HILLARY'S GREAT DAY AND TRUMP'S LOUSY ONE.

WASHINGTON POST DAILY 202

The scope and scale of Hillary Clinton’s victories last night ameliorates much of the pressure that she has been under to pander to Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

California was the biggest delegate prize of 2016 for Democrats. Sanders spent the better part of the past month camped out there. And Clinton beat him by 13 points – or nearly half a million votes.

California was the Vermont senator's last hope to remain a major player all the way through the Democratic convention next month. He didn't just lose but lost badly.

She won the second most valuable prize available last night, New Jersey, by 26 points. And she defeated Sanders in New Mexico and South Dakota.

The Democratic coalition will ultimately unify behind Clinton – as long as she pays a modicum of respect to Sanders, which she will – because the liberal base does not want Donald Trump to become president. And Clinton benefits enormously from growing concerns among independent voters about the presumptive Republican nominee.

Clinton's nomination-clinching speech was confident and confrontational, signaling that she is ready, willing and able for the challenge of taking on an opponent as unorthodox as Donald Trump.

And, Clinton just became the first woman in history to clinch a major party nomination for U.S. president. That's a pretty nice night.

The White House released a statement at midnight Eastern to declare Clinton the winner, announce that Obama will meet with Sanders on Thursday and reveal that POTUS called both candidates last night. Beyond Obama, a handful of other Democrats are also pursuing unity. Philip Rucker and Dan Balz report this morning that Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are all working to bring both sides together: “Obama and White House political director David Simas, as well as Warren and Reid, have been in communication with both camps to lay the foundation for an eventual coming together, according to several senior Democrats.” Sanders also plans to meet with Reid  on Capitol Hill.

-- Sanders, who won the small states of Montana and North Dakota, promised he will “continue to fight” for delegates. Sanders promised he would not abandon the political movement he started.  But he also acknowledged that the path ahead is “very steep.” And, today, an aide said his campaign plans to part ways with many staffers, in particular people who work on advance and field operations. -- Sanders hoped a victory in California and some surprises elsewhere would give him an argument to pull superdelegates away from Clinton. Neither happened. And now he has little justification for continuing his quixotic quest, with the exception of trying to maximize his leverage.

Once again, Hillary excelled in higher-turnout primaries and bigger states with more delegates while Bernie did best in a lower-turnout caucus with relatively few delegates on the line. Clinton unexpectedly won the South Dakota primary, even as she lost in the North Dakota caucuses. “

 Sanders does not want to be the reason Trump becomes president. “He is certainly against Trump and will do anything to stop Trump,” said Tad Devine, a senior strategist for Sanders. There have been a number of conversations between the two camps, including talks between Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver. “Things are going in a positive direction,” Devine said. “No negotiations are going on but there is interaction.”

A visceral loathing for Trump will almost certainly keep the Rising American Electorate from staying on the sidelines, as well. Young progressives may not like Hillary, but it’s hard to imagine that most will not fall in line once the election becomes a clear, head-to-head choice.

-- The growing number of Republican defections from Trump show that this will not be as much of a base election as the last several presidential contests. If Clinton can win over independents and center-right Republicans who are alarmed by Trump, she will win the presidency.  And last night’s primary results show trepidation about Trump among Republican base voters. More than a month after the GOP contest effectively ended, Trump got just 67 percent in South Dakota, 71 percent in New Mexico, 74 percent in Montana and 81 percent in New Jersey. In California, with ballots still being counted, Trump is pulling about three-quarters of the vote. John Kasich got 11 percent and Ted Cruz got 8 percent.

 The two highest ranking Republicans in Congress had made their disappointment and frustration with Trump's say-what-I-want strategy increasingly obvious. "Clean up your act now or we will lead a full scale revolt against you" was the very clear message Ryan and McConnell sent Trump over the last 72 hours.

On Tuesday night, the duo got what they wanted: A measured — and scripted! — Trump, who acknowledged the responsibility he had been handed as the Republican presidential nominee and pledged to "never let you down." Whether Trump sticks to that promise is anyone's guess — and judging from his past behavior it would be a good guess that he won't. But, for one night at least, Ryan and McConnell showed that they could bring the Republican nominee to heel.

-- Benefitting from discomfort with Trump, the Libertarian candidate polls in double digits for the first time. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson pulls 10 percent against Clinton and Trump in a Morning Consult survey, with 72 percent of his supporters saying they are driven by their dislike of both major party nominees.

-- The Wall Street Journal says Trump’s fundraising operation is a total mess: “Several members of a list of prominent Republican fundraisers who Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee announced last month had signed on to work for their joint fundraising committee said they have yet to raise any money for the effort,” Reid Epstein, Rebecca Ballhaus and Beth Reinhard report.

-- Clinton has surmised that the easiest path to victory in this environment is turning the election into a referendum on Trump.

The campaign is today launching a “Republicans against Trump” initiative aimed at making inroads. “Trump is not qualified to be president,” a pledge on the site reads. “He does not represent my beliefs as a Republican and, more importantly, my values as an American. He does not speak for me and I will not vote for him.”

