Before the New York presidential primary vote, the (always right unless it isn’t) conventional wisdom was twofold:

1. Republican billionaire and showman Donald Trump HAD to win big in his home state. If he didn’t blow the competition (aka Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: Ohio Gov. John Kasich now seems in it as a vanity romp) away and in a YUGE way, chances are his nomination was iffy.

2. Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have to win by double digits to really show that she all but has the nomination locked up, when you factor in the super delegates. In anticipation of a Clinton win, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders camp let it be known that if Clinton didn’t win in double digits it would be an “embarrassment.”

This was a case where both candidates met the conventional wisdom bar.

Trump won big, blowing his competition away — and Clinton won big in double digits, leading to her making a spirited victory speech and Sanders changing his plans to campaign to Pennsylvania for the primary there, and instead return home to Vermont. Early CNN exit polls showed an extremely tight race, which started some Internet pundits wondering if Clinton would lose. You could see the narrative slowly emerging. She didn’t (so pundits then move on to new assertions, stated as if they have special knowledge of What Will Happen Next).

What next? A few thoughts. The larger issues are these:

Here’s an extensive roundup of mainstream media, new media and Twitter reaction to the critical New York primary — and what it likely means going forward. Note that these quotes are excerpts (so go to the link to read each piece in full).

–-ABC’s Rick Klein notes that Trump and Clinton had hometown advantages but it doesn’t change the math that will allow their well-funded competitors to stay in the race as long as they choose:

Clinton dispatched with Bernie Sanders in the state Sanders was born in, and where Sanders outspent Clinton substantially. But neither this nor any likely subsequent wins will end the Sanders challenge, not to mention the issues his candidacy has elevated, to Clinton’s regular discomfort.

New York did serve a critical purpose for Trump and Clinton: both will walk away from the state with large caches of delegates, and give them leads that will be practically impossible to overcome.

“We don’t have much of a race anymore,” said Trump.

“Victory is in sight,” said Clinton, closer to the mark for both of them.

—The Hill points out that the old saying “a slip of the ship sinks a ship” applies to Cruz, whose sneering talk about Trump about the showman’s “New York values” did not go over well with New Yorkers, who basically said drop dead. Lesson? Even in this age where zingers mean more than policy recitation, a zinger that insults one of the biggest states in the country might be an unwise thing to do, even if it’s great red meat for your party’s base in primary debates.

Cruz, who may end up getting zero delegates from New York state, was not helped by his attacks on “New York values.”

The New York values line — first delivered in January as a critique of Manhattan’s liberal culture — played well among evangelicals in Iowa but came back to bite Cruz when he had to face Empire State voters.

Cruz drew loud protests as he campaigned in the Bronx and tried to reframe the comment as an attack on New York Democrats. But returns from Tuesday show no evidence he made inroads with voters.

–Why did Sanders fail to get the votes to show he could give Clinton a run for her money and that there was a result for the big money his campaign spent in the state? Politico’s analysis is spot on: Sanders became distracted and hit rough patch after rough patch in New York, all as he sharpened his attacks on Hillary. I believe these attacks may have pleased his supporters but have undermined his original image as someone who was not just another attacking politico. Politico’s story also points out a reality of 21st century politics: campaigns get stalled on little gaffes, unwise decisions that clearly would cause them to lose focus. Unspoken? The role of social media in magnifying these errors and dominating a news cycle. Here’s part of Politico’s must-read-in-full piece:

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.

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.

AND:

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.

Note on this one there was no excuse: the advisors read a headline and did not carefully read the story. On most papers, reporters don’t write headlines so headlines may not be accurate.

