This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can't Tell Bernie Sanders to Drop Out
Her choices in 2008 dictate what she can say now.

—By Pema Levy
| Mon May 2, 2016 6:00 AM EDT



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-drop-out-election

Eight years ago this month, Clinton was trailing hopelessly behind then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. On May 1, 2008, Clinton loaned her bankrupt campaign $1 million (following at least $10 million in earlier loans). Before the end of that week, pundits were calling the contest for Obama, whose May 6 win in the North Carolina primary, by 14 points, had made his delegate lead essentially insurmountable. "We now know who the Democratic nominee will be," Tim Russert said on MSNBC after the results came in. Less than a week later, Obama surpassed Clinton in the super-delegate count, signaling that the party establishment was shifting behind the presumptive nominee.

But Clinton was determined to fight until the last votes had been cast. She would go on to win contests in West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota before the primary ended on June 3, even though there was no way for her to make up her deficit in the delegate count.

Along the way, the Clinton campaign put forward every conceivable argument to justify staying in the race. It used wins in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky to claim that Obama was losing support among white working-class voters and that she would be the stronger general election candidate. On May 5, it began to argue about the delegate math, making the case that the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination was actually 2,209, not 2,025, the figure that had been cited up until then—and that if neither campaign reached that new number, Clinton was prepared for a floor fight at the party's convention. On May 23, Clinton justified her continued White House bid by noting that in 1968, Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, after winning the California primary. And lurking in the background in these final weeks was the rumor that Republican operatives had gotten hold of a tape of Michelle Obama disparaging "whitey."

Eight years later, Clinton knows she cannot turn around and tell Sanders it's time to leave the race, even though her current lead over Sanders, at about 300 delegates, is larger than the nearly 160-delegate lead Obama had over her after the North Carolina primary in 2008. The Sanders campaign had $17 million on hand as of the latest public filings at the end of March, giving it far more fighting power than the broke Clinton effort had at the same point in 2008.

“All right, apparently there’s a young man who’s having some problems," Cruz said, as the young heckler shouted, "You suck!"

Cruz responded, "Thank you, son."

“Children should actually speak with respect," he continued. "Imagine what a different world it would be if someone told Donald Trump that years ago.”

“You know, in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking," the Texas senator remarked, echoing similar comments he made in January in reference to Hillary Clinton, suggesting then to voters that they should "spank" the former secretary of state at the ballot box for her handling of the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/05/ted-cruz-heckler-spanking-222694

Ted Cruz Responds to Caitlyn Jenner's Bathroom Break

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/ted-cruz-responds-caitlyn-jenner-s-bathroom-break-n565351

In an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, Cruz claimed Pres. Barack Obama, former Sec. Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump want to pass a law "that says any adult man can go into a girl's restroom if he feels like a woman at that minute."

He continued, "The real danger is not people who are transgendered. It's people who are predators."

The direct challenge from Jenner did not cause Cruz to back away from his position. "People who are predators…use that law as an excuse to go target our kids. And that is a real danger," he said.

Calling this a "common sense" issue, Cruz said, "I'm the dad of two little girls. It doesn't make any sense to allow grown adult men, strangers, to be alone in a bathroom with a little girl, and virtually all Americans understand that. And it is only the height of political correctness that refuses to acknowledge that."