Bernie Just Won Nevada and People Are Losing Their Minds

This is either the beginning or the end, depending on where you stand.

Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire earlier this monthM. Scott Brauer for Mother Jones

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Sen. Bernie Sanders promised to to ignite a movement that would shake up the Democratic establishment, and after handily winning the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, he’s delivered. Sanders ran away with a victory in Nevada, winning 46 percent of the vote. His closest competitor, Joe Biden, won just over 19 percent.

And the big scary liberal establishment is losing it. Exhibit A: MSNBC host Chris Matthews. In his caucus commentary on Saturday night, he mentioned that he’d been reading about the fall of France during World War II, and then made this ill-advised analogy to Sanders’ victory: “The general, Renault, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘How can it be? You’ve got that greatest army in Europe.’ And he says, ‘It’s over.'” That ham-fisted anecdote drew instant criticism from those who thought Matthews was comparing Sanders to Hitler, including Mike Casca, the campaign’s communications director.

The hashtag #msnbcmeltdown started trending on Twitter on Sunday morning and there have been calls for Matthews’ resignation.

The flip side of the establishment hand-wringing that Matthews was channeling is that Sanders’ victory in Nevada was a monumental moment for progressives. The state’s caucus was a test unlike any other so far in the Democratic primary, writes Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy, and it has cemented Sanders as the frontrunner:

But while Sanders’ opponents may agree that he won’t make the best nominee, none can agree on how to actually stop him. In the meantime, Sanders has built a political movement that might make any kind of maneuvering aimed at denying him the nomination irrelevant, and one that by its very existence neutralizes one of the most compelling arguments his opponents once had.

Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, the Silver State isn’t a racially homogenous white voting bloc. And Sanders has built a racially and ethnically diverse coalition of young people whose influence will be further tested as Super Tuesday nears. If Sanders sweeps those primaries in 10 days, get ready for an even bigger freakout.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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