“She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote, unquote, not qualified to be president,” said a fired-up Sanders that Wednesday night, headlining a rally in Philadelphia and delivering up his harshest take yet on the former secretary of state and senator as the political spotlight started shifting fully to New York.
“Well let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC. I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you’ve supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs. I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know, has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries.”
Stunned Clinton staffers, according to several of them, saw it as a declaration of war. Clinton’s army of elected surrogates in New York went on the attack against Sanders, painting the suggestion as absurd and offensive, and the kind of thing one hears from a crass politician, not a political revolutionary — a message that Clinton allies said the campaign heard from Democrats as it was door-knocking across the state. Sanders was repeatedly asked to defend his claim before he eventually backed off.
Meanwhile, Sanders’ Daily News interview continued to reverberate.

There’s a lot more. And another lesson here is the role of crowd counts: in campaign after campaign over the years, candidates, their supporters and many pundits make assumptions of vote outcomes based on big campaign rallies. It’s a dangerous assumption to make, if you aim for accurate predictions.

Politico also notes that this was a highly significant win for Clinton. Indeed: as the exit polls came in, on Twitter and elsewhere you coudl see new and old media primed for the narrative that Sanders was going to win or it’d be a close race and that Hillary Clinton was in serious trouble. Instead, this happened:

Badly trailing Hillary Clinton in delegates and the popular vote despite his eight-of-nine winning streak, Bernie Sanders needed a dramatic moment in New York on Tuesday night to shake up the Democratic nomination contest before it’s simply too late.
Instead, it was Clinton who delivered the statement with a decisive win in her home state. With 90 precincts reporting, she led 58 to 42 percent, and was declared the winner by The Associated Press.

“Today you proved again, there’s no place like home,” she told a raucous crowd in New York City afterward. “This one’s personal,” she added of her victory.
The emphatic win by Clinton could finally put to rest lingering doubts about her struggles to stamp out the Vermont independent — and allow her to finally pivot in earnest to the general election as the slugfest continues on the Republican side.

Actually, in reality, Clinton can pivot all she wants, but it’ll be like trying to do ballet in a mosh pit.

There are no signs that Sanders intends to halt his campaign, his followers insist it isn’t over, and he’s well funded — and is likely to get lots more in contributions.

A CROSS SECTION OF BLOG AND OTHER WEBSITE REACTION:
—The Daily Kos’ Magna99:

Disappointing day for Bernie and supporters, but far from devastating, as the Spinners-That-Be will be mightily spinning it.

The reason? This: While in 2008, Obama won only one county of 64 in Clinton’s “home state” of New York; this time, Sanders took FIFTY counties to Clinton’s twelve. (Think about that for a coupla seconds, and how it relates to that abysmal national favorability rating.) And, since delegates are awarded by congressional district, Clinton looks to only net 30 delegates with her win (final results not yet in)… what looked like a substantial win didn’t amount to a substantial net gain.

So… here’s where we stand. None of the online poll-trackers show the actual, current pledged delegate numbers that include the recent redistributions in Nevada, Missouri and Colorado, plus the Washington State delegates won but not yet awarded (until the last stage of caucusing is complete — Sanders’ numbers won’t go down there).

With these factored in, Bernie went into New York down only 196 pledged delegates. After tonight, he looks to be down no more than 226. (Which is less than what most outlets were reporting going into New York.)

There are 1668 pledged delegates still up for grabs.

Sanders’ continues to narrow the gap in delegate-rich California, a state with semi-open primaries with registration changes allowed til May 23. This is great for Bernie’s Independent voters.

—The National Review on Trump’s win:

Reports of Donald Trump’s demise have been overstated. After a disappointing few weeks, Trump came roaring back on Tuesday night with a huge victory in his home state of New York. It was nothing short of a crushing defeat for anti-Trump forces. Victory in the New York primary, Club for Growth president David McIntosh told National Review earlier this month, would be achieved by “getting Trump under 50 percent,” the threshold at which a candidate secures all 14 of the statewide delegates. Every delegate counts at this point, since Trump’s victory on the first ballot of the convention hangs in the balance. Keeping the real-estate mogul under 50 percent could have deprived him of perhaps 20 delegates, depending on how well he did in each of the congressional districts.

