Before the Democratic presidential race gets to South Carolina, the Nevada caucuses will take place on February 20th. Recently I pointed to an excellent article by Tierney Sneed about the challenges both campaigns will face there.

But there is a bit of a dustup going on about these upcoming caucuses that centers around something the Clinton campaign has been saying. Here is how Josh Bresnahan tweeted what he heard from Robby Mook:

/4 Mook: "There's a sizable Hispanic population in Nevada, but about 80% of Dem caucus voters in that state are white." That helps Sanders

— John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) February 10, 2016

Here is what campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said to Chuck Todd:

And how important is Nevada, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked.

“Nevada is an important state. So is South Carolina, which comes after that.”

And are both must-wins?

There’s going to be a narrowing in both places — we’re clear-eyed about that,” said Fallon. “There’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus in Nevada. But it’s still a state that is 80% white voters. You have a caucus-style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.

“There’s a reason to believe the race will tighten even there,” he said again.

The reason this is causing a stir is that, according to 2008 Nevada exit polls, about 65% of Democratic caucus-goers were white. So I’m not sure where the 80% came from. But technically speaking, the designation “Hispanic” refers to language of country of origin and can represent those who are either White or Black. If that is the distinction the Clinton campaign is making, its probably too cute by half.

But on the bigger picture, color me not surprised that the Clinton campaign is trying to down-play the expectations game in Nevada. No one really knows what’s going to happen there (polling is close to useless) and so the best both candidates might hope for at this point is to out-pace the expectations game.

Another note to keep in mind about Nevada. This is where Clinton’s campaign manager made his name in 2008.

The 36-year-old [Robby] Mook first rose to fame in Clintonland after he oversaw Clinton’s 2008 Nevada caucus campaign, where she won 51 percent of the popular vote…After glowing reviews of his Nevada performance, Mook was entrusted with managing Clinton’s efforts in other important territories: Ohio, Indiana, and Puerto Rico—all of which she went on to win. “Robby was instrumental in her winning them,” one member of the 2008 Clinton campaign’s leadership told me last spring when Mook took the job atop Clinton’s 2016 nationwide campaign…

This time around, Mook has infused the entire Clinton campaign with that organizer’s spirit and stocked it with his old aides, self-proclaimed members of the “Mook Mafia” that formed in Nevada in 2008.

We’ll have to wait and see what the “Mook Mafia” can pull of in Nevada this year.

Back in 2000, there was a debate between Al Gore and Bill Bradley held at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. As you might expect, the topics largely focused on things of particular concern to the black community. It was a very contentious debate, but Gore ultimately landed a knockout punch in the following exchange.

GORE: That’s not true either, not true. That’s not true either. Let me respond to this. You know, we’ve had basically the same length career in the Congress, and over the course of that time, I’m proud that I have a better COPE (ph) voting record measured by the support of working men and women and organized labor than Senator Bradley. I compiled that better record in a state in the South where it was not always that easy compared to New Jersey.

I have — I am the one who has been endorsed by the leading pro- choice group. I have been endorsed by organized labor. I have been endorsed by Senator Ted Kennedy and by virtually the entire Congressional Black Caucus.

Now, do you think that they all have such poor judgment, Senator Bradley?

(APPLAUSE)

BRADLEY: What I think is they don’t know your record as a conservative Democrat.

(BOOING)

(APPLAUSE)

BRADLEY: They — they don’t know that you voted five times over three years for a tax exemption for schools that discriminate on the basis of race. It’s in the record. The Black Caucus stated so.

SHAW: Time.

BRADLEY: It’s there in the record.

GORE: You know what? In my experience, Black Caucus is pretty savvy. They know a lot more than you think they know.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, they’re not — black — Congressional Black Caucus is not out there being led around, you know. They know what the score is. And they also know that their brothers and sisters in New Jersey said you were never for them walking the walk, just talking the talk.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. Al Gore could point to the polls that showed that he was winning the black vote. He had the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus. Was Bill Bradley saying that blacks were stupid or uninformed or just “didn’t know” Al Gore’s record?

Are you calling black people dumb?

Bill Bradley wasn’t calling anyone dumb, but he was suggesting that if black people knew more about Al Gore’s record they’d be less inclined to support him.

Donald Trump uses this kind of thing all the time, although in a slightly different way. He says that people like what he’s saying, that he didn’t make any gaffes, that he won debates, because the polls say he’s winning. If you’re ahead, you can accuse your critics of questioning the intelligence and judgment of the electorate, and any subgroup of the electorate.

It’s elementary politics, and it works until your support dries up and you can no longer argue that the people are with you.

Bill Bradley got roundly booed for suggesting that black people didn’t know Al Gore’s record, and that was the sound bite played from the debate with Howard Dean ‘Aaaarrgh-style’ repetitiveness.

