If Sanders has a shot at the nomination, some of those hundreds of superdelegates would have to be from Texas. But according to a handful of interviews among the state’s power brokers on Wednesday, turning on the former U.S. secretary of state will be a hard sell in the Lone Star State.

Most superdelegates are current or former officeholders or members of the Democratic National Committee. The party created the designation in the early 1980s to exert some control over the nomination process.

While Sanders has a few dozen superdelegates backing his campaign, Clinton dominates in support of those Democrats nationally — and particularly in Texas.

“I’m trying to figure out what metric I should look at in making a decision to suddenly flip my support for Bernie Sanders," said state Rep. Rafael Anchia, a superdelegate from Dallas. “Hillary Clinton won the district that I represent 70 to 30 percent; she won the state of Texas 65 to 35 percent, roughly; she has won far more states than he has; she has won more pledged delegates than he has."

It's an argument many other superdelegates from Texas and elsewhere echoed.

Even as Barack Obama's campaign celebrated Tuesday's primary results, aides charged yesterday that they would have had an even stronger showing were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: the popular conservative radio host and longtime Clinton family nemesis Rush Limbaugh.

The impact of Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" emerged as an intriguing point of debate, particularly in Indiana, where registered voters could participate in either party's primary, and where Clinton won by a mere 14,000 votes. As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and prolong the Democratic fight.

Limbaugh crowed about the success of his ploy all day Tuesday, featuring on-air testimonials from voters in Indiana and North Carolina who recounted their illicit pleasure in casting a vote for Clinton. "Some of the people show up and they ask for a Democrat ballot, and the poll worker says, 'Why, what are you going to do?' He says, 'Operation Chaos,' and they just laugh," Limbaugh said Tuesday.

But Limbaugh called off the operation yesterday, saying he wants Obama to be the party's pick, because "I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees."

He added: "He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that."

He went on to argue that he's going to win because he'll pile up votes now that the contest has moved out of the Deep South. This is a shorthand version of an argument that Sanders and his allies have been deploying recently in an attempt to downplay Clinton's lead in pledged delegates – "having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality" he told Larry Wilmore, host of "The Nightly Show," earlier this week.

There's a lot wrong with this formulation, as Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times this morning. It suggests a world view redolent of former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's toxic pandering to "real America." In Sanders' case, he's saying that red-state Democrats should be discounted because they're too conservative. But that's simply wrong, Krugman notes: Clinton isn't "riding a wave of support from old-fashioned Confederate-flag-waving Dixiecrats," she ran up the score by scoring lopsided victories among black voters ("let's be blunt, the descendants of slaves," he writes).

And the fact that the Deep South is conservative should be irrelevant, given that Sanders argues the principle obstacle to his super progressive agenda is campaign finance corruption rather than, say, ideology. Either he's leading a national movement, as he claims, or he's not.

Thus more broadly, his attempt to delegitimize a swath of voters lays bare a fundamental inconsistency of the Sanders campaign: One of his basic answers about how he's going to accomplish his aims – whether winning the Democratic nod, winning the general election or enacting his agenda – is the forthcoming revolution. His super-ambitious agenda will prove to be achievable substance rather than unicorns-and-rainbows fantasy, he said Thursday night, "when millions of people stand up, fight back and create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. That is what the political revolution is about. That is what this campaign is about."

And that's fine: If he can summon the revolution, then more power to him, literally and figuratively. But the Sanders revolution is breaking on the hard realities of math. The revolution will not be televised, the old song goes; but it can be fantasized – and it can be measured, in votes and delegates. And in every calculable respect, it's coming up short. That leaves Sanders to bank on an anti-democratic sleight of hand to secure the nomination. That's not a broad-based revolution; that's a palace coup.

Here's why: Despite Sanders' recent string of victories, there is no sense in which he is winning this race. As The Washington Post's Philip Bump wrote earlier this week:

In fact, by every possible democratic measure, Clinton is winning. She's winning in states (and territories) won, which isn't a meaningful margin of victory anyway. She's winning in the popular vote by 2.4 million votes – more than a third more than Sanders has in total. In part that's because Sanders is winning lower-turnout caucuses, but it's mostly because he's winning smaller states. And she's winning with both types of delegates.

Bernie Sanders says his platform makes financial sense for most Americans. For example, his campaign says Sanders's single-payer health care system would save an average family of four almost $6,000 per year.

But in order to pay for his proposed programs, Sanders needs to increase taxes on virtually everyone in America. So if you're a voter, the question is simple:

Are you willing to pay more taxes for his proposals, like nationalized health care and free public college tuition?

How much more?

When we polled voters, we found most Sanders supporters aren't willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for his biggest proposals. That's well short of how much more the average taxpayer would pay under his tax plan.

We asked voters how much more they are willing to pay for nationalized health care and free public college

We conducted a poll the week of April 4 in partnership with the nonpartisan technology and media company Morning Consult. In it, we asked voters how much more they would be willing to pay for two of Sanders's big propositions: a universal health care system covering all Americans and free tuition at public colleges and universities.

Most Americans say they are willing to pay something extra for these programs:

Nationalized health care: Around 80 percent of Sanders supporters are willing to pay more in federal taxes for universal health care coverage, compared with about 70 percent of Clinton supporters and about 40 percent of those supporting a Republican candidate.

Free public college tuition: A slightly lower percentage of people were willing to pay more for free public college tuition: 80 percent of Sanders supporters, 60 percent of Clinton supporters, and about 40 percent of those supporting a Republican candidate.
But when we look at how much more voters are willing to pay, we get a better idea of how voters view Sanders's plan.

Two in three Sanders supporters don't want to pay more than $1,000, or at all, for universal health care

About 66 percent of Sanders supporters said they wouldn't be willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for universal health care. This includes the 8 percent of Sanders supporters who aren't willing to pay anything at all.

