Mitch Perry
Although Bernie Sanders and his supporters have to be feeling great after the Vermont senator stunned everyone Tuesday night by defeating Hillary Clinton in Michigan, Clinton’s victory in the richer delegate state of Mississippi won her more delegates for the night, 86-69.
Nevertheless, it’s certainly a stunning rebuke to the pollsters and pundits, some predicting Clinton could win by nearly 30 percentage points. On the Bloomberg Channel’s “With All Due Respect” Tuesday night, the dean of conventional wisdom, Mark Halperin, said the only way that the Sanders could “spin” that they did OK was if he came within 4 percentage points.
He won by 50%-48%.
How big a victory was it? No less than FiveThirtyEight website calls it one of the “one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.”
When Jesse Jackson won Michigan back in 1988, his fans actually thought he might take the nomination, freaking out the DNC leadership.
They ended up nominating Michael Dukakis.
So now what? There are two huge prizes next week, Ohio and Florida, and again the polling shows Sanders trailing big-time in those states.
I like his chances to surprise better in the Buckeye State than down in Florida, where the reputation as “Clinton Country”seems to be well deserved, until otherwise noted.
Sanders has been so busy trying to win the earlier states that Wednesday will be his first campaign stump this year in Florida, and who knows whether he’d show up if there wasn’t a debate in Miami?
Nevertheless, he does have a very vocal group of supporters in the Sunshine State who are very much into his message, as I can attest covering a couple of events the campaign has had with campaign staff members (as well as the listeners on my weekly radio show).
Although Clinton fans are undoubtedly still feeling smug about her chances of capturing the nomination, perhaps they shouldn’t feel so terrific. The fact is, the majority of states she’s winning in the South are destined to go Red in November. So Sanders’ success with whites in particular could prove troublesome in some of the states where Donald Trump thinks he can compete that other Republicans haven’t in recent elections, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and perhaps a few others.
In other news …
House District 59 hopeful Rene Frazier says she knows it’s a a lot about negotiating with the other party to get things done as a Democrat in Tallahassee.
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A Survey USA poll done for Bay News 9 is making Florida look ominous for Marco Rubio next week.
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Orlando area U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson says the U.S. Deptartment of Justice won’t look into the circumstances regarding the death of 14-year-old Andrew Joseph III at the Florida State Fairgrounds two years ago. However, he says they may look at the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office’s practices.
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Speaking of the HCSO, it had a message for the media Tuesday regarding the apparent exuberance among some reporters to find out when the Go Hillsborough investigation is due out.
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And Uber is now going after Senate President Andy Gardiner regarding the holdup in voting for a bill regulating TNCs in Tallahassee.
