Politico
By Annie Karnie
March 16, 2016
The
2016 Democratic primary effectively ended Tuesday night, with Hillary
Clinton as the all-but-certain winner but Bernie Sanders barely
acknowledging it.
For
Clinton, a narrow win in Illinois and double-digit victories across the
battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio provided
deliverance from a humbling loss in Michigan a
week earlier and finally gave her the space to begin her pivot to
Donald Trump and the general election. That left the Vermont senator to
deliver his standard 60-minute stemwinder in Phoenix without mentioning
a single defeat.
After
noting that she now has a 300-delegate lead – which will make it
essentially impossible for Sanders to catch up given the rules of the
Democratic process -- Clinton turned her attention
to the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
“Our commander-in-chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it,” she told her energetic supporters.
“When
we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million
immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States,”
Clinton said, discussing Trump’s most outrageous
policies, “when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it
makes him wrong.”
With
Trump sweeping Florida and knocking Marco Rubio out of the race,
Clinton also highlighted the heightened stakes for Democrats, noting
that “tonight, it’s clearer than ever that this
may be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes.”
That
doesn’t mean Sanders -- fueled by a money machine that never stalls --
will fade into the ether any time soon. The calendar now turns to a
string of overwhelmingly white, caucus states
like Idaho, Utah, Washington, and Alaska, where he is favored to
collect the small piles of delegates available -- 244 delegates in
total, counting Hawaii on March 26.
“It’s
amazing, he’s a cash machine,” marveled a Clinton insider. “If he
loses, he says, ‘big bad Hillary is winning.’ Boom, $5 million. If he
wins, it’s like, ‘keep the revolution going!’
Boom, $5 million. We got 1.5 million more votes. But either way, he
gets $5 million.”
Clinton
on Tuesday night crushed Sanders in Florida -- where there are more
eligible voters in South Florida than in all four early nominating
states combined -- with a 31-point victory.
And she won North Carolina by a hefty 16-point margin, despite a $1
million Sanders ad blitz over the past week that tripled her spending
there.
Clinton allies were quick to declare the race over.
"Hillary
Clinton's wins tonight effectively ended the Democratic nomination for
president,” said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Correct the Record.
“It is all but mathematically impossible
for Bernie Sanders to overtake her lead. Her message is resonating and
hers is the real revolution--a revolution that will break down barriers
and that will get things done for the American people."
But
if Florida was a bonanza that widened the delegate gap between them,
Ohio was the wild card win that allowed Clinton to shift her gaze
forward -- her 13-point victory represented a staggering
blow to Sanders, who was not able to translate his economic message and
opposition to foreign trade deals into success in Ohio and Illinois. In
the other industrial Midwestern states to vote Tuesday, Clinton held a
slight lead in Missouri with 99 percent of
the vote in.
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