This is history that Sanders should remember, because it’s easy to fall into the same trap. People ask him why blacks are supporting Clinton and the natural response is to say that things will change when people are more knowledgeable about their respective records.

Even if you think that is true, it’s a trap.

The best you can do is to say that you hope to change people’s minds.

My only response to the standoff in Oregon has been that we could safely ignore the militiamen and that the best strategy for dealing with them was to “let them get bored and wander on home to gather their scattered cattle” because we don’t want to create martyrs or put our own law officers at risk, and they “can be identified and arrested later, at our leisure.”

Well, unfortunately, one man was killed. But it could have been much worse, especially if the Feds had shown impatience or listened to their critics who were accusing them of having one standard for dealing with minorities and another for dealing with gun-toting white folks.

Now they’ve arrested all of the major ring leaders and are negotiating the surrender of the last holdouts. They even managed to arrest the patriarch, Cliven Bundy, at the Portland airport last night.

Many people criticized the Feds for not finding a way to arrest Cliven Bundy back in 2014 and suggested that leniency then had only encouraged his sons to pull this stunt in Oregon. I hope people can see now the wisdom of playing the long game here.

I wish that law enforcement would show this kind of restraint and show this same concern for human life in their day-to-day efforts to maintain law and order in our cities. The lesson here is that it works. What tends not to work is to succumb to public pressure and make quick arrests or to go in guns blazing to deal with threats that may be manageable without lethal force if you’re willing to spend the time to see it through.

As we head into the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary, talk has finally heated up about the role of people color in this Democratic presidential primary. As I noted previously, Hillary Clinton has been working for a while now on building her firewall following the two contests in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Some people aren’t buying in. Alana Horowitz Satlin points to her twitter feed to make this assertion.

Hillary Clinton may be counting on support from black and Latino voters to score the Democratic presidential nomination, but not everyone’s on board with that plan.

Lauren McCauley agrees and notes not only the support Sanders has received from Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, but the scathing article by Michelle Alexander titled: Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.

Meanwhile, Charles Blow used his column yesterday to explain why he is getting tired of hearing the following from Sanders supporters who don’t understand why so many African Americans are planning to vote for Clinton.

If only black people knew more, understood better, where the candidates stood — now and over their lifetimes — they would make a better choice, the right choice.

Here is just part of Blow’s response:

Tucked among all this Bernie-splaining by some supporters, it appears to me, is a not-so-subtle, not-so-innocuous savior syndrome and paternalistic patronage that I find so grossly offensive that it boggles the mind that such language should emanate from the mouths — or keyboards — of supposed progressives.

But then I am reminded that the idea that black folks are infantile and must be told what to do and what to think is not confined by ideological barriers. The ideological difference is that one side prefers punishment and the other pity, and neither is a thing in which most black folks delight.

Yes. He just said that some white progressives as well as conservatives tend to infantilize black people - just in different ways. It’s something we should all note and check any inclination to do ourselves.

Blow then goes on to explain how the history of African Americans in this country has affected the lens through which they view the promises of politicians - with a quote from James Baldwin - which he summarizes this way:

History and experience have burned into the black American psyche a sort of functional pragmatism that will be hard to erase. It is a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, and its existence doesn’t depend on others’ understanding or approval.

Personally, I find this discussion and all of these voices to be powerful. American politics will become infused with these topics in the coming years - no matter what. We can all be early adopters by listening and learning now.

Yesterday, on the ninth anniversary of his announcement that he would run for president, Obama returned to Springfield and gave a speech at the Illinois General Assembly. In it, he returned to a theme he talked about in both his 2015 and 2016 State of the Union speech: A Better Politics. This is something the President has been thinking about for a while now and is likely going to be one of the causes he champions post-presidency.

Informed by his background as a community organizer, he has a unique take on the causes and consequences of our political polarization. It starts with what Ta-Nehisi Coates once said that he shares with activists from our past:

Here is where Barack Obama and the civil rights leaders of old are joined — in a shocking, almost certifiable faith in humanity, something that subsequent generations lost. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may have led African Americans out of segregation, and he may have cured incalculable numbers of white racists, but more than all that, he believed that the lion’s share of the population of this country would not support the rights of thugs to pummel people who just wanted to cross a bridge. King believed in white people, and when I was a younger, more callow man, that belief made me suck my teeth. I saw it as weakness and cowardice, a lack of faith in his own. But it was the opposite. King’s belief in white people was the ultimate show of strength: He was willing to give his life on a bet that they were no different from the people who lived next door.

Here is how President Obama talked about that yesterday while reminiscing about his time as a state senator from Illinois:

I learned that most Americans aren’t following the ins and outs of the legislature carefully, but they instinctively know that issues are more complicated than rehearsed sound bites; that they play differently in different parts of the state and in the country. They understand the difference between realism and idealism; the difference between responsibility and recklessness. They had the maturity to know what can and cannot be compromised, and to admit the possibility that the other side just might have a point.

