At The Fix, Janell Ross explains “What Hillary Clinton’s massive win among black voters [in SC] really says“: “There is evidence of substantial but far from record-setting overall primary turnout there, too. But, there is also this: Black voters turned out and voted in large numbers relative to other Democrats, giving their numerical majority within the party added meaning…Black voters in South Carolina cast 6 in every 10 Democratic primary votes, according to CNN’s exit poll data. That ratio is huge — and sets a record-high in South Carolina black voter participation rate. The previous high was 55 percent, set in 2008…It is a result that should begin to crush the popular and often repeated myth that black political behavior in 2008 and 2012 was nothing more than a blip, a fleeting kind of emotion-only engagement inspired by a singular and history-making black candidate.”
The Associated Press adds: “Six in 10 South Carolina primary voters were women, and 8 in 10 of them said they voted for Clinton. She was also supported by about 7 in 10 men…Six in 10 white women supported Clinton, while a majority of white men said they voted for Sanders…Clinton ate into Sanders’ advantage among young voters. Although he was supported by a slim majority of primary voters under 30, she was supported by about three-quarters of those between the ages of 30 and 44, as well as 8 in 10 of those 45 and older…Two-thirds of white voters under 45 supported Sanders, but among blacks, that group went overwhelmingly for Clinton.”
More demographic breakdowns of the SC Democratic primary vote exit polls right here.
Looking forward, Politico’s senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian has useful guide to Super Tuesday, “Breaking down Democrats’ Super Tuesday map:What to watch for in the biggest day of the Democratic presidential race so far.”
The Upshot’s Nate Cohn adds, “The results in South Carolina — as well as in Nevada, where Mrs. Clinton also won black voters by a wide margin — suggest that she can count on big wins in six Super Tuesday states where black voters represent an above-average share of Democratic voters: Alabama, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Georgia. The polls say the same thing…As a result, the Sanders campaign has effectively conceded the South on Super Tuesday. The campaign is not airing advertisements there, according to NBC News data.”
From RMuse’s PoliticusUSA post, “Two Respected Liberal Journalists Issue An Important Warning To Democrats“: “Maddow and Capehart both note that regardless the incompetent and hate-mongering Republicans seeking their party’s nomination, “the Republican field is consistently making more people turn out to vote. Republicans have voted in four states so far this year and in every single one they have broken the voter turnout record for that state.” Maddow then pointed out, again, that voter turnout for Democrats is down substantially. In fact, it was down 28 percent in Iowa, it was down 13 percent in New Hampshire, and it was down 33 percent in Nevada…It is noteworthy that 41 percent of one Democratic faction would not support the “other Democrat” if their candidate is not the nominee..”
E. J. Dionne’s syndicated column, “Working-class slump stokes Trump” illuminates a major reason for the GOP front-runner’s success with one of the largest demographic groups: “…Trump embraces positions on economics and foreign policy anathema to most conservative politicians. He is an ardent critic of recent free-trade agreements, opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare, has been even more vocal than many Democrats in criticizing President George W. Bush and the Iraq War and even endorses the Democrats’ long-standing call for government negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to drive down drug costs…This mix has allowed Trump to win votes from self-described moderates and conservatives alike, but his strongest support comes from voters at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale.”

Bridget Bowman reports at Roll Call that petitions bearing 1.3 million signatures urging Republicans to “do your job” and honor “the Senate’s Constitutional duty to consider a Supreme Court justice” have been delivered. Further, adds Bowman, “The Democratic National Committee launched a social media effort with the hashtag #DoYourJob, and hosted daily press calls with lawmakers about how a prolonged vacancy on the court would affect gay rights, immigration, abortion rights, voting rights, and health care.”

