Bernie Sanders Will Not Be President The Week

"The problem is that Bernie Sanders isn't Barack Obama — and no, I'm not just talking about Obama's presumably much greater ability to mobilize the African-American vote. I also mean his enviable capacity to inspire moderates as well as liberals to vote for him. Sanders, by contrast, is the strong favorite of those who identify as "very liberal" but understandably polls weakly among self-described "moderate" Democrats. With Sanders continuing to propose very liberal economic policies that even leading progressive commentators consider to be vague and unrealistic, that is unlikely to change.

But doesn't Clinton face equal and opposite problems of her own by appealing primarily to moderates in the party? She would if there were equal numbers of economically liberal and moderate Democrats, but there aren't. Though the number of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents willing to describe themselves as economically liberal has increased in recent years, the terms still apply to just 32 percent of the total. The proportion of those describing themselves as economically moderate or conservative, meanwhile, is 64 percent.

Which means that Clinton's more economically moderate base of support is roughly double the size of Sanders' liberal base."

Unfuzzy Math: It's Still Hillary Clinton's To Lose The Daily Beast

“I don’t know that it’s right to say anything in particular has ‘gone wrong’ for Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire,” David Axelrod responded in an email. He managed Barack Obama’s campaign against Clinton in ’08. “Iowa has always been poised for a candidate like Sanders to do well, and she has hedged against that by building a far stronger organization there than she had in ’08. I still rate her a slight favorite to win there.

“New Hampshire is a home game for Bernie, so she is fighting uphill,” Axelrod continued. “Beyond those states, however, the terrain turns sharply in her favor, which wasn’t the case in 2008. Ironically, her firewall may be her gaudy lead among minority voters who went in large numbers to Obama in 2008. Twin losses to start the year would be damaging and surely lengthen the race, which is far from ideal. But even if she does lose them, she would be the favorite coming out of it, albeit a nervous one.”