And it convinced me that if we just approached our national politics the same way the American people approach their daily lives — at the workplace, at the Little League game; at church or the synagogue — with common sense, and a commitment to fair play and basic courtesy, that there is no problem that we couldn’t solve together.

Perhaps you have the same reaction that Coates had to talk like that - it makes you suck your teeth. But the truth is that if we really do believe in this thing called democracy, that has to be your starting place. Otherwise, it doesn’t work.

Eventually, the President got into the truth about what a better politics means for governing in a democratic republic. This also makes some people feel like sucking their teeth. He started by outlining his own values as a progressive Democrat. And then said this:

I believe that there are a lot of Republicans who share many of these same values, even though they may disagree with me on the means to achieve them. I think sometimes my Republican colleagues make constructive points about outdated regulations that may need to be changed, or programs that even though well-intended, didn’t always work the way they were supposed to.

And where I’ve got an opportunity to find some common ground, that doesn’t make me a sellout to my own party…

So trying to find common ground doesn’t make me less of a Democrat or less of a progressive. It means I’m trying to get stuff done.

And the same applies to a Republican who, heaven forbid, might agree with me on a particular issue..

Yes, with that, the President weighed in on a topic that is creating a lot of heat in the Democratic presidential primary right now. But let’s be honest, this is something Barack Obama has been talking about since he first came on the national scene in 2004 and has continued to both talk about and practice since then. So if you are tempted to think that he is only saying this in order to tip the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton, you are being extremely short-sighted. As James Kloppenberg wrote in his book titled Reading Obama, this kind of approach is basic to the President’s view of how democracy works.

It has become a cliche to characterize Obama as a pragmatist, by which most commentators mean only that he has a talent for compromise - or an unprincipled politician’s weakness for the path of least resistance. But there is a decisive difference between such vulgar pragmatism, which is merely an instinctive hankering for what is possible in the short term, and philosophical pragmatism, which challenges the claims of absolutists…and instead embraces uncertainty, provisionality, and the continuous testing of hypotheses through experimentation…

Between college and law school, Obama spent three crucial years working as a community organizer in Chicago, and observers unsurprisingly take for granted that there must be a difference between what he learned on the streets of the far south side and what he learned in the seminar rooms of elite universities. To a striking degree, however, the lessons were congruent: Democracy in a pluralist culture means coaxing a common good to emerge from the clash of competing individual interests.

These are things that Barack Obama has been talking about since before he entered politics. If you don’t understand that they are the bedrock on which his values as a progressive Democrat are built, then you are probably tempted to see him as naive or a sellout.

Beginning with his 2016 State of the Union, the President has added some concrete steps we can take politically to create a better politics. They are as follows:

1. “First is to take, or at least reduce, some of the corrosive influence of money in our politics.”

2. “The second step towards a better politics is rethinking the way that we draw our congressional districts.” On this one, the President made an interesting point about how this contributes to polarization.

You wonder why Congress doesn’t work? The House of Representatives there, there may be a handful — less than 10 percent — of districts that are even competitive at this point. So if you’re a Republican, all you’re worried about is what somebody to your right is saying about you, because you know you’re not going to lose a general election. Same is true for a lot of Democrats.

3. “…a third step towards a better politics is making voting easier, not harder; and modernizing it for the way that we live now.” He made an interesting point about how this one loops back to #1 and #2.

Now, the more Americans use their voice and participate, the less captive our politics will be to narrow constituencies. No matter how much undisclosed money is spent, no matter how many negative ads are run, no matter how unrepresentative a district is drawn, if everybody voted, if a far larger number of people voted, that would overcome in many ways some of these other institutional barriers.

This is where we might find President Obama agreeing with Bernie Sanders. But it is also a way of pointing the finger at us - as citizens - rather than at “those people” who rig our system. The reason special interests have so much power is because we have abdicated ours.

In the end, here’s how the President defined a better politics:

We’ve got to build a better politics — one that’s less of a spectacle and more of a battle of ideas; one that’s less of a business and more of a mission; one that understands the success of the American experiment rests on our willingness to engage all our citizens in this work.

If you are interested in watching the whole speech, here it is:

* Greg Sargent identifies the similarities between Trump and Sanders. Trump says, “we’re getting ripped off” and Sanders says, “the system is rigged.” But he also notes the differences between the two.

Trump says our elites are weak, stupid, and corrupt. Sanders says our elites are being corrupted.

* I would also note that Sanders and Cruz share a strategy for victory. Both of them are counting on being able to mobilize disengaged voters. Here’s how Amy Walter explains the Cruz plan:

The Cruz camp also makes the point that evangelicals have been disengaged from the last two elections. Getting them out to vote, they argue, will be the game-changer in 2016.

