There are many moving tributes to Hillary Clinton’s remarkable victory and the historic significance of what she has accomplished. For openers try this Baltimore Sun editorial, which notes, “But make no mistake, this is big. As of today, the whole parent-daughter chat about “you can grow up to be anything you want to be including president of the United States” sounds a bit more credible than it did the day before. And few candidates better embody the struggles women have faced in the last half-century — from balancing motherhood to career to be accepted in the various male-dominated professions — than the presumptive Democratic nominee…How overdue is a female head of state? While Republicans and Democrats may brag that they’ve collectively elected more women to Congress than ever (about 20 percent of the House and Senate is female), other countries have done much better. As a Pew Research Center study released earlier this year points out, the U.S. ranks 33rd among 49 high-income countries in electing women to its national legislature. But wait, it’s really worse than that: Compared to 137 countries where data is available, the U.S. ranked 83rd , according to Pew.”
At The American Prospect, Adel Stan adds “Call me a sentimental sap, but forgive my tears. A woman has just won the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties. An accomplished woman. A woman who can throw a rhetorical punch. A woman who’s made tough choices. And for the sake of all of the women who come after her, that’s a righteously good thing. We’ve been waiting a long time.”
From “Will Bernie Sanders supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton now? Here’s what we know” by Scott Clement and Emily Guskin at The Fix: “A May Washington Post-ABC News poll found 20 percent of Sanders primary supporters said they would support Donald Trump if he faced Hillary Clinton in a general election. At the same point eight years ago, 26 percent of Clinton primary supporters said they would support Republican Sen. John McCain…Post-ABC polling tracked Clinton’s 2008 primary supporters throughout the fall campaign and found they steadily gravitated toward Obama during the general election. Obama’s support among Clinton primary supporters rose from 64 percent in May to 73 percent in mid-September, 79 percent in mid-October and 83 percent by Election Day, according to the national network exit poll.”
Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports on President Obama’s White House meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders scheduled for today.
At The Hill Brent Budowsky envisions a new, powerful role for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 campaign: “After the California primary, it is now certain that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) cannot be the Democratic nominee for president, but he can still be the second most important Democrat in the election if he plays his cards right. Sanders should drop out of the presidential campaign as a candidate for the presidency, and reconstitute his campaign as a people’s PAC to raise substantial money from small donors that would be used to support liberal candidates running for the House and Senate against Republicans…Sanders still has a golden opportunity to have a truly powerful impact on American history in ways that would touch, and improve, many aspects of American life. His supporters and small donors can have a huge impact, achieving many aspects of the Sanders revolution that would begin immediately and last for decades to come.”
In his Tuesday night speech in Santa Monica, reports Amy Davidson at The New Yorker, Sanders “emphasized that he was still after something bigger than Trump–“transforming our country,” “knowing that we can do much, much better as a nation,” and making health care a right. Also, breaking up the banks and making “the billionaire class and corporate America” pay more taxes.” — all of which fit in nicely with Budowsky’s suggestion.
If there are any swing voters of conscience who remain undecided in their choice for president, this ad should close the deal:

At The Boston Globe Matt Viser’s “Reid reviews scenarios for filling Senate seat if Warren is VP pick,” explains how problematic it could be for Dems to keep Warren’s senate seat if Clinton selects her as running mate. Ditto for Sens. Sherrod Brown and Cory Booker, who would also have their replacements selected by Republican governors. Other frequently-suggested Democratic running mates who don’t have that problem include Sens. Bernie Sanders (VT), Tim Kaine (VA), Jack Reed (RI) and Amy Klobuchar (MN) along with CO Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Political scientists may have to coin a new term for Republicans who couple their denunciations of Trump’s racism with their endorsements of the GOP nominee. William Saletan provides an instructive typology at slate.com, “14 Republican Excuses for Donald Trump’s Racism.”

