Is Trump Unstoppable?

Ted Cruz opened by saying that Jeb Bush “brought honor and dignity” to the campaign. That’s an odd standard for this particular candidate to advance. He was accused by an irate Ben Carson of dirty tricks in Iowa. And although he says Jeb never went down “to the gutter,” that’s precisely where some of his supporters were discovered yesterday.

A pro-Cruz PAC got caught making automated phone calls slamming Donald Trump for supporting the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds in Columbia. “Trump talks about our flag like it’s a social disease,” the calls said. Cruz himself has equivocated on the issue. But he failed to distance himself from the group—Courageous Conservatives PAC—or its message before voters headed to the polls.

Cruz says that his campaign "defied expectations" in South Carolina, spinning a likely third-place finish. He then quickly pivoted to pitching himself as the only viable conservative left in the race, and the only Republican "who can beat—and has beaten" Donald Trump. While congratulating Trump, he urged Republicans who don't want to see Trump as the nominee to join his campaign.

Ted Cruz comes on to speak just as the results tighten up in the race between him and Rubio for second place. He declares that he finished "effectively tied for second place," although with 99 percent of precincts reporting, he trailed Rubio by about 900 votes. Like Rubio, Cruz laid the praise on thick for Jeb Bush, saying that he "brought honor and dignity to this race" and noting that he never went down "to the gutter," in a not-so-subtle reference to Donald Trump.

Russell points out that Marco Rubio now seems to only have nice things to say about Jeb Bush even though they have had a rocky relationship on the campaign trail. That's no accident, of course. Rubio is undoubtedly hoping to pick up some of Bush's support now that he has dropped out of the race, and is likely betting that he stands a better chance at that if he offers up some praise for the now-failed candidate.

Rubio concludes: "If it is God's will that we should win this election, then history will say that on this night in South Carolina, we took the first step forward in the beginning of a new American century.”

Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush went at it pretty hard during parts of the campaign, but Rubio was effusive in praising his fellow Floridian on Saturday night. He called him "the greatest governor in the history of Florida" and said he hoped his service to the country wasn't finished. Rubio congratulated Trump on his victory but ignored his other rivals.

The close race for second place hasn't been called yet, but Marco Rubio, who leads Ted Cruz by less than a percentage point with 80 percent of the vote counted, has decided to declare victory. “This has become a three-person race, and we will win the nomination,” he says. Rubio congratulated Trump and had effusive praise for Bush. If his second place finish holds, questions about where he's going to rack up a win will continue to swirl. But as in Iowa, he's exceeded expectations and can claim to have some momentum.

Donald Trump just finished a jubilant speech here in Spartanburg, South Carolina. "I want to thank everybody. I love you all. We will never, ever forget South Carolina.” Flanked by his family and former Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, Trump celebrated his victory in the primary. As for the substance of the speech, it was mostly just the Trump stump speech: Make America Great Again, build the wall, strengthen the military—the usual.

But Trump also mocked the pundits he said he was watching on television before he spoke. They think that with candidates like Jeb Bush dropping out, other establishment candidates will gain strength. (Trump did not mention Bush, who had just dropped out, despite using Jeb as a punching-bag throughout the campaign.) Don’t count on it, he said: He’ll win those votes. He promised strong showings in Nevada and on Super Tuesday. "Let’s put this thing away!"

Ben Carson is making reassurances in the midst of what's shaping up to be a poor showing in the South Carolina GOP primary. Taking the stage to address a crowd of supporters, Carson declared: “I'm not going anywhere.” Right now, vote results show Carson in last place, but to hear Carson tell it, hey, that means he's still in the race!

“There's only six now, and I'm still one of them,” he told supporters to cheers. Carson went on to warn, though, that he'll need help from his fans if they want him to pull ahead. “There is a political class that consists of the Washington establishment, and the news media, and the pundits, and they believe that they have complete control of our country,” Carson said ominously, before pivoting to a more empowering message. “They only have complete control if we give them complete control,” he said. “It is we the people who really have the power. The problem is, if we don't exercise the power, then they continue to have the control.”