“The evangelical vote,” Cruz campaign’s Tyler tells me, “is the largest unfished pond of voters - it’s a frickin’ ocean.” Tyler estimates that something like 30 million evangelicals are ready and willing to support someone like Cruz but will remain on the sidelines if the more ‘establishment’ candidate gets the nomination.

And here’s what Sanders said last night in his New Hampshire victory speech:

What began last week in Iowa, what voters here in New Hampshire confirm tonight, is nothing short of the beginning of a political revolution.

It is a political revolution that will bring tens of millions of our people together. It will bring together working people who have given up on the political process.

Steve Benen looks at Iowa and New Hampshire to determine how Sanders is doing so far.

In last week’s Iowa caucuses, turnout was good in the Democratic race, but it dropped when compared to 2008, the last competitive Democratic nominating fight…

In yesterday’s New Hampshire primary, turnout was again strong, and with nearly all of the precincts reporting, it looks like about 239,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary. But again, in the party’s 2008 nominating contest, nearly 288,000 voters turned out, which means we’ve seen another drop.

* Today we not only get to say good-bye to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign. Carly Fiorina is out too. I could say more. But in the interests of propriety, I’ll leave it at that.

* Late yesterday afternoon came some news that was a huge blow to anyone who cares about the environment and climate change.

In a major setback for President Obama’s climate change agenda, the Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the administration’s effort to combat global warming by regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The brief order was not the last word on the case, which is most likely to return to the Supreme Court after an appeals court considers an expedited challenge from 29 states and dozens of corporations and industry groups.

But the Supreme Court’s willingness to issue a stay while the case proceeds was an early hint that the program could face a skeptical reception from the justices.

This was another one of those 5/4 rulings from the Supreme Court. And beyond the message they might be sending with this stay, a ruling against the Obama administration on this could imperil the entire Paris Climate accord that was just agreed to last December. That makes it even more crucial for everyone to keep in mind the fact that our next president will likely make significant appointments to the Supreme Court…the health of our planet just might depend on who they chose.

* Anyone who is surprised that Ta-Nehisi Coates plans to vote for Bernie Sanders never understood the argument he was making about the candidate’s position on reparations. Coates was very aware of the fact that neither Democrat in this race supported his position on that issue. His concern was that Sanders takes “radical” positions on many issues, but embraced a more “establishment” response to the toll white supremacy has taken on African Americans. By the way, Black people have been supporting political candidates who don’t align with their position on racial justice for decades. This is nothing new.

* In an entry titled: The Triumph of the Untested, Stephen Rose tackles the question, “What’s propelling anti-establishment rage?”

* Finally, here’s another brick in Hillary Clinton’s firewall.

Congressional Black Caucus PAC voted to endorse Hillary Clinton, per Rep Butterfield, expects at least a dozen CBC members on ground in SC

— Deirdre Walsh (@deirdrewalshcnn) February 10, 2016

Apparently Chris Christie is pulling the plug on his campaign today. The fact that he inflicted a mortal wound on Marco Rubio in the last Republican debate before bowing out is a gift to the two remaining candidates who will fight it out for the “establishment” lane: Kasich and Bush.

Right now the polling averages at Real Clear Politics show Trump with a huge lead in the next primary state of South Carolina, with Ted Cruz coming in second. So, of course, the headline reads: Bush plans scorched-earth attack on Kasich, Rubio. Unless his second place finish in New Hampshire gives Kasich some monumental momentum in South Carolina, he is not much of a threat - given that he’s been running at about 2% in the polls there. Our friend Ed Kilgore looks even farther ahead into the primaries and concludes that Kasich has nowhere to go.

If you look at the exit polls from New Hampshire, Kasich’s narrow but sufficient (in this state, anyway) path to second place was pretty clear: He won 20 percent or more among self-identified moderates, those earning over $200,000, people who perceive themselves as “getting ahead financially,” voters focused on the economy and jobs, and those who reject banning Muslim immigration and favor a path to legalization for the undocumented. It’s very important to understand that voters like this are not in heavy supply in South Carolina or in the southern states that crowd the calendar on March 1.

Could that leave Jeb Bush as the last man standing in the establishment lane? Or has he already been dismissed? We’ll have to wait and see. The one thing it might mean is that this Republican presidential race really is going to come down to a contest between Trump and Cruz. As Kilgore writes:

All in all, the Kasich-Bush-Rubio fight is beginning to resemble a sideshow that will only produce a wounded and financially bereft survivor who does poorly in the March 1 “Super Tuesday” blitz and could become roadkill by March 16.

It’s interesting that Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly are warring with each other and that Roger Ailes has arranged for HarperCollins to give Kelly a $10 million advance on a book as a way to keep her happy. Frankly, I’m not a Foxologist. I can’t watch the network without feeling ill. And I know that this gives me a bit of a blind spot in my political analysis, but I’m just not willing to pay that kind of price to know everything I ought to know.

What someone else might be better positioned to discuss is how the rise of Trump is flummoxing the network and how they’re going to handle this.

