WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton returns to Illinois on Thursday evening to rally voters in north suburban Vernon Hills with the primary looming on Tuesday.

Clinton touches down in her native Illinois after swings Thursday in Florida and North Carolina — states also holding votes on Tuesday.

Clinton will appear at 7:15 p.m. the Sullivan Community Center, 635 Aspen Drive in Vernon Hills, which straddles Lake and Cook counties. The village is in the 10th Congressional District where both of the Democratic rivals battling for a House seat — Brad Schneider and Nancy Rotering — back Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
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From the Clinton campaign: “At the event, she will discuss her plans to break down the economic barriers that favor those at the top and build an economy that works for everyone. Clinton will also encourage Illinoisans to take advantage of early voting before March 14th.

For those of you salivating — or trembling — at the thought of Hillary Clinton being clapped in handcuffs as she prepares to deliver her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention this summer: deep, cleansing breath. Based on the available facts and the relevant precedents, criminal prosecution of Clinton for mishandling classified information in her emails is extraordinarily unlikely.
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“There are plenty of unattractive facts but not a lot of clear evidence of criminality, and we tend to forget the distinction,” American University law professor Stephen Vladeck, an expert on prosecutions involving classified information, told me. “This is really just a political firestorm, not a criminal case.”

Could a clever law student fit the fact pattern into a criminal violation? Sure. Would a responsible federal prosecutor pursue it? Hardly — absent new evidence, based on my conversations with experts in such prosecutions.
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..., there is no clear evidence that Clinton knew (or even should have known) that the material in her emails was classified. Second, it is debatable whether her use of the private server constituted removal or retention of material. Finally, the aggravating circumstance of false statements to federal agents is, as far as we know, absent.

Democratic races: nothing to say, except that Hillary Clinton is getting more votes than Bernie Sanders. By Democratic Party rules, that means that she is also getting more pledged delegates. She continues to be on track for the nomination.

Mood and priorities are being set now. Sanders is showing Clinton what she is missing with a large segment of the Democratic base, similar to what Trump is showing the Republican establishment. The Republicans are already getting disproportionate air time so keeping the contest going is actually not a bad thing at this point. Hillary would get barely a mention on the news if it weren’t for Bernie right now.

Given the polling, the best case scenario for Sanders is keeping Hillary Clinton to under 100 delegates. Worst case, she increases her lead by 100 delegates.
The race would be all but over at that point.

...If Sanders wants to make this a race again it would have to be by winning Michigan. The rust belt is about the last delegate-rich area not yet tested in a vote, so if Sanders is going to significantly exceed his targets in states (Silver has his target in Michigan as a win, 67/130) he’d better start tonight with at least not digging that hole he’s in any deeper.
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UNWomen Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka quietly acknowledged that she and UNWomen support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the presidency, although she stopped short of a full endorsement.

“Whenever there’s a woman candidate, our support is necessarily behind that candidate,” she said in an interview Monday. “Because she is a woman, she has got our support.” She said it would be “odd” if they were to support anyone else, since increasing women’s representation in government is a major priority for the organization.

The comments came on International Women’s Day, amid events in more than 40 countries to demand gender equality and in anticipation of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Much has been written about how black voters are Clinton's "firewall." But in primaries, women have been delivering her important wins, too -- women of all races.

This is helping offset her struggles with the largely white male voters who have rallied around her challenger, Bernie Sanders. In fact, Clinton has lost the female vote in just two primary states -- New Hampshire and Sanders's home state of Vermont. (She does worse overall in caucus states, but most don't have entrance poll data.) That has a lot to do with her performances among black women, but she also has been very strong among white women.

... the Democratic presidential front-runner and her supporters should be glad she participated for what I assume is the very reason she was reluctant to do so: Fox pressed Clinton on issues that are important to many conservatives and managed to throw her off-script. That might sound like a bad thing for her, but the results were actually some of her best, most substantive responses of the campaign.
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Clinton didn't want to mention her support for late-term abortion restrictions, but Baier forced her hand with his follow-up. And she ought to be happy that he did. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) complained in a February debate that Democrats haven't been pressed on their abortion stances, he also said Clinton "believes that all abortion should be legal, even on the due date of that unborn child." That's not accurate, but Clinton can't debunk that kind of false attack if she never talks about the abortion restrictions she favors.

Later in the town hall, Baier raised the issue of Clinton's private email use as secretary of state. When he did, Clinton reverted to one of her favorite arguments: "Nothing I sent was marked classified or that I received was marked classified."
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It wasn't a perfectly smooth answer, but it conveyed a point Clinton should make more often: Yes, many of the emails on her private server are now classified, but they were not at the time she sent or received them.
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Clinton probably didn't win hordes of conservative converts Monday, but she answered tough questions in a way that might at least make some temper their disdain and that might appeal to independents. That's worthwhile. That's why she should do this more often.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, wife of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, is calling on young Americans and those apathetic about voting to “take sides” in the 2016 election to stop a racist tide that’s “raising its ugly face in America.” And she’s announcing she's on Hillary Clinton's side.

