For Hillary Clinton, the three most important states in the March 15 contests were the swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio. It was a sure bet that she would win in North Carolina and Florida, but Ohio was an uncertainty because it was a state that favored her opponent Bernie Sanders with its proportionately high concentration of White voters, and especially blue collar voters who were concerned about the direction of the economy in their hard hit industrial areas.
So when early results came in for those three swing states projecting that Clinton was the victor, it was Hillary who was swinging easy all the way through the evening.
The moment the polls closed in Florida she was declared the victor by more than a 2 to 1 margin having garnered more than one million votes in the Sunshine state and an exclamation point that this is a state that she believes she can win in November.
And then a convincing win in North Carolina, a state that had gone blue in 2008, in which Clinton made yet another profound political statement, “I will compete here this Fall too”.
Then there was the biggest prize of the night for the Clinton campaign, a state that sealed it for her, and that will help propel her to the nomination, a 14 point win in Ohio. This was a state that even the Clinton campaign expected would go down to the wire, but a state in which the Monmouth poll actually got it right, a resounding Clinton victory.
If Sanders had prevailed in Ohio, as many analysts and prognosticators had anticipated given his surprising victory in the Michigan primary, then the narrative would have been completely different. Sanders would have dismissed her lopsided southern victories as some sort of aberration, and could have combined two big rust belt state wins into an argument that she is a weaker candidate. As it turned out for Sanders, Michigan was the aberration, and his inability to turn the tide will most likely come back to haunt him in the end.
For Hillary the task of convincing democrats that she is the best candidate to take on the GOP nominee this Fall , has gotten easier, but she can’t let down her guard and must reassure the party that she can hold down those swing states in the general election, a task that is very daunting but also doable.
The primary states of Illinois and Missouri were close victories for Hillary where she will need to do a better job of explaining her positions on trade policies, but there are still some very important primaries around the corner such as Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey where she must still perform well in order to convince the electorate that these are states she can secure in the general election.
Sanders will continue to campaign as long as he has the funds to do so in some red states that have caucuses such as Idaho and Utah, that for all intents and purposes are meaningless in a general election map. He will conceivably win a majority of the remaining caucuses along the way, and pick up a few delegates here and there, but Hillary will continue racking up convincing margins in the big primary states that favor her all the way to the convention.
Now that Sanders is in dire straights in his quest for the nomination, will he decide to go nuclear on Hillary (the emails, her integrity, etc), while at the same time she is directing her attention to the general election and the GOP nominee? Will he actually go after her in the same manner in which the Republicans would?
The next primary election is on March 22 in Arizona, a state that is not good territory for Sanders given it’s sizable Latino electorate and older voters, a demographic where Clinton has a considerable advantage. Will he start slinging mud at her as the campaign heads West, and continue going negative, as he did in Illinois while unsuccessfully trying to tie Clinton to the unpopular Chicago Mayor Rob Emanuel , or will he just keep campaigning vigorously to get out his message.
Sanders can’t win the delegate race, that opportunity has come and gone, but what he can do is make a valiant effort to influence the direction of the Democratic party, and deliver continued hope to his millions of supporters across the country.