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With New Hampshire and Iowa in the rear view mirror, next up is Nevada, Feb 22 and South Carolina, February 29.
Watch for the “national polls mean nothing” folks to suddenly discover national polls 🤔. But perhaps more interesting in the new Morning Consult poll — all interviews post-NH — is support by race. Bernie is doing great there, 30 (Black) and 48 (Hispanic), but the numbers that also jump out are Pete’s 4 and 8 and Amy’s 1 and 3. They aren’t encouraging if you want to be the nominee of the Democratic party. Mike Bloomberg, by way of contrast, is 19/17, Biden 34/13.
Why all of a sudden the chatter about Bloomberg? My guess is there are lots of folks unsettled and downright unhappy about the remaining choices (including Bloomberg). I think it’s going to be one of those elections, with tough choices to make. Buckle up, we have work to do.
Follow us below the fold for more.
We are just two election nights into this whole Dem nomination, but the once crazy idea of a Bernie vs. Bloomberg matchup looking more real by the day. https