Unfortunately for Carson, wags were quick to note that his declaration of “I'm not going anywhere” could also be interpreted to mean that his campaign is doomed.

Donald Trump didn’t just win big tonight. He won across the board.

CNN’s exit poll shows that Trump did best with men, but also finished first among women. He won among Republicans and independents; voters who were somewhat conservative and moderate; veterans and non-veterans; suburbs and rural areas; and in all five regions of the state tallied in the poll. He even won a plurality of evangelicals.

There were some weak spots in his coalition. The 69-year-old mogul was edged out by the 45-year-old Cruz among voters 44 or younger, and among strong conservatives. Rubio beat him among those with postgraduate degrees, and among those earning more than $100,000, and in urban areas. But they won these groups narrowly, for the most part; and neither the groups nor the margins will be enough to beat back Trump unless they can deepen their support.

Above all, South Carolina demonstrates the breadth of Trump’s appeal within the GOP’s primary electorate. There is no other candidate who can cut across the different segments of the Republican Party so effectively. And that makes him a formidable frontrunner.

Bush getting out presumably helps Rubio. Many of his supporters and donors only stuck by Bush out of loyalty as his campaign looked increasingly hopeless in recent months. The boost in money, and presumably votes, that Rubio can expect to get will be a boon to his argument that he has potential despite not winning any states.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush told his supporters that he was suspending his campaign after lackluster finishes in the first three voting states. "I’m proud of the campaign that we’ve run to unify our country," he said. "But the people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and so tonight I am suspending my campaign." After his supporters groaned, Bush seemed to briefly choke up and then congratulated his rivals who "are still on the island," as he put it.

Jeb Bush just dropped out of the presidential race. My colleague David Graham has this elegy for his campaign:

Almost all presidential campaigns end in failure. But few complete an arc as dramatic as Jeb Bush’s bid: Once considered a highly unlikely candidate, Bush surged almost immediately upon his entry into the pole position, then almost as quickly fell out contention and became a punch line.

More here.

On MSNBC, after Lawrence O’Donnell says that polls show that both Cruz and Rubio would beat Trump in one-on-one matchups, Brian Williams doesn’t miss a beat: "You sound like a Democrat at the salad bar of rationalization."

If Donald Trump wins South Carolina, which virtually every major network is now predicting, the question becomes what his victory means for the rest of the race and his electability overall. One interesting factoid about the South Carolina GOP primary is that the state has a track record of accurately predicting the eventual Republican nominee. The only election where that didn't hold true was in 2012 when Newt Gingrich won the state and Mitt Romney turned out to be the party nominee.

Rubio and Cruz are currently locked in a tight battle for second place. The stakes are high for both: If Cruz can’t place second in a state where the electorate looks very friendly to his message, it doesn't bode well for his strategy to win a bunch more Southern states on March 1. But if Rubio can’t place second in a state where he had heavy establishment support, including the governor's endorsement, it will raise major questions about his competitiveness further down the calendar.

There’s now a lot of speculation going around about which candidates will gain if some of the trailing candidates get out. Who would get Jeb Bush's votes? (The assumption is Rubio.) Ben Carson’s? (Probably Cruz, though the two men's bad blood complicates that equation.) On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer is scolding John Kasich for his determination to stay in the race, which he says is making it harder for a "mainstream" candidate to get ahead.

One thing people tend to overlook is the overlap between Rubio and Cruz's voters, which is significant. They are each other's biggest obstacle, and together they command a lot more of the vote than Trump.

Now that Donald Trump is the declared winner, there are two key questions: 1) Will Marco Rubio overtake Ted Cruz for second place, which would mark a significant comeback after his disastrous debate performance earlier in the month? And what percentage does Jeb Bush need to finish with to credibly continue with his campaign? Double digits is an arbitrary threshold, and one that he's teetering on the edge of right now, with about 13 percent of precincts reporting.

The last two governors in the race are trailing behind tonight. Jeb Bush and John Kasich are fighting for fourth place, although the weight of securing that spot may be a little heavier for the former. In the days leading up to South Carolina, Bush pulled all the stops. His brother, who has a strong backing in the state, campaigned for him and he was also joined by his mother. (Not to mention all the money that’s been poured into the state.) As results are now, his fate doesn’t look promising. Meanwhile, Kasich, anticipating low results, is not in South Carolina and still powering off the momentum he gained from his second-place finish in New Hampshire. In any case, this race has not been kind to the governors.

