Very briefly, I want to convey a set of hopeful, if mildly cynical and irreverent reflections on the Super Tuesday primaries and the state of both parties.
1. At least from the looks of things in Hampshire County and the reflections of younger co-workers in Greater Springfield, Bernie Sanders will take the Massachusetts Democratic primary, if by a razor thin margin, against Secretary Clinton. The Massachusetts Democratic primaries should be thoroughly irrelevant to the larger conclusion of the Democratic primary season - Hillary Clinton is going to win her nomination off the backs of African-American voters in the South and elderly voters in the coming weeks in Florida, even if she has to struggle for working class Whites in razor thin margins for Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin against Bernie in the coming weeks! I don't know how Minnesota is going to vote today, but the caucus structure does not seem to be in Bernie's favor (I could be wrong). Colorado could slide Bernie's way if Boulder has its way (don't count on it!). Either way, Clinton will cruise out of today's primaries and caucuses with a heavy lead. She'll run away with Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas, a brutal enough beating for Bernie to crawl into the Midwest primaries wounded, clear victories in Massachusetts and Vermont, notwithstanding. (OK, from the morning after, no such luck for Grandpa Bernie in the Bay State! Wrong again; just too many Democratic insiders in metropolitan Boston pulling for Hillary.)
2. Trump will run away with the Deep South, Cruz will squeeze out Texas, Rubio will look very respectable in Georgia and Virginia, Kasich will eek out second place in Vermont and Massachusetts, and every Republican insider will spend the next week, like they spent the last week, wondering how the hell to defeat Trump in order to save the party! Once again from the morning after, who knew Rubio would win the Minnesota caucuses, and what does it tell us about Trump's appeal within the GOP? Why are things different in Michelle Bachmann's backyard? Just the nature of the caucus process? Trump ignore the Minnesota electorate in the run up to Super Tuesday? Or do Republican voters in Minnesota possess a strange foresight, comprehending that there is no way that a Trump nomination can win the Presidency for the GOP? Ben Carson is now, apparently, officially gone. Kasich might as well be - he may be able to hold out for the Michigan primary, but he stands no chance of winning it. Rubio had better hope to win his home state. Cruz needs to make a dent in the Plain states and the Rockies. Outside of these states, Cruz stands no chance against Trump.
3. No candidate that has to take time to figure out whether he wants to play footsy with acknowledged racist, White supremacists in order to curry favor with the radical right wing is ever going to be elected President of the United States in this period of our history! Trump is winning by summoning a particular angry, anti-establishment dynamic within the Republican Party. Effectively, he is pulling in the Tea Party crowd, denying these supporters to Cruz and Rubio, who might otherwise split the super-conservative vote. Oddly, however, Trump is appealing to groups within the White population that Sanders is appealing to on the Democratic side, notwithstanding the radical degree of difference between the messages conveyed by the two campaigns. Sanders appeals to the hopes of poor, working class White Democrats who look wistfully at the promise of a return to the New Deal and the Great Society. Trump appeals to the fear and hatred of Republicans in the same economic dynamic, looking for someone to blame for their economic woes and anxieties, to which they resist the notion that governmental action might improve their lives. The problem is that, when you pull this crowd in on this sort of a message, with nuanced racial imageries in tow, you end up also attracting the out-of-the-closet racists from the Deep South and Midwest. If someone like Trump has to take a few minutes to realize that an endorsement from David Duke, telling all red blooded Anglo-Saxons to go out and cast your fortunes with the Republican front runner, is an endorsement that he needs to renounce, then he cannot expect to win a general election with an electorate that is looking exceedingly less White by the day.
4. Acknowledging when I'm wrong! Bloomberg is going to stay out of the Presidential race if Hillary Clinton comes out in complete control of the Democratic nomination process from Super Tuesday - a Bloomberg run will only help a tragically absurd and immoderately insane Trump nomination on the Republican side, and Michael Bloomberg is too smart and too patriotic to risk a national catastrophe!!
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