For what it’s worth, and at the risk of oversimplifying some complex issues, I think a lot of the tension over the Black Lives Matter movement results from some Americans either innocently or willfully misconstruing the name as “Only Black Lives Matter” when the intent is something much closer to “Black Lives Matter Too.”

Anyway, I took a bunch of photos before, during, and after the vigil, and some of the beginning of the march to City Hall.

Clinton was a huge favorite going into the primary season and had strong backing from the party establishment. Obama had lots of things against him, including limited national political experience, a strange name, and influential super-delegates who had decided to back Clinton early.

Of course, Clinton had plenty of things working against her too, and many voters — including me in a letter to the New York Times — argued against the return of “Clintonian testiness” to the White House. At the time, I wrongly thought that Obama would have better luck working with Republicans in Congress.

This history is worth remembering now in 2016. Bernie Sanders supporters especially need to recall what happened in 2008. Yes, it was entirely possible for an insurgent candidate to beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

How did the Obama team best Clinton, while the Sanders team has failed? There are obviously many ways of answering that question, but there is one key: implementing a campaign strategy that would maximize delegate accumulation.

The Democratic primary process allocates delegates in proportion to the popular vote. There are quirks to the numbers based on a variety of factors — like which Congressional districts have odd numbers of delegates — but the final delegate count in each state is very close to the popular vote. The Obama team did an especially impressive job of taking advantage of low-turnout anti-democratic caucuses, of minimizing losses, and of maximizing wins.

Take a look at the delegate counts at RealClearPolitics for every contest in 2008.

In 2008, there were 3434 pledged Democratic delegates, and Obama ended up beating Clinton by only 127 — 1766.5 to 1639.5. The primary order was different from 2016, which is worth remembering, but it’s still instructive to look at the general sequence of events.

At the end of January, Obama led Clinton by a few delegates, and then came the 23 contests on Feb. 5th. Clinton had big wins in California (+38 delegates), New York (+46), Massachusetts (+17), and Arkansas (+19), but Obama fought Clinton to a virtual draw on that day because of wins like his home state of Illinois (+55) and because of some really strong caucus showings, including taking 48 of 72 delegates in Minnesota, 14 of 23 in Utah, 15 of 18 in Idaho, and 10 of 13 in Alaska.

And then, while the Clinton campaign’s organization seemed in disarray, the Obama campaign reeled off an impressive string of wins from Feb. 9th to 19th:

Virgin Islands: Obama 3 – Clinton 0
Nebraska: Obama 16 – Clinton 8
Louisiana: Obama 34 – Clinton 22
Washington: Obama 52 – Clinton 26
Maine: Obama 15 – Clinton 9
Democrats Abroad: Obama 4.5 – Clinton 2.5
District of Columbia: Obama 12 – Clinton 3
Maryland: Obama 42 – Clinton 28
Virginia: Obama 54 – Clinton 29
Hawaii: Obama 14 – Clinton 6
Wisconsin: Obama 42 – Clinton 32

In those contests alone, Obama picked up 123 more delegates than Clinton. (Remember that his final lead was only 127.)

And, in terms of the math, the contest was pretty much over.

Clinton stayed in the race until June. She had some solid wins in the final months including Ohio (+7 delegates), Pennsylvania (+12 delegates), West Virginia (+12 delegates), Kentucky (+23 delegates), and Puerto Rico (+21 delegates), but Obama was able to hold serve, as it were.

Understandably, Clinton supporters did not want to believe that Obama had built an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates before the end of February, but he had. It’s worth recalling, though, that back in 2008 we didn’t have the social media connectivity that we do today. My sister and I routinely discussed Obama’s overwhelming lead of 100+ delegates, but I wasn’t getting into fights on Facebook (I wasn’t even on Facebook yet in early 2008) about basic mathematics.

And the national press did what it tends to do — they continued to talk about the horse race aspects of the nomination fight, and they left readers with the impression that the pledged delegate count was closer than it was. Surely, trailing by just a few percentage points, Clinton still had a viable path forward?

No, she did not.

