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.”

If you have been wondering how much of the conflict between supporters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders is Republican-inspired, you are not alone. There does seem to be a fair amount of internet jabber which appears to be designed to foment conflict between their followers. For example, Gideon Resnick reports in his post, “Trump Trolls Plot to Bait Bernie and Hillary Into Twitter Wars” at The Daily Beast:

“Let’s troll Bernie and Hillary supporters systematically,” the 4Chan thread on a recent weekend in May read.
The plan was simple: get a bunch of people to create pro-Bernie Sanders and pro-Hillary Clinton accounts and go to war on Twitter. The sham accounts would use hashtags to slander the opposite candidate and try to rile up die-hard fans into saying accusatory things to the supporters on the other side. The goal was to create more divisions and somehow use it to help Donald Trump gain more support.
“We need to take advantage of this,” the author of the original post wrote. “This is Trump’s gift. If we’re serious about a Trump presidency we need to start infiltrating their conversations in order to sow more divison. I’m talking systematic and long-term /mischief/, not just a hew [sic] minutes trolling dumbass SJW’s (social justice warriors).”

This particular scam didn’t end so well, since no new threads were launched by it, the stated goal of its proponent. There are other thinly-disguised Republican trolls foraging around on social media, as Resnick notes, quoting a Sanders supporter:

“Dear Admins (or whoever else wants to see what the other side is doing to troll us)… These idiots created a website on specific strategies to troll us,” Tam L. Cocar wrote, referring to the thread in the “Bernie Believers” Facebook group. “Unfortunately, a lot of it seems too familiar as of late. So if you have hours to waste to see how elaborate their trolling strategy has become (they seem deluded enough to fancy themselves as 007 types), please do. Why some moron would post this without the site being password protected I don’t understand.”

Very few Clinton or Sanders supporters take the bait. As Eric Varney, who runs a pro-Sanders Facebook page, explains of another troll ploy:

“An attempt like this would only work with people who are uneducated about the political system and do not know how to debate civilly,” Varney told The Daily Beast. “Neither the majority of Clinton or Sanders supporters are stupid. There are ignorant people on both sides who would fight the wind if it whistled wrong. But that’s the nature of social media.”

Those who are too time-challenged to noodle around on Twitter may notice suspicious posts on Facebook and other social media. Much of it reflects the civility of an unusually-immature jr. high school student. But Dems should probably assume that there are more sophisticated trolls out there trying to juice up divisions between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns.
“Let’s you and her fight” trolls are likely wasting their time, since most Sanders and Clinton supporters are well-aware that their common adversary – the Trump campaign – would like nothing better than to divide Democrats. They recognize that Trump represents a radical departure from progressive values and his defeat should be the top priority for all Democrats after the convention.
None of this is to deny that there that there are some strongly-felt differences on key issues, independent of trollage, that need to be resolved by the two Democratic campaigns. Few supporters of Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders are going to be provoked by any of it, though both camps are wise to keep an eye out for GOP trolls who are trying to amp up the bickering between them.

Yesterday J.P. Green noted an article in Campaigns & Elections underscoring the high regard Repubican party political operatives have for Facebook as a media outlet for their ads — despite the efforts of Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to discredit Facebook as tainted by liberal bias.
But Thune’s record suggests more than a little hypocrisy, as Steve Benen noted at Maddowblog:

…John Thune says he’s concerned about Facebook’s “culture” and the integrity of its mission statement, but again, how in the world is that any of his business? Isn’t the Republican model based on the idea that the free market should decide and if online consumers don’t like Facebook’s “culture,” we can take our clicks elsewhere?
But even more striking still is Thune’s uniquely weak position. When the South Dakota Republican became Congress’ leading opponent of net neutrality, Thune made the case that any political interference in how the Internet operates is inherently unacceptable.
Worse, in 2007, Thune railed against the “Fairness Doctrine,” arguing at the time, “I know the hair stands up on the back of my neck when I hear government officials offering to regulate the news media and talk radio to ensure fairness. I think most Americans have the same reaction.”

For the sake of argument, so what if Facebook had more “liiberal” content? Fox News, Breitbart and the Drudge Report display relentless conservative bias every day, and no Senators are trying to intimidate them to change their polices to reflect a more liberal point of view. Not all media has to be nonpartisan.
But Facebook has 1.6 billion “users,” and dwarfs all other websites in some key metrics that measure influence, which explain Thune’s meddling.
In reality, however, the political content of Facebook is mostly determined by the public, as its “users” choose which articles, videos and other content to share with their FB friends. It’s different for every user, from moment to moment. Liberals see mostly liberal content, and the same principle applies for both conservatives and moderates. Facebook does provide a powerful forum for peer-to-peer political education. But everyone can choose what to read and view and what to ignore, and that includes content spotlighted by Facebook’s administrators and staff.
But Brian Fung’s Washington Post article, “Facebook is making some big changes to Trending Topics, responding to conservatives” raises a disturbing possibility that facebook is caving to political pressure. As Fung reports,