With his decisive win in New Hampshire, Donald Trump dashed the GOP Establishment’s hope that skipping last month’s Fox News debate would sink his campaign. By claiming more than a third of the New Hampshire vote, Trump not only exceeded expectations and more than doubled the vote tally of any of his rivals — but also demonstrated that disregarding Fox News doesn’t spell political ruin for a Republican. The grip that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Co. have held on the GOP for nearly a generation got a little looser Tuesday night.

Inside Fox there is confusion about what role the network should play in this altered media ecosystem going forward. According to three insiders I spoke to, the channel’s hosts and producers are split over how to cover Trump. Historically, in moments like this the strategy would be clear: Punish the person who publicly crosses Fox. But network boss Ailes has tried that, and Trump not only survived the PR assaults, including one last month, but he seems to have emerged stronger than ever. The situation is even more dire because Marco Rubio, a favorite of many high-profile voices at the network, fared badly in the New Hampshire primary, only a few days after political analysts were floating the possibility that he might even beat Trump. Tuesday night, Fox’s pundit class had to accept that his robotic performance during ABC’s debate may have destroyed his candidacy. Charles Krauthammer even compared it to Ed Muskie’s 1972 implosion.

There has been a lot of focus on how Trump and Cruz are giving elected Republican officials a bad case of heartburn, but much less on how their successes are messing up the operation of their Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitzer.

I don’t think right-wing media is set up to deal with an unorthodox candidate who doesn’t consistently hew to the conservative line, let alone one who attacks their talent and boycotts their debates. I also don’t know how they’d promote Cruz without willing and eager surrogates to fill the chairs. I’m sure they’d muddle through, but they’re not effective if they can’t do their thing the way they been trained to do it.

The GOP is definitely in disarray.

The Dems are suffering from their own form of schizophrenia, but their media outlets actually kind of thrive on the debate and excitement. It helps that they’ve never really been an official organ of the party. It reminds me of how countries with official state religions couldn’t weather the pedophilia crises nearly as well as countries where no religion was tightly aligned with the government.

As of right now, with 92% of the vote reporting, Bernie Sanders is projected to have won 13 delegates from New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton is projected to have won nine. There are still two delegates left to be allocated. This is good and bad news for Sanders. It’s good that he won so decisively that he actually netted four convention votes. It’s also good because it demonstrates that he can do as poorly as Clinton (currently 38.3%) in future states and still get 41% of the delegates.

But, by the same logic, this is devastating news for Sanders. Even winning 60% of the vote, he barely scratched the surface of Clinton’s lead, which thanks to superdelegates currently stands at 394-42. The same proportional rules that make it impossible for Clinton to put Sanders away also make it nearly impossible for Sanders to overcome a 350 delegate deficit.

I’ve seen some Sanders supporters suggesting that the superdelegates will flip if they see that Bernie is the choice of the voters. They cite Barack Obama as an example of this. I hate to tell you, but it won’t be so easy this time around. Obama had the backing of Tom Daschle, who had recently been the most powerful Democrat in Washington DC. Obama was supported, early, by senators and governors from the Plains States and Mountain West where the minority populations are low and the Clintons remained unpopular. And Obama won the support of the black community which had been initially skeptical about his chances. Finally, Obama had support from the donor class, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and many philanthropists. If the superdelegates had denied him the nomination, a lot of very powerful people would have been upset, and the Democrats’ most loyal voting base would have been beyond irate. It was never going to happen.

It could definitely happen to Sanders, though. He wasn’t even a Democrat until six minutes ago. He obviously angers the big donors. He has no coalition of support in Congress, nor the support of anyone as powerful as Daschle was in 2007-8. There are no governors supporting him. Even mayors like Boston’s Marty Walsh and New York’s Bill de Blasio, who might be expected to support a progressive candidate, are not in Sanders’ camp. Add to this that a lot of Democrats are skittish about Sanders’ identity, his age, his region, his religious profile, his embrace of “socialism,” and his positions on foreign policy including Iran, and you’re not likely to see a stampede of Democratic insiders rallying to his cause. In fact, they probably see this as an example of why superdelegates were created in the first place. If the voters want to commit political suicide, the party leaders can step in and restore reason.

That’s the idea, anyway, and Sanders should not expect to see more than a handful of defections from Clinton even if he starts reeling off big victory after big victory.

That’s not to say that he couldn’t whittle down the lead a bit, but he’s still effectively blocked from winning this nomination barring Clinton collapsing through scandal, legal problems, or really poor performance on the campaign trail. In the latter scenario, the pressure of losing primary after primary might cause the Clinton Camp to lash out in ways that do them real damage with core constituencies.

But short of one of these unlikely scenarios, she’s still the heavy favorite to win the nomination even if she loses a lot more than she wins.

