Sanders, Trump take Michigan

Clinton extends lead with
Mississippi, Rubio all but done

LANSING, Mich. — Bernie Sanders keeps chipping away at Hillary Clinton in the quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

Sanders took Michigan on Tuesday night, though Clinton ran away with a win in Mississippi with overwhelming support from black voters.

The race to 2,383 delegates has Clinton now at 759, while Sanders has 546.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump took Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii, while Ted Cruz carried the Idaho primary.

Trump now has 446 delegates in a race to 1,237. Cruz is at 347, while Marco Rubio remains at 151.

The economy ranked high on the list of concerns for voters in Michigan and Mississippi. At least 8 in 10 in each party’s primary said they were worried about where the American economy is heading, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Among Democrats, 8 in 10 voters in both states said the country’s economic system benefits the wealthy, not all Americans.

Sanders has sought to tap into that concern, energizing young people and white, blue-collar voters with his calls for breaking up Wall Street banks and making tuition free at public colleges and universities. 

Michigan, with big college towns and a sizeable population of working-class voters, was a good fit for him, though something of a surprise victory given that Clinton had led in polls heading into Tuesday’s voting.

Still, Sanders has struggled mightily with black voters who are crucial to Democrats in the general election. In Mississippi, black voters comprised about two-thirds of the Democratic electorate and nearly 9 in 10 backed Clinton.

In a nod toward the kind of traditional politics he’s shunned, Trump emphasized the importance of helping Republican senators and House members get elected in the fall. 

Having entered Tuesday’s contests facing a barrage of criticism from rival candidates and outside groups, he also delighted in overcoming the attacks.

“Every single person who has attacked me has gone down,” Trump said at one of his Florida resorts. 

He was flanked by tables packed with his retail products, including steaks, bottled water and wine, and defended his business record more thoroughly than he outlined his policy proposals for the country.

Sanders, meanwhile, said in a statement: “We already have won in the Midwest, New England and the Great Plains and, as more people get to know more about who we are and what our views are, we’re going to do very well.”

While a handful of recent losses to Cruz have raised questions about Trump’s durability, Tuesday’s contests marked another lost opportunity for rivals desperate to stop his march to the nomination. 

Next week’s winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida loom large as perhaps the last chance to block him short of a contested convention fight.

Rubio, Tuesday marked the latest in a series of disappointing nights. He emerged from Michigan and Mississippi with no new delegates, a grim outcome for a candidate who has the overwhelming support from Republican senators, governors and other elected officials.

Rubio insisted he would press on to his home state’s primary in Florida next Tuesday.

“It has to happen here, and it has to happen now,” Rubio told supporters during a rally in Sarasota.

If Rubio can’t win at home, the GOP primary appears set to become a two-person race between Trump and Cruz. The Texas senator is sticking close in the delegate count, and with seven states in his win column he’s argued he’s the only candidate standing between the brash billionaire and the GOP nomination.

During a campaign stop at a North Carolina church, Cruz took on Trump for asking rally attendees to pledge their allegiance to him. He said the move struck him as “profoundly wrong” and was something “kings and queens demand” of their subjects.

Some mainstream Republicans have cast both Trump and Cruz as unelectable in a November face-off with the Democratic nominee. But they’re quickly running out of options – and candidates – to prevent one of the men from becoming the GOP standard-bearer.