At Politico Burgess Everett’s “Democrats resist total retaliation in Supreme Court fight” includes an update on emerging Republican and Democratic strategies regarding senate action on President Obama’s nominee to fill Scalia’s seat.
Here’s a good collection of earlier Mitch McConnell quotes explaining why it’s wrong to obstruct Supreme Court nominations for purely political purposes.
In “Why Obama is vetting Nevada’s Republican governor for the Supreme Court,” at Vox, Matthew Yglesias explores the political chess behind the Sandoval trial balloon: “…Floating Sandoval’s name in the press as a way to bait Republicans into batting it down could be a savvy strategy for Democrats to underscore exactly how rigid the GOP is being about the confirmation battle.” On the other hand, adds Yglesias, “filling the seat with a moderate Republican might actually be worse from the standpoint of labor unions who are currently looking forward to a tie on the Friedrichs case.” Thus far, Democrats have been far too willing to overlook the economic views of Republican nominees to the high court.
Julia Hirschfeld Davis and David M. Herszenhorn report at The New York Times that “Mr. Obama predicted that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and other Republicans would not be able to sustain their refusal to acknowledge or act on his nominee, adding that in his private conversations with some of them on the matter, it was clear to him that they were not comfortable with that stance. He added, “I think it will be very difficult for Mr. McConnell to explain, if the public concludes that this person is very well qualified, that the Senate should stand in the way simply for political reasons.”
GOP message guru Frank Luntz tweets “This race is Trump’s to lose. Unless he has a meltdown in one of the remaining 5 debates.
But NYT’s Alexander Burns still sees five ways Trump could blow it in the weeks and months ahead.
Meanwhile Republicans Mitt Romney and George Will have suggested that Trump’s tax issues could sink his candidacy. “Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is,” says Romney, “or he hasn’t been paying taxes we would expect him to pay or perhaps he hasn’t been giving money to vets or to the disabled like he’s been telling us he’s been doing,” Adding to the delicious irony of Romney dissing Trump’s personal tax-paying, Trump responds by calling Romney “goofy.”
Meanwhile, “Nearly 20% of Trump Fans Think Freeing the Slaves Was a Bad Idea,” reports Daniel White at Time magazine. More on the bigotry of sizable percentages of Trump voters here.
There are good reasons “Why Democrats (probably) shouldn’t worry about record Republican primary turnout” thus far in the caucuses and primaries, explains Jeff Stein at Vox.

Greg Sargent has a perceptive post at The Plum Line, making a point that has largely been overlooked by the mainstream media — that Sen. Bernie Sanders has a long-term strategy that will continue even if he loses the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. As Sargent notes in his comment on Sen. Sanders’ extraordinary success in winning the support of younger voters:

Clinton will need to get all those young voters to start supporting her in big numbers. Even if turnout is down this year, Sanders — to a far greater degree than Clinton — seems to hold the key to engaging this constituency. He has somehow conveyed to a whole lot of young people that politics can matter in their lives. And remember, Democrats are betting on a new generation of young voters to give them a demographic edge that lasts beyond 2016.
So you could see Sanders playing a role at the convention; in helping shape the agenda for the fall campaign; and in helping engaging young voters, this time in preparation for the general election. As MSNBC’s Seitz-Wald reports, the Sanders camp sees such a role as a crucial part of his “political revolution.” Even if he doesn’t win.

Sanders is of course fighting to win the presidency, and he believes he has a good chance to do so. But he was an energetic social activist long before he won any elective office, and devoted his time and efforts to civil rights, peace and economic justice going back to his days as a college student. Few contemporary political leaders can match the lifelong commitment to social reforms that permeates his personal narrative.
That commitment will continue, whether he wins or loses the Democratic nomination. And even if he loses, he will still be in good position to recruit young people to join the long-haul struggle for social change and to help organize them into a force for effective action. For this reason, Sargent believes that Sanders will likely campaign all the way to the Democratic convention, where the coalition he has mobilized will be able to lay some of the foundation for a lasting social movement.
Sargent is certainly right. That this seems to be hard for the horserace-focused MSM to grasp is a sad commentary on their limited perspective about social movements. But if Sen. Sanders is able to mobilize a critical mass of young activists to become engaged in political and social change beyond 2016, he will have done a great service for America, regardless of who is elected President in November.

