Here’s one reason the Clinton campaign might not be panicking (too much)

[brooklynite]

Washington Post:

Here’s a fascinating nugget from the New Hampshire exit polls that sheds some light on how Hillary Clinton’s campaign is likely to proceed in the big, diverse primary battles to come in late February and March (click to enlarge):


Among New Hampshire Dems, only 40 percent want to generally continue Barack Obama’s policies, while 56 percent want to change direction — 42 percent want to change to more liberal policies, while 14 percent want to change to less liberal policies. Among those who want more liberal policies, Sanders crushed Clinton by 81-18. But among those who want to continue Obama’s policies, Clinton defeated Sanders handily by 62-37.

While one hesitates to place too much stock in exit polls, if this is anywhere close to accurate, it may have real bearing on the contests to come, and may explain why the Clinton camp intends to proceed as it does against Sanders. It suggests another way in which the New Hampshire electorate may have been particularly hospitable territory for Sanders, who is not running as the candidate who would build incrementally on Obama’s achievements, as Clinton is doing.

It’s reasonable to speculate that the electorates in some of the contests to come — which will have more nonwhite and less liberal Dem voters — might have higher percentages of voters who want to continue Obama’s policies or who are not looking for more ambitious change than Obama delivered. As former Howard Dean adviser Joe Trippi puts it, once you leave New Hampshire, suddenly the Democratic Party has a much higher percentage of nonwhite voters, and of the white ones, a lot more of them are moderate and conservative Dems.

[BillZBubb]

1. Hillary will do OK on Super Tuesday.

She'll rack up a lot of delegates from states that will never give a Democrat their electoral votes, whether the nominee is her or Sanders. Those states' influence on the party is unfortunate, since they pull our party too far to the right--without giving us any electoral benefit.

We have our own "red state/blue state" split within the Democratic party. Hillary will win most of the "red" state primaries. Bernie will do very well in the "blue" states.

[Downwinder]

2. We have some pretty liberal Dems. in this very RED state.

[BillZBubb]

35. And all of them together won't get us one electoral vote.

[Downwinder]

37. Sad isn't it.

But we do count in the nomination process.

[redstateblues]

6. You sound like a blue stater

wanting to deny us red state Democrats any voice in choosing the nominee. Sounds like you would be fine with only having primaries in blue states-what about purple states? Condescending attitudes like yours that will keep red states red.

[karynnj]

30. having early primaries in purple states might be best

As others said, no Democratic nominee will win most of the SEC states. Likewise, the blue blue states are not in question. The race always comes down to the purple states. It would be best to define that liberally - including g some states like Missouri that might better be colored red violet or NH which has gone from purple to blue violet.

Note that this would include Iowa and NH, which are small enough to do what they do now by requiring candidates to really talk to people. It could then go to states like NC, VA, PA, NV, Fl, CO etc. Note that these states include diverse populatioms.

Now, if there is a difference between say POC in the deep south and in PA, NC etc. It is the latter that matters. We aren't going to win AL in the GE.

[BillZBubb]

36. I am not.

I live in one of the reddest states.

I want the states who won electoral votes for our nominee to be awarded the privilege of holding their primaries FIRST. They've earned the privilege. The red states could hold their primaries later in the cycle.

"Condescending attitudes" like mine make zero impact on why red states are red.

[Cali_Democrat]

9. So you're saying a dem in a blue state should have more power to influence the primary

than a dem living in a red state?

[BillZBubb]

31. I would prefer blue state dems to have more influence in the nominee, yes.

And by that I mean I would rather have a Democratic Super Tuesday that is primarily blue states, rather than what we have now which is dominated by red states.

Let the blue states speak first. They've earned that right by getting electoral votes for the Democratic nominee. That should count for something.

[Godhumor]

10. WTF? Every Democratic voter should have a say in choosing their candidate

You're talking about disenfranchisement.

[BillZBubb]

32. No I am not.

[KingCharlemagne]

11. That is a very astute observation. I wish you would build it out into its own OP and

elaborate on your themes.

If Candidate A wins the majority of Dem delegates from, say, Alabama, what exactly does that mean, since Alabama hasn't gone Democratic since George Wallace days?