Facebook said Monday it will stop relying as much on other news outlets to inform what goes into its Trending Topics section — a part of Facebook’s website that despite its small size has grown into a national political controversy amid accusations that the social network is stifling conservative voices on its platform.
Under the change, Facebook will discontinue the algorithmic analysis of media organizations’ websites and digital news feeds that partly determines which stories should be included in Trending Topics. Also being thrown out is a list of 1,000 journalism outlets that currently helps Facebook’s curators evaluate and describe the newsworthiness of potential topics, as well as a more exclusive list of 10 news sites that includes BuzzFeed News, the Guardian, the New York Times and The Washington Post.
…Facebook’s policy change Monday appears to be aimed at defusing the palpable tension between it and Republicans outraged over reports that Facebook’s Trending Topics could be biased against conservatives. Facebook’s announcement ending the scraping of news sites and RSS feeds for Trending Topics came in a response to Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the top Republican on the powerful Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Thune demanded on May 10 that Facebook answer a series of questions in light of the mounting outcry over the perceived bias.

Facebook has reponded that “Suppressing political content or preventing people from seeing what matters most to them is directly contrary to our mission and our business objectives.” But the changes regarding the selection of ‘Trending Topics” content suggest otherwise.
Most Facebook users will probably not notice much change in political slant and tone. That will still be largely determined by user posts. But the possibility that Facebook’s content policy can be influenced by political intimidation, especially from the politician who leads the opposition to net neurtrality, is disturbing.

Julie Pace of Associated Press addresses a critical problem for the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination:

How can the wonkish Clinton counteract Trump’s finely tuned ability to command attention? Can she win the White House by letting Trump run on his terms, hoping his unorthodox candidacy wears thin with voters by November?…Or does she need to make a positive case for her own candidacy, something she has struggled to articulate during the Democratic primary?

It’s a tough question. Trump’s ability to manipulate the media is unprecedented in U.S. presidential politics. Back in March, for example, a New York Times/mediaQquant study found that Trump had received $1.898 billion in free media coverage, compared to $746 million for Clinton and $321 million for Sanders.
As a reality TV star, he has learned that saying outrageous things positions his campaign to dominate headlines and television coverage. He undoubtedly hopes that it creates an unspoken subtext that he is “in control” of the narrative, regardless of how stupid or malevolent are the substance of his comments. Low-information voters, he hopes, will mistake his media domination for authority.
Further, notes Pace,

“He’s good at dominating the news cycle and changing the news cycle to fit his purposes,” said Rick Tyler, former communications director for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign. “He has this ability to just change the trajectory of where the news is going by using amazing distractions that are just too delicious to pass up.”

if Sanders can somehow pull offf an upset and win the Democratic nomination, he is going to have the same problem. Although Clinton has received more popular votes than Trump, and Sanders has received nearly as many, neither one has received anything close to the media coverage Trump now takes for granted. Trump’s campaign is the ultimate test of the proposition that even bad media is better than no media.
The danger for the Democratic presidential candidates is that their ability to be pro-active in their messaging gets smothered by Trump’s outrage du jour. As Pace writes,

…Clinton has overcome her messaging struggles in the primary and is close to clinching the Democratic nomination. But facing Trump will be another matter, with his capacity to set the tone for the day in the morning through frequent tweets and calls into news shows, catching his rivals off guard and leaving them scrambling to catch up.

It’s possible to over-worry about all of this. A lot of Trump’s coverage is not just bad; It’s horribly negative and that has to hurt some over time. Millions of voters are going to see video collages of his most unflattering moments in the months ahead and it could have a devastating effect on his campaign.
There are a lot of options in between ignoring Trump’s daily tirade and blasting him with well-targeted soundbites. But what the Democratic presidential nominee must have is a disciplined, pro-active messaging strategy and a positive political identity that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s reckless and obnoxious persona.

Although former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got nearly 2,000 more popular votes than Sen. Bernie Sanders in the KY primary, Sanders is ahead by about 36,000 more popular votes than Clinton in Oregon, where 70 percent of the votes cast have been counted, according to the Associated Press.
The two candidates are expected to split the delegates in KY, while Sanders will reduce Clinton’s delegate lead slightly as a result of his Oregon victory. Dana Tims of The Oregonian noted,

Sanders locked up the Oregon victory by establishing insurmountable leads in Democratic strongholds including Multnomah and Lane counties. But they’ll share 74 delegates proportionally, meaning Sanders’ victory will do little to cut into Clinton’s overall lead in delegates.
…A sizable surge in voter registration, particularly among young voters apparently sparked by Sanders’ populist message, preceded the primary.
Registration among those ages 18 to 29 increased by 21 percent from September 2015 to April 2016. No other age group managed to break double digits, with voters ages 30 to 39 coming closest at 9 percent, according to Oregon Secretary of State’s Office figures.
During that same eight-month period, Democratic registration grew by 16 percent. Democrats now comprise 42 percent of the electorate, up from 38 percent less than a year ago. Republican registration, by contrast, grew by 7 percent during the period. Their share of the electorate remained unchanged at 30 percent.