At Brookings William Galston sheds light on the ideological value that undergird’s Trump’s enduring strength among Republican voters in opinion polls: “Trump enjoys a large advantage in public support, moreover, despite ranking at or near the bottom on most of the personal characteristics that voters value in prospective presidents–honesty and trustworthiness, caring about people’s needs and problems, sharing their values, and having the right experience. He leads in only one area–strong leadership qualities. It speaks volumes about the current mood among Republicans that the desire for strength appears strong enough to trump all other considerations, even among voters who prize piety and humility.”
Dems can be forgiven a smidgeon of schadenfreude at the utter failure of Jeb Bush’s quest for the GOP nomination, given his role as president’s brother/Governor of Florida in the 2000 election. At Mother Jones Pema Levy’s post, I’ll Be the Judge of That: How Jeb Bush Perpetuated the Sunshine State’s War on Black Voters provides a recap on the effects of ex-felon disenfranchisement in Florida for those who have forgotten: “The 2000 presidential election was ultimately decided by a 537-vote margin in Florida. More than 500,000 ex-felons were barred from the polls, including at least 139,000 African Americans, who vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Their exclusion almost certainly changed the outcome of the race. The beneficiary, of course, was Jeb Bush’s brother…Under Jeb Bush, Florida undertook a second voter purge–again with a sharp racial skew–in 2004, the next presidential election year. Of the 48,000 people on the second list, 22,000 were black. Just 61 people on the list were Hispanic, at a time when Florida Hispanics, including the Cuban community in Miami, voted solidly Republican. After the media made the list public, and with a potential lawsuit looming, Bush abandoned the purge…According to Edward Hailes, a lawyer with the US Commission on Civil Rights, the number of African Americans wrongfully expunged from the rolls who would have voted for Al Gore was 4,752–nearly nine times greater than the 537 votes that handed George W. Bush the presidency…Ultimately, Bush approved just one-fifth of the 385,522 applications for civil rights submitted during his eight years in office.” Of course felon disenfranchisement was just one element of voter suppression in FL in 2000, in addition to the Brooks Brothers Riot, finagling with voter machines, “lost” registration forms, misinformation and other shenanigans, all under the watch of Governor Jeb Bush.
At The Nation Sean McElwee highlights “The GOP’s Class Divide on Austerity; Even inside the GOP, the working poor don’t support the austerity politics of the party’s elites.” McElwee analyses from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study of more than 50,000 respondents.
In his weekly Syndicated column, E.J. Dionne, Jr. observes, “A good case can be made — and has been made by progressives throughout Obama’s term — that if Democrats said that everything was peachy, voters who are still hurting would write off the party entirely…But ambivalence does not win elections. Running to succeed Ronald Reagan in 1988, George H. W. Bush triumphed by proposing adjustments in Reagan’s environmental and education policies, but otherwise touting what enough voters decided were Reagan’s successes…Democrats need to insist that while much work remains to be done, the United States is in far better shape economically than most other countries in the world. The nation is better off for the reforms in health care, financial regulation and environmental protection enacted during Obama’s term…If Clinton, Sanders and their party don’t provide a forceful response to the wildly inaccurate and ridiculously bleak characterization of Obama’s presidency that the Republicans are offering, nobody will. And if this parody is allowed to stand as reality, the Democrats will lose.”
Peter Dreier’s post “Nine Battleground States that Could Flip the Senate — and the Supreme Court” at The American Prospect puts the 2016 stakes in clear perspective: “If the Democrats win the Senate and a Democratic president gets to replace Scalia and appoint three other justices, they will cement a liberal majority for at least two or three decades. If either Clinton or Sanders wins the White House, Justices Ginsburg (who will be 83 next year) and Stephen Breyer (78) might retire to allow the president to pick their younger successors. Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes votes with the court liberals, will be 80 in 2017. If he retires and a Democrat selects his replacement, the court could find itself with a 6-3 liberal majority, with only Chief Justice John Roberts (currently 61 years old) and Justices Clarence Thomas (67) and Samuel Alito (65) remaining to carry the conservative torch. (Two other liberals–61-year-old Sonia Sotomayor and 55-year-old Elena Kagan, both Obama appointees–could remain on the court for another two decades…Even with Roberts remaining as chief justice, a court with a 6-3 liberal majority could have more influence in moving the country in a progressive direction than at any time since Chief Justice Earl Warren led the court between 1953 and 1969.”
Hillary Clinton just got a big boost from 20 unions representing 10 million workers — which means her campaign will soon have more money and manpower. Further, “Exit and entrance polls from the Iowa and Nevada caucuses showed voters from union households favoring Mrs. Clinton over Mrs. Sanders by a roughly 10-point margin — greater than the margin by which Mrs. Clinton won those contests overall,” reports Noam Scheiber at the New York Times.
At The Daily Beast, however, Michael Tomasky observes of Clinton’s NV victory, “this win should mean that Clinton will be able to unite the party without anybody’s flesh being ripped…It now looks like Clinton is going to be the nominee, and that this primary will be over sooner rather than later. She should win nine of 12 Super Tuesday states, and maybe 10; I think she could get Massachusetts, while Sanders holds in Vermont and Minnesota. But barring the email-indictment scenario or some totally unexpected thing (and of course those things could happen!), it’s hard to see a scenario where Sanders could steal away any delegate-rich states. So she seems to be on the way.”
Olivia Nuzzi’s Daily Beast post on the SC results has a headline that will make establishment Republicans wince: “Trump Smirks As Beltway GOP Crumbles.” Nuzzi adds this telling insight: “He did not explain what was historic about the evangelical in the race losing the evangelical vote in a state where –according to an exit poll–73 percent of Republican voters said they consider themselves born-again or evangelical Christians. Trump, whose cursing is part of his stump speech, is on his third wife, admitted on TV that he’d never asked God for forgiveness, and this week got into a fight with The Pope.”
From vocativ.com:

