The preseason phase of the presidential campaign is now officially over, so what can we expect—that is, if anything can really be expected this year? Certainly few, if anyone, anticipated the rise of Donald Trump and Ben Carson. The sustainability of the former caught the political pros off guard; the collapse of the latter was less of a surprise. Bernie Sanders has obviously done better than his Senate colleagues expected, not to mention the Democratic establishment and Hillary Clinton. But what next? On the Democratic side, Clinton may well hear Sanders’s footsteps for a while longer. It’s not hard to understand how a heavily ideological candidate can do well in Iowa or, for that matter, other caucus states. In fact, that’s the norm. Neither is it a shock that a liberal Democratic senator from Vermont might be doing well elsewhere in New England, including New Hampshire. But it is very hard to see how Sanders can prevail. There simply aren’t enough delegates picked in caucus and/or New England states to sustain Sanders. His support is too narrow and too white
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