And, so far, I’ve only been contemplating worst case scenarios for her. But there’s no reason to assume that she’ll lose all of her commanding polling advantage in future states.

I expect Sanders to get a lot of momentum out of Iowa and New Hampshire, and there will be plenty of Clinton-in-disarray stories, but those are some pretty big numbers for Clinton. She has (or had) a pretty big cushion.

It’s really inspiring to see all these young adults really getting into politics and behind the Sanders campaign, and I’m kind of bummed that they are most likely going to get a pretty demoralizing lesson in the nuts and bolts of insider power. I just hope they don’t get alienated by the process and give up on future participation.

I also hope that if Clinton prevails, as I still expect, that she does it outright and not by depending on superdelegates. If she wins that way, she’ll probably have to put Sanders on her ticket to have any hope of bringing the party together for the general.

I’ve always found this quote from Molly Ivins to be surprisingly uplifting.

Things are not getting worse; things have always been this bad. Nothing is more consoling than the long perspective of history. It will perk you up no end to go back and read the works of progressives past. You will learn therein that things back then were also terrible, and what’s more, they were always getting worse. This is most inspiriting.

What I love about Ivins is that she understands progressives - their strengths and weaknesses. So there she is poking at us over our tendency to always be in a state of “OMG - things are awful!”

One of the ways that is being manifest lately is with all the pearl-clutching about how the Clinton and Sanders camps are being mean to each other in this primary. Can’t you just hear Ivins saying…”Puhleeze, let me tell you a story about what a mean Democrat really looks like.” And then she’d have us all laughing about some shenanigans in Texas during the days when Democrats were in charge.

Since Molly is no longer with us (may she rest in peace), I thought I’d give you a story. I probably won’t be able to make this one as funny as one that she might tell. But hopefully it does the trick anyway.

It comes from something Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote back in the 1940’s when we all assume that the “establishment” was progressive. This guy - who went on to work on the presidential campaigns of people like George McGovern and Robert Kennedy - wrote a book titled: The Vital Center. Here’s the overview:

The Vital Center is an eloquent and incisive defense of liberal democracy against its rivals to the left and to the right, communism and fascism. Originally published in 1949, it shows how the failures of free society led to the disenchantment of the masses with democracy, and sharpened the appeal of totalitarian solutions. The book calls for a radical reconstruction of the democratic polity based on a realistic understanding of human limitations and frailties.

Sound familiar yet? Here’s an excerpt where Schlesinger describes “progressives” as “Doughfaces.”

The progressive once disciplined by the responsibilities of power is often the most useful of all public servants; but he, alas, ceases to be a progressive and is regarded by all true Doughfaces as a cynical New Dealer or a tired Social Democrat.

Having renounced power, the Doughface seeks compensation in emotion. The pretext for progressive rhetoric is, of course, the idea that man, the creature of reason and benevolence, has only to understand the truth in order to act upon it.

But the function of progressive rhetoric is another matter; it is, in Dwight MacDonald’s phrase, to accomplish “in fantasy what cannot be accomplished in reality.” Because politics is for the Doughface a means of accommodating himself to a world he does not like but does not really want to change, he can find ample gratification in words. They appease his twinges of guilt without committing him to very drastic action.

…The Doughfaces differ from Mr. Churchill: dreams, they find, are better than facts. Progressive dreams are tinged with a brave purity, a rich sentiment and a noble defiance. But, like most dreams, they are notable for the distortion of facts by desire.

Clearly, the arguments that are being engaged on the left during this presidential primary are nothing new. But no one from the Clinton camp has called anyone in the Sanders camp a “Doughface”… at least not yet. That should, as Molly Ivins would say, “perk you up to no end.”

Expectations going in to the New Hampshire primary were that Trump and Sanders would win. That is exactly what happened.

But beyond that, we learned a few things. For the Democrats, it was the margin of victory for Sanders. Right now (with 91% precincts reporting) the results stand at 60%-38%. That’s a major win for Sanders. In terms of raw vote totals, Sanders bested the performance of both Clinton and Obama in 2008 by about 30,000 votes. But overall turnout was down from that year by about 50,000. So we’ll have to wait and see if the revolution has actually been ignited.

In the exit polls (which are not terribly reliable), Sanders won almost every group identified - including young voters by about the same margin we saw in Iowa, as well as women. Because New Hampshire is an open primary, 39% of voters on the Democratic side were self-identified Independents. Sanders won that group 72-27. Other than that, primary voters were younger (7 in 10 younger than 30), more educated (6 in 10 were college grads and 3 in 10 have post-graduate degrees) and overwhelmingly white (90%).

A few weeks ago I pointed to this analysis by David Wasserman on what Sanders needed from Iowa and New Hampshire to stay even with Clinton in the projected delegate count.

The key takeaway from our model below: in order for Sanders to be “on track” to break even in pledged delegates nationally, he wouldn’t just need to win Iowa and New Hampshire by a hair. He would need to win 70 percent of Iowa’s delegates and 63 percent of New Hampshire’s delegates.