We’re tracking the vote totals tonight, but the real prize up for grabs in South Carolina is a big bundle of delegates—50, to be exact. It takes 1,237 delegates to secure the Republican nomination. Despite the hype, Iowa and New Hampshire award comparatively few, and split them up among contenders.

Coming into tonight, Donald Trump led the field, with a total of 17 delegates. By winning the state, he just picked up another 29. And if he’s also the top finisher in each of South Carolina’s seven congressional district, he’ll pick up the remaining 21, for a clean sweep.

That’d put Trump at 67—far ahead of Cruz’s 11, or Rubio’s 10. Trump has won roughly a third of primary votes cast in the first three states. But he could easily end the night with two-thirds of the delegates. It’s a system that was intended to consolidate support around a frontrunner, squeezing out more marginal rivals. Only this year, it’s the establishment candidates who find themselves squeezed aside, as the peculiar math of the primary process works to Trump’s advantage.

...or, maybe not. With just 1 percent of precincts reporting, NBC has just called the South Carolina Republican primary for Donald Trump. Other networks and newswires quickly followed.

NBC News call: Trump in SC.

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) February 21, 2016

That's in line with the polling leading up to the race, and in that sense, confirms expectations. But from a broader perspective, it’s nothing short of astonishing. In the debate just before this primary election, Trump rehearsed his long list of heretical dissents from Republican orthodoxies, blaming the Bush administration for failing to heed CIA warnings before 9/11, denouncing the Iraq War for destabilizing the Middle East, defending the use of eminent domain, promising to save Social Security without trimming benefits, and crediting Planned Parenthood for “wonderful things having to do with women's health.” More recently, he attacked the pope and Apple. And he found himself attacked by a Cruz-supporting PAC for backing the removal of the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds.

Had any of his rivals done even one of these things, it might have adversely impacted their fortunes, causing some of their supporters to have second thoughts. But Trump’s support appears remarkably solid; one Republican consultant told my colleague Molly Ball that if the primary electorate is a pie, Trump’s slice is made of titanium.

The focus now shifts to Cruz and Rubio, who appear locked in a tight battle for second. But although whoever grabs the silver will surely trumpet their victory, make no mistake: Tonight is Trump’s night. Again.

Voting just ended in South Carolina, and the exit polls show a race that’s still too close to call. Exit polls are most useful for giving a portrait of an electorate and its views; they’re imperfect as predictive tools. They suggest a race split in two. There’s a tightly clustered pack at the front, with Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. Far behind are Bush, Carson, and Kasich. That mirrors the polling in recent days.

It’s tempting to look at the exit polls, which do show Trump in the lead, and Cruz ahead of Rubio, or at the first thousand votes to be counted, which show the same results, and extrapolate out from that. But the better way to read these early indicators is that the race is tight, and it may be a long night before its outcome is clear.

Sanders delivered his concession speech in Nevada. The defeated candidate energized supporters and drew cheers by promising to take on Wall Street, “a corrupt campaign-finance system,” the political establishment, and criminal-justice reform. Sanders downplayed expectations for South Carolina, a state where Clinton looks likely to ride a wave of support from black voters to a win, by looking ahead to the Super Tuesday states and projecting victory. “I believe that on Super Tuesday, we have got an excellent chance to win many of those states,” Sanders said. He warned the crowd it won’t be easy to take on the establishment, and he made a plea for support. But Sanders ended on a note of optimism. “We have come a very long way in nine months,” he said, adding: “It is clear to me, and I think most observers that the wind is at our backs. We have the momentum.”

The Nevada caucuses stand as the first significant test of the primary season of how the Democratic candidates would fare with minority voters. Bernie Sanders has struggled to attract support from nonwhite voters, and Nevada was viewed as a proving ground to see whether he could expand his appeal. Exit polls from Nevada currently indicate that Sanders won white and Hispanic voters, while Clinton won black voters by a wide margin. That margin was wide enough for Clinton to win the nonwhite vote overall.

