I was fortunate to have the opportunity to watch Thursday's Democratic debate in Brooklyn live and in person. Although I have seen the other debates on television, there was something more visceral about being there.

What was most dramatic was not any particular point in the debate or any statement the candidates made, but the display of sheer and intense animosity that has developed between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters. With so much attention focused on the civil war taking place among Republicans, commentators may have missed the anger brewing among Democrats.

The tensions on the stage were nothing compared to the tension in the crowd. I sat next to one Sanders supporter who sat with his tattooed arms tightly crossed and head angrily shaking whenever Clinton said anything. In his mind it was clear there was nothing Clinton could do or say that was right.

Even when Clinton made a statement about the need to defend women's reproductive rights, something Sanders strongly supports, he and his friends wouldn't stand up. Throughout Clinton's comments, they yelled that she was bought by Wall Street or how she was a liar who refused to answer any question, "yes" or "no." One of the people in the group said, "I'm a Bernie Democrat. She's Trump light." They were not alone.

Many of Donald Trump’s supporters are intolerant — racist, sexist and xenophobic. Indeed, some high-profile work has highlighted Trump’s populism and his appeal to less-educated authoritarians — a potent witch’s brew challenging democratic norms. And other analyses have focused on the specific targets of Trump supporters’ anti-democratic attitudes – especially, but not solely, Muslims, immigrants and black Americans.

Attention to the treatment of these minority groups is certainly warranted and important, but focusing only on Trump overlooks a crucial point: These are not the only groups that many people dislike, and intolerance is not concentrated among Trump supporters.

The nearly unequivocal story is that Trump supporters are no different from others, including Clinton and Sanders supporters.2 The one clear exception is supporters of John Kasich (~7 percent of the sample), who are demonstrably more tolerant than Trump’s. Kasich’s supporters are distinctive because 30 percent of them in this poll are self-identified Democrats, but also because the majority of them (54 percent) will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee – just over a quarter will peel off and vote for Clinton and the other quarter claim they will not vote. Kasich support appears effectively to be a protest against Trump by people who wish a restoration of good democratic order.

Here’s why Hillary doesn’t hold large rallies. They’re God-awful expensive. Say you want to hold a rally in a park for 27,000 people (actually Bernie had about 11,000, but lied with the higher number) you can’t just say meet me at the park. You have to pay for a permit, arrange and pay for porta potties, and pay for almost all the security. The city/town pays for their regular patrols, the person holding the rally has to arrange for and pay security in advance. These are almost always off-duty cops who can wear their uniform. They make about $100-$200/hour. For a crowd of about 27,000 that’s at a minimum of $100,000 per hour. And the candidate has to pay for clean-up afterwards. A huge rally can cost the candidate a million in campaign donations. For what? He has a photo-op of him in front of a lot of people.

What does Hillary have? Photo-ops of her sitting with some guys and winning at Dominos; eating an ice cream concoction named after her; dancing the Meringue in Harlem with a small crowd going wild and dancing with her; visiting and talking with children; and meeting and listening to people having problems. Oh, and the best one of all looking at and coveting that piece of cheesecake as one of her campaign aides digs into a slice of strawberry cheesecake. Total cost for Hillary maybe $10,000.

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RQ-2
FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20463
April 6, 2016
SUSAN JACKSON, TREASURER
BERNIE 2016
PO BOX 905
BURLINGTON, VT 05402

IDENTIFICATION NUMBER: C00577130

REFERENCE: MARCH MONTHLY REPORT (02/01/2016 - 02/29/2016)

Dear Treasurer:
Response Due Date
05/11/2016
This letter is prompted by the Commission's preliminary review of the report referenced
above. This notice requests information essential to full public disclosure of your
federal election campaign finances. Failure to adequately respond by the response
date noted above could result in an audit or enforcement action. Additional
information is needed for the following 8 item(s):
1. The totals listed on Line(s) 21, 22, 23 ....

Tad Devine is a bright guy. But put him in a game of dominos and he’ll probably lose.

So when the top advisor for the Bernie Sanders’ campaign floats a set of unrealistic hypotheticals as a path to the Democratic nomination, we have to question his lucidity.

A few minutes ago on the Rachel Maddow Show, Devine outlined his domino theory path to the nomination – a thesis based on three interwoven requirements for Bernie Sanders.

1. Win more states
2. Win more pledged delegates
3. Show the Democrats that Sanders can beat the GOP nominee and, the unspoken fourth action,
4. Persuade super delegates to flip and cast their lot with Sanders

Let’s look at each.

