Empire State has its say

Some people couldn't care less about the US primary race for the nominations of the Democratic and Republican parties - esoteric processology for political junkies.  That might have been true from the mid-2000s to before but since 2008, it's been pure melodrama.
The rise of Barack Obama and the envy of Hillary Clinton, then the craziness of the Republican nominations in 2012 and now all chaos has broken loose, with intriguing battles in both the Democratic and Republican circles.  Particularly for the GOP, for if we thought they were loony tunes four years ago, they've surpassed themselves in being certifiable.
The Democratic candidature has hardly been civil, with Bernie Sanders accusing Clinton of being part of the problem i.e. the establishment and has hoovered up the starry-eyed idealistic 'college' vote.  Sanders' supporters can be vicious.  Trying to intimidate a George Clooney fundraiser dinner for Clinton was petty and lacked class - banging pots and pans is hardly focusing on the issues, even if Clooney did issue a mea culpa about obscene levels of money in a broken political system. I got in a Twitter spat before I even aware of it with one Sanders supporter, after I gave a shout-out asking how anti-war people would have prevented a Gaddafi massacre in Benghazi.  He gave a classic tin-foil hat response of 'don't believe the propaganda' and then tried to work the conversation round to his favourite topic of Honduras and the role of Clinton (as far as I could see she was being the perfect diplomat in seeking a peaceful resolution to a 'judicial coup').  To cite Realpolitik would have been a waste of time because that was the whole thing he was railing against.  Anyway, I guessed correctly that Julian Assange was one of his heroes and while he kept referring to a UN report that was compiled by a group of anti-American academics (who presented no evidence other than the uncorroborated belief of Assange of extradition to the USA), I proved that neither he nor the UN academics had any respect for rape victims, of which Assange has confessed to (though he doesn't see having sex with someone while they sleep and continuing after they wake up as rape...), as he was incapable of condemning it.  This all feeds into my impression of the gun-crazy IRA apologist Sanders and though I don't hold a candle for Clinton, I'm gratified by every pledged delegate she adds.
After his defeat in Ohio, Sanders needed to win 58% of the remaining delegates to take the nomination and though he racked up seven consecutive state wins in mostly sparsely populated states, his early rhetoric after Super Tuesday about the proportional allocation of delegates turned on him, as he couldn't shake Clinton off.  In New York, with its huge delegate count, Clinton won 58% of the vote (incidentally 10m more people have voted for her than have voted for Sanders so far).  Sanders is justified in going all the way to the Convention as Clinton's angel advice with his genuinely progressive ideas that she will need to co-own if she is to take his base with her into the general election.  But Tuesday was a crushing night for someone born in Brooklyn.
Fellow New Yorker Donald Trump scored a signal victory over his two rivals, despite a '7/11' blunder, picking up almost two-thirds of the Republican vote.  Ultraconservative prostitute user (his telephone number was found in a brothel madam's contact book) Ted Cruz paid for his scathing assault on 'New York values', scraping in with a measly 13% - his reaction was bizarre saying America was at its best when "lying down with its back on the mat" - maybe he was recalling his instructions to the prostitutes.  John Kasich, well, he's still there and a quarter of the vote.
But Trump was winning everywhere.  New York isn't a 'winner-takes-most' (or 'all) state but the scale of his triumph made it one.  After a flurry of states just before Easter, Republicans had just one state (Wisconsin) in a whole month to think about, allowing them to get their ground game together for delegate-rich New York and the remaining New England primaries.  With California still to come, its entirely possible that Trump avoids the possibility of a contested convention and is the nominee.
Then we'll see some real sparks fly in his battle with the consummate political operative Clinton.  This should prove fascinating right up to November.