The Daily Trail: Could some Sanders supporters pose a post-primary challenge for Clinton?

Some Sanders supporters say they won't back Clinton. At least, they say it now. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

They say everyone likes a winner. They are wrong.

To be a winner means that you have beaten someone else. In a presidential primary season, that someone else may be backed by millions of people, all of whom were hoping that someone other than yourself would claim victory. And so they may not like you very much.

While you're still fighting, they may like you even less.

"Clinton is well on her way to the nomination. But Wisconsin — a fall battleground with a celebrated tradition of progressive activism and political reform — represents a phenomenon that could undermine her in the general election: She has yet to energize some parts of the liberal base, or even persuade them to be comfortable with her candidacy," report Philip Rucker and John Wagner.

"...General election polling shows that Clinton would easily defeat Republican front-runner Donald Trump in Wisconsin and other swing states. The data also suggest that the majority of Sanders supporters would vote for Clinton.

"Yet among Sanders’ most fervent backers — the committed liberal activists who in a general election would be necessary in any grass-roots effort and whose votes could be decisive if the race tightens — there is a strong distaste for Clinton. To them, she represents the moneyed, special-interest politics they have been fighting against."

She's been here before. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

According to some recent polls, like last month's NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, as many as 1 in 3 Sanders supporters say they won't back Clinton in the fall if she's the Democratic nominee.

That stat may have a familiar ring to it. If you followed the last contested Democratic presidential primary, it should.

Flashback to the spring of 2008 (we were all so much younger then!), and pick a primary, any primary. Here's one night: "According to the exit polls, half of Clinton's supporters in Indiana would not vote for Obama in a general election match up with John McCain. .... Obama gets even less support from Clinton backers in North Carolina. There, only 45 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama over McCain." After the Democratic convention, those figures plummeted. Obama beat McCain in both states.

Stay tuned.

IT WILL NEVER END:

Today, he rickrolled. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)

Congratulations on surviving the worst day of the year.

April Fools' Day is a bad day. A very bad day. The sort of day that makes some of us question our life choices, because our choices have led us to a profession that requires us to spend all day on the Internet, which today resembled a yawning hellscape, rather than a job that involves something more pleasant, like raw sewage or subway rats.

Yet here we are. Some of you have been complaining that the 2016 campaign has ruined April Fools' Day this year. You are wrong, because you cannot ruin something that is already objectively awful. In case you had managed to forget what day it is, but caught the faux headlines, here are the big campaign fact checks for the day: No, Hillary Clinton did not select a college student as her running mate. No, Rand Paul did not really endorse "entropy" in 2016 (not that it needs any help this year.) No, Donald Trump did not agree to debate Ted Cruz one-on-one.

On a related note: No, there will be no free Hamilton performances in Brooklyn's Prospect Park this year, and if you call the number listed to get your "free tickets," you will reach Trump campaign headquarters (which, like everyone else in the city, probably could not get any extra tickets to that show if the New York primary depended on it.)

And now, for the best news you'll hear all day: April 2 is just hours away!

NEW YORK IS LARGE, IT CONTAINS MULTITUDES: In primary votes so far, Hillary Clinton has generally had the edge in big, diverse states. Bernie Sanders has held the advantage in less-populated areas with large white working-class populations. New York has plenty of both.

"Upstate New York, with its mix of manufacturing and rural towns, serves as the setting for both the announcement and a bulk of Clinton's campaigning in the state in the coming weeks, the campaign said," reported Abby Phillip.

"...While most of the state's population density is downstate, particularly in New York City and the surrounding areas, Clinton's focus on the upstate region reflects a desire to shore up support in an area that may be a ripe target for Sanders.

"Sanders has targeted voters in such states as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin with a message that is critical of free-trade policies that are blamed for the loss of U.S. jobs to international competitors.

"Upstate New York's demographics and economics are similar to those states, where the Sanders campaign believed it had a shot of winning — and in the case of Michigan, did win. And the region also boasts a fair number of college and university students, who overwhelmingly support Sanders.

"...Clinton intends to deploy a New York-centered version of her broader argument against Sanders: that he lacks a track record to back up his rhetoric."

Today, Sanders attacked Clinton for attacking Sanders for attacking Clinton over fossil-fuel donations. (Got that?) “Secretary Clinton owes us an apology,” he told a Sheboygan, Wis., crowd. “We were not lying. We were telling the truth.”

Here's the backstory behind the Clinton hit he's talking about:

STRAIGHT FIRE: Think fast -- if you had to compare Bernie Sanders to another American political figure, who would you pick?

For pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, the answer appears to be Dick Cheney; they released a new spot hitting the Vermont senator on his gun control record.

THE VIEW FROM THE TRUMP PROTEST TRAIL: At a Sanders campaign rally today, the senator took a swing at Trump, calling him a "nutcase." Some of his supporters have been delivering their Trump attacks on the scene at the mogul's own events.

This week, a protest outside a Trump rally in Janesville, Wis., drew notice when a teenage girl was pepper sprayed during a face-off between the GOP front-runner's supporters and foes, in an incident that seemed to embody the emotion and chaos surrounding similar showdowns all year.

But that was just a moment in an hours-long event that also served as a textbook example of the reception greeting the mogul outside many campaign stops, particularly those outside the South. Here's what it feels like to stand outside a Trump rally.

. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

(Conservative Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes isn't a fan of Donald Trump. So one protester wasn't a fan of Sykes.)

. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

WHITHER KASICH COVERAGE? We haven't seen a lot of Ohio Gov. John Kasich lately. For one thing, no matter how his convention strategy may play out, he's already been mathematically eliminated from primary season contention for a delegate majority: even if he were to win every delegate in every Republican primary contest for the rest of the season, he'd still fall short. But there's another reason, says Callum Borchers.

"John Kasich is kinda boring," he writes. "That's the shortest answer to the question of why he doesn't attract more media coverage."

Then again, Kasich did draw coverage yesterday, on a couple of fronts: he ate pizza with a fork, in New York. He mentioned former Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Donald Trump in the same sentence. He managed to draw fire from Ted Cruz, who spent the week dismissing the idea that Kasich should be able to contend for the nomination in Cleveland. And the super PAC supporting his presidential bid released an anti-Cruz attack ad that was straight-up nightmare fuel.

"The common denominator in each of these storylines is a show-biz quality — conflict, buffoonery, weirdness — that Kasich's campaign generally lacks," says Borchers. "The Ohio governor's relative dullness wouldn't matter so much if he were winning ... But the likelihood that Cruz will head to Cleveland with the requisite 1,237 delegates isn't much higher; he would need to collect 85 percent of the remaining delegates."

Maybe the media should pay more attention to Kasich, he says. But heading into the primary season, Kasich had to have known that "finding the media spotlight is a legitimate campaign skill that any successful politician must hone," he writes. "You can't just be the serious, sensible candidate and expect the cameras and microphones to come to you."

TRAIL MIX: Trump's Friday abortion position: Federal laws right now are "set", he told CBS. Later, his spokeswoman said he meant abortion law was set for now, and that as president he'd try to change them.

--The North Dakota GOP won't have a primary this year. Or a caucus. But it picks its convention delegates tomorrow; here's how they'll do it.

--They'll head to a convention that's shaping up as...an eventful one: today, Trump supporters called for a "Stop the Steal March on Cleveland"

--Next week, President Obama will deliver a speech at the University of Chicago on the Supreme Court vacancy. This week, he cast his primary ballot. For someone.

YOUR DAILY TRAIL PIT STOP: Dateline: Green Bay. (VIDEO)