At The Fix, Philip Bump’s “How the Internet has democratized democracy, to Bernie Sanders’s benefit” sheds light on the power of social media as a force for political education and change. Commenting on the insights of NYU professor Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” Bump explains:

…The gist is this. The two-party system necessarily can’t encompass every viewpoint. So, to hold parties together, some things became unmentionable. As media options broadened and the press wasn’t acting as gatekeeper, candidates could talk to voters more directly. But they still largely needed the resources of the party in order to get elected, so they still hewed to the rules about what couldn’t be mentioned.
Until 2008, when Barack Obama mastered talking to, fundraising from and turning out a large population.
“Reaching & persuading even a fraction of the electorate used to be so daunting that only two national orgs could do it,” Shirky wrote. “Now dozens can. This set up the current catastrophe for the parties. They no longer control any essential resource, and can no longer censor wedge issues.” The result, he says, is the “quasi-parlimentarianism” of the moment: The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Trump Party and the Sanders Party, all vying for power and the presidency…Trump and Sanders can ignore the established parties by talking directly to the voters.

Thanks to the internet and social media, now candidates can define their political personas without as much help from their respective political parties. The “Internet has “democratiized democracy,” as Bump puts it.
The other factor referenced by Bump is cell phones. Bump quotes from Jill LePore’s New Yorker article describing a recent rally for Hillary Clinton:

The instant Clinton began speaking, dozens of arms reached high into the air, all across the room, wielding smartphones. It was like watching a flock of ostriches awaken, the arms their necks, the phones their heads, the red recording buttons their wide, blinking eyes.

Bump adds, “That ceaseless documentation of the moment made individuals in the crowd often indistinguishable from reporters…The media has a role, as do the political parties. The role of each was once to serve as gatekeeper. Now, the role is often to serve as bullhorn.”
Trump’s TV presence surely fueled his success as a GOP presidential candidate. He began his white house run with name recognition few political leaders could hope to match. Plus, he understood how to leverage media to get free publicity worth millions of dollars.
A few weeks ago, I noted that, with respect to advertising,

Online ad share is growing fast. But broadcast television still rules, when it comes to ad budgets and is projected to account for about $8.5 billion of the $11.4 total ad spending for 2016, compared to about $1 billion for digital media, according to Issie Lapowsky, writing in Wired. But Larry Grisolano, who supervised political ads for the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns, predicts that in 2016 presidential campaigns will allocate “nearly a quarter of their spending to digital media.”

Yet, it’s not as much about the ads, as peer contact and sharing in social media, particularly facebook, which is so easy to use and where anyone can share print, video and photos. You can’t do that in newspapers and TV.
A well-circulated YouTube clip likely meets more persuadable eyeballs than the most carefully-crafted letter to the New York Times. Peer to peer contact is critical for enhancing voter turnout. But it’s also important for forming and changing political attitudes.
The success of the Sanders campaign owes much to social media. Sanders does not have a flashy TV persona, as does Trump, and to a lesser extent, Clinton. His sincerity comes across well on television. But his more effective tool is social media, which helps to explain his soaring popularity with younger voters.
A candidate can get a lot of bang for the buck recycling YouTube clips on facebook and other social media to reach younger voters. Democrats seem to have more leverage with these tools at the moment. I’m seeing a vigorous debate between Clinton and Sanders followers on facebook and twitter.
Hillary Clinton can be an extremely effective communicator, frequently comes across as the most knowledgeable candidate in televised debates, and generally does well in TV, radio and print interviews. But the Clinton campaign has some catch-up to do to reach the youth demographic on social media.
One of the best things about social media is that it can’t be smothered by the Koch brothers or any other wealthy conservative financiers. A staged political ad is always going to have less cred with swing voters than a heartfelt share on fb. This may come in handy in the final weeks of the general election.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of who will be the next justice in the evenly-divided U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama’s nominee could have a profound impact on both the politics of 2016 and the shape of social and economic progress well into the future.
In his post, “The Simply Breathtaking Consequences Of Justice Scalia’s Death” at ThinkProgress, Ian Milhiser notes that the Supreme Court’s docket includes major cases addressing immigration, abortion, birth control, unions, redistricting, affirmative action and the environment. That’s just the short run. In the-too-distant future, the Court will render decisions that could reverse the Citizens United decision, support gun control and strengthen consumer protection, to name a few possibilities.
At this writing it seems highly unlikely that the President’s nominee will be confirmed by the present U.S. Senate. As SCOTUSBlog publisher Tom Goldstein recently put it,