Thus far, Clinton has received more than 3 milllion more popular votes than has Sanders. As for overall delegate totals, Tims notes,

Although precise delegate tallies can change day-to-day, Clinton, prior to Oregon and other Tuesday contests, counted 1,716 delegates awarded on the basis of the votes she’s gotten. That’s an edge of 283 over Sanders’ 1,433 pledged delegates.
When superdelegates are factored in, Clinton’s lead grows daunting, giving her a 2,240-to-1,473 edge over Sanders…Unpledged Democratic party leaders are free to support the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their states’ voters leaned. A vast majority of the party’s 714 superdelegates – 524 to 40 to be precise – have declared their support for Clinton.

The Clinton campaign believes they can clinch the delegates needed for the Democratic nomination on June 7, when California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota hold their primaries and caucuses. Sanders has pledged to stay in the campaign “until the last ballot is cast” and “take our fight to the convention.”
Regarding the angry conflict between Clinton and Sanders supporters at the Nevada state Democratic convention, Clare Foran observes at The Atlantic:

The challenge for Democrats, and particularly for Clinton, is to find out how to preserve unity as the primary drags on. One question is whether the kind of hostility seen in Nevada will play out at the national convention this summer. “There’s not going to be any violence in Philadelphia,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN on Tuesday. “Whoever the ultimate nominee is we want to unify the party… so that we can all go out and defeat Donald Trump in the fall. I don’t think there’s any question about that. What happened in Nevada, I think, is an aberration.” That likely won’t be enough to quell fears among Democrats who are concerned that unity will be difficult to achieve.

Let anger, chaos and violence define the GOP brand. The last two Democratic national conventions have provided excellent displays of civility, event management and party unity — that’s a tradition worth keeping.

From Andrew Prokop’s Vox.com post, “Why Democrats increasingly think Donald Trump can deliver them a Senate landslide“:

In addition to competing in a set of Senate contests that have long been expected to be in play, Democrats have managed to recruit well-credentialed and potentially formidable challengers in many “reach” Senate races where the party wouldn’t ordinarily expect a win.
These contenders are running mostly in red states, and most of them would likely lose in a “normal” presidential election year. But a backlash against Trump could potentially put these seats into play, so long as credible challengers were ready and waiting to take advantage of the situation.
“We wanted to have as many surfers on the water as we could, because we didn’t know how big the wave would be,” a Democratic strategist involved in Senate races recently told me.
Indeed, the surprise dynamics of the presidential race and the apparent strength of these contenders make the upper bound for Democratic gains very high indeed — north of 10 seats. With a strong performance across the board, Democrats could end up with 56 seats or even more overall, which is a very solid majority.

Prokop adds, “The upshot, of course, is that Democrats get to pick and choose which Republican-held seats to gun for, while playing defense in very few races.” He sees three basic categories of 2016 U.S. Senate races:

The top-tier GOP-held battlegrounds: These are six Republican-held seats that have long looked vulnerable — Obama managed to win all these states twice. In five of these, senators who first won their seats in 2010 will face a presidential-year electorate for the first time, while the other seat is open.
The “reach” GOP-held targets: Then there are another six GOP-held seats, mostly in redder states, that would likely be out of reach in a typical year. But Democrats think they’ve recruited strong challengers in all six who could be competitive in the Year of Trump.
The few Democratic defenses: Finally, there are a mere two Democratic-held seats that are being seriously contested by the GOP. And both are in states with growing Hispanic populations, so Democrats are hoping Trump’s rise will hurt Republicans badly here.

Here’s a map illustrating Democratic prospects for winning a senate majority at the current political moment, based on Prokop’s analysis:

Prokop has paragraphs analyzing each key senate race, and you can read more about it right here.

Gabriel Debenedetti reports at Politico that “A group of Bernie Sanders staffers and volunteers is circulating a draft proposal calling on the senator to get out of the presidential race after the final burst of Democratic primaries on June 7, and concentrate on building a national progressive organization to stop Donald Trump.”
It’s a 1600-word document, which “calls for the Vermont senator to exit the race and launch an independent political group far larger than any other recent post-campaign political operations, such as those started by Howard Dean or Barack Obama.”
Yamiche Alcindor reports at The New York Times, however, that:

Michael Briggs, a spokesman for the Sanders campaign, called the draft plan “totally irrelevant.”
“We are focused on winning the Democratic nomination,” Mr. Briggs said in an email. “This document is something that neither the senator nor anyone he works with has seen. We have no idea who wrote it. We could care less about the document.”