Based on the results, Sanders got 50% of Iowa’s delegates and 46% of those that have been allocated so far in New Hampshire. So unless these results change the trajectory of the race going forward, even with this overwhelming victory in New Hampshire, he didn’t meet that test.

On the Republican side, the news is that this primary did nothing to sort out the contest between the “establishment” candidates. Kasich came in second to Trump followed closely by Cruz, Bush and then Rubio. This tweet from Al Giordano sums up how they’ll play those results.

Trump: I WON. Kasich: I AM THE ANTI-TRUMP. Bush: I BEAT RUBIO! Cruz: I BEAT HIM TOO! Rubio: OBAMA KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE'S DOING.

— AlGiordano (@AlGiordano) February 10, 2016

The one thing that might help sort some of this out would be if Christie, Fiorina and Carson would drop out. But so far we haven’t seen any of them make such an announcement.

Clearly, Rubio’s performance in the last debate probably knocked him out of contention. Whether Bush or Kasich can step into the breach and mount any kind of challenge to Trump/Cruz remains to be seen.

* This is an even worse characteristic in a president than being a Marcobot.

[T]o those who have known him longest, Rubio’s flustered performance Saturday night fit perfectly with an all-too-familiar strain of his personality, one that his handlers and image-makers have labored for years to keep out of public view. Though generally seen as cool-headed and quick on his feet, Rubio is known to friends, allies, and advisers for a kind of incurable anxiousness — and an occasional propensity to panic in moments of crisis, both real and imagined.

* For a few years now we’ve all been suggesting that the Republicans have simply ignored the autopsy performed by the RNC following the 2012 election. But Jim Geraghty basically pronounces it dead.

The RNC report’s advocacy for a path to citizenship was a slap in the face to those Republicans who had long been angry about illegal immigration.

In other words, it’s time to go “all in” with that angry nativist base. We’ll see how that works out for ya.

* Bill Scher gives us some history about “Why it’s OK to Accept Wall Street Campaign Cash.”

What do Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson all have in common? They all accepted campaign contributions from Wall Street tycoons.

And, for those on that list who have already been president, all successfully imposed regulations on corporations anyway.

* Basically, the Virginia State Board of Elections is saying to the court: “You know that past 200 years of slavery and racial discrimination against African Americans in this state? Well…let’s ignore all that when you decide whether or not our new voter ID law is legal.

In VA voter ID case, SBE filed motion yesterday to exclude evidence of historic racial discrimination before 1965. Truly amazing.

— Marc Erik Elias (@marceelias) February 9, 2016

* When someone writes “Why the Working Class is Choosing Trump and Sanders,” it is important to start reading that as: Why the White Working Class is Choosing Trump and Sanders.

* At Republic 3.0, Jeremy Smith and David Mitchell write about a new bill that would help boost Americans’ retirement security by expanding the federal match for contributions into retirement accounts:

* Finally, as you watch the returns from the New Hampshire primary tonight, there isn’t much doubt about who the winners are going to be. But Eric Levitz gives us another angle to keep an eye on.

So the question tonight is margin of victory. Many pundits have argued that a double-digit win would mark a triumph for the socialist insurgent. But if Sanders wins by a margin of 55 to 45 percent, Hillary Clinton will walk away with an even share of New Hampshire’s delegates.

…as long as Clinton gets above 43.8 percent of the vote, she’s entitled to half the state’s delegates.

Let’s count the ways that Molly Ball dehumanizes the youth vote.

1. They line up for hours to see Sanders, snow accumulating on their puffy jackets and knit caps and uncombed hair.
2. They gather in little knots as they wait for him to appear, engaging in impromptu rap sessions about pot legalization and campaign-finance reform.
3. [The New Left] is obsessed…with policing its own adherents for their violations of its norms.
4. At a rally against police violence at Dartmouth in November, a protester screamed at a frightened girl, “Fuck your white tears!”
5. “Socialism shouldn’t be a dirty word,” Phillip Moran, a green-eyed aspiring glassblower with a black beard and blue bandana on his head, told me.
6. The kids want legal marijuana.
7. They want rights for gay people and trans people and people in between genders.
8. “I work for our sexual-assault prevention program, educating people about seeking and receiving consent,” said Sami Cola, a women’s studies major at the University of New Hampshire with a blond topknot and ripped black jeans.
9. “I know I enjoy white privilege,” said Russel Evans, a 20-year-old history major at the University of Vermont with shoulder-length dirty-blond hair.
10. The kids are earnest and well-meaning and sweet. They come to see Sanders in couples, leaning on each other’s shoulder, wearing matching pot-themed T-shirts (“KEEP CALM AND BERN ONE”).
11. “I try to get people to recycle, because I care about what happens to the earth,” said Nicole Rode, a junior biology major, who wishes she could stop having political arguments on Facebook but can’t help herself.
12. Emily Ratajkowski, the swimsuit model best known as the girl in the the “Blurred Lines” video, emceed the event and began with a fiery repudiation of Gloria Steinem, who had implied that young women only supported Sanders because they wanted to meet boys.
13. The students around him all sat down, too, and he urged them to put their arms around each other. It had the feel of an old-school love-in. He led them in an a cappella rendition of “Lean on Me.”