Now that Hillary Clinton has won the New York democratic primary decisively, using the state to widen her massive delegate lead and popular vote lead at a time when Bernie Sanders desperately needed to pull off an upset in order to justify the continued existence of his campaign, the question has surfaced: how many democrats and liberals will now defect from Team Bernie to Team Hillary this week? It turns out one prominent Sanders supporter is already doing just that.

“The political revolution Bernie Sanders began (or more accurately, uncovered) is not over,” declared political operative Christopher Nikhil Bowen late last night. “However, his campaign as a true contender to be our party’s nominee, is.” This is notable because Bowen used to work for Bernie Sanders. He’s from Vermont and he was an intern for Senator Sanders back in college. He goes on to explain that he’s still a big fan of Bernie, but he now believes that Hillary is the path forward in the general election and a much preferable choice over any of the 2016 republicans due to her favorable stances on a number of issues.

In Christopher Nikhil Bowen’s words: “I cannot afford a Republican presidency, we cannot afford to go back. I refuse to go back. Stand with me friends as we press forward for a better America with Hillary Clinton. I have endorsed Hillary Clinton for President tonight, and I urge you to do the same!” Read his full endorsement.

It’s time for Bernie Sanders to admit that Hillary Clinton is winning the primary fair and square, and if he can’t do that, it’s time for him to quit.

Things have been getting sour for Team Sanders for weeks now, but, in the past week, the campaign took a decisive turn away from positive campaigning and actually trying to win towards focusing a baffling amount of energy on a futile narrative about how his losses don’t really count.

I wish it were otherwise, but there’s simply no nice way to put this. The Sanders camp has decided to focus on stoking half-baked complaints about process, complaints that don’t serve to win a single vote to their side. Instead, it seems about Sanders and his supporters insinuating that Clinton is winning by cheating. The behavior is not the behavior of people trying to win. It’s the behavior of someone who lost a hand of poker and is throwing his cards in his opponent’s face and screaming about how unfair it is that the other guy drew a better hand.

Things had already been getting ugly prior to the New York primary, with Sanders trying to dismiss the Clinton wins in the “deep South” by saying, “That is the most conservative part of this great country.”

NEW YORK — Bernie Sanders had just arrived at the rally, and missed the incendiary remark entirely. Many on the senator’s campaign had never even heard of Dr. Paul Song, the speaker who had just commandeered news coverage of a massive Washington Square rally in New York by referring to “corporate Democratic whores.”
Nevertheless, by the next morning, the campaign was forced into full scramble mode. Cable coverage of the 27,000-person rally was eclipsed by reporting on the furor surrounding the comment, requiring a Sanders response. After first resisting an apology, the campaign settled on disavowing the remark with a tweet.
Story Continued Below
Another day, another lost news cycle.
In New York, Sanders finally hit the wall, his winning streak halted by a daily pummeling that forced him on the defensive and stopped his momentum cold. The tabloids dealt him punishing hit after punishing hit. The Democratic establishment, most of it in Hillary Clinton’s camp, piled on harder than the Sanders campaign expected. Caught up in one distraction after another – a quarrel over debate details, a back and forth with Clinton over her qualifications, a trip to the Vatican in the run-up to the election – Sanders never gained his footing or even came close to pulling off the upset victory he once predicted with frequency.
Just two weeks before, on the night of his victory in Wisconsin, everything seemed to be going Sanders’ way. He was flush with cash thanks to his energized small donors and he was riding a wave of momentum after posting six wins in the seven previous contests. His aides had just agreed to the finishing touches of a debate in New York — something Sanders himself wanted after the campaigns had initially agreed to hold it in Pennsylvania. His top staff viewed the increasingly sharp timbre and pitch of the race as confirmation that Clinton herself was frustrated with the direction of things.
But even then, trouble was brewing. As Wisconsin voters went to the polls, a transcript of a halting Sanders’ interview with the New York Daily News editorial board earlier that week was beginning to generate online chatter, raising questions about Sanders’ solutions on his wheelhouse topics like breaking up the biggest banks. The Clinton campaign quickly seized on the transcript, sending it to millions of its backers as part of a fundraising email making the case that Sanders hadn’t thought through how to accomplish his biggest goals.

The next day, fresh off his victory, Sanders received another hit: his advisers read in disbelief a Washington Post headline that they took to mean Clinton had questioned Sanders’ qualifications for the presidency during a "Morning Joe" interview. It was one step too far, they thought – and Sanders himself agreed