On Tuesday, Bernie Sanders announced the hiring of Simone Zimmerman, an outspoken critic of Israeli policy and its prime minister, as his campaign’s national Jewish outreach coordinator. The appointment was met with near instantaneous condemnation by the American Jewish establishment. By Thursday, the Sanders campaign announced it was suspending Zimmerman to investigate an exceptionally critical Facebook post from March 2015 attributed to her that characterized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as sanctioning mass murder. "F___k you, Bibi..." the post read.

Here’s more from the New York Times on the ideological divide that Zimmerman represents:

Ms. Zimmerman, who declined to comment, has been active in left-wing Jewish politics for years and came up in organizations such as J Street, but has also worked closely with Jewish synagogues in Los Angeles, and with young Jews on myriad trips to Israel. While the American Jewish establishment considers her and her allies radical, she and young Jewish activists argue that their disgust with the Netanyahu government’s policies is inching toward the mainstream.

This Friday, a group of Maricopa County voters will sue the state of Arizona over the disastrous primary election in March that left them waiting up to five hours in the desert heat to cast a ballot. They will be supported in the case by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Arizona Democratic Party, the president of the Navajo Nation, and the campaign of Ann Kirkpatrick, who is challenging Sen. John McCain for his seat in Congress.

“Arizonans were denied their constitutional right to vote because those who run the system weren’t prepared, and it can never happen again,” Kirkpatrick said in an e-mailed statement. “Today’s action is about representing every Arizona voter who stood in line for far too long or was forced to go home without casting a ballot.”

The case demands the U.S. District Court of Phoenix review why the county cut the number of available polling places from 200 to 60, leaving only one voting center for every 21,000 voters, and ensure there are adequate polls open for this November’s general election, which will have even higher voter turnout. Even in the lower-turnout March primary, some polling places ran out of ballots.....

The new lawsuit from the Democratic Party aims to remedy the problem before November, when the key swing state could help determine the fate of both the White House and the Senate. Democrats are also suing in four other swing states — Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina — over allegations of voter suppression against students, people of color, and the poor.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz argued Thursday that policies in these states are a deliberate attempt by Republican officials to maintain their power. “They want nothing less than to disenfranchise voting groups who are inconvenient to them on Election Day,” she said. “That’s exactly what Arizona’s officials did when they closed polling locations and rejected thousands of provisional ballots, and it’s exactly what they’ll continue to do if left unchecked.”

Austin, TX -- Last week, the Texas Tribune reported that “Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have stumped for Ted Cruz for president, but there's no record he voted in this year's Republican primary in Texas. A spokesman for Perry suggested his ballot may have been lost in the mail.” [Texas Tribune, March 29, 2016]

The Tribune goes on to state,“Fayette County Elections Administrator Dina Bell confirmed by email on Tuesday that Perry requested a mail-in ballot for the March 1 Republican primary and one was given to him on Feb. 1.Bell recalled that Perry showed up in person to get it…”

Here’s where it gets interesting: picking up a mail-in ballot in person is against the law. Isn’t this the kind of potential voter fraud Gov. Perry and Republicans rail against? After all, you wouldn’t want empty ballots just floating around.

Texas Election Code States: “(a)The balloting materials for voting by mail shall be provided to the voter by mail. A ballot provided by any other method may not be counted….(b) Subject to Subsection (c), the balloting materials shall be addressed to the applicable address specified in the voter’s application. The election officer providing the ballot may not knowingly mail the materials to an address other than that prescribed by this section.” [TEC § 86.003]

Texas Democratic Party Vote-by-Mail Program Director & former State Representative Glen Maxey issued the following statement calling for an investigation from the Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Fayette County and District Attorney:

“Anything less than a full and thorough investigation on this issue is confirmation that corruption has completely infected Texas government under one-party Republican rule.

Yesterday afternoon, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced its fundraising tally over the same period, and though Sanders hasn’t matched his rival in votes or wins, we were reminded once more that he’s easily defeating her when it comes to dollars in the bank. But the Clinton campaign’s press release added something Sanders’ did not:

Hillary Clinton raised about $29.5 million for her primary campaign during March. That amount brings the first quarter total to nearly $75 million raised for the primary, beating the campaign’s goal of $50 million by about 50 percent. [Hillary For America] begins April with nearly $29 million on hand.

Clinton raised an additional $6.1 million for the DNC and state parties during the month of March, bringing the total for the quarter to about $15 million [emphasis added].

The first part matters, of course, to the extent that Sanders’ fundraising juggernaut is eclipsing Clinton’s operation, but it’s the second part that stands out. How much money did Sanders raise for the DNC and state parties in March? Actually, zero. For the quarter, the total was also zero.

And while the typical voter probably doesn’t know or care about candidates’ work on behalf of down-ballot allies, this speaks to a key difference between Sanders and Clinton: the former is positioning himself as the leader of a revolution; the latter is positioning herself as the leader of the Democratic Party. For Sanders, it means raising amazing amounts of money to advance his ambitions; for Clinton, it means also raising money to help other Democratic candidates.

As Rachel noted on the show last night, the former Secretary of State has begun emphasizing this angle while speaking to voters on the campaign trail. Here, for example, is Clinton addressing a Wisconsin audience over the weekend:

“I’m also a Democrat and have been a proud Democrat all my adult life. I think that’s kind of important if we’re selecting somebody to be the Democratic nominee of the Democratic Party.

“But what it also means is that I know how important to elect state legislatures, to elect Democratic governors, to elect a Democratic Senate and House of Representatives.”

The message wasn’t subtle: Clinton is a Democrat and Sanders isn’t; Clinton is working to help Democrats up and down the ballot and Sanders isn’t.