“I’ve lived long enough to see the ugliest of it all,” Evers-Williams said in an interview with USA TODAY in which she endorsed the former first lady.

“It’s time to call out and say, take sides. You cannot sit back and observe. Become involved and do what you feel is best. Do not allow evil to overtake this America of ours,” said Evers-Williams, approaching her 83rd birthday.

Evers-Williams' late husband is Medgar Evers, a prominent leader in the Mississippi civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her official endorsement comes on the eve of the Mississippi primary as Clinton continues her sweep of Southern states dominated by black voters. While Clinton is winning the black vote by huge margins, turnout in states including South Carolina was significantly lower than in the 2008 primary election.

... Why, at this late date and this many debates into the 2016 presidential election cycle, has Sanders made demonstrably little to no effort to alter the way he interacts with the woman he at least strongly suspected he would be running against him from the day he declared his campaign? He has almost certainly had the same advice and information that every male candidate gets about the need to be constantly mindful about coming across like a chauvinist or a bully when on a debate stage facing a female competition.

The challenge is twofold. First, there's the way it appears to other people — to voters — who often recoil at these sorts of displays. This is a well-documented fact. And voters have some ideas about how women should behave too. So don't think Clinton is up on any debate stage and relaxed, while Sanders is the only one dealing with a minefield. Sanders has almost certainly been briefed on this research and had someone preparing him for debates try to identify the right way to manage Clinton's interruptions. (Our suggestion: Try some version of "Excuse me" or "I would like to finish," minus the hand gestures.)

But the second is the one that may really be worth our collective time. That is: Does Sanders have the capacity to recognize the way these moments look or think deeply about the degree to which sexism propels his debate-stage performances? Whether that chauvinism is real or imagined or even toyed with by his opponent for political gain, why can't Sanders find a better way to manage these moments? And, is some combination of all of the above something that a 21st-century presidential candidate has simply got to consider and manage effectively?
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Keep in mind that, if Sanders were to secure the Democratic nomination and then win the election, there are many female heads of state, foreign government representatives and others who are not men, with which Sanders will have to work effectively. It's in many ways the very same reason to concern ourselves with Donald Trump's debate stage and Twitter behavior and the methods and insults he's adopted when attempting to confront women — journalists, political opponents and others.

No one is saying Sanders and Trump are on equal footing in the terrain of public offensiveness or displays of sexism. But when it comes to women, Sanders and some of his supporters' public behavior seem to inhabit a nearby Zip code. And the time where that kind of behavior — even hints of possibly sexist thinking — will be ignored or go unnoticed is probably long dead.

FLINT, Mich. – Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Flint, a city where manufacturing jobs have been replaced by poisoned water, should have been on Bernie Sanders’ turf: a discussion of trade policies, corporate greed and government spending cuts that have led to horrible consequences.

Sanders fought as if his life depended on it – and it just might be, as he has fallen dangerously behind Hillary Clinton in the delegate count.

But Clinton came prepared to the CNN debate and more than held her own, preventing Sanders from the clear victory he needs to change the trajectory of the race ahead of Michigan’s primary on Tuesday.

While the debate is unlikely to dramatically alter the outcome of the Michigan primary or the even more important set of contests on March 15, it nonetheless revealed new details about the candidates and the differences between them.

Here are four key moments:

The Sunday night debate was a late addition to the schedule, but unavoidable given the crisis given the water disaster in the city. “This is a crisis. We cannot drink the water,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said. “What happened in Flint could happen in any community.”

Former President Bill Clinton spent his Saturday in Detroit, encouraging union members to work for his wife’s bid. Although the powerful UAW, Teamsters and the AFL-CIO were not going to take sides, others such as AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers and LIUNA were knocking on doors for her. “She’s got the unions—or at least their leaders. You can’t overstate that impact,” said one neutral Democratic operative in Michigan whose clients include Clinton and Sanders backers. “It’s hard, if you’re a shift worker, to tell Bill Clinton no.”

It’s why Team Clinton is spending every day ahead of Tuesday’s balloting here. She has proven successful in winning over more diverse states, while Sanders has found success in largely-white states. A win in Michigan could prove immensely helpful ahead of March 15, when other swing states Ohio and Florida cast ballots. While Clinton has yet to clinch the Democrats’ nomination, she’s obviously looking ahead to the general election—and gleefully imagining a contest against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.

“The stakes keep getting higher, and the rhetoric you’re hearing from the other side keeps sinking lower,” Clinton said Saturday night, making an allusion to Trump. It’s clear she’s ready to pivot to a head-to-head race with the man Establishment-minded Republicans see as being dragged to the muck by the New York billionaire. Keep in mind, Clinton delayed Sanders while her fight song echoed through the Detroit casino ballroom. She’s betting luck is on her side. So far, it has been.