Things have suddenly gotten weird for Donald Trump in the wake of his attacks on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, with Republicans once again wondering if there’s some way to dump the tycoon and find a more conventional nominee. Now, however, their options are a lot more limited, as I explained at New York:

The backlash to Trump’s racially tinged comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, and the putative nominee’s apparent inability to back away from them, has the senior leaders of the party unable to defend him. South Carolina senator and former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, quite recently the quintessential Trump disparager who was reconciling himself to the mogul’s candidacy, is now sounding a new alarm and urging fellow Republicans to withdraw their endorsements: “This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy,” he told the Times. “If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it. There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.” Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell has offered the candidate a terse directive: “Get on message.”
So is there actually some mechanism whereby Republicans could dump Trump if the panic spreads or the “putative nominee” freaks out and starts blaming his troubles on a conspiracy between ISIS and the Cisco Kid?
Well, yes, there is a nuclear option — but it still has to be considered very unlikely. Approximately one-third of the delegations to the Republican National Convention will be bound to primary or caucus winners by state election laws. For the rest of them, however, the “binding” is by national party rules, and ultimately the rules of every Republican convention are made and can be unmade by the convention itself. So, in theory, convention delegates could vote to unbind themselves (or at least those not bound by state election laws) before the first presidential ballot and throw the nomination open again. If you recall that a significant number of “Trump delegates” are not personally loyal to the wiggy dude to begin with, you could see how a revolt could gain traction under very precise — and unlikely — circumstances.
There are two internal GOP conditions that would need to be present before the nuclear option could ever come into play. The first would be a widespread abandonment of Trump by the very party opinion-leaders who have been climbing aboard his bandwagon in the last few weeks — a mass exodus on the “off-ramp” Graham is talking about. The second and more important development would be a radical change in the rank-and-file sentiment — which was strongly evident long before Trump appeared to have nailed down the nomination — opposing any kind of “coup” against the primary results.
Regardless of what Lindsey Graham and other fair-weather friends of Donald Trump think, neither of these things is going to happen unless there is first a sudden, sickening downward lurch in Trump’s general-election poll numbers. I doubt anything other than 20 points or so — and with it a renewed fear of a down-ballot disaster for the GOP — would get the dump-Trump bandwagon rolling. At that point, all hell could break loose, and Cleveland could be wild and crazy fun after all.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting, it appears that Hillary Clinton has won the California primary by about 13 percent and she has also won the New Jersey primary by 26 percent margin, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. In addition, she has won the New Mexico and South Dakota primaries by about 3 percent in each state. Sen. Bernie Sanders got a consolation prize in the form of victories in the Montana primary and the North Dakota caucuses.
An estimated 20 percent of California mail-in ballots will have to be counted in the days ahead. But it is likely that Clinton’s double-digit lead in that state will hold.
Given’s Clinton’s impressive win, Sanders will most likely endorse her before too long, despite his stated intention to campaign in next week’s Washington, D.C. primary, which marks the end of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary season.
At reuters.com John Whitesides provides this assessment of the accomplishments of the Sanders campaign:

During the campaign, Sanders forced Clinton to tack left repeatedly on issues ranging from her support for a higher minimum wage to her opposition to the Asian trade pact and Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Sanders’ progressive allies said those shifts by Clinton will be helpful in the Nov. 8 election against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has touted an anti-trade and pro-jobs economic agenda, and for Democrats in their efforts to recapture a majority in the U.S. Senate.
“When the story of the 2016 election is told, a major part of it will be that Bernie Sanders helped the Democratic Party turn up the volume on economic populism issues,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Some media are amping up stories about Sanders being a sore loser. But it seems unlikely that a candidate who has the smarts to do as well as he did would be politically tone-deaf enough to let his campaign end on a sour note. That would deny him leverage with the next president — and also Democratic leadership, when it comes time to assign committee chairmanships.
It remains unclear what percentage of Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton, though historical patterns indicate that a healthy majority of them will vote for the Democratic nominee.
Questions bearing on the timing of Sanders endorsement of Clinton include: What elements of the Sanders policy agenda will be incorporated in the Democratic Convention party platform? Will Clinton select Sanders as her running mate, or, if not, will Sanders like her choice? and perhaps most important of all, how hard will he campaign for her?
Clinton has been gracious in victory, and hopes for a unified Democratic campaign going forward at full strength rest in large measure on how well Clinton and Sanders work together.
In her New York Times report on Clinton’s victory, Amy Chozick nicely describes the factors that made Clinton such a strong candidate:

She may not be the orator President Obama is, or the retail politician her husband was. But Mrs. Clinton’s steely fortitude in this campaign has plainly inspired older women, black voters and many others who see in her perseverance a kind of mirror to their own struggles. And Mrs. Clinton’s very durability — her tenacity, grit and capacity for enduring and overcoming adversity — could be exactly what is required to defeat Donald J. Trump.

