Last night's town hall, Michigan votes today, and the debate Wednesday

-- The town hall format, with contestants questioned separately by the moderator and selected audience members, demonstrates again its superiority over both candidates' arm-waving and shouting from podiums.  There is no interrupting, hence there are no misused allegations of sexism (satire, yes; uncomfortably close to reality.  Not the virtual reality that dwells in the fevered minds of the SHills at Blu Koolaid Drinkers Revue).

Both candidates showed well.  Bernie stood out simply for his sincere and direct stands that go against the doctrine held by the average Fox viewer.  Hillary was grilled over Libya and her emails, as predicted, but emerged unscathed.  The Twitter responses ranged from the customary unhinged conservatives freaking out over soshulism or Benghazi or abortion -- a topic mentioned for the first time in a Democratic debate or forum -- to Republicans saying both Clinton and Sanders were their second choices after Trump, to the spinners for both blue sides working overtime.  It was one of the more diverse ideological event hashtags I've followed during this cycle.

-- Another stellar performance by him and another adequate performance by her is unlikely to move the needle in Michigan or Mississippi, both of which are casting ballots today.  There will be more calls for Sanders to pack it in when these states get called shortly after the polls close tonight, but with Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio all on deck to vote next Tuesday, no verdict will be rendered on his campaign's fate before then.

But it shouldn't be long after that.

Update: Mark Kleiman is ready to sign the death certificate.

-- Debate night is Wednesday in Miami with Amazon's Washington Post and Univision moderating.  The WaPo has made no secret of its Hillary bias.

The GOP get their own post coming up.

A bounce-back weekend for Bernie

But a last hurrah as well.

Sunday's debate brought a little more clarity to the state of play for the Democratic presidential nomination; our favorite mensch got the best of the exchanges between he and Hillary Clinton last night, and that dovetailed with the news that he had prevailed in the Maine caucuses, after winning two other caucuses -- Kansas and Nebraska -- on Super Saturday (Clinton won Louisiana's primary in a walkoff).  This continues the pattern of Sanders winning mostly Caucasian states that caucus (no pun intended), and Clinton running up large leads in Southern states that vote the usual way.

Sanders' good weekend is just not going to be enough.

While the crowd seemed to be with Bernie, and some punches were landed, he did not deliver the knockout punch many pundits said he needed to turn around his prospects for a Michigan primary win this coming Tuesday. 

RealClearPolitics.com’s most recent report of polling within Michigan shows Clinton leading Sanders by an average of 20%. While Michigan’s 148 delegates will be allocated proportionally, a loss of that magnitude would be devastating for Bernie. 

Enthusiasm may get a candidate votes; the right number of delegates gets a candidate the party nomination.

[...]

... short of a new scandal or the worsening of an already existing scandal, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

More from Politico, including some unsolicited advice.

With Sanders now having won a total of seven primary or caucus contests to Clinton’s 12 (he lost even liberal Massachusetts, his neighboring state)—he is sailing into ever-more challenging electoral waters ahead. Party operatives have begun gaming out just how and when Bernie should say “when.” He doesn’t want to give up too easily. Nor should he stay on so long that he severely harms Clinton—now more than ever the likely nominee—in the fall. 

In his election night rally in Vermont on Tuesday, Sanders declared that his campaign was, among other things, “about dealing with some unpleasant truths that exist in America today and having the guts to confront those truths.” 

The big unpleasant truth is this: Sanders may have already changed things in this campaign as much as he ever will. By credibly challenging Clinton in the early days of the race, Sanders moved the needle—and Clinton herself—on the issues he cares most about, from trade to Wall Street regulation to expanded access to health care. If history is any judge, there is only so much more that Sanders could expect from a victorious Clinton, or that she would be willing to give him. It seems all but inconceivable that she’d choose him as her running mate ( he is too old, and too unpalatable to too much of the country). She would not offer him the one Cabinet post he might covet (say, Treasury Secretary?) and it’s unlikely he would trade his perch in the Senate for one she might proffer (say Labor or Health and Human Services). 

[...] 

At 74, Sanders knows this is it for him. He’s too old to run for president again, and his small-donor fundraising base makes him immune to the sort of establishment pressures that might induce a more typical candidate to drop out. (On Tuesday morning, his campaign announced he had raised $42 million from 1.4 million contributions, averaging $30, in February alone.) 

“At the end of the day, what does he care if he alienates Hillary Clinton?” asks Anita Dunn, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked on Bill Bradley’s ill-fated challenge to Al Gore in 2000. “He’s got an 80 percent approval rating in Vermont. He’s still going to be a senator, in a closely divided Senate, and if he walks out on the Democratic Caucus, he could cost them control, so he is pretty untouchable. But the real thing to think about is why he is running to begin with—which is his message, his belief that the progressive wing of the party was not going to be represented in the process if he didn’t run, and all that speaks to me of the place he may really want to use his accumulated delegates—that is, the platform.”

Read on there about the Democratic Party's past platform negotiations, the comparisons to Jesse Jackson's quixotic '88 bid, the conciliatory plum of a speaking slot in prime time during the convention, and ... that's it.  A little more unity hoo hah, and then "it's time to GTF on the bandwagon, you dirty hippies".

The same old song and dance every four years from our shitty corporate Democrats.

Speaking only for myself, I'm not falling for the banana-in-the-tailpipe, Kucinich/Jackson/Dean head fake any longer, even when it ultimately comes from Sanders himself.  No matter the hugs and kisses and browbeatings about the Supreme Court that will eventually replace things like this ...

@queenofdorkdom @PDiddie FUCK YOU Everyone, especially Bernie is blaming Hillary for everything her husband did. Guess that part is okay.

— Dakota (@doodlebug0) March 7, 2016

@PDiddie Bernie would be. He has perverse sexual fantasies. Can't imagine being in bed with that fuckhead.

— Dakota (@doodlebug0) March 7, 2016

That's what passes for the Clinton campaign's outreach today.

I'll pass on standing with folks like that.  At any time in the future.