http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/11/fire-remains-hot-bernie-takes-west-virginia
Sanders won across the board. CNN exit polls show him winning men 53-35 and women 50-38. He won the young big again, and even edged Clinton among seniors. He won the college educated and the non-college educated (60 percent of the electorate). Over one-third of the voters were self-described independents, and he won those by more than two to one (58-22). He won voters most concerned about the economy, health care and inequality. He won those most favorable to a candidate who is honest (69-21), and who cares about people like them (59-23). Clinton once more won those most concerned about experience (75-23) but they were barely one-fifth of the electorate.
West Virginia Democrats don’t like President Obama. Clinton routed him here in 2008. But this time, Clinton has clearly defined herself as the candidate of continuity. Only one-fourth of Democratic primary voters (26 percent) wanted to continue Obama’s policies. Clinton carried those 68-30. Sanders remarkably won both those who wanted more liberal policies and those who wanted less liberal policies than Obama.
Sanders keeps winning primaries, adding delegates and whittling away at Clinton’s pledged delegate lead (now up by about 286). He’s now won 19 primary contests (20 if you include Democrats abroad). In the face of a Democratic establishment and mainstream media eager to put the primaries behind them and get on to the main event, he keeps drawing massive rallies and demonstrating the power of his message.
And he’s clearly pushing Clinton to move to a bolder agenda. She recently doubled down on her opposition to the president’s Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, opposing a vote in the lame duck session of Congress and calling for a new trade approach that works for working people. This week, she announced her support for a public option in Obamacare, and for allowing people of “a certain age” – 55 or 50 – to buy into Medicare. Sanders immediately dubbed it “Medicare for some” but it clearly demonstrates the continuing influence of his campaign to move Clinton and the party to a more progressive message.
Sanders, Clinton, and the Not-So-Simple Case of West Virginia[/b
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/11/sanders-clinton-and-not-so-simple-case-west-virginia
“West Virginia is a working-class state,” Sanders said, in explaining his victory, and “working people are hurting.” That is true, profoundly so. And Sanders has a set of policy proposals (against free trade, for reducing the cost of college and health care and raising taxes on the wealthy) that resonate with them. Clinton has, as a direct result of his challenge, moved or fortified her own positions on issues like increasing the minimum wage. On Tuesday, she came out with new proposals for expanding Medicare and access to child care. But the campaign isn’t as simple as that. In West Virginia, Sanders won slightly more than fifty-one per cent of the vote. (According to exit polls, he won sixty-five per cent of the voters forty-four and younger.) Clinton only got thirty-six per cent (and twenty-four per cent of younger voters). Paul Farrell, a West Virginia lawyer who had said that he was running because both Clinton and Sanders were too liberal, got nine per cent—which is what Ted Cruz, who has suspended his campaign (but hinted on Tuesday that he could unsuspend it), got on the Republican side. (Trump got seventy-six per cent of the Republican vote—another lift of his ceiling—and sixty-one per cent in Nebraska.) Keith Judd, a felon who, notoriously, got forty-one per cent of the West Virginia primary vote against an incumbent Barack Obama, in 2012, got 1.8 per cent, putting him just ahead of Martin O’Malley. Clinton did worse with moderates than Sanders did. According to a CBS exit poll, a third of Democratic primary voters said that they would vote for Trump in the general election over either Clinton or Sanders. (Independents could vote, and some may have been brought in by other races on the ballot.) Only six per cent of West Virginians of either party said that the prospect of a Trump Presidency left them “scared.” West Virginians are brave people.
That may be too simple, also. Sanders’s broader message has to do with what he calls the corruption of the political system. In his speech in Salem, he spoke about Wall Street donations to super PACs undermining democracy. (He didn’t connect them to Clinton, though he has often enough.) It’s something that Trump also talks about. The ideological implications of the belief that just about everything in this country is “rigged” have yet to be worked out. This election has, at least, revealed that the feeling is widespread. In West Virginia, according to a CNN exit poll, voters who listed honesty as a top quality they looked for in a candidate went for Sanders over Clinton by a margin of sixty-nine per cent to twenty-one. There have been similar findings in other states. Clinton’s supporters may feel that such concerns, unfair to start with, are laughable when one compares her to a brazen liar like Trump. But Trump can lie about that, too. Sanders is still in this fight, and he has sound reasons to keeping going. Getting ready for the next one, though, is on Clinton.
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