…And reverberate down-ballot, helping Democrats regain majorities in congress and the state legislatures.

In the wake of reports that Hillary Clinton has won the delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination for president and a near melt-down of the Trump campaign, the primary in the nation’s most populous state has lost some its political lustre. As the nation’s ‘vanguard’ state, however, the close Democratic race in California is still of interest and will likely have an effect on how soon Democratic rank and file unite behind one candidate.
At New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer, Ed Kilgore notes that “Clinton has led every single public poll taken in the state, 19 in all,” but, If Sanders “does edge Clinton, the show may go on for another month or so before its inevitable closing.”
In Andrew Prokop’s’ Vox post, “Primary elections 2016: today’s poll closing times and what to expect” he explains “Now, the race in California appears tight — Sanders hasn’t led a single poll of the state, but he trails by just 4 percentage points in the HuffPost Pollster average. By contrast, New Jersey looks like a blowout for Clinton, and the other (small) states have scarcely been polled.”
As for Sanders’s afirmation that he will continue to campaign regardless of the California and New Jersey results, Prokop wites,

There is reason to be skeptical of Sanders’s pronouncements, though. Presidential candidates have often argued that they’ll fight all the way until the convention, only to reverse course when defeat is finally unmistakable. And Matt Yglesias argues that Sanders will likely do the same.
Whatever Sanders’s intentions, Hillary Clinton has already moved on to the general election and focused on beating Donald Trump. Indeed, according to recent reports from The New York Times and CNN, several key Democratic figures who have remained neutral so far, like President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, will likely endorse Clinton in the coming days, as an effort to signal to Sanders that it’s time to throw in the towel.

In any case, the Clinton campaign has already moved on, making Trump the focus of their attacks. Whether or not she has the needed pledged delegates in a few days or weeks, she is laser-focused in general election mode, and not looking back.
Democrats have a rare opportunity for a wave election, and if they can unify behind their nominee in the coming days and weeks, they can lead America forward to an exciting new era of progressive change.

In an open letter to down-ballot Republicans, GOP strategist Rick Wilson has some harsh words for his party’s elected officials who are supporting Trump, as reported by James Hohman at The Daily 202:

“You own the racial animus that started out as a bug, became a feature and is now the defining characteristic of his campaign. You own every crazy, vile chunk of word vomit that spews from his mouth. … He’s political poison. Don’t believe me? You will. … Trump doesn’t give a damn about your election. You’re not part of a unified Republican ticket; you’re collateral damage in Trump Rampage Raw WWE 2016.”
Wilson tells Republican candidates that it is not too late to dump Trump: “As much damage as he does every day, he’s also giving you an out. Tear off the bandage. Take the short blast of pain and the stupid tweets from stupid people. Take the idiotic Tweet he’ll hit you with and make fun of it. Wash the stink off, and you’ll feel like a human again. You won’t spend every day in fear of defeat, or in fear of losing your political soul…Stop trying to run a generic, please-the-base campaign where your political lanes are bounded. Run as a Florida Republican or a Colorado Republican or a Nevada Republican and separate your brand from Trump’s. You can’t finesse this. There is not ‘just a little Trump’ just as there’s no ‘just a little pregnant.’ Just run.”

Conservative commentator Jay Cost piles on in response to Republicans attempting to walk back support for Trump, tweeting to fellow Republicans: “Doesn’t work like that, @newtgingrich. You, @SarahPalinUSA, @seanhannity own this dumpster fire.”