Is there anything Clinton could have done to win the 2008 primary? I’m not going to try to answer that question in detail, but a more finely tuned campaign organization probably could have been more competitive in caucuses. But Obama was an exceptional candidate in a variety of ways, and once black voters — especially black women — began to view him as a viable nominee, Clinton probably didn’t have a chance.

One Clinton argument turned out to be a non-starter. Even though Hillary Clinton had many super-delegates on her side early on and was seen by many as more electable in the general election than Obama, there was no way those party officials were going to deny the nomination to the clear winner of the pledged delegates.

So let’s bring this conversation forward to 2016.

Consider the 2016 primary schedule and the results, so far.

After Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, the race turned to South Carolina on Feb. 27th, where Clinton won over 73 percent and took 39 of 53 pledged delegates. I was sitting in my parents’ home in Kentucky that night, fairly bored, but my jaw dropped when I saw Clinton’s margin. It was obvious to anyone who follows the numbers that Sanders had monumental work to do in the South, especially among black voters, if he wanted to remain a viable candidate after the contests on March 1.

So that very night I found a live stream of Sanders talking about the S.C. results — from Minnesota. Yes, he had been to Texas earlier that day, but by evening he was in Rochester, Minnesota. On Feb. 29th, he held a big rally in Minneapolis. It turns out that he spent a lot of time before the S.C. primary in other states, especially ones where he faced smaller deficits.

I was astounded by this bizarre travel schedule. My reasoning was simple: if Sanders continued to perform so badly with black voters and if he got swept across the South by similar margins, his campaign was going to fail quickly.

Sure enough, on March 1st, Sanders did well in a few places and got trounced in others:

Alabama: Clinton 44 – Sanders 9
American Samoa (caucus): Clinton 4 – Sanders 2
Arkansas: Clinton 22 – Sanders 10
Colorado (caucus): Clinton 25 – Sanders 41
Democrats Abroad: Clinton 4 – Sanders 9
Georgia: Clinton 73 – Sanders 29
Massachusetts: Clinton 46 – Sanders 45
Minnesota (caucus): Clinton 31 – Sanders 46
Oklahoma: Clinton 17 – Sanders 21
Tennessee: Clinton 44 – Sanders 23
Texas: Clinton 147 – Sanders 75
Vermont: Clinton 0 – Sanders 16
Virginia: Clinton 62 – Sanders 33

So on that day Clinton took 160 more delegates than Sanders. Game over.

Really, game over? How can you say that?

I suppose the Sanders campaign could have made dramatic changes to their campaign strategy at some point immediately after that shellacking, but it was soon clear that no significant changes were in the offing.

And then there was the fact-free internet commentary like this piece at the Huffington Post about how Sanders actually won on March 1!

By this time, the Sanders team had clearly signaled its preference for symbolic victories and for “winning states” rather than for accumulating delegates. It was a strategy doomed to failure from the beginning.

In the many weeks since that March 1st trouncing, Sanders has continued to double down on that strategy and has tried to minimize Clinton’s wins in the South and therefore her dominance among black voters.

Are there things the Sanders campaign could have done to improve the Senator’s standing among southern voters generally and non-white voters specifically? Absolutely. Are there things they could have tried even in the final few days to minimize their losses? Maybe.

But Sanders opted not to change course, and seemed to assume that a few high-profile wins — even if they netted him relatively few delegates (Michigan, for example) — would change the “momentum” of the race.

As it turned out, the strategy continued to excite his supporters and bring in millions of dollars, but it failed to change the dynamic of the race, and Sanders continued to perform miserably with non-white voters. On March 15th, Clinton picked up 104 more delegates than Sanders in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. Sanders had a nice run of impressive caucus wins later in the subsequent weeks — Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington — but Clinton undid that damage with big wins in large diverse states like New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

So who has the momentum now?

No one. There has been virtually no momentum in the 2016 Democratic primary. Sanders has done better in low-turnout caucuses than could have reasonably been expected, but he has failed to make significant headway with some core Democratic constituencies.

Before the primaries got underway, the data journalists at FiveThirtyEight tabulated contest-by-contest targets for each candidate. These were not predictions but merely targets: if Sanders or Clinton is on the path to the pledged delegate majority, about how many delegates should he/she win in each state?