The bottom line is that President Obama’s nominee is not getting confirmed before the election. Maybe there will be a permanent filibuster. Maybe Republicans will nominally allow the filibuster to be “broken,” then proceed to reject the nominee on the merits. (That course is suggested by the announcement by Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he would await a nomination before deciding whether to hold hearings.) Maybe a couple of Republicans who have specific concerns in purple states will even vote for the nominee. But the entire process will be crafted to ensure that the nominee is not confirmed.

Goldstein is likely correct. But there remains a possibility, that once the President submits his nominee, purple state Republican senators will have second thoughts about serving as collateral damage in a Democratic landslide resulting from Trump being nominated.
Up till now, Republicans have gotten a fairly easy ride on their policy of knee-jerk obstruction of all things Obama and Democratic. The coming SCOTUS battle will up the stakes considerably, perhaps to the point where even low-information voters get it that GOP really does stand for “Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis.” Not a brand that offers much hope for the future.
Further, there are some cracks in the GOP’s obstructionist wall. As Emily Atkin notes at ThinkProgress:

[Ron} Johnson is the latest Republican senator to suggest that his colleagues should at least consider an Obama-nominated replacement for Scalia, breaking with the hard-line position of McConnell. On Tuesday morning, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) warned that his colleagues should not automatically block any nominee, saying the party risks “[falling] into the trap of being obstructionists.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has not ruled out holding committee hearings on Obama’s pick. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has said he would “look at” a nominee put forward by Obama…While most Senate Republicans have sided with McConnell’s decision not to hold any hearings, not everyone has been outwardly supportive. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), for example, recently said that all Supreme Court nominees deserve “in-depth consideration given the importance of their constitutional role and their lifetime tenure.”

It has been argued that the President could make a recess appointment, who could serve without confirmation until the next congress convenes. Veteran High Court reporter Lyle Denniston observes at SCOTUSBlog,

…Less than two years ago, the Supreme Court severely narrowed the flexibility of such temporary appointment power, and strengthened the Senate’s capacity to frustrate such a presidential maneuver.
It is true that one of the Justices regarded as a giant on the Court’s history, William J. Brennan, Jr., actually began his lengthy career with just such a short-term appointment. The chances of that happening again today seem to have diminished markedly.
..Could President Obama make a nominee during that recess? Only if the Senate is taking a recess lasting longer than three days, and does not come in from time to time during that recess to take some minimal legislative action. Both of those circumstances would be entirely within the Senate’s authority.
In that circumstance, a recess appointment to the Court would not be within the terms of the Constitution, as spelled out in Article II.

In that context, a recess appointment could be more than a little problematic, with lots of distracting side-battles. With that in mind, the President still has another way to get his appointee confirmed. It would just take longer. He could appoint a highly-qualified candidate, who gains the wholehearted endorsement of both Democratic presidential candidates. The SCOTUS nominee might be blocked from confirmation in this session, but could have added leverage in the next session, with a new president and Senate.
Some of the potential candidates who have been suggested:
Judge Jane Kelly, age 41 – Tom Goldstein notes, “Eighth Circuit Judge Jane Kelly, who was confirmed by a vote of ninety-six to zero, with the strong support of Senator Grassley. So she will almost certainly be a serious candidate.” But she has served on that court for 2 years.
Attorney-General Loretta Lynch, age 55 – “…Her confirmation vote in the Senate was close (because of Republican votes), so the administration could not make the point that she had been uniformly supported in the past…” But the Republicans could delay her by asking for all sorts of documents pertaining to her tenure as Attorney General, another problematic distraction.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Age 45 — “She was confirmed by without any Republican opposition in the Senate not once, but twice,” notes Goldstein, who thinks she would have a good chance of ultimately being confirmed. She has impressive academic credentials and clerked with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. However, adds Goldstein, “Judge Brown Jackson’s credentials would be even stronger if she were on the court of appeals rather than the district court and if she had been a judge for longer than three years.”
Paul J. Watford – Age 48, is a highly respected Ninth Circuit judge who was confirmed by a 61-34 vote. But he has only served for 3 years. He clerked with Justice Ginsburg and was supported by conservative legal scholars, as well as progressives.
D.C. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, age 47 — Described by Goldstein as “almost a lock to get a Supreme Court appointment in a Democratic administration, because he is so very widely respected and admired. If it were possible to select a consensus candidate whom Republicans would actually confirm, he would surely be it…He also has the great advantage of having been unanimously confirmed.” However, notes Goldstein, he “generates very little political advantage” in the context of 2016 electoral politics.
Judge Merrick Garland, DC Circuit Court, age 63 – “He’s considered a judicial moderate,” notes Michael Tomasky, “and back in 2010, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, always a big player in Supreme Court deliberations, said that Garland would be confirmed for the high court on a bipartisan basis, “No question.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, age 66 – Popular and respected, it’s easy to picture her as a great Supreme Court justice. But her confirmation would mean that Democrats could lose a Senate seat, since Massachusetts has a Republican governor who would appoint her successor. Frequently-cited as a possible presidential candidate in the future, she more likely has higher aspirations. This looks like a non-starter.
These are just some of the names that have been mentioned as possible short-list nominees. But no one should be surprised if the unique politics of 2016 produces a wild card nominee. The race of the eventual nominee could be a factor in how voters perceive the way they were treated by the Republicans. Perceived ideology will surely influence some confirmation votes.
Expect some ferocious political chess surrounding the Supreme Court vacancy over the coming weeks. Regardless of who is eventually nominated by President Obama, however, Democrats are in very good shape for restoring a progressive majority to the Supreme Court.

