US elections 2016: The winners and losers from Super Tuesday

Hillary Clinton won convincingly in all of the big states on Super Tuesday - relegating Bernie Sanders to a handful of wins

Hillary Clinton won seven states on Super Tuesday (RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)

The biggest day - and night - of the 2016 presidential primary season is (mostly) in the books. Voters in 11 states, from Texas to Vermont, cast ballots with hundreds of delegates at stake on both sides. I watched, tweeted and jotted down some of the best and worst of the night that was. My picks are below.

Winners

• Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is setting her sights on the general election this November (AP)

It's (close to) all over. The former secretary of state won convincingly in all of the big states on Super Tuesday — relegating Bernie Sanders to a handful of wins in states that award relatively few Democratic delegates (Vermont, Oklahoma). Clinton's margins matter too; she won by wide spreads in the biggest delegate-awarding states such as Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Like in South Carolina, Clinton dominated — and that may not even be a strong enough word — among black voters. In Georgia and Virginia, for example, Clinton won more than 80 percent of the black vote. And, it's not just tonight that looks good for Clinton. It's hard to see where Sanders wins a bundle of states in a row somewhere later this month or next month (or the month after that.) Clinton has a death grip on the Democratic nomination. The only question is how and when she and her team negotiate a peace with Sanders. And she knows it. Her victory speech Tuesday night in Florida was aimed directly at Trump — talking about why America is and always has been great and why we need to break down, not build up, walls. Expect lots more of that.

• Donald Trump

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign event in Radford, Virginia February 29, 2016 (REUTERS/Chris Keane)

What Super Tuesday proved is that, barring some sort of cataclysmic event, the real estate billionaire will end the primary process with the most delegates of any candidate in the field. The only question that remains is whether he can get more than the 1,237 delegates he needs to cinch the GOP nomination. The breadth of Trump's wins — he won seven states, including Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia andAlabama — make it hard to cast him as a candidate limited by either geography or ideology. No Republican nominee has won the panoply of states that Trump has. Yes, Trump would have liked to win Texas to close out Cruz and probably Oklahoma (which Cruz also won), too. But wins in seven out of 11 voting states — Trump's haul for Super Tuesday — is pretty good. The two most probable paths for the race at this point are 1) A Trump delegate win or 2) A near-Trump win with the possibility of an open convention where the party establishment tries to take it from him. I like Trump's odds.

• Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz speaks at a campaign rally in Dallas, Texas (Reuters)

Combine the wins in Alaska, Texas and Oklahoma for the senator from Texas with Rubio's inability to bring home a victory in Virginia — and suddenly Cruz looks like the favorite to be the alternative to Trump. That is, without question, the best-case scenario coming out of Super Tuesday for Cruz given that a loss in Texas would have effectively ended his campaign. Plus, the votes between Tuesday and the March 15 primaries — Louisiana, Kansas, etc. — look like potential Cruz wins. Major problems exist for Cruz —most notably that he isn't dominating among evangelicals or in the South as he should, and that the D.C. establishment loathes him so much it's hard to see them uniting behind him to stop Trump. Still, all in all, a good night for Cruz -- and one that keeps him in the race and viable for at least two more weeks. "Our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten and can beat Donald Trump," Cruz said Tuesday night. Hard to argue with that.

• Liberals: For years, "liberal" was a bad word. No longer. A majority of Democrats in every state that voted on Super Tuesday called themselves "liberals." Sanders may have lost on Tuesday night, but the re-claiming of the word "liberal" for Democrats is a testament to his influence on this race.
• Political junkies: The best (only?) hope of Republicans who want to stop Trump is to keep him under the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination. That means an open convention — a fantasy that most political junkies thought would never come to pass — might well come to pass.

Losers

• Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio had a rough showing on Super Tuesday, all but eliminating his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination. (Getty Images)

If you want to be the Republican nominee, you have to win things. Yes, that's an obvious point. Rubio's only Super Tuesday win was in Minnesota — meaning that he was 1-for-15 in the states that have voted in the Republican presidential primary process. You can try to spin that if you are for Rubio, but the numbers are the numbers. It's very hard to make the case to the candidates not named Marco Rubio that they need to clear the field for him so that he can take on Trump, given what happened on Tuesday night. And that's not just because of Trump's wins and Rubio's losses. It's because Cruz won three states as well. Sure, it was his home state of Texas and nearby Oklahoma as well as Alaska, but wins are wins. For those pointing to Florida on March 15 as a state where a Rubio comeback can begin, I would note that the most recent polling in the state showed Trump ahead of the state's junior senator by double digits. It's hard to see how those numbers move in Rubio's direction after a night like this one, although Rubio did promise that "two weeks from tonight, right here in Florida, we are going to send a message loud and clear. We are going to send a message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist." Uh, okay.

• Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders vowed to keep pushing for the Democratic presidential nomination after Super Tuesday. (Getty Images)

Tuesday's results showed that Sanders simply didn't do enough to disrupt the race in the first four states. Clinton built momentum in Nevada, added to it Saturday night in South Carolina and watched as it crested on Super Tuesday. It was telling that Sanders gave his victory speech at 7:30 p.m. Eastern before the vast majority of states voting on Super Tuesday had been called. It was also telling that nowhere in the speech did Sanders suggest where his campaign goes from here.

Sanders can and probably will remain in the race for the foreseeable future because he still has a rabid following and plenty of money. But nothing that happened on Tuesday night alters the narrative of the Democratic race — that Clinton is on a steady march to the nomination.

• Chris Christie

New Jersey Governor and former White House hopeful Chris Christie listens as Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event (AFP/Getty)

The New Jersey governor, who stunned the political world by endorsing Trump, is -- not surprisingly -- a terrible second fiddle. He looked awkward and uncomfortable standing rigidly behind Trump after introducing the real estate mogul in Florida.

• Republican establishment: What happened Tuesday night looks like a worst-case scenario for the GOP establishment. Why? Because Trump kept up the pace he needs to come close or go over the delegates he needs to be the nominee. And Cruz emerged as the most probable Trump alternative. That is a rock and a hard place choice for establishment Republicans who fear Trump and hate Cruz. And it may be the only choice they have left.
• Fairfax County: This is the county where the Fix family resides. It's a highly educated and affluent county. And yet, it was one of the slowest-reporting counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Come on, man. What are we even doing out here, man?

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