[firebrand80]

15. This discussion sounds awfully familiar

to a debate of 8 years ago

[KingCharlemagne]

19. My memory has grown a bit rusty. What was that

debate?

[firebrand80]

22. In '08 Clinton argued that she won all the big blue states

like OH and PA that Dems needed to win in the GE. Obama countered that he could expand the map.

[KingCharlemagne]

23. Thanks. I think I must have missed that debate back in 2008, BC I was

still protesting against Bush right up to Nov. 2008. (I did carry Obama signs and supported him in the primaries, but I was the sterotypucal single-issue voter. For me, it was and is Iraq.)

[firebrand80]

25. I find it ironic

that Hillary may find herself on the other side of the same debate 8 years later

[uponit7771]

14. You do understand that those states have some of the most progressive dems in them right!?

[BillZBubb]

33. No doubt, just not enough of them to be meaningful electorially.

[JRLeft]

17. I expect her to be the nominee.

[Codeine]

18. The Dems in those states are largely PoC.

Let's not write off such a huge section of the bedrock upon which our party is built, mmkay?

[BillZBubb]

34. I don't want to write anybody off except super delegates.

[vadermike]

3. Hmmm

But if Hillary is the nominee of our party with those kind of unfavorable ratings NGOs we might as well give up cause nominee has won like that and plus trump would probably still Winn cause people are tired of establishment I'm worried and I'm a hill supporter

[LondonReign2]

4. Curious, why is the last line (change to less liberal policies) blank?

[Autumn]

7. This section in the article seems to be the missing numbers in that graph

42 percent want to change to more liberal policies, while 14 percent want to change to less liberal policies.

Interesting that the WP printed an incomplete graph in their article . I wonder why they only showed the 14% less liberal policies. High numbers for Bernie in that graph when you add the 42% who want more liberal policies under his column.

[vadermike]

5. Unless

People hate trump worse which is possible

[uponit7771]

8. Sanders is a passenger who screaming at a bus driver for not going through stop & go traffic fast...

... enough

Then, when the bus driver makes a right turn so they can make a left turn later to continue down their southbound path the passenger screams the bus drivers a sell out!

[LondonReign2]

12. The root of the Sanders campaign is a passenger

pointing out that the bus is headed over a cliff while the owners of the bus reap enormous profits, and after the bus goes over the cliff the survivors are then forced to bail out the owners by buying them a new bus.

[uponit7771]

13. That sounds alarmist at best seeing the passengers can see the traffic through their GPS...

... I don't see how this analogy works out for Sanders

lol... I do feel you on buying them a new bus... that pisses me off to no end

[Bluenorthwest]

21. What bus do you ride where the passengers get GPS?

That's such a strange comment.

[uponit7771]

29. ... on their phones...

[speaktruthtopower]

16. She is..

trying to position herself in the middle without de-energizing her base. Her people aren't that worried about losing to Bernie in the end. They're worried about bringing his supporters in without acrimony and getting them out to vote in the general election.

[TTUBatfan2008]

26. It will be a problem

Her campaign is playing identity politics on gender, race, and age (specifically against young people).

I'm not even talking about unofficial Internet supporters. Hillary was 2 feet away from Albright as she played the gender card in a very ugly manner and then Hillary herself said people get too easily offended. She has official surrogates making statements that strongly suggest the young voters are idiots. And now she has machine politicians playing the race card when the 1990's Clinton policies on race are hurting black people today.

This will only disenfranchise voters for November. Not a good strategy for a candidate who is not trusted by around 60% of the country and is the only candidate to have an open FBI investigation while campaigning. But young voters are idiots for seeing serious flaws in her candidacy?

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Yes, she won the less liberal, more wealthy segment of voters, the DOMA branch of the Party which

she has always embraced as her very own.

[Betty Karlson]

24. So Clinton now relies on the assumption that everybody is happy with the status quo?

She could be in for a rude awakening...

[ORjohn]

27. Why worry, she's got more delegates

I am disgusted that HC has used the demo system to turn a resounding defeat into a win by New Hampshire delegates pledging to her.

[riversedge]

28. Interesting for sure. Thanks