New Hampshire

New Hampshire didn't settle much, except that - emphatically - Trump and Sanders aren't going away any time soon.

-- To digress for a bit:  the fact that Sanders and Trump so thoroughly whipped everyone else in the field - the Donald got more votes than Cruz, Bush, Rubio combined, and Bernie is swamping HRC by some 50 thousand votes - ought to give punditry a moment of pause.  These are the wise folks who told us last summer that both of them would fade in a hurry, dismissing Trump especially as some kind of blow-dry joke.  We'd be wise to take any further declarations with some of the stuff in the salt shaker --

The Carolinas and further South will be more hostile ground for Bernie, and possibly for John Kasich - he did more than a hundred town halls in NH but they don't know him at all below the Mason-Dixon Line.  Still, as someone who found Kasich to be one of the few adults in the GOP pack, it's encouraging to see his essentially positive and non-hysterical message get some traction - he was a poor 2nd to the Trump Tower, but whipped Cruz, Rubio, and Bush easily.

Still, Bush has $40 million in the bank, and can pull a Rubio now, claiming that even a 4th place finish keeps him in the game.  I don't know how Rubio can turn a poor 5th place into a "win" ala Iowa, and he didn't even try tonight.  Bush may do very well in South Carolina, so the GOP fight will likely drag well into the spring, even to the convention - usually a coronation, but this time it could be a dogfight on the floor.

Arrivederci Christie, Carson, and Fiorina.......

Two cents worth:

- Trump's speech was all bluster - content free.  Kasich was actually quite moving, talking about our national need to get beyond mutual demonization.

- HRC gave one of the better speeches of her whole campaign - a ringing call, striking all the bells from climate change to crumbling infrastructure.  Too late?  Is she too old school in a new game?

- Bernie was hoarse, hit his usual marks on the Left, went too long, but he's tapped into something real that's very much alive.

- If Kasich can keep the fire burning, we've got a 5-candidate run in the GOP camp  (maybe they'll burn through all the Koch money by Labor Day.......)

For the political junkies, it's the best of times.........