Thanks, Harry? The most powerful Democrat in Nevada, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, was publicly neutral in the race and even caucused along with his wife as “uncommitted” on Saturday. But Amy Chozick of The New York Times and Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada political reporters, reported that Reid made a key phone call to D. Taylor, the head of the culinary-workers union, which declined to endorse either Clinton or Sanders. Reid wanted to ensure that the tens of thousands of casino workers could have paid time off to caucus, and Taylor reportedly agreed to help. Clinton is winning Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, by nearly 10 points.

Hillary Clinton, with Bill by her side, delivered her second victory speech of the 2016 contest in Nevada on Saturday—a significant win moving forward after a tight race with Bernie Sanders. “Some may have doubted us, but we never doubted each other. This one’s for you,” Clinton said. It’s déjà vu for Clinton, who also won the state’s caucus in 2008. Despite a strong footing in Nevada, Sanders had achieved considerable momentum following a win in New Hampshire, threatening the Clinton campaign. In a statement, Sanders said that he called and congratulated Clinton. A loss would have been a setback for the Clinton campaign as she continued through the presidential primary, but now she goes into the South Carolina Democratic primary with a leg up. There, the minority vote will be equally important. In Nevada, 76 percent of black caucusgoers backed Clinton, according to entrance polls, which also showed considerable support from union workers and self-identified Democrats. In a sense, this was also a win for the establishment in light of Sanders’s call for a political revolution. “Americans are right to be angry but we’re also hungry for real solutions,” she said, later using a regular talking point and jab against Sanders. “The thing is, we’re more than a single-issue country.” But Clinton did appear to take a bit from Sanders’s playbook.  “We’re all in this together. We all have to do our part,” she said. During her speech, Clinton repeatedly started her phrases with “we,” a shift in strategy. Sanders had struck a chord with New Hampshire voters in his use of the word, and it appears that Clinton may be adopting the pronoun, too.

“The fight goes on,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s win in Nevada is both a needed victory for her and another triumph for her campaign’s expectations-setting game. Both Nevada and South Carolina were long seen as “firewall” states for the former secretary of state due to their large proportion of minority voters. But immediately after the Sanders blowout in New Hampshire, Clinton’s camp began warning that Nevada was not such a sure thing. There is a scarcity of polling in the state, so it was difficult to verify whether this was true. (Although the limited surveys that did come out showed a tight race.) Clinton’s 4-point margin is much closer than people would have expected even a few weeks ago, but the fact that it’s not seen as a shocking close-call for Clinton is a testament to those lowered expectations.

Senator Bernie Sanders has issued a statement on the Nevada caucus:

I just spoke to Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victory here in Nevada. I am very proud of the campaign we ran. Five weeks ago we were 25 points behind and we ended up in a very close election. And we probably will leave Nevada with a solid share of the delegates.

I am also proud of the fact that we have brought many working people and young people into the political process and believe that we have the wind at our back as we head toward Super Tuesday.  I want to thank the people of Nevada for their support that they have given us and the boost that their support will give us as we go forward.

It’s a pretty tempered statement. Sanders is right to be proud of the result in Nevada—after all, this wasn’t supposed to be a close election, and his team made it one. That won’t be the headline, though. (Sanders is right about the delegates, though he still trails Clinton by a good bit thanks to commitments she has extracted from superdelegates.) But as Gabriel Dedenedetti notes, Sanders made another point in an email to supporters: The Nevada results, a close contest in a diverse state, “sent a message that will stun the political and financial establishment of this country our campaign can win anywhere.

It’s likely a win for Clinton. More outlets are now calling the Nevada race, with NBC and CBS News along with CNN both projecting Clinton the winner. AP has also called the state for the former secretary of state. The Clinton campaign must be breathing a major sigh of relief right now, especially since the campaign has been attempting to downplay expectations for Nevada ever since Sanders won the New Hampshire primary. A win in Nevada will give Clinton momentum heading into South Carolina, a supposed firewall state for her with it’s large population of African American voters. A win will also help reassure her supporters and donors—and bolster one of Clinton’s biggest arguments against Sanders: that he is unelectable. Now that the primary race has moved past the early-voting and not-very-diverse states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders may be showing his limits.

