BROOKLYN — New York is supposed to be a magical city that extracts “authenticity” out of its presidential candidates — you know, the rubes who tote wallets in back pockets, can’t quite swipe a MetroCard, or stand there like flap-hatted Vermont tourists fishing around for subway tokens left over from their last trip to the Big City in 1960.

The 2016 primary here — for all its hype — provided few new insights into the character of the candidates — but it did clarify both the Republican and Democratic races, delivering the expected victories to the expected hometown front-runners, Donald Trump and, especially Hillary Clinton.


The 10-day New York campaign was dumber, more scripted and meaner (at least on the Democratic side) than a great state deserved. Each candidate embraced the most self-serving Empire State cliché they could glom — Bernie Sanders trumpeted his Spaldeen-stoopball 1950s Brooklyn upbringing (while eliding the endemic segregation in his fiercely divided neighborhood), Hillary touted her 2000 upstate listening tour (downplaying her coziness with Wall Street), while actual Americans Ted Cruz and John Kasich seemed mesmerized by the wild exoticism of half-sour pickles and matzas.

Only Donald Trump — a “Bonfire of the Vanities” character who has busted out of his tabloid 1980s cage to devour 2016 basic-cable America — seemed to really get what New Yorkers wanted. Which was to be momentarily amused, then left the hell alone. By necessity (no riots, please!) and instinct (he has Jeter-esque name recognition already) the Donald lay lower than in any previous contest and triumphed resoundingly.

It was semi-fun while it lasted. Here are five takeaways from the New York primary.

1. “Momentum” is for losers. Bernie Sanders cruised into New York riding a wave of victories: He won eight out of the past nine nominating contests. Which all added up to not very much — he cut Clinton’s lead in pledged delegates from about 240 to under 200. The Sanders campaign — taking a page from Clinton’s own effort in 2008 — has been pushing the idea that the Vermont senator was surging past the mathematical impediments to his nomination.

Clinton nearly erased that run with one big win in New York, a victory that her staff expected to net her about 20 to 25 pledged delegates. It also robbed Sanders of a core (if flawed) rationale for his candidacy: That Clinton couldn’t win consistently in big, Northern states — she can add New York to a column of wins that includes Florida, Texas, Virginia and Ohio.

And late in the day came news that electrified Clinton’s already-jazzed staff: that Sanders had unexpectedly flown back to Vermont to recharge his political batteries.

2. Trump: The mouth that didn’t roar. Turns out that shutting up, lying low and reorganizing your amateurish campaign ain’t such a bad idea. Trump, who kicked off his candidacy at Trump Tower on Fifth took the Fifth during his home-state primary — steering clear of perilously liberal Manhattan to hold rallies in Patchogue on Long Island and Rochester upstate.

It may be too late to showcase restraint, but Trump (who attempted rapprochement with Megyn Kelly during the primary sprint) used his dead-certain win here as cover to reset his campaign — layering over bar-bouncer campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with seasoned GOP pro Paul Manafort and flack Hope Hicks with former Scott Walker aide Rick Wiley.

3. Bernie and Hillary officially hate each other’s guts. Here was a hometown contest destined to sow bitterness. Sanders (like so many other Brooklynites) professes to be proud of the moxie and street toughness instilled by the borough of his birth, but his first-ever vote was with his feet — and he got out, first to Chicago, then to the braying-Guernsey environs of Burlington. Still, he feels pride of ownership and bragged (in Wyoming) that he would make New York transplant Clinton quake; Clinton, who parked her carpetbag in Chappaqua 15 years ago, wanted to crush his upstart challenge in her Chappaqua backyard — and she did.

Clinton won by a wide margin— and there was much eff-you high-fiving in the ballroom of the Sheraton New York. But Sanders’ defeat (accompanied, as always by the big crowds and even bigger torrent of online donations) was the bitterest one yet and deepened the already yawning fault lines between the Bernie stalwarts and a Clinton team increasingly itchy to see him gone. Not going to happen anytime soon, apparently: The tweet being incredulously digested at a Clinton victory party was an MSNBC report quoting Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver defiantly claiming his candidate would take the fight to the convention floor — even if Clinton secured an overwhelming lead among pledged delegates and supers.

“We kicked his ass tonight,” a senior Clinton aide told me Tuesday night. “I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f--- him.”

4. Why is John Kasich still running? Sure, Donald Trump built (or branded himself on) over half of Manhattan. But Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the closest thing to a moderate remaining in the Republican field should have appealed to voters here — and he couldn’t make the sale in critical areas like Nassau County or suburban Buffalo. At 11 p.m. he was clocking in at a modest 25 percent — less than half of Trump’s commanding 60 percent level of victory.

Kasich stands no chance of catching either Trump or Ted Cruz in the delegate hunt— so his core rationale is that he fares far better than either man in a general election match-up against Hillary Clinton. Losing so badly in her home state, however, does little to bolster that case — and the trickle of cash coming to his campaign is likely to dry up as he heads into the homestretch.

5. Whiteout. Clinton managed to fight Sanders to a virtual draw among white voters statewide (and won 60-to-40 among whites in the five boroughs) — but the big story, for the umpteenth time in 2016 was Sanders’ inability to make significant inroads with black voters. Spike Lee made a nice ad for the Vermont senator — but it couldn’t compensate for the candidate’s repeated (and inexplicable) dismissal of Clinton’s huge wins in the “Deep South” — which blacks interpreted as a slight.