At The New York Times Jennifer Steinhauer explains why Senate Majority Leader “Mitch McConnell’s Stance in Confirmation Fight Could Help and Hurt G.O.P.,” noting that a substantial number of significant cases coming up are likely to provoke a close vote by the Supreme Court. Says Steinhauer, “Every deadlocked 4-to-4 decision will spotlight the Senate’s inaction.”
“My hunch is that Obama will try to put the Republicans’ obstructionism in sharp relief by offering a nominee who has won support and praise from GOP senators in the past. Three potential candidates who fit these criteria and won immediate and widespread mention were Merrick Garland and Sri Srinivasan, both judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and Jane Kelly, a judge on the 8th Circuit. (I should note that Garland is a dear friend of long standing.)…The partisan outcome of this year’s election just became far more important. This fall, Americans will not just be picking a new chief executive. They will be setting the course of the court of last resort for a generation.” — from E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s Washington Post column
Michael Tomasky makes a case that President Obama should nominate an extremely well-qualified Mexican-American jurist, Tino Cuellar. Having Republican Senators squirming in the spotlight as bigoted obstructionists, says Tomasky, could hammer the GOP’s percentage of the Latino vote in November down to the teens — which improves the chance for a Democratic landslide in November.
John Nichols notes at The Nation that in Saturday’s Republican presidential debate Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio either demonstrated a disturbing ignorance of recent Supreme Court history, or worse a deliberate distortion of the facts. As John Nichols explains in The Nation, “Cruz said, “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court Justices in an election year.”…The debate moderator, John Dickerson of CBS News, pointed our that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988…”No,” replied the know-it-all senator, “Kennedy was confirmed in ’87.”..”He was appointed in ’87, confirmed in ’88,” said Dickerson.” Nichols points out that Rubio incorrectly asserted that “it’ been 80 years since a “lame duck president” appointed a Supreme Court justice.”
Politico’s Kevin Robillard explains how “Scalia death raises stakes in battle for Senate control” and quotes a likely soundbite for Dems: “”It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat,” said retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, whose seat in Nevada is one of the battlegrounds of 2016. “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”
At The New Yorker, John Cassidy asks, “Will the G.O.P. Response to Antonin Scalia’s Death Hand the Election to the Democrats?” Cassidy explains, “If you were a Democratic strategist trying to maximize turnout, what would you most like to see? One possibility, surely, is the prospect of the election being transformed into a referendum on the President versus the do-nothing Republican Congress.”..”Well, the Senate GOP might just have ensured the Obama coalition turns out in 16,” David Plouffe, a former senior adviser to the President, tweeted on Saturday evening.
In her NYT op-ed, “Not Their Mother’s Candidate,” Susan Faludi ponders the “feminist generation gap” and how it is playing out in the 2016 presidential election. Faludi,. author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” observes “Fueled by the force multiplier of Madeleine Albright’s “special place in hell” quote the next day, the feminist family feud now threatens to engulf a presidential campaign. Women under 30 in New Hampshire went for Mr. Sanders 4:1, while women 65 and older sided nearly 2:1 with Hillary Clinton…That the Democratic agenda, so singularly important to women, could be scuttled by a slugfest between generations of like-minded women is a tragedy we can’t afford.”
Steve Phillips, author of “Brown is the New White,” quoted from his interview by Janell Ross in the Washington Post: “In 2012, Democrats and progressives spent $2.7 billion on political campaigns, and that’s just at the federal level. Since 46 percent of Democratic voters are people of color, roughly half of all political spending should target voters of color — hiring of staff, running ads, organizing and mobilizing voters. We need to take advantage of technological tools that enable us to examine campaign-spending reports. For instance, ProPublica has developed an excellent new tool called Campaign Finance API. We then need to use social media to shine a light on how campaigns are doing, and whether they are spending their money right. …After so many years of focusing on and chasing after white swing voters, many cannot conceptualize or comprehend a reality in which white people are not the most important voters to prioritize…Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison (D) has proved that a sophisticated, culturally competent voter mobilization can actually increase voter turnout in mid-term elections, and he has done so at the same time as voter turnout plummeted in Minnesota and around the country. His program eschewed the typical 30-second television ads targeting white swing voters and instead hired organizers to talk to and mobilize Latinos, renters, black church-goers and African immigrants.”
In his article at The Guardian, “Republican debate in South Carolina: 10 things we learned,” Nicky Woolf has a funny take on the GOP presidential wannabees debate Saturday night. Woolf’s subtitle “Donald Trump bullied Jeb Bush, Ben Carson (mis)quoted Stalin, Ted Cruz attempted to speak Spanish and John Kasich said what we were all thinking” provides a sense of the flavor. But my favorite is #6: “Jeb Bush said he’d moon someone, but it is relatively unclear whom, and whether he ever went through with it.”