TRUMP CONTINUES TO GET DEFINED:

-- “Trump Promised To Give Trump Vodka Proceeds To Charity — But Never Did,” by Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie: “When Trump announced in late 2005 that he was launching a Trump-branded vodka, many who knew him were flabbergasted. Trump has been a teetotaler his entire life, and he blames alcohol for the early death of his big brother, Freddy Trump. Perhaps to soothe his conscience, Trump said then that he would donate all the money he made from the deal to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the impaired-driving prevention group. ‘I’m going to give 100 percent of that money to them in honor of my late brother, Fred Trump,” Trump said … But MADD never received any money.” (The organization says Trump offered some money, but it has a policy of not accepting donations from the sale of alcohol.) 

Trump also faces questions about what happened to money from his most recent book, “Crippled America.” He pledged to donate the profits to charity: “In May, Trump reported earning more than $1 million in royalties from the book. But there were no signs that he gave away any of it.His staff refused to answer questions.” Both of these fit into a quite familiar pattern...

Clinton herself nodded briefly to Sanders supporters near the top of her speech last night, saying that the “vigorous debate we’ve had” has been “very good for the Democratic Party and for America.”

“I know it never feels good to put your heart into a cause or a candidate you believe in and come up short,” Clinton said, referring to her 2008 loss to Barack Obama. “I know that feeling well.”

Then she pivoted to talk more about the historic nature of her victory and Trump. Clinton declared: “This election is different. It really is about who we are as a nation. It’s about millions of Americans coming together to say: We are better than this. We won’t let this happen in America. And if you agree – whether you’re a Democrat, Republican or independent – I hope you’ll join us.”

-- After lurching left to beat back Bernie, watch for Hillary to pivot back toward the middle. It will start slow and then accelerate after her coronation in Philadelphia. The 2013 Virginia governor’s race is instructive. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, was the manager for Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The Macker has really high unfavorable ratings but won by caricaturing his Republican opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, as scary and out of the mainstream and heavily touting Republicans who had crossed over to endorse him.

Robby Mook

-- Hillary’s strong finish last night demonstrated that she does not need a vice president from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. If she wants this election to be a referendum on Trump and Trumpism, picking a populist firebrand like the Massachusetts senator is only a distraction and polarizes the choice for independents. It takes the attention off Trump. (It’s also hard to imagine the Clintons, who place such a premium on loyalty, picking the only Democratic woman in the Senate who steadfastly refused to back them during the primaries.) She could still, of course, choose someone from this wing of the party, but the chatter will probably die down a bit.

-- Clinton will still need to make minor concessions to Sanders, such as in the party’s platform. The Sanders wing wants new language on issues like trade, fracking, Social Security and Citizens United. Those are relatively easy, non-binding “gives.”

-- Big picture, Clinton is running a much better and more organized than she did in 2008. Karen Tumulty has a deep dive on how Hillary won the nomination, with lots of detail. But the organizational element is key. Hillary 2.0 pays much closer attention to the fundamentals. Delegate strategy was “one of the first things” the campaign discussed this time around, said two-time campaign staffer Marlon Marshall. (Read Karen’s whole story.)

• As a politician’s wife, first lady, senator and secretary of state — and as a two-time candidate for president — Mrs. Clinton has continually redefined the role of women in American politics. Clinton has never been a dazzling campaigner, and her perceived tone-deafness and an FBI investigation into her email certainly didn’t help. But the presumptive Democratic nominee had faith in her plan and determination not to repeat her mistakes.

• WHAT’S NEXT FOR BERNIE?
• The mainstream media’s coverage of Bernie’s defiant non-concession is absolutely brutal:
  Politico says that RAGE is driving Sanders to continue his campaign. “There are many divisions within the Sanders campaign—between the dead-enders and the work-it-out crowds … between the more experienced staffers who think the kids got way too high on their sense of the difference between a movement and an actual campaign. But more than any of them, Sanders is himself filled with resentment, on edge, feeling like he gets no respect -- all while holding on in his head to the enticing but remote chance that Clinton may be indicted before the convention,” Edward-Isaac Dovere and Gabriel Debenedetti write. “Convinced since his surprise Michigan win that he could actually win the nomination, Sanders has been on email and the phone, directing elements of the campaign right down to his city-by-city schedule in California. He wants it. He thinks it should be his.” Intimates said his approach has been boiled down to a feeling summed up as “Screw me? No, screw you."

The New York Times says Sanders “sounded at times messianic” during his speech last night. “[R]evolutions rarely give way to gracious expressions of defeat,” the New York Times’ Michael Barbaro writes. “‘It’s hard to concede,’ said Howard Dean of Sanders’ resistance to end his bid, imploring him to ‘switch into the mode of a statesman.’ ‘You don’t get any points for carrying on or complaining about it,’ Dean added. ‘You get points for sucking it up.’”

ABC News political director Rick Klein: “Sanders has railed against a ‘rigged’ system … But the fact is that, where the world now stands, the only way Sanders can become the Democratic nominee is if party insiders rig the process for him."

“The real choice facing Sanders over the next couple of weeks is what kind of lesson he wants to impart to his supporters,” adds Vox’s Matthew Yglesias. “Does he want to tell them that the system is rigged, and that candidates worth rallying for don't have a chance to win? That they may as well join the large group of Americans who don't really participate in the political process at all? Or does he want to tell them that when you fight the good fight, you sometimes lose, and then you stop and think about how to win next time? … To live, the political revolution needs to die.