We’re past the halfway mark in Nevada, and Hillary Clinton is maintaining a slim lead. Fox News has already projected a Clinton win, but other outlets are holding out—it’s just too close to call. A tight race was expected and Sanders’s momentum is telling. Clinton started staffing up in Nevada two months before the Vermont senator, and she won the state’s caucus in 2008.  Thus far, the results show that Sanders can appeal to a diverse electorate, which would also benefit him in South Carolina. But again, several more votes are still trickling in.

As results from the Nevada Democratic caucuses trickle in, the South Carolina Republican primary is still underway—and record turnout is expected. According to a Politico report, 58,000 Republicans turned in absentee ballots—that’s double the number seen in 2012. The number suggests a continuing trend in this year’s presidential election, following record turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I tried to stop by the Donald Trump campaign’s upstate South Carolina headquarters in downtown Greenville a little after 4 o’clock, but it was all closed up. Maybe the staff is out doing GOTV, or maybe they’re already prepping for Trump’s victory party in Spartanburg, about 30 miles away.

Early exit polls from Nevada so far appear to be confirming some of the trends that emerged from the New Hampshire primary. In New Hampshire, Clinton beat Sanders with voters 65 and older and with voters who have an income level of $200,000 or higher—two of the only demographic categories where Clinton did beat Sanders. In Nevada, Clinton is again taking the lead among older and more affluent voters, but she’s also winning several other categories, too—a potential indication that Clinton may have a stronger showing today. Currently, Clinton is ahead of Sanders among women voters, voters 45 and older, and voters who consider themselves moderate or conservative. That’s a contrast to New Hampshire, where Sanders won nearly every demographic and ideological category. Results could still shift in Sanders’s favor, however, in any of these categories, and Sanders currently has a lead among Hispanic voters, a demographic group the Clinton campaign has worked hard to win

Preliminary entrance polls from the Nevada Democratic caucus show that 49 percent think the next president should “generally continue Barack Obama’s policies.” Between Clinton and Sanders, the former secretary of state takes the majority. This has been a point of contention between the two candidates. This week, Sanders accused Clinton of pandering to black voters by aligning herself with Obama. It’s a tricky position for Clinton who has strived to distinguish herself but also respect the policies of her former employer. Sanders, too, has struggled with this as he attempts to spark a political revolution. It should also be noted that 41 percent of caucusgoers think there should be a change to more liberal policies and, in that regard, Sanders takes the lead.

Campaign confirms photo of man arrested at 1963 protest on South Side is Bernie Sanders https://t.co/FzPDJ7Mx3w pic.twitter.com/2EeocNgU8e

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) February 20, 2016

Bernie Sanders has been pressed on his history of civil-rights activism, with luminaries like Representative John Lewis questioning how involved Sanders was. But as they say, “Pictures or it didn’t happen”—and The Chicago Tribune has the pictures. The paper turned up a negative in its photo archives that shows the then-student getting arrested. The details of the arrest are sketchy, but it appears he was protesting segregation in Englewood.

It’s not the first photo to pop up that apparently shows Sanders’s 1960s activism. A man in a photo of a 1962 sit-in was identified as Sanders, but others disagreed. In this case, there seems to be no dispute. In a fantastic detail, Sanders aide Tad Devine explained how Sanders was able to confirm it was him—from a more than 50-year-old student-ID card he still carries. “Bernie identified it himself,” Devine told the Tribune. “He looked at it—he actually has his student ID from the University of Chicago in his wallet—and he said, ‘Yes, that indeed is (me).’”

Among the caucusgoers is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Reid has stayed neutral ahead of the states’s Democratic caucuses, placing much attention on encouraging voter turnout. This week, he spoke with the head of the state’s most powerful union so that workers could get time off to caucus.

Remember Marco Rubio’s          “3-2-1” plan? You can be forgiven if you don’t—it’s not something you hear much about these days. That label was the name given to the hope by Rubio insiders, reported by National Review’s Tim Alberta, that he would finish third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, and then first in South Carolina. (Around the same time, other Rubio advisers told the Associated Press that they didn’t expect to win the Palmetto State.)

