Editor's Note: Below is a brief excerpt from Hedgeye Potomac Chief Political Strategist JT Taylor's Capital Brief sent to institutional clients each morning. For more information on how you can access our institutional research please email sales@hedgeye.com.
GOLDEN STATE WARRIOR
With wins in CA, NJ, SD and NM last night, Hillary Clinton has now fully assumed the mantle of presumptive Democratic nominee. She has been victorious in a majority of the primaries, garnered three million more votes than her opponents, has 2,497 pledged delegates to Bernie Sanders’ 1,663, and has 571 superdelegates to Sanders’ 48. The party will now begin to unify around her with a popular president by her side as she moves into the next phase of her campaign. She and her allies will continue to define and dismantle Donald Trump and his policies.
Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton super PAC, has allocated $20 million for an ad buy against Trump – building on her effective foreign policy speech last week pegging him as unfit to be president. Clinton will also need to reassess her trust and likeability factors – repairing and retooling her image will be critical - it will become her advantage when voters decide the “lesser of two evils.”
WEAKENED AT BERNIE’S
Bernie Sanders is all but out of the race – but that doesn’t mean he’s dropping out...In order to be viable for the nomination at this juncture - Sanders’ only option is to flip superdelegates – something that remains completely unrealistic (he’s flipped one in six months). He and some in his inner circle have been hard-pressed to accept his fate, but nonetheless he says he will not relent until the convention. With Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of Clinton and President Obama’s expected soon, Sanders risks becoming a pariah in his party the longer he holds out.
“A BETTER WAY”
Speaker Ryan rolled out a wide-ranging conservative agenda just a few weeks ahead of the Republican convention in July. The product of several task forces and dozens of meetings with House members outlines conservative proposals for jobs and the economy, taxes, health care, national security, constitutional authority, and poverty. The plan is a byproduct of the autopsy of the failed 2012 Romney campaign as well as Ryan’s vision for an optimistic agenda for his Congressional colleagues and the party writ large. Ultimately, in the face of Trump terrorizing the party – the proposal gives Republicans a platform to run on in the fall, trying to put the Republican party back on track.
