Despite Losses, Sanders Camp Vows To Make It Brooklyn v. Brooklyn

In the end, Ohio wasn't even close. Hillary Clinton glided to a double-digit win in the rust-belt state, where Bernie Sanders had pinned his hopes on blue-collar voters after his unexpected victory in Michigan last week. And Clinton routed Sanders in Florida and North Carolina, and edged him in Illinois and Missouri, significantly widening her delegate margin.

Clinton's string of victories comes after a week of heightened anxiety among Democratic voters as media images of violence at Donald Trump rallies ricocheted around the internet — and as Trump appeared ever-closer to capturing the GOP nomination.  

Exit polls contained evidence that the Trump factor may be causing Democrats to coalesce around Clinton. Asked who would have best chance against Trump: Clinton topped Sanders in every state: from 58 percent in Missouri to 74 percent in Florida. 

In interviews in the days leading up to the primaries, Ohio voters raised concerns that Sanders' health care plan and pledge to provide free public college would end up costing too much in taxes. "I want to have something left in my paycheck," said homemaker Karen St. Clair, of Youngstown.

Despite the losses, Sanders says the primary geography will favor him for the next month, as the vote moves through several mostly Western states to what will be the biggest prize so far in the Democratic primary, with 291 Democratic delegates: New York.

Which means a Brooklyn boy who lives in Vermont will bring the fight to a former New York Senator who has based her campaign in Brooklyn.

Propelled by over five million small contributions, Sanders has vowed to take his campaign all the way through June.

"What this campaign is about, again, is thinking outside the status quo," Sanders said in a rally in Phoenix Arizona, Tuesday. "You do not have to accept the status quo. We can do better. Don't let people tell you that you can't think big." Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, vote next week, first in a string of relative low-delegate states that vote over the next month.

In 2008, Clinton trounced then-Senator Barack Obama in New York, 57 percent to 40 percent, Obama won only one of New York's 62 counties: Tompkins county, which includes Ithaca. Despite having begun to win huge majorities of African Americans in several states that voted before New York, Obama lost even in Brooklyn and the Bronx, the counties with the most blacks in the state. 

And even though New York's western edge shares with the mid west several rust belt towns, fully two thirds of New York's primary vote is in downstate New York —the city and its suburbs. 

Still — New York looks a lot like Illinois, anchored by a large city that has a large percentage of African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants. Like Chicago, New York is full of progressive intellectuals of all races. 

"Bernie Sanders gets the same people who supported Zephyr Teachout in her primary against Andrew Cuomo," said Dan Cantor, National Director of the Working Families Party, who acknowledged he was "hoping for a better result" Tuesday night. But in New York, Cantor said of Sanders, "he gets young people for sure, as well as working class white voters upstate and on Long Island, and rural voters. There's a substantial number of progressive people of color in New York. And that's a force to be reckoned with."  

There's another reason Democrats will be energized by the New York primary: Donald Trump is bragging he will win so big in his home town, it will show the country he can beat Hillary. 

At a watch party at the Royal Bar near Union Square for Hillary supporters, New York Democratic Party Vice Chair Trudy Mason said no matter what the delegate count on April 19, the fight for the state would be fierce.

"It's a psychological thing," Mason said. "This is her home state. She has to win this, 'yuge.'  Because Donald is also from New York, she has to make a great showing."