President-hopeful Ted Cruz hosts Bloomingdale Town Hall

Bernie Sanders’ most ardent supporters were concerned that they weren’t seeing enough of him. Hillary Clinton may seem out of touch (“We were broke!”) and privileged, but do not forget how effective she was with blue-collar voters in her 2008 presidential run.

Republican presidential hopeful Sen.

No other candidate in the robust Republican field scored more than two percent support. The idea is to pick up a strong lead in delegates needed to secure the nomination when 14 states, mostly in the South, vote on March 1st in the so-called SEC primary. Rubio has charged Cruz with being unclear on how he would deal with the 12 million people already in the country illegally, while Cruz has countered that he has never wavered in his oppostion to providing any form of “amnesty” to them. “There’s not a lot of time after those early states to really refocus and rejigger your team”.

“One problem with his strategy though: Jeb Bush probably had the best way of doing this – going to SEC football games”.

Last week, the center of Ted Cruz’s Tennessee campaign was a darkened hotel bar, where some of his biggest boosters in the state gathered to watch the most recent Republican presidential debate. But neither of them would make that mistake again.

And she notes that while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has the momentum after spending more than 50 days in New Hampshire this cycle and racking up endorsements, the race is still wide open.

Marco Rubio appears to be reading from the same playbook. “And Ted Cruz could be a wild card there, depending how well he does in Iowa”.

How soon after Christmas do the Iowa air wars begin? And if it stays that way, it could be Cruz who outflanks Trump the way Romney outflanked Gingrich and Santorum four years ago. Van Susteren said, “Am I reading this wrong?”

Meanwhile, Cruz’s numbers were higher than Trump’s in several key demographic areas that could lead him to victory in Iowa, including among Tea Party voters, by 38-27 percent; white, evangelical Christians, by 33-22 percent; and very conservative supporters, by 33-22 percent. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Clinton; the next three pitted the three Republicans against Democratic candidate Sen. “But we haven’t seen the fireworks we have a feeling are coming”.

“I am not my brother’s keeper”, Cruz added with a smirk.

At FiveThirtyEight today, the Cook Political Report’s outstanding analyst David Wasserman looks at the highly educated cadre of GOP voters that flocked to Mitt Romney’s upscale banner in 2012, and speculates that a consolidation of such voters – like Mitt accomplished against the divided downscale support bases of Gingrich and Santorum – might carry the day this time as well. It can be a process that goes on for some time, and only committed caucus-goers will go in for that.