So far, Clinton has matched or exceeded her delegate target in 35 contests and fallen below her target in 13. Sanders has matched or exceeded his delegate target in 20 contests and fallen below his target in 28. Clinton has matched or exceeded her target in 13 of the last 14 contests going back to April 5th. In other words, she might not be winning in the most recent states to vote, but she would be doing well enough to be headed to the nomination even if she and Sanders were in a virtual tie.

Of course, they aren’t tied. Clinton is way, way ahead.

Now it seems the Sanders campaign is tripling down on its failed strategy. All the talk is about California, a state that Sanders could conceivably win on June 7th, but the Sanders team is downplaying New Jersey, where the demographics make a win less likely. And even if Sanders manages a 20 point win in California — that would be huge! — he’d only make up about 90 delegates, nowhere near enough to dig out of his 270 delegate hole.

Clinton is certainly going to head to the convention with a strong lead in pledged delegates, and it’s likely to be far, far higher than Obama’s lead in 2008. Sanders has been arguing all along that the super-delegates should not exist, but now his campaign is arguing that those very super-delegates should overrule the popular vote. That argument is nonsensical and hypocritical.

The Sanders team has convinced many of their supporters that the whole system is rigged, a cynical argument that flies in the face of recent history. Just eight years ago, an insurgent candidate knocked off the party favorite, and the Obama team won by understanding the rules and playing the game better than the Clinton team did.

Was Sanders hurt by the purge of inactive voters from the voter lists in Brooklyn? Maybe, but Clinton won Brooklyn handily and many of the inactive voters were likely last active in 2008, when Obama won. In other words, any purge of inactive voters in Brooklyn probably hurt Clinton worse than Sanders.

What about the debate schedule, Wasserman Schultz, the closed primaries? Again, Obama overcame these same issues in 2008. Given the huge amount of cash coming into his campaign and the ubiquity of social media, Sanders has had no trouble getting the word out about his positions. And voters in individual states have for decades known the quirky rules about primary voting. The state-by-state variation isn’t something that was just created out of thin air to screw over Bernie Sanders.

Sanders simply did not win, and I expect that we’ll see some really interesting post mortems on the campaign down the road, like this fascinating inside look from VTDigger. (That piece includes the thorny detail that Sanders’ top political strategist is also an owner of an agency through which the campaign spent millions of dollars on advertising.)

I’ve had mixed feelings about Sanders, especially the political impracticality of some of his positions, from the beginning, but like many others I now see his campaign as downright deceptive. Many Sanders supporters seem to think that he still has a chance to overcome Clinton’s pledged delegate lead. Those people are wrong, and they are being encouraged in this false belief by Sanders and many of his high-profile supporters.

So what else can we learn from 2008?

Hillary Clinton fought through the final primaries, but after that she and her supporters finally digested the fact that they had lost, and she threw the full weight of her power behind Obama. I’d sure like to see Sanders do the same here in 2016, but that seems depressingly unlikely.

The SCMPD has just released this powerful and really well-produced video about the need for citizens to come forward with information about crimes that they witness or concerns that they have: “End Gun Violence : Step Forward”.

The first interviewee is Pam Abraham, the mother of a murdered son. She’s a powerful presence throughout — the moral force of the video — but she’s joined by a variety of grassroots leaders like Ronald Williams and various other community members, in addition to Chief Jack Lumpkin, D.A. Meg Heap, and Detective Robert Santoro.

Click here for more on the video from the SCMPD.

This is well worth your time:

Pundits and polls had thought that Bevin was headed to defeat on election day last month, but he sailed to an upset, defeating Democrat Jack Conway by 85,000 votes.

But before we go into more detail and speculation: Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Voight:

I swear that’s Jon Voight. A moment after this, he literally turned and smiled and waved, but the shot I took with my normally foolproof FujiFilm x100t is nothing but a big blur. Put me in a crowded dark bar with a drink in my hand, and I know just how to take one solid photo after another, but if you put me on a sunny street corner at 10 a.m., it’s nothing but trouble.

Anyway, now what?

