After the Acela Primary

Lloyd Green writes at The American Conservative:

Much as Clinton may rail against the rich for not paying their fair share of taxes, it is the wealthy who have kept her in the game. Democrats who commute daily to Wall Street had the final say in the Nutmeg State. Tellingly, Clinton ran best along Long Island Sound, Cheever Country, the very route that hauls precious human cargo into Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal daily, and the very places where George H.W. Bush grew up.

While Democrats don’t give Clinton the highest grades for empathy or honesty, they have repeatedly rewarded her for her electability and experience. For the moment, polls show that may be enough for Clinton to defeat either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
As for Sanders, he continued to run well with young Democrats, and white voters without college degrees. But as was the case in New York, being the beer track candidate is not enough if you’re looking for the win.

Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, Sanders sounds determined to trudge onward to July’s Democratic Convention. Unlike Clinton who ended her 2008 quest after winning the California Primary, Sanders refuses to take “no” for an answer, acting as if his candidacy were about something larger than himself.

Speaking to his supporters in West Virginia as the results rolled in, Sanders rehashed the trajectory of his campaign, and stressed that he was outperforming Clinton when pitted against the Republican field. But Sanders also went well beyond talking about process, and devoted his speech to the themes of inequality, and how being wealthy translates into a markedly better and longer life.

In West Virginia, that is a message that will likely resonate for Sanders in the state’s upcoming primary. For the record, West Virginia is the whitest state in the Union, and it is also among the nation’s poorest. Unfortunately for Sanders, few of the remaining primary states match West Virginia’s demographics