Don’t look now, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is rising in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary polls and is once again drawing both large crowds at campaign stops and Bernie Bros back to their keyboards.

And just like in 2016, Sanders is already giving many Democrats and their allies heartburn.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) recently said Sanders should not be allowed to run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, because “[h]e’s not a Democrat.”

When asked why Sanders won’t refer to Venezuelan strongman Nicholas Maduro as “a dictator” or take a position on whether the socialist dictator must go, Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) insinuated that it just doesn’t really matter because Sanders “is not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

And then there are the former staffers of 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton who claim that Sanders was far from a team player when he lost the nomination. Worse, they suggest he is a diva who relishes “carbon-spewing private jet” travel. Not exactly a good look for a candidate who is constantly barking about climate change and the size of America’s carbon footprint.

There is no doubt the heated rift over Sanders is reopening old wounds. The prize thus far for Sanders furor goes to The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald who in defense of Sanders called MSNBC “a dishonest political operation, not a news outlet” for its allegedly slanted coverage of Sanders’ first 2020 campaign rally in Brooklyn, New York.

Taken as a whole, the message from institutional Democrats and their allies in the media is simple: Just please go away, Bernie.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at The Hill

President Trump is publicly breaking with congressional Republicans on trade and guns, causing tensions within the party at a time when lawmakers hope to be united ahead of the midterm elections. 

Republican strategists and nonpartisan political experts say Trump appears to be looking beyond this fall’s elections, when GOP control of Congress is at stake, to his own bid for a second term in 2020.

The announcement on Thursday of the tariffs, which have yet to formally be put in place, came shortly after Trump said that Brad Parscale, his longtime digital marketing strategist, would be his 2020 reelection campaign manager.

While there have been no significant polls on the tariffs so far, Trump’s populist positions on trade were popular in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, states that sealed his victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.   

“He’s fighting for the industrial Midwest, which is essentially the key for him to win reelection, and this is obviously something where he is putting their interests first while everyone else is pooh-poohing the idea of fighting for the American worker,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign.

Read more from Alex Bolton at The Hill

Speaking to a gathering of Democratic donors on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton placed blame for her election loss on two people, FBI Director James Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but her critics say Democrats should spend more time looking inward, as well.

Campaign headquarters was reportedly so fixated on data showing a healthy 5-point lead in Michigan that warnings from officials and volunteers in the state that more needed to be done were not heeded. At one point, union volunteers heading from Iowa to Michigan were sent back because the campaign was more concerned with putting Trump on defense in Iowa than playing offense in Michigan.

Chasing the prospect of an electoral landslide, Clinton expended resources in longshot states while campaign workers in Michigan were struggling to get any attention from headquarters at all.

“They were just an over-confident bunch in every way,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.

O’Connell saw signs of trouble for Clinton, though.

“What the Clinton campaign missed, one of the biggest weaknesses, was overall, particularly with the Rust Belt, she didn’t have a strong message, and essentially she was nearly tone deaf with those folks,” he said.

Democrats scoffed at Trump’s promises to bring jobs back, but his message on trade resonated while Clinton’s support for free trade landed with a thud.

“At least he was selling those voters something.”

O’Connell also questioned Clinton’s confidence, given how strong of a showing Sen. Bernie Sanders had in the Rust Belt state primaries.

“Sanders was the one who told you… He was connecting with the very people in the Democratic Party who were pissed off,” he said.

Read more from Stephen Loiaconi at Sinclair Broadcast Group

Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa Jr. says Michigan’s passage of a right-to-work law on Tuesday “basically betray[s] democracy.” Actually, it portrays democracy — and reasonably accurately. 

For decades, Hoffa, his father, who also led the Teamsters, and almost all leaders of major unions have unabashedly and unashamedly aligned themselves with the Democratic Party. They provided foot soldiers for campaigns and money when necessary to pave the way for Democrats to win public office. 

Those officeholders, in turn, rewarded them with union-friendly laws, expanded social services, high salaries and generous benefits for union members in the public and private sectors, as well as fostered a climate that enhanced — rather than challenged — the power of the leaders themselves.

A perfect storm had to come together to topple union power in what can be considered the birthplace of the big-time American labor movement. And it did. Unions overreached this fall and had a ballot initiative to enshrine union rights in the state constitution. It fell 57-42.

That was the signal Rick Snyder, the state’s Republican governor, and the Legislature needed that Michigan residents had tired of blind government support for unions and would consider alternatives.