In his insightful post “Black Democrats Want To See Bigger, Earlier Voter Turnout Efforts,” Darren Sands notes at BuzzFeed News, “Many of the political committees and campaigns seem to be a standstill when it comes to planning and moving money into programs that will turnout base democratic voters,” Quentin James, a Democratic strategist said. “Coming out of the 2012 cycle, we saw African-American voters cast ballots at a higher rate than white voters for the first time. I’m not a rocket scientist, but it seems a smart strategy would be to double down on turning out that demographic.”…”People are tired of the last-minute money,” one well-connected Democrat said, alluding to a trend in recent years to put resources into black outreach beginning in the fall. “That is a huge concern and they don’t want that. They want see that early investment. It needs to happen on the ground and now.”
Catastrophoic visions and squirmage epidemic in GOP over Trump’s doubling down on Latino-bashing.
But Trump’s attack against Judge Curiel may be more about creating a distraction from his growing fear that the ‘Trump University’ scandal can get even uglier, as the press uncovers the outrageous details, notes Heather Digby Parton at salon.com.
“Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election…Still, race is a powerful subtext; African-Americans make up 19 percent of Virginia’s population, but 45 percent of those covered by the governor’s order. The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organization, says one in five African-Americans in Virginia cannot vote because of felony convictions…But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away.” – from Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s NYT article, “Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote.”
Significant pros and cons about this idea. But keeping Biden close makes a lot of sense.
Politifact says “For median income, we found that 95 of the 100 poorest counties were located in red states” and “For percentage of residents in poverty, we found that 93 of the 100 poorest counties were in red states.” In the spirit of false equivalence, Politifact adds stretchy yada yada about Republicans doing well in rural areas and these counties being poor way back when the states were Democratic, but the fact nonetheless remains that Republican dominated state government has utterly failed to reduce poverty in these areas.
At The Atlantic Michelle Cottle explains why “There’s No Escaping the Top of the Ballot,” and notes “The level of split-ticket voting between the presidential race and races in the House and Senate is down to about 5 percent at this point,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at NYU who has written on the nationalization of U.S. elections. Getting that number up much higher, predicted Pildes, “will be like pushing a boulder up a hill.”
Well, this is encouraging: “Senate Democrats are doing everything they can to link candidates in swing states to Trump, launching their “Party of Trump” campaign in March aimed at vulnerable GOP incumbents. The DSCC has reserved about $50 million worth of television airtime in the fall to hammer that message home,” reports Alexander Bolton at The Hill.
Will violence at demonstrations against Trump help him? Jose A. DelReal and Sean Sulivan address the concern at the Washington Post.

Intrepid poll-watchers have been waiting for the much-revered Field Poll to come out before laying any bets on next Tuesday’s California Democratic presidential primary. It’s now out, and I wrote about the findings at New York as soon as it was available.

Clinton has led in all 18 public polls of California taken this year, and still leads in the RealClearPolitics polling average by six points (49-43). But the much-awaited final poll by the Field Organization, probably the most respected public-opinion operation in the country, shows Sanders pulling to within the margin of error, with Clinton hanging on to a 45-43 lead.
The coalitions put together by the two candidates are very familiar to anyone following the Democratic race. Sanders is running up big margins among under-30 voters (75-15) and to a lesser extent registered independents (54-27), while Clinton is dominating among over-65 voters (56-28) and holding a healthy lead among registered Democrats (49-40). Clinton’s traditional strength among minority voters is ebbing a bit; she leads among African-Americans (57-36) and Latinos (46-42), but trails Sanders among Asian-Americans (34-47), who represent a higher percentage of the likely primary electorate (11 percent) than do black voters (9 percent). Clinton actually leads overall among non-Latino white voters 44-43, probably a tribute to the relatively advanced age of white voters. There’s the usual gender gap as well, and it, too, is strongly influenced by age: Sanders leads among under-40 men by 71-19, while Clinton leads among women over 40 by 57-29. Regionally, Clinton is ahead in Los Angeles County and the Central Valley, while Sanders’s top regions are the San Francisco Bay and the Central Coast.
Since Field showed Clinton’s lead in April at a slim 47-41 margin, there aren’t any big late trends apparent, other than a Sanders surge among Asian-Americans. Of the 23 percent who reported having already voted by mail by the last week of May, Clinton has a nine-point (47-38) lead, which is almost certainly explained by the higher propensity of older voters to vote by mail. Field estimates that two-thirds of the vote will ultimately be cast by mail, which is actually a bit less than in the 2014 primary.
Overall, Field’s two-point Clinton margin matches that of another late-May poll released Wednesdayday, from NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist; PPIC had the same finding last week.
Certainly the perception is that Sanders has the momentum, although you have to wonder if his heavy dependence on younger voters makes further gains difficult. And there’s really zero evidence that Bernie is on the brink of the kind of big landslide victory he needs to cut deeply into Clinton’s pledged-delegate lead.

The two big takeaways from recent polling of California are this: despite all the talk about HRC’s strength among nonwhite voters and Bernie’s strength among white voters, the two candidates are running just about dead even in both categories, basically because age is dominating every other demographic “split.” And so long as they are running pretty much even, a win for Bernie Sanders won’t cut much ice except as a matter of symbolism.