A fractious New York primary has given Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the clear victories they badly needed to end any perception that the wheels may be coming off their campaigns. Trump’s win will give him a desperately needed momentum injection—but with more than 57 percent of the vote, Clinton’s victory is at least as crucial to her chances, and it'll do a lot to extinguish the insurgent hopes of her opponent, Bernie Sanders.
With no clear path to the nomination left, is Sanders’s campaign effectively over? And what legacy will it have?
There is no doubt he’s pulled Clinton leftward when she would have preferred to pivot to the center for the general election. Doubtless she will now begin to do that—but the sheer gravitational pull of Sanders’s insurgency will still throw off the trajectory of her national campaign.
And after all, she led Sanders by more than 40 points in New York polling until the autumn of 2015. That a victory by a margin of more than 15 percent in New York is considered a big win for Clinton reflects just how high Sanders had raised the stakes, winning seven of the eight contests in the weeks before New York voted.