In case you miss the point, these are kids who complain about income inequality even though they have ski lift tickets on their puffy jackets. They want free tuition, legal pot, and they can’t be bothered to comb their hair. They’re obsessed with rape culture and white privilege and use incomprehensible words like ‘cis’ and ‘intersectional,’ and they don’t like patriarchy. They have no use for religion or other imaginary things, and they dress in rags and don’t shave. They’re as likely to tsk-tsk you for saying something racist or failing to recycle as they are to worry about people who are “in between genders.’ They major is useless things like English, Women’s Studies, History, and sustainable-agriculture. Or, maybe they don’t even bother with college and merely aspire to be a hippified glassblower.

I like most of Molly Ball’s reporting, and this piece is probably a broadly accurate portrayal of the people she’s encountered in New Hampshire. But it’s needlessly snarky and dismissive. These young adults’ opinions aren’t less valid because they wear ripped jeans, argue obsessively on Facebook or believe in sustainable agriculture.

And, as Nancy pointed out earlier, it may be a bit premature to expect that the youth vote in places like South Carolina and Georgia will be as pro-Sanders as it is in Iowa and New Hampshire. This is an assumption that crept into the Matt Yglesias piece I cited in my last article.

To my way of thinking, Ball’s piece is flawed on both counts. It’s condescending and it’s presenting facts not yet in evidence.

Let the kids’ words speak for themselves, and let’s see how they vote before we tell everyone what they think.

During the last Democratic presidential debate, Chuck Todd opened a question to Bernie Sanders by pointing out that he had never supported a trade deal during his time in Congress. He then went on to ask whether or not as president, that would allow a country like China to set the rules of trade for the world. Here is how Sanders responded.

Chuck, I believe in trade, but I do not believe in unfettered free trade. I believe in fair trade which works for the middle class and working families of this country and not just large multinational corporations…

We heard all of the people tell us how many great jobs would be created. I didn’t believe that for a second because I understood what the function of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, and the TPP is, it’s to say to American workers, hey, you are now competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour minimum wage.

I don’t want American workers to compete against people making 56 cents an hour. I don’t want companies shutting down in America, throwing people out on the street, moving to China, and bringing their products back into this country.

So, do I believe in trade? Of course, I believe in trade. But the current trade agreements over the last 30 years were written by corporate America, for corporate America, resulted in the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs, 60,000 factories in America lost since 2001, millions of decent-paying jobs; and also a downward spiral, a race to the bottom where employers say, “Hey, you don’t want to take a cut in pay? We’re going to China.”

That answer clarified a few things, but left a lot of questions. I notice, for example, that Sanders says that he supports “trade,” but never said that he would support a “trade deal.” One has to assume that when he calls for “fair trade,” he is imagining a trade deal that he thinks if fair to American workers.

If that is a correct assumption, then it would be helpful to hear what kind of trade deals we could expect a President Sanders to negotiate. When he points to the problem of American workers having to compete with people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour, would he attempt to negotiate a $7, $10 or $15 an hour wage for the Vietnamese people via a trade deal? Or would he simply refuse to trade with any country whose minimum wage was below ours (or what we want it to be)?

Perhaps a trade deal negotiated by President Sanders would simply insist on worker’s rights to organize for a better wage - as do the side deals the Obama administration negotiated with Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei via the TPP. But as we’ve seen in the past, there are significant problems that arise in enforcing those commitments. How would a Sanders administration deal with that?

What Sanders raised as concerns about trade deals are actually the result of dealing with a global economy. Most liberals who reject the TPP seem to recognize this reality and the attempts in recent agreements to narrow the divide. They tend to have other issues with TPP. For example, David Cay Johnston (like Sen. Elizabeth Warren) has zeroed his critique in on the expansion of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provision. I assume that Sanders shares that concern. So it would be helpful to know what he envisions as an alternative.

Many have noted that on questions of foreign policy, Bernie Sanders does not present his case as strongly or effectively as Hillary Clinton. But when it comes to trade policy, it is clear that Sanders is very passionate. My concern is that he has expressed that primarily in terms of what he is against. We have heard almost nothing from him about what he envisions a fair trade agreement would look like.

I am not suggesting that, in this campaign, Sanders needs to lay out specific detailed answers to the questions I’ve raised. But it would be helpful if he would identify some goals and principles on how he proposes to deal with trade issues. As many pundits have pointed out about Republicans, to merely be against something is not enough.