Hillary Will Clinch Tomorrow Night Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey

This article was posted on Tuesday night, June 6.  Right after it was posted, the Associated Press announced that it had updated the delegate count based on new information on superdelegates and Hillary Clinton had indeed hit the threshold of 2,383 required to secure the Democratic nomination.

This is a strange time in this strangest of all presidential election processes.  And that is because Hillary Clinton is running against Donald Trump every single minute of every single day, and yet her actual opponent in a set of primaries on Tuesday (the final primaries of the season, save for District of Columbia on June 14) remains the indefatigable Bernie Sanders.  Sanders is certainly The Guest Who Stayed Too Long and his continued presence in the race – and insistence that he will go on to the convention -- is a huge thorn in Clinton’s side.  There remains absolutely no credible path for Sanders to claim the nomination. In fact, by this time tomorrow night, it will be over.

Let’s recap since the last set of primaries three weeks ago on May 17.  Donald Trump knocked out Ted Cruz and John Kasich on May 4 and thus became the presumptive GOP nominee.  He undertook a rather successful courtship of the GOP establishment, classically consolidating the party behind him, and immediately closed the gap versus Clinton to mere percentage points in both national and swing states polls.  The apparent denouement of the courtship was Paul Ryan’s endorsement of Trump on June 1.

Clinton and Sanders had a split decision on May 17, the kind of “victory” for Sanders that the media loves (the race continues!) and the numbers geeks (like me) cannot quite fathom.  He won Oregon, lost Kentucky, and picked up a net of only +10 delegates versus Clinton, closing the unpledged delegate gap to a whopping 275.  In other words, another feeble chapter in a prolonged lost cause.

Clinton proceeded to have a Very Bad Week (“Hillary Clinton is Criticized for Private Emails in State Department Review”).  Then, she proceeded to have a Very Good Week (“Clinton Bombards Trump With Verbal Missiles in Scathing Foreign Policy Speech”).  And Trump, having finally secured Ryan’s endorsement, swiftly reverted to the racist hate-machine that the GOP thought he might have decided to leave behind, and is now in the midst of a week from hell. 

Bad enough that the Trump U trial is exposing the “education” offered there as little more than a rather  criminal-sounding fraud.  But Trump, far from distancing himself from the trial, has chosen to attack the judge in the Trump U lawsuit for alleged bias due to his Mexican heritage.  As it happens, the judge was born in America and was once so zealous as a California prosecutor of Mexican drug lords that he had to spend a year in a witness protection program hiding from them.  Needless to say, Trump’s rapprochement with the GOP elders took a sudden U-turn, and Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the rest were all forced to publicly denounce his statements, as did VP contenders Newt Gingrich and Bob Corker.  Trump is showing no signs of walking any of this back.

Thus, just when you think this race might settle down into a normal 21^st century race, full of Blue Walls and Swing States, albeit with the mud flying at record levels, Donald Trump reasserts his inner evil and demonstrates conclusively that his path to November will not tack in any predictable manner.  Certainly any notion of a more “presidential” Trump emerging can be buried.

Meanwhile, poor Bernie.  He can’t get a media moment in this whirlwind, but nevertheless the race in California has tightened.  Clinton has never trailed in any polls, but the last three polls each show her with a mere two-point lead.  She will win big in New Jersey (polling has her ahead by well into double digits), and thus will come out way ahead in the delegate count for the day. 

There are also primaries in New Mexico, Montana and South Dakota as well as a caucus in North Dakota, all with, of course, far fewer delegates at stake.  There has been no polling whatsoever in these states of late (for good reason), but I suspect Bernie will do well in all – especially North Dakota, which is holding a caucus) – except for New Mexico where Hillary will pull one out.

The delegate math is as follows.  Clinton, having won the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands primaries the last two days, now has 2,360 delegates, including superdelegates.  Thus she requires only 23 more to reach the magic 2,383 number.  She will achieve that mark as soon as the polls close in New Jersey tomorrow night at 8 PM EST.

BTRTN predicts that Hillary Clinton will win California by a nose, New Jersey by a huge margin and also win New Mexico, while losing the Dakotas and Montana.  Clinton will emerge with more than enough delegates, including superdelegates, to clinch the Democratic nomination.

We also expect that with the California win, Sanders will exit the race on Wednesday.  If Sanders manages an upset there – not so sure.  For the record, Hillary Clinton dropped out of the 2008 race on June 7, which was less than a week after Barack Obama achieved the required delegate number to clinch the nomination that year.

Just for laughs, below is a link to a YouTube video that pretty much captures "Why Bernie Sanders Is Actually Winning."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHS-K7OuLAc

California	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	52
Sanders	48
New Jersey	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	58
Sanders	42
New Mexico	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	54
Sanders	46
Montana	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	46
Sanders	54
South Dakota	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	45
Sanders	55
North Dakota	BTRTN Prediction
Clinton	28
Sanders	72

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHS-K7OuLAc