Deadblogging the Michigan Primary

It just gets more surreal: Trump, celebrating his wins in Mississippi and Michigan,  rambles on about Trump properties and products, with a Secret Service agent guarding a table of Trump brand name stuff.

The polls had Hillary up by more than 20 points and gave her a 99%plus lock on Michigan, while pundits said Bernie blew the Michigan debate.  Which in terms of those expectations makes Bernie Sanders' whiskerish victory in Michigan the upset of 2016.

According to the live bloggers at the NY Times and the Guardian, there appeared to be a lot of Dem crossover voting to the GOPer side, and several heard buzz that overconfident (and dare we say entitled) Hillary voters were among them.

Ed Kilgore at New York noted that Bernie overwhelmingly won the youth vote in Michigan, and it was nearly as numerous as the black vote, which Hillary won but below her southern numbers.

There's probably no Midwest industrial state that's become more of a mess than Michigan.  A bad economic situation--with acute and extreme division between a few rich and the rest, including a lot of poor--has been made far worse by GOPer state government, and all their "emergency management."

The result appears to be an angry anti-establishment outpouring of votes. I wouldn't be so sure that all Dems who crossed over to the R primary, did so to vote against Trump.  Trump not only won pretty big, he got a lot of votes--probably more than Hillary or Bernie.  Democrats have to be worried about Michigan now.

In delegate terms, Hillary won the night with nearly all the Miss. and nearly half of Michigan.  But Bernie's victory makes Ohio next week of paramount importance to Hillary.  Now it's true that Obama lost many big blue states to Hillary in the primaries that he won in the general.  But Hillary first of all has to demonstrate that Michigan was an aberration, that she can win Ohio, Missouri and Illinois.  She can't be the nominee of southern red states only (she won Mississippi tonight with more than 80% of the vote.)

Meanwhile, Trump continues to look unstoppable.  The thrice-married, boastful foul mouth won another evangelical southern state (that's supposed to be Cruz country) and a midwest industrial state (like Kasich's Ohio.)  There's no indication he won't sweep the March 15 biggies. So all heil the conquering hero.