I can’t see that the newly elected Bevin has any particular plan to address Kentucky’s failing government pension system. (Really, it’s collapsing.) He is poised to roll back the Medicaid expansion even though Kentucky has arguably benefited more from it than any other state. Across the state, poverty-stricken rural areas that have quickly come to rely on the Medicaid expansion for better quality of life and for potential economic development voted overwhelmingly for Bevin. See here, here, and here.

Bevin’s appointees include a coal executive to head the Energy and Environment Cabinet and a charter school advocate from Louisville to head the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet. I seriously have nothing against charter schools when appropriate oversight is in place, but school choice isn’t going to solve the woes of rural Kentucky. Many counties barely have the students and funding to maintain one public high school.

On the other hand, Bevin is a successful businessman and army veteran who was raised and attended college outside of Kentucky. He does not have deep ties to much of the state’s Republican establishment — he even challenged incumbent Senator Mitch McConnell — and he might bring an independence and entrepreneurial spirit to the governor’s office. Repeat, might.

No matter what happens, cities like Louisville and Lexington seem likely to continue prospering, and my hometown of Frankfort will always benefit from the presence of state government. Frankfort will even benefit, at least in the short term, from the party changeover, which will bring all sorts of economic stimuli (home sales, spending by lobbyists, etc.).

So here’s the new governor:

He looks thrilled to see me, right?

My parents’ home is literally just a block from the corner where I took that picture. I was hovering amidst the very heavy security — officials probably beefed up security after San Bernardino, right? — and then there was Bevin hopping out of the trolley to walk up Capital Avenue.

It was a lovely day for a parade, and in the photos you can see all sorts of random things. Some quick impressions:

• Kentucky now has a black woman – Jenean Hampton — as Lieutenant Governor. Who knew?
• Who wasn’t in the parade? Oh, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, most members of Congress …
• Hey, marching band parents, listen up: If you’re hovering over your kids and their friends while they march in parades, you are screwing up the photos. And if you’re wearing garish colors that don’t match the school colors, then you should pack it in and go home.
• Speaking of marching bands: are the outfits getting even odder? Check out the percussion section for one band wearing leopard skin capes over their kilts.
• The requisite vultures were circling — they’ve been everywhere in Frankfort for years.
• Franklin County Judge/Executive Huston Wells was my tennis coach for a year in high school. A couple of years after that, we worked on a summer paint crew together. Two really fine young men on that crew — Kenny Miller and Bert Harberson — died far too young. I yelled to Huston today and told him who I was, but I’m not sure he put the pieces together.
• Former governor Paul Patton and his wife look great, and their faces lit up when I told them so.
• Yep, there were lots of empty seats in the bleachers up near the capitol.
• The big U.S. flag being carried by the Vietnam veterans was pretty impressive.
• There was one gray-haired environmentalist with a protest sign.

In short, if no candidate gets 50 percent on Tuesday, that race will go into a runoff. (50 percent + 1 vote is enough to win.)

First, a word on racial, neighborhood, and retail politics:

The population of Savannah is somewhere in the ballpark of 55 percent black, 35 percent non-Hispanic white, 5 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian. The percentage of blacks is probably higher among those under 18, so the voting power of Savannah’s African-American population probably isn’t quite as strong as those numbers appear, but there is no doubt that there will be more black voters than white voters in this election.

There is only one council district — District 4, where Julian Miller is challenging Mary Ellen Sprague — where white voters clearly dominate.

There are lots of voters who will split their tickets on Tuesday between white and black candidates, but many voters will vote for an all white or an all black slate. There’s clear evidence of white candidates beating black candidates head-to-head, like Tom Bordeaux’s easy runoff win in 2011 for Alderman At-Large Post 2, but there is still an electoral edge for black candidates.

Savannah is a small, who-do-you-know kind of town. Take a look at the 2011 general election results, and you’ll see that Jeff Felser made the mayoral runoff with just a little over 5,000 votes. John Hall and Estella Shabazz were elected to council with just over 1,600 votes. With numbers that low, one doesn’t need a lot of money or a sophisticated multimedia campaign to win.

