On to Super Tuesday, the mega primary day
For all the attention and money lavished on Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, they allocated about 2 percent of the pledged Democratic delegates and 5 percent of the Republican delegates who will pick the nominees of the two major parties.
For all the attention and money lavished on Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, they allocated about 2 percent of the pledged Democratic delegates and 5 percent of the Republican delegates who will pick the nominees of the two major parties.
Now, things accelerate.
In two days, Super Tuesday, more states vote (12) and more delegates are at stake (1,460 in both parties) than on any other single day in the presidential primary campaign.
Afterward, it will be clear whether Hillary Clinton's Southern fire wall of African American voters stabilized her candidacy enough to make her, once again, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the face of a strong challenge from the left by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
And Republican elites will learn whether their efforts to stop the steamroller of businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump - who has won three out of the first four contests with a fed-up, nationalist message - were too little, too late.
If Trump were to clinch the GOP nomination, it could trigger a rift that shatters the party. Legions of conservative writers and thinkers have said they could never support Trump because his authoritarian impulses and liberal positions on spending are antithetical to the philosophy of limited government.
"It's more likely he'd have to stop himself at this point," said national GOP strategist Bruce Haynes. "The question would become: 'Is there a peace to be made, or will we see someone emerge as a third-party candidate as a safe harbor for establishment Republican voters who don't want to cast their ballots for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?' "
So far, those in the GOP complaining about Trump have been unable to organize a concerted effort to fight him. Donors have been unwilling to spend on anti-Trump advertising, wary of tangling with a vengeful and unpredictable figure. Party leaders also have been wary of fueling the Trump movement by appearing to oppose it.
Meanwhile, Trump seems to be rolling along. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who ripped Trump in last week's debate, continues to portray him as a "con artist" with failed businesses and defrauded investors in his wake. But Gov. Christie, long an establishment figure, spurned Rubio on Friday to endorse Trump.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, appealed to lower-polling candidates to pull out and make way for one who can beat Trump - many party insiders believe that would be Rubio. But Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who polls in single digits nationally but placed second in New Hampshire, believes he has a shot. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses, has a committed base of evangelical and tea party conservatives. And retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson shows no sign of quitting.
"We're in the middle of the ocean with no engine, we're going where the winds take us, and we can't tell where they're coming from," Haynes said.
Voting for both parties on Super Tuesday takes place in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado (caucus), Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota (caucus), Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. Republicans in Alaska also hold caucuses that day.
Kasich aims to do as well as he can in the Northeastern Super Tuesday states and make a stand March 8 in Michigan. The plan is to get to Ohio on March 15, which awards all its 66 delegates to the winner.
"We expect to run strongly enough in Michigan to make it a stepping-stone for Ohio," said former Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Bob Walker, an adviser to Kasich.
But after Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio vote March 15, about 60 percent of Republican delegates will have been won. Can the field narrow to one anti-Trump candidate before then?
Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory in South Carolina, on the strength of her support among African American voters. African Americans made up 61 percent of the primary's electorate, and Clinton bested Sanders 83 percent to 17 percent, according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the networks and Associated Press.
It is a demographic warning to Sanders, who has not been able to match Clinton and her husband Bill's deep connections to African American voters.
In 2008, African Americans made up large proportions of the Democratic electorates in Southern states with primaries on Super Tuesday - 51 percent in both Alabama and Georgia, 48 percent in Louisiana, 30 percent in Virginia, 29 percent in Tennessee, and 19 percent in Texas.
In the days ahead of the South Carolina primary, Sanders had moved on to campaign in states where he hoped to do well on Super Tuesday. His targets: the primaries in Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and his home state of Vermont, along with the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado.
They contain 288 delegates up for grabs Tuesday, while the Southern states have 571 delegates at stake, including 222 for Texas alone.
"If you wanted to do media campaigns in all of those states, you'd probably have to spend $50 million," Sanders strategist Tad Devine said last week on the daily edition of Meet the Press on MSNBC. "Different campaigns have different strategies. . . . We think this nomination process is going to go on for a long time, all of the way through California."
After South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Clinton could have a 75-delegate lead over Sanders, projected David Wasserman of the independent Cook Political report. With Clinton's huge lead in committed superdelegates - Democratic officials not bound by primary results - Sanders would have to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates at stake in primaries and caucuses to pull even, Wasserman said.
Since Democrats award pledged delegates proportionally, that would be a tall order. "In short, it could very quickly become mathematically implausible for Sanders to come back from a large delegate deficit," Wasserman wrote.
Still, Sanders would be able to prolong the contest for several months, given the strength of his fund-raising. He has said he will continue.
215-854-2718@tomfitzgerald