Sanders and his campaign are still focused on making the most of the rest of the presidential campaign. They still hope for an upset win in CA and they plan to be in a good position to win the nomination, should Clinton stumble or hit the political banana peel. However, as Debenedetti explains,

The group of over a dozen Sanders backers crafting the proposal — a collection of volunteers and current and former Sanders staff members, all veterans of other high-profile campaigns, including Barack Obama’s, who insist on anonymity — believes that leaving an imprint on the party platform is an overrated goal. They suggest that the Vermont senator should exit the race if it’s clear he cannot win — a call similar to the one made by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, his lone Senate endorser — rather than spend the five weeks before the convention in limbo.

Another element of the proposal may not sit so well with Democratic Party officials, depending on the timing:

While Sanders will likely speak at July’s official Democratic convention in Philadelphia, the document proposes that he and his aides host a ‘convention’ event of their own to spur excitement and launch this group: “The best organized independent expenditure organization in history [that will] give the vast (and deeply anti-establishment) base a vehicle into which they will whole heartedly pour their energy.”…Such an effort, they write, would help bridge the gap between Clinton and the “large cadre of young, newly political Sanders supporters [that] sees rejection of Hillary and the Democratic Party establishment as core to their identity.”
…”A Sanders-led (as opposed to Sanders-centered) independent entity could provide a much needed, articulate and energized economic populist voice to the anti-Trump effort without the intrinsic compromising effect posed by close association with Neoliberal Democratic elites, as well as weaning the volunteer base off total reliance on individual candidates during one-off election cycles.”

It’s good to know that this dialogue is underway inside the Sanders campaign. Win or lose, Sen. Sanders has a lot to contribute to the defeat of Trump and the election of Democrats down-ballot from the presidency, If he is able to organize a progressive coalition that can function beyond 2016, Democrats may at long last have the vehicle that can help challenge the GOP’s midterm edge.

At Vox.com Matthew Yglesias conributes the most credible explaination yet offered why Sen. Bernie Sanders will surely support Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Democratic nomination:

…Sanders already has all the reasons he could possibly need to give Clinton his full-throated support.
Thanks to the primaries, Sanders has emerged as a substantial factional leader inside the Democratic Party — someone whose statements and tweets will garner media attention, whose email list will be coveted and envied by other Democrats in Congress, and whose support or opposition to a measure will matter to a national constituency. That gives him, potentially, considerably more influence over national affairs than he’s had in his previous 25 years in Washington. But essentially all of that influence hinges on Clinton winning the election in November.
That, rather than anything to do with platform concessions or “lesser of two evils” talk, is why Sanders will almost certainly do everything in his power to boost Clinton this fall. He’ll do it because it’s the right thing for Bernie Sanders.

Their differences on key issues are more a matter of degree than substance, as Yglesias notes,

Clinton and Sanders are pulling in the same direction on almost every issue.
Sanders wants to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour; Clinton wants $12.
Sanders wants a massive increase in taxes on the wealthy; Clinton wants a modest one.
Sanders wants a big new government-run health insurance program to cover everyone; Clinton wants to expand an existing government-run insurance program to cover more people.
Sanders wants a hard cap on bank size and complexity; Clinton wants enhanced capital requirements for large and complex banks that would discourage size and complexity.

Yglesias adds, “…On virtually every issue, Sanders has promised to go further than Clinton has in the same direction. Which is another way of saying that implementing Clinton’s agenda would be a way of moving closer to Sanders’s goals — so in pursuit of his goals, he’s going to want to put her in the White House.”
In addition, argues Yglesias, a Clinton victory gives Sanders substantially enhanced clout as the leader of a bona fide grass roots movement that has the ear of the President. It would give Sanders inside leverage, as opposed to being the leader of a movement on the outside.
Further, it would give Sanders the inside track to become the chair of one of the most powerful Senate panels, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, with “influence over legislation, of course, but also the ability to call hearings on whatever subject he likes.” That’s a lot better than being a minority member of the committee headed by a Republican, which would likely accompany a Trump victory.
Sanders is a pragmatic progressive, not a Naderesque ideologue who would rather go down in a blaze of purist glory than support reforms that can benefit millions of working people. Sanders is not giving up his efforts to win an upset victory. But he clearly understands that a Clinton presidency would provide support for his policy reforms, support that would be completely denied by Republican control of the Senate. For both moral and practical reasons, he will work hard to elect the Democratic presidential nominee, as will most of his supporters.