $85 million over the past nine months, largely on TV ads, bashing other candidates, most notably Rubio.
Meanwhile, Bush's official campaign -- which provided basic funding for his travel and political staff -- had less than $3 million in available cash as the month began. He had only been able to raise $1.6 million in January, despite a once-sprawling donor network.
Bush's failure to ignite was not simply a factor of the size of the GOP field. Bush, like others, was caught off-guard by the durable popularity of political outsiders -- particularly Trump.
The final stage of Bush's campaign became an all-out bout with the outspoken real estate mogul -- the two frequently referring to each other as a "loser." Bush took shots at Trump's lack of experience while Trump attacked Bush's family legacy, particularly the unpopular Iraq war waged by his brother George W. Bush.
Bush, meanwhile, offered himself as an experienced public executive and potential world statesman informed in part by his father's and brother's wartime presidencies. But it wasn't a case strong enough to translate into votes.
"I just don't see a third Bush presidency," Julie Michau of Beaufort, South Carolina, said Wednesday after attending a Bush event.
There were other problems as well. The policy-oriented Bush was overshadowed in early debates by Trump and Rubio, which dramatically slowed his early autumn fundraising.
Bush went on to finish sixth in the Iowa caucuses, but barely squeezed ahead of Rubio in New Hampshire for a fourth place finish. South Carolina was viewed as a last early voting state for Bush to make a mark.
While the South Carolina primary claimed Bush, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who returns indicate will finish either last or second-to-last, has vowed to stay in the race.
In a lengthy speech, Carson told his supporters that “people are being easily manipulated and told what they are supposed to think and who they are supposed to follow.” He added that he “truly believes as time goes on more and more people will begin to get serious.”

Trump wins South Carolina GOP primary

Donald Trump swept to victory in the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday, putting him in a commanding position as the race shifts to a slew of delegate-rich contests.
Jeb Bush, though, abruptly suspended his campaign after a distant finish, leaving unclear to whom his supporters will gravitate.
But Trump, at his victory rally, seemed to dismiss the notion that other candidates would benefit from Bush's exit.
"[The pundits] don't understand that as people drop out, I'm going to get a lot of those votes," Trump said.
He said the primary race lately has been "mean" and "vicious" but: "When you win, it's beautiful."
He closed by saying, "Let’s put this thing away, and let’s make America great again."
Trump's victory is not by the big double-digit margin that pre-election polls had suggested. Still, this makes back-to-back victories for Trump, who more than doubled the vote of his closest competitor in New Hampshire last week.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio remain locked in a battle for second place.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Rubio is narrowly leading Cruz with just over 22 percent. Trump leads with 33 percent.
Both candidates were staying confident.
"After tonight, this has become a three-person race, and we will win the nomination,” Rubio told supporters.
Rubio placed third in Iowa, but stumbled in New Hampshire following a rough debate performance. He vowed to bounce back, and entered the South Carolina contest enjoying support from the state's popular governor, Nikki Haley, and other state leaders.
Senior Cruz aides maintained the Texas senator remains “well-positioned” going into looming Southern state primaries, since he won Iowa and placed third in New Hampshire.
Lagging far behind Saturday were the three other candidates – Ohio Gov. John Kasich, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Bush, all of whom appear to be stuck in single digits.
While Bush suspended his campaign, Carson vowed to stay in, as did Kasich.
The GOP race heads next to Nevada and after that to Super Tuesday, representing a delegate gold mine. Even South Carolina, with 50 delegates, is the most valuable GOP primary to date. As the winner, Trump would get the lion's share.
South Carolina, historically, also is a prized contest for Republican candidates as it has a knack for picking the eventual nominee – the primary winner has gone on to claim the nomination in every race since 1980, except for 2012 when Newt Gingrich won.
The state has a reputation as well for bringing out bare-knuckle campaign tactics, and this year was no exception. Charges of dirty politics flew on all sides in the lead-up to Saturday’s primary, with robo-calls and misleading websites surfacing about the candidates.
The race tightened in the final days, but not enough to shake Trump's long-time advantage there.
Trump had enjoyed a 13-point lead in the latest average of pre-election polls by Real Clear Politics. Fox News exit polls indicate significant numbers of late-deciding voters ended up supporting Cruz and Rubio, causing both candidates to perform more strongly than pre-election polling suggested.
Trump, according to exit polls, was still the overwhelming favorite among voters who said they’re angry with the federal government. Cruz, though, had the edge among voters who said their top issue is terrorism.
But of the three other candidates, only Kasich has made it onto the leaderboard in the three opening contests. With Bush out, he's the last governor standing in the race.
Bush, the former Florida governor, entered the 2016 presidential race as an early favorite, but fell in the polls steadily, despite having had a couple strong debate performances in recent weeks.
“The presidency is bigger than any one person. It is certainly bigger than any candidate,” he said in suspending his campaign.
SOUTH CAROLINA GOP PRIMARY RESULTS
Kasich, who placed second in New Hampshire, had low expectations in South Carolina. He is looking toward more moderate states that vote later in March.
Trump's victory, meanwhile, could foreshadow a solid performance in the collection of Southern states that vote on March 1. Victories in those Super Tuesday contests could put the billionaire in a commanding position in the delegate count, which determines the nomination.
Trump won in South Carolina after the Democrats held caucuses earlier in the day in Nevada, where Hillary Clinton was projected the winner.