Candidates in Savannah need to know a lot of people, know a lot of people who also know a lot of people, and get out into the community as much as they can. I obviously don’t know everything that each campaign has been doing, and I’ve been out of town a lot in recent months, but I have seen little evidence that the 2015 challengers have done the sort of retail politicking required to pick up a few votes here, a few more votes there. For example, if Eddie DeLoach gets into a runoff with Edna Jackson, and if he can win even 10 percent of black support in that runoff, he might very well be Savannah’s next mayor, but I don’t know that he and his supporters have done the type of legwork necessary.

So, here are my more or less final thoughts on each race:

MAYOR:

Ok, I’m not even going to talk about crime. I’m going to briefly mention only a few of the other major issues at City Hall right now. I could literally go on and on and on for thousands of words about the failings at the top.

But who is the top?

Savannah has a strong city manager form of government. For part of Jackson’s term, Rochelle Small-Toney was in the top spot, and Jackson deserves credit for pushing Small-Toney out, but now the city manager is Stephanie Cutter, who rose over the years through the ranks. Jackson has repeatedly expressed strong support for Cutter, so a vote for Jackson on Tuesday is probably an endorsement of four more years of a Jackson/Cutter administration. Let’s consider some of the things that combination has brought us:

1) Cultural Arts Center. My Sunday City Talk column tomorrow is mainly about the Cultural Arts Center, which was originally intended to be an economic development tool for MLK. Now we’re putting it on some of the most valuable land in the city.

2) Meldrim Row demolition. What do our leaders think of affordable housing, African American history, classic vernacular architecture, maintaining diversity in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood? Meldrim Row is your answer.

Before:

After:

3) Alcohol ordinance. The city has been trying to revise the ordinance since January 2013 (or earlier). In 2014, literally on the business day before the first public meetings, the city released a draft that would have banned any adult between 18 and 20 from being in a restaurant that serves alcohol after 10 p.m., unless that person is with a parent. That means that restaurants like Applebee’s, Vinnie’s, Crystal Beer Parlor, and dozens of others would have to begin carding every single young looking patron who entered the door after 9 p.m. or so, whether or not that patron was ordering alcohol. City officials quickly dropped that provision from their draft, but it is still utterly mind-boggling to me that a group of adults could work on a draft for 18 months and then include a bone-headed idea like that. In fact, officials eventually dropped most of the onerous language of that first draft (and would create new entertainment options for 18+ audiences), but it’s now a year later and there is no ordinance.

4) Food trucks. At the mayoral forum at Armstrong, Mayor Jackson articulated a broadly liberal vision for food trucks — a vision that would allow entrepreneurs a real chance to thrive. But Jackson’s words directly contradicted pretty much everything in the draft ordinance released by the city. So where is the disconnect? At a council workshop session, alderwoman Carol Bell noted that she had started asking the city to move on an ordinance when her term began in early 2012. And here we are.

5) Waters Avenue strip mall. Enough said.

6) A vision for the old arena when new one is built. At that Armstrong forum, Jackson said that she thought that community groups would still want to use the MLK arena even after the new arena is built off West Gwinnett. Huh??????

7) Police merger. The merger may already be over, and city officials have increasingly blamed the county, but many of us blame and have for many months been blaming the city for its hubris.

8) The NewZO. Under this leadership, it will never happen, so I’m not even going to bother making a pitch for it.

So, is that enough? We have a dysfunctional city government, and all signs point to the situation getting worse before getting better, if Jackson is reelected.

Have challengers Eddie DeLoach and Murray Silver done enough retail politicking — appearing at churches, community groups, neighborhood gatherings — to attract the small percentage of black votes necessary to a) force a runoff and b) defeat Jackson in a runoff? Since Louis Wilson looks unlikely to take a significant percentage of the black vote away from Jackson, Jackson is certain to enter a runoff or to win outright on Tuesday. I suspect that she is going to win outright.

And then I can only hope that she will realize that she is at the helm of a sinking ship.

ALDERMAN AT-LARGE POST 1:

I’d like to take all the at-large candidates — the two for this post and the six for post 2 — and put them all on council. What a smart, diverse, and interesting group that would be.

