Clinton aims to railroad Sanders in ‘Acela primary'

BALTIMORE — Bernie Sanders looks to be headed for a rough ride through the Acela corridor.

Here in Maryland, where Hillary Clinton locked up much of the state’s political establishment last year while the state’s former, Gov. Martin O’Malley, was still in the race, she leads by more than 20 percentage points in the polls. On Monday, she was endorsed by The Baltimore Sun, the state's largest daily newspaper.

It’s a similar story in each of the four other Northeastern states voting Tuesday — Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — where Sanders is also up against a wall of institutional support for Clinton. And there are other powerful forces working against him, among them, demographics and closed primaries.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime Clinton supporter, predicted that the four states using a closed primary format — where only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary — will prove especially challenging for Sanders, whose best primary performances have come in states where voters don’t need to be Democrats to participate.

“Wherever it’s a primary for Democratic voters she does much better,” Rendell said of Clinton.

In a best-case scenario, Sanders might pull out a win or two Tuesday and keep it close in a delegate-rich state like Pennsylvania. It’s not out of the question: He’s outspent her on television and radio ads in all five states and attracted thousands of supporters to his trademark rallies.

But even so, the senator’s best-case scenario wouldn’t make much of a dent in Clinton’s delegate lead — currently at 275 pledged delegates


http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-northeast-primaries-222272#ixzz46wOlM5qm
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