A review of the week's events in the Democratic Party's contest for the nomination.

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Late-Breaking News --Arizona Primary may be a Do-over!

How Bernie Can Win -- Courtesy of Alan Grayson

"The first Democratic Presidential Primary runs from Feb. 1 to March 15. All 11 "Old South" states vote in that primary. We have two states left to go, (Missouri and North Carolina) but Hillary Clinton has won every one of the other nine, by an average of 43 points.

Outside those states, 12 other states also have voted. Bernie Sanders has won nine of those races, HRC has won only two, and there has been one tie (Iowa). The average result in those 12 states has been a Sanders win by just under 20 points.

The net effect of this (Hillary winning the "Old South" by 43 points, Bernie winning everywhere else by 20 points) is a Clinton lead among pledged delegates of 223 (specifically, 775 to 552).

Primary 2.0. runs from March 16 through June 7. It includes all of the Pacific states, and all of the "Mountain" states except Colorado and Nevada (which have already voted). Biggest: California (545 delegates), New York (291) and Pennsylvania (210). Democratic Presidential Primary 2.0 elects a total of 2033 pledged delegates. If Bernie wins those races (and delegates) by the same 60-40 margin that he has amassed in primaries and caucuses outside the "Old South" to date, then that will give him an advantage of 407 pledged delegates. That is more -- far more -- than the current Clinton margin of 223. Almost 700 pledged delegates are chosen on June 7 alone. It seems unlikely that either candidate will accumulate a margin of 700 pledged delegates before then. So this one may come down to the wire."

One difficulty in determining the results to date is that there is little agreement on how many delegates each candidate has.

How Do Bernie's Results Compare With Alan's Figures?

The vote from Democrats Abroad has now been tallied and Bernie trounced Clinton -- 69% to 31%. 34,570 people participated in the voting that has given Bernie 9 delegates and Clinton 4. Good so far.

Last Night in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho

Decisive wins for Bernie are being reported from Utah with its 37 delegates and Idaho with 27. One hardly knows what to write about Arizona. The networks were reporting it a big win for Clinton within minutes of the polls closing. Jeff Weaver was not willing to concede because he said that the "numbers did not add up."

However, a voter (I am not reporting his name) commented on Bernie's blog that major voter suppression had been taking place in Phoenix. 1) Only 60 polling places were provided for a city of 4.2 million 2) Independents who re-registered as Democrats in order to vote in this primary were kicked off the voting rolls and had to fill out provisional ballots that were not counted and 3) at one a.m., 6 hours after the polls technically closed, that is, no one new could get in line, there were still people waiting to vote at 51 of the 60 polling places.

This comes on the heels of a report out of North Carolina over the weekend from a student president of a university there who claims that the Sanders campaign had been infiltrated by Clinton supporters put in place by the DNC. Apparently, their job was to disrupt the campaign by not posting events that were planned, by preventing individuals who wanted to endorse Sanders from getting in touch with campaign headquarters, and giving a kind of make-work to volunteers that prevented them from phone banking. He named three individuals whom he felt were responsible. The link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017340584

Before that popped up, a well-known expert in studying voting anomalies asked the campaign to look at the apportionment of delegates in Oklahoma. Link:

http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/03/07/election-integrity-activist-wants-sanders-to-check-oklahoma-ballots/

Bringing In The Money

On Sunday, the NY Times hit a new low in its coverage of Bernie's campaign. In an article headlined, "Hillary Clinton Campaign Has Raised Millions Toward Beating Bernie Sanders," the reporter's enthusiasm for Hillary's fundraising could barely be contained. Wow! Hillary had raised $30.1 million in February and (at last) had reached the one million small donors mark.

Here is what it said about Bernie, "Mr. Sanders has nearly kept up in donations, relying almost exclusively on his army of young supporters who give online in small increments." Not a word that Bernie had raised $43.5 million in the same time period.

New Poll -- Bernie Best General Election Candidate

A new CNN/ORC poll released on Monday, March 21^st, showed that if Sanders becomes the Democratic Party standard bearer for the White House he would defeat the real estate mogul 58 percent to 38 percent. That's almost double Hillary Clinton's 12-point lead over Trump. This backs up what previous polls have found: Bernie is a winning general election candidate. Bernie would also defeat Kasich while Hillary would lose to him.

Bernie Campaigning in Washington

On this coming Saturday, Washington, Hawaii, and Alaska will hold closed caucuses. Only registered Democrats will be eligible to participate. How will this affect Sanders chances?

Seattle was declared "Bernie Sanders territory" when a record number of supporters -- over 16,000 turned out to hear him in that city on Sunday. In Spokane, just under 10,000 rallied while more than 8,000 welcomed him to Vancouver. Jane Sanders was campaigning in Hawaii.

Hillary Clinton went to Washington also, but she had an event that cost a bundle to attend. A $50,000 bundle. Or $27,000 could also get you the chance to do a meet and greet.

Authors Bio:

Now retired and a writer, I am a feminist and political activist, a radical Democrat (have come to dislike the term "progressive"), and a blogger. Have done political tours of Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, West and East (way back when)Germany, China, etc. Learned a lot about the US through other people's eyes. Wrote about my life in "Discovering America: A Political Journey." And was one of six winners of an international essay contest sponsored by Cuban ministeries.