As I’ve said before, I’m impressed by Carol Bell, but she hasn’t pushed hard enough on the mayor and the city manager. I’m also impressed by challenger Linda Wilder Bryan and will likely vote for her on Tuesday. I’m frankly still trying to decide.

ALDERMAN AT-LARGE POST 2:

What an interesting race. The establishment support (Chamber-affiliated PAC, Savannah Morning News, Savannah Tribune) for retired bank president Brian Foster has led many of my friends and acquaintances to oppose his candidacy, but I think he’d be an excellent choice, assuming he’s a bit more consistently engaged than Tom Bordeaux, who currently holds the seat.

But Joe Steffen and Travis Coles both seem like better choices, and I have also been impressed with interviews with G. Lind Taylor, Alicia Blakely, and Clinton Young.

This is a really strong field, and each of these six candidates has a shot at making the runoff, although the racial demographics — three are white, three are black — and the lack of polling make this race very tough to call.

UPDATE, 11/2, on at-large races: I will post something more detailed later, but there were flyers distributed on Sunday throughout much of the city that were paid for by Jackson’s and Foster’s campaigns. Those flyers endorsed all incumbents. The Bell campaign was not listed as a funder of the flyer, but she has not responded so far to a message left for her on her official Facebook page.

In light of this flyer and the desperation of supporting all eight incumbents, I recommend supporting Linda Wilder-Bryan for Post 1 and either Joe Steffen or Travis Coles for Post 2 (although at the moment I’d vote for any of the candidates over Foster).

DISTRICT 1:

Has Bernetta Lanier done enough retail politicking to knock off incumbent Van Johnson? Are West Savannah residents tired enough of high crime and lack of economic development to vote the incumbent out? Keep in mind that Lanier grew up in the neighborhood and has a huge network.

As I’ve said before, if Van Johnson has designs on the 2019 mayoral election as is widely assumed, then he obviously has to defeat Lanier on Tuesday and has to help make council more effective over the next four years. He’s smart enough to demand better and quicker work from city staff.

DISTRICT 2:

District 2 has been significantly redrawn, and it seems very likely that the new voters added to the district, including me, will vote overwhelmingly against incumbent Mary Osborne. I don’t know how anyone who is familiar with the blight, crime, and poverty in the 2nd district could vote for more of the same with Osborne, but some will … Still, I’m confident that we’ll see a runoff between Detric Leggett and Bill Durrence. Andree Patterson is also a strong candidate with real interest in issues like better urban planning and affordable housing.

DISTRICT 3:

Wow, Kim Dulek is an impressive candidate. But she’s a relative newcomer to Savannah, and she’s a white candidate in an overwhelmingly black district with an incumbent — John Hall — who has been active in the community for decades. I hope Dulek will continue to be engaged in local politics, even if she can’t overcome the inherent obstacles on Tuesday.

DISTRICT 4:

I’ve never quite understood some of the frustrations with Mary Ellen Sprague, who handily won reelection in 2011. Julian Miller is an impressive challenger, for sure, and it looks like he might have a slight edge. If Miller wins, I hope he follows through on holding the mayor and city manager’s feet to the fire on moving more quickly to support the SCMPD and Chief Lovett Lumpkin (I’m not the first to make that mistake!), and I hope that he demands results on all sorts of lingering issues on the city’s plate.

DISTRICT 5:

Does the energetic Shaundra McKeithen have the community connections to unseat Estella Shabazz? Like Leggett, McKeithen has been described as representative of a new group of leaders in Savannah’s black community — ones who are willing to break with the entrenched powers — but has she done enough in the 5th district to tip the scales and knock off a well-known incumbent? I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. Change happens slowly around here.

DISTRICT 6:

What else is there to say about Tony Thomas, who is once again picking up key endorsements despite being the target of all sorts of questions and attacks? Many Southside residents love Thomas, but this election poses some special problems for him. His district now has a very slim white majority, and he’s being challenged by two white candidates (Stephen McElveen and David Self) and a strong black candidate (Zena McClain).

Thomas was unopposed in 2011, and he still has a chance of winning outright on Tuesday, but I suspect this race will head to a runoff.