In yesterdays West Virginia primary, Bernie Sanders won convincingly over Hillary Clinton.
In a state that she won eight years ago.
I thought Hillary was supposed to be unbeatable in the South.
Obviously, there has been a significant change in the voters' perception of Clinton.
Sanders won big, with 51.4% of the Democratic vote to Clinton's 36%. Possibly this number was helped because of the "semi-open" primary system they use, where voters registered under a party MUST vote in their party's primary, but unaffiliated (independent) voters may vote in either primary.
So Bernie's huge margin may have to do with the fact that, just as in the general election, unaffiliated voters may vote for either candidate. This reflects the polling that has Sanders consistently doing better against Trump than Clinton.
But the Democratic machine overwhelmingly wants Hillary to be their candidate, and Bernie will never be treated fairly by the party apparatus. The game is rigged, and going in everyone can see the writing on the wall.
However, there's still about 10 weeks to go before the convention, and even if Hillary wins the required number of delegates outright before California, Bernie will still have a huge amount of popular support going into Philadelphia in late July. He'll have a dramatic affect on the party's platform, and he's already influencing Clinton's rhetoric. Moving her more toward the liberal end of the spectrum, although she's still as firmly a conservative Democrat as Barack Obama.
And I can't believe anyone actually WANTS a third term of Obama at this point.
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