As South Carolina Republicans go to the polls, that plan is a distant memory. Rubio nailed the “3” in Iowa, but slipped to fifth in New Hampshire. And now he’s polling third in South Carolina. Speaking on the Today show Saturday morning, Rubio was asked how damaging it would be if he didn’t finish in the top two. He professed to be unconcerned about it. “I think we need to remember a couple things,” he said. “This is still a very crowded field. There are six people running full-scale legitimate campaigns.”

The thing is, he just may be right: If Rubio finishes in the top three, ahead of Jeb Bush and John Kasich, he may once again have a chance to consolidate the so-called “establishment lane.” But is that enough to win the nomination?

Where Republican candidates are today can say a lot about their expectations for the South Carolina primary. Take John Kasich. He finished in second-place in New Hampshire, but has been trailing behind in the state. Instead, Kasich has his eyes set on states holding their primaries in March, like Michigan and Massachusetts. But his campaign is sure to look at the South Carolina primary results to see if they’ll knock out a key competitor, Jeb Bush.

Bernie Sanders is coming into the Nevada Democratic caucuses with the wind blowing behind his back after a first-place finish in New Hampshire. If he takes Nevada, it’ll prove that he can also gain momentum among minority voters. The state’s demographic makeup differs from Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters are predominantly white. In Nevada, 17 percent are Hispanic, according to 2014 data from the Pew Research Center.

As Clare mentioned, the two Democratic candidates will be vying for that vote. The question is: Will they show up? In 2008, they only made up 15 percent of caucusgoers. To Sanders’s advantage, many Latino eligible voters are Millennials, but Clinton has a stronger record among minority voters.

In the lead up to the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary, the divide between Democrats and Republicans on immigration looks as sharp as ever. Hillary Clinton made news on Thursday when she committed to tackling immigration reform in her first 100 days as president. Clinton’s emphasis on the issue makes sense heading into Nevada, where Hispanic voters could play a pivotal role in determining the Democratic winner. (Still, it’s by no means certain that Clinton will prevail with Hispanic voters. Polling from NBC News and SurveyMonkey shows Clinton’s advantage with Latino voters over Sanders eroding.) The conversation on the Democratic side of the field looks starkly different, however, compared with what’s happening on the Republican side where Donald Trump is trying to prove he has taken the hardest line on keeping illegal immigrants out of the country. “Remember that Marco Rubio is very weak on illegal immigration,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “South Carolina needs strength as illegals and Syrians pour in. Don’t allow it.” The partisan gulf is pronounced heading into nominating contests expected to act as the first substantial test of what Hispanic and black voters think of the candidates.

What is there even to say about Donald Trump’s comments at a primary-eve rally in South Carolina? MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin reported from North Charleston:

The standout topic, however, was terrorism and national security. Trump repeated—favorably—an apparent myth about how General John Pershing summarily executed dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with tainted ammunition during a guerrilla war against the occupying United States.

“He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood,” Trump said. “And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the fiftieth person he said ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, OK?”

The story appears to be a hoax spread via e-mail forwards, according to rumor tracker Snopes.com, with no evidence it occurred.

It’s hard to say what the point of the anecdote was. Sarlin reported that Trump’s moral was that “we better start getting tough, and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads, or we’re not gonna have a country, folks.” But that seems like a non sequitur—the plain reading would be a celebration of desecrating Muslim corpses for its own sake.

Disturbing? Gratuitous? Beyond the pale? Sure, though also par for the course by now. The comment drew widespread condemnation Friday evening, particularly from conservatives who dislike Trump and who are infuriated to find him elevated as the spokesman for right-wing thought, since it gives him a platform for commentary like this. But will it hurt Trump? The candidate, who is leading in the polls in South Carolina, has picked fights with the pope and Apple this week, to no apparent detriment. Given prevailing views about Islam among Americans, and particularly Republicans, which are far less beloved than the Vatican and the tech company, there’s not much reason to predict the comments will harm his political standing.