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I’m not much of a horse-race guy, but it sure seems like the horse race is now key to the future of the Democratic primaries. The problem for Bernie Sanders is that he has an obvious structural disadvantage—superdelegates are almost 100 percent Clinton supporters—as well as a problem in the states following New Hampshire. So he needs to follow up his good showing in Iowa with electrifying results in New Hampshire.

But he can’t. He started opening up a big lead in New Hampshire at the beginning of January, and the polls now have him 20 points ahead. To generate any serious shock waves he’d have to win by 30 or 40 points, and that’s just not in the cards. Obviously anything can happen, but at this point it looks like Sanders wins in New Hampshire; it’s entirely expected and ho hum; and Clinton then marches implacably on to the nomination. It’s hard for me to see a likely scenario in which anything different happens.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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