Read more from Ford O'Connell at The Hill's Pundits Blog

From The Washington Post:

The conservative groups that supported Michigan’s new “right to work” law — winning a stunning victory over unions, even in the heart of American labor — vowed Wednesday to replicate that success elsewhere.

But the search for the next Michigan could be difficult.

“If Michigan can do it, then I think everybody ought to think about it,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. He said he thinks at least one more state will adopt such a law before the end of 2013, and listed Alaska, Missouri, Montana and Pennsylvania among the top contenders. “Very confident. It will happen. [But] I can’t tell you where the next one is.”

Romney's native state of Michigan is at best a second tier battleground state for now. Public Policy Polling has more:

Barack Obama won't have to worry too much about holding Michigan for the Democrats this fall- he leads Mitt Romney 53-39 there, a lead little changed from PPP's last poll of the state in February when his advantage was 54-38.

Romney just doesn't have much of a home field advantage in the state. Only 24% of voters consider him to be a Michigander to 65% who do not. And only 35% have a favorable opinion of him to 57% with a negative view.

It's not just Romney's unpopularity helping Obama in Michigan though. Obama's own approval rating is at a record high in our polling of the state with 53% of voters giving him good marks to 41% who disapprove, including a 50/43 standing with independents.

Obama's crushing Romney on what will doubtless be one of the biggest issues in the campaign in Michigan- 55% think that he's been better for the automotive industry in the state to only 31% who say Romney wins out on that front.

Going inside the numbers Obama's winning over 13% of Republican voters while losing just 7% of Democrats, and he also has a double digit advantage with independents at 48-36. Obama's winning women by a 58-34 margin and significantly has a 10 point lead with white voters at 50-40.

Things may get closer in Michigan between now and November but Obama has a lot of breathing room and looks pretty safe to take the state again, regardless of Romney's local connections.

The chances of Mitt Romney winning Masachusetts (him home state) in 2012 are just short of impossible. His chances in his native Michigan are much better, but are still a stretch at this point. If Romney loses both states, but wins the White House - he will have cleared a historic hurdle. The Washington Post's Greg Sargent has more:

[T]o find someone who was elected without winning either, you have to reach back 168 years to [James] Polk, who was elected president in 1844 despite losing his native state of North Carolina and his home state of Tennessee, where he had been Governor.

Romney will likely have to duplicate that feat. He isn’t contesting Massachuetts, his state of residence, and the odds are against him in his native state of Michigan, because of his opposition to the bailout.

What does it mean? This rare set of historical circumstances is notnecessarily predictive, but it goes right to the heart of an odd fact about Romney: He doesn’t really have a geographical base of his own; it’s one he’s inheriting as a generic Republican candidate.

Yours truly said the same thing at U.S. News & World Report BEFORE Michigan voted. The New York Times' Nate Silver has more:

Nevertheless, I’m interested in the question of what historians will see as the turning point when they look back on the 2012 Republican race. This is intended as a purely retrospective exercise, not a predictive one, making no apology for taking advantage of the hindsight we now have.

Nevertheless, in my view, the consensus of evidence seems to point toward one of these dates in particular: Michigan (and Arizona) on Feb. 28.

Yes, you can look at Michigan as representing just 16 of the 646 delegates that Mr. Romney now has. But it voted at an early enough stage of the race that Mr. Romney’s lead in delegates was not all that large and the delegate math did not matter all that much. Mr. Santorum would have had plenty of time to make up ground if he had won Michigan and changed the momentum of the race.

Had Mr. Romney lost Michigan, perhaps he would have lost Ohio on Super Tuesday and accumulated significantly fewer delegates on the evening. Had he lost Ohio, perhaps he would have lost Illinois. Had he lost Illinois, he might have lost Wisconsin. Who knows — perhaps you would be reading an article about when Rick Santorum had clinched the Republican nomination. Or perhaps a late-entrant candidate would have jumped in. These things follow a path-dependent course. I thought at the time (and still think) that one could make a strong case for Mr. Romney’s vulnerability until he secured Michigan.

From ABC News' Jonathan Karl:

Not so fast. When it comes to delegates, it turns out Mitt Romney did not win Michigan.

ABC News projects that the 30 delegates awarded based on Michigan’s  Tuesday primary will be evenly split – 15 delegates for Mitt Romney and 15 delegates for Rick Santorum.

Mitt Romney may have won the overall vote by a margin of 3 points , but Michigan awards it’s delegates based on how the candidates did in each of the state’s 14 congressional districts, not solely on the popular vote totals.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell talks about Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan on Canada's CBC.

Video available at http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/News/ID=2203527745