—The National Review on Clinton’s victory:

Bernie Sanders’s weeks-long winning streak ended abruptly Tuesday night, as the upstart Democratic insurgent smacked into an immovable New York City electorate happy to hand Hillary Clinton a double-digit victory. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of Sanders’s loss. The Brooklyn-born Vermont senator threw everything but the kitchen sink into New York, outspending every candidate on either side by a massive margin and deploying an army of paid staffers and volunteers to crisscross the state. He lost by a 15-point margin, ceding another 31 pledged delegates to Clinton and perhaps fatally damaging his ability to attract the Democratic superdelegates he must convince in order to challenge Clinton at the convention in Philadelphia. New York City went overwhelmingly for Clinton: She won 66 percent of the vote in Manhattan and nearly 70 percent in the Bronx, swept the remaining boroughs and Long Island, and even won Staten Island by a six-point margin.

Sanders had been scheduled to campaign in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, but abruptly cancelled his plans and flew to his hometown of Burlington, Vermont after the scope of Tuesday’s loss became clear, citing a need to “recharge.” His traveling press corps left stranded in the Keystone State, Sanders sent congratulations to Clinton through the local Vermont press, sounding very much like a man defeated. “We have come a long, long way,” he said. “We have a very, very strong grass-roots movement . . . activism wins elections.”

—Liberal Values on the outcome:

Clinton might have moved to the left on selective issues during this campaign, but she is certainly no liberal. Supporting programs to benefit women and children is admirable, but is not sufficient to make one a liberal–especially when she is a warmonger, opposes government transparency, supports the corrupting role of money in government, opposes single-payer health care, ran in 2008 as a self-described pro-gun churchgoer, worked with The Fellowship in the Senate, and supports restrictions on civil liberties. On issues such as trade, the drug war, and foreign intervention, Clinton is even to the right of Republican front runner Donald Trump (who has many faults of his own).

Preventing independents from voting in the New York primary, as well as the other irregularities there, will also not make independents supporting Sanders feel good about voting for Clinton if she wins.

I also wonder if there is more meaning to these words from Sanders. Most likely he will endorse Clinton if she is the nominee, with the understanding that his supporters will make their own decisions. However he has sounded less and less like someone who is willing to support the party if he loses, making me wonder if he is reconsidering his previous statements that he would not run as an independent.

—One of my favorite bloggers, “Booman,” aka Martin Longman, who explores what Sanders and his supporters should realistically do next:

If you want the Democratic convention in Philadelphia to have as many Sanders supporters as possible, then vote for him. Just know that the goal here is to have a lot of progressive influence at the convention and to get a lot of progressives some experience working within the power structure of the Democratic Party. The goal is not to win the nomination anymore, but that doesn’t mean the fight should be over.

It troubles me that so many progressives got their hopes up and are now feeling despondent or worse. But the issues that got people excited about Bernie aren’t going away and the battle within the party goes on. If you let this be about one man, you’re were missing the big picture. This year’s delegates will have real influence, and they’ll be veterans four years from now. They’ll be in a position to change how the nomination process works. They’ll attain positions of local power. Some of them will become elected officials.

Sanders has some decisions to make, but his movement will live on with or without him. He can probably maximize their influence by carrying on, but he can also bring dishonor and disrepute on his supporters if he isn’t smart about his approach. I really hope we don’t see signs of petulance, and I don’t want to see him pumping delusions and bitterness into his followers. I think, and hope, he can conduct himself in a positive way and be pleased with what he’s accomplished, which has been more than he probably expected to accomplish.

He tried his best to win in New York, which is what his supporters deserved, but he came up short and it’s well and truly over now. All that’s left is to carry the torch to the convention and realize the fruits of his labors, which can and should be considerable.

A CROSS-SECTION OF TWITTER REACTION:

graphic via shutterstock.com

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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