May 17, 2016

Bernie Sanders Is Poised to Make a Very Weird Kind of History Tonight

Update: No he didn’t.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tabor-roeder/21581179719/in/photolist-yT4bRv-zbp35n-z9wrCd-ydwWyL-yT3R7a-z8g2D1-ydxi7u-DsEuaF-D3GAGN-D3GAE3-Dsvjh7-D3GAJG-CxqNjz-D3GBhA-CWjsHa-D3GAVd-D3GBDs-DnxR6x-D3GBEE-DnxRrT-CxqNJn-CxiXTu-CxqNpK-CxiXVd-Dkf63Q-Dkf6L3-DsvjQS-DnxRbT-CWjsQe-CWjssa-D3GAQo-DuPfeP-CWjsvB-D3GBq1-CWjtfx-DsvjYY-Dkf6gf-Dkf69S-CxqNMi-Dkf62C-DsvjLU-DnxRiX-CWjsq6-Dkf6ay-D3GBKu-DuPfrT-Dsvjj1-uKPWnL-uKPWCA-vGQjz2">Phil Roeder</a>/Flickr

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Update, 5/17: It finally happened. Hillary Clinton won a county called Clinton County. Her long national nightmare is over. Read below for the original piece.

Bernie Sanders can make history in Tuesday night’s Kentucky Democratic primary. No, he can’t clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, nor is he likely to score a big win that convinces superdelegates to switch their allegiances en masse. But if he can beat Hillary Clinton in Kentucky’s Clinton County, he will have defeated Clinton in all nine of the Clinton Counties in the United States.

Let’s take a look at where things stand, by way of the New York Times’ excellent interactive maps:

Iowa (2/1):

Michigan (3/8):

Illinois (3/15):

Missouri (3/15):

Ohio (3/15):

 

New York (4/19):

 

Pennsylvania (4/26):

Indiana (5//3):

The nine counties are named for two different men from New York state—George Clinton, who was vice president to both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and former Gov. Dewitt Clinton, the planner of the Erie Canal. So it makes sense that the various counties reflect the Yankee migration into the Midwest (or old Northwest) or are in places that might have benefited from the canal’s economic boom. More to the point, people in the South, where Clinton has dominated, tended not to name their counties after New York politicians.

Still, Kentucky’s Clinton County could put the streak in jeopardy. It is similar in demographics to two bordering counties in Tennessee, Pickett County and Clay County, which Clinton won handily in that state’s Super Tuesday primary. There is only one Sanders County in the United States, named for the former Montana Sen. Wilbur Fisk Sanders. Clinton will have her chance at payback when Montana votes on June 7.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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