In last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders again provided an impressive example of civility and how to conduct an informative and uplifting discussion of their respective visions for America’s future — and their differences concerning the policies needed to get there.
Those who hoped for a blustering mud-wallow were probably disappointed, though you may see overheated headlines suggesting otherwise.That’s not to say that either candidate was reluctant to call out the adversary with clever zingers. A couple of examples from Tal Kopan’s CNN Politics post “Top 10 lines from the PBS NewsHour Democratic debate“:

“Well I know journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy and we have yet to know who that is,” Clinton said in response to Sanders slamming Kissinger.
“Let’s not insult the intelligence of the American people. People aren’t dumb. Why in God’s name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions? I guess just for the fun of it; they want to throw money around,” Sanders said of Clinton and Obama taking money from big donors on Wall Street.

There were some wince-inducing moments, including Clinton gushing a little too much about her admiration of Obama. Ed Kilgore noted Sanders’ “harping on old-hippie preoccupations,” such as Nixon era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s role in Cambodia, and carrying on about FDR and Churchill.
My impression was that Clinton dominated the debate, though not by much. Her closing statement was significantly better, however. Both candidates provided an admirable example of thoughtful, informed and mature political discourse, which we have seen, is no longer to be taken for granted in America.
Overall, this was another confidence-inspiring presidential debate, which stands in dignified contrast to the Republican snarkfests. Trump has nastily insulted so many of his adversaries that it is hard to picture him picking any of them as his running mate, should he win the GOP nomination. But it’s easy to see Clinton and Sanders running together on the same ticket. Both are doing so well that it may become hard to do otherwise.
Taking a step back and surveying the value of the Democratic debates so far, there is reason for Dems to be optimistic. These are great debates, and the pragmatist vs. idealist theme that has emerged can help to clarify Democratic Party priorities. Both candidates are also setting a solid example for Democratic candidates running down-ballot, and that’s a good thing indeed.
Those who missed the debate can watch it right here.

NYT reporters and editors preview tonight’s Democratic presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee. “Hillary Clinton’s campaign just started airing a powerful ad in South Carolina highlighting her record of fighting for criminal justice reform and decrying “systemic racism.” I’ll be watching to see if — and how — Mrs. Clinton brings up race and gender issues as she seeks to restore a solid base after losing big to Mr. Sanders in New Hampshire,” says Nick Corasaniti in one overview.
Josh Putnam’s “A Glossary of National Convention Delegate Allocation” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball provides a much-needed guide for us perplexed primary watchers.
The Feb. 20 Nevada caucuses aren’t getting as much media play as did NH or the upcoming SC primaries (Feb 27). But “It really is the first test there is of how effective you are going to be in mobilizing the Democratic coalition in a general election,” says Rebecca Lambe, senior strategist for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of NV. It’s a smaller state than SC, but has more delegates than NH. NYT’s Adam Nagourney reports that “This state is as racially diverse as Iowa and New Hampshire are not: About 20 percent of the Democratic electorate is Hispanic, and 13 percent African-American. Over 95 percent of Vermont, his home state, is white.” The state is considered a Clinton stronghold, but the Sanders campaign, hoping to benefit from NV’s same-day registration, is committing resources to make it a fight.
And here’s why the NV polls are not much help in predicting the outcome.
SC is considered Clinton country, as well. But most of the media interest will likely be in the Republican race, where it could be Bush’s last stand, or alternatively, his comeback moment. We’ll see how much clout dropout Sen. Lindsey Graham has with his Bush endorsement, although Gov. Terry Branstad’s squiring Christie around in Iowa didn’t help him much. It’s early yet, but 2016 doesn’t seem like a great year for successful endorsements.
The ‘Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein’ theme has gotten a pretty thorough workout across media platforms during the last year. But Nicholas Kristof’s latest column offers several well-stated insights about it, including “Republican leaders brought this on themselves. Over the decades they pried open a Pandora’s box, a toxic politics of fear and resentment, sometimes brewed with a tinge of racial animus, and they could never satisfy the unrealistic expectations that they nurtured among supporters.”
At The Fix Phillip Bump explains why “Democrats may have an enthusiasm problem in 2016,” and notes “The Republicans had more voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire than did the Democrats.” But Darrell M. West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution describes turnout for both parties as “healthy,” presaging a high-turnout election in November.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. notes of Hillary Clinton’s image problem: “…A woman who can be charming and engaging outside the context of politics has offered neither a crisp explanation for why she’s running nor a persuasive answer to those who see her as untrustworthy. And her burden is formidable: She must readjust her candidacy without seeming to be contriving a new personality for new circumstances.” The need for a “crisp explanation” makes sense. Candidates really need a compelling sentence or two, perhaps a soundbite, about their reason for running as opposed to a windy laundry list. Jack Olsen, a frequent TDS commenter, has a perceptive observation about this difference between Clinton and Sanders messaging thus far. As for the “untrustworthy” problem, a strategy to contradict the overstated ‘soft on Wall St’ critique might help.
At The Atlantic Ronald Brownstein addresses her challenge in his article “Can Hillary Clinton Convince Voters They’re Not Settling? The former secretary of state will have to shift her strategy as she faces her surging Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.” Brownstone argues, “Clinton wants to present herself as a doer who can produce incremental progress, while her opponent offers unachievable dreams. The problem is that, as in the 2008 race, this positions her as the dour chaperone at the party, offering half-measures while glumly raining on the transcendent change her opponent promises…That’s hardly an inspirational message–particularly for the younger voters who have flocked to Sanders in stunning proportions across Iowa and New Hampshire…Even after her New Hampshire collapse, Clinton still has significant advantages, particularly predominant support among minority voters. But if Sanders continues to drive the campaign argument, those defenses will face increasing strain.”

Looking at vote totals in NH, Sanders was the top vote-getter by far, racking up a tally of 138,716 votes with 92 percent of the returns in, compared to Trump’s 2nd place finish of 92,417 votes. Clinton received 88,827, followed by Kasich’s 41,813 votes.
Of the more than half of a million ballots cast and 92 percent of the ballots counted, all of the Republican candidates together received more than 30 thousand more votes than the two Democratic candidates together.
Trump did well with white working class voters, while Sanders did even better. As Patrick Healey notes in his NYT article, “New Hampshire Takeaways: Trust, Experience and Message Count“:

In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Obama in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states partly because of solid support from working-class white voters. But Mr. Sanders prevailed with these voters in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Sixty-eight percent of white noncollege graduates supported him, as did 65 percent of people from families earning less than $50,000. On the Republican side, the same groups of voters broke strongly for Mr. Trump.

That would be 68 percent of white non college Democratic voters supporting Sanders. CNN Exit polling indicates Clinton received 30 percent of white Democratic voters with no college degree. Clearly, Sanders received more white working class votes than did any other candidate of either party.
Trump won with 41 percent of white Republican voters with no college degree, while Kasich received 12 percent of non college white Republican votes, as did Cruz. The rest of the GOP presidential candidates split the remaining 34 percent of the white working class Republican vote in NH.
Sen. Sanders clearly has traction with this often pivotal demographic group. It appears that he has struck a potent concern of white workers with his emphasis on reforms to rectify economic injustice and curb corporate political power. It will be interesting to see if his message resonates as the primary campaign heads south. It looks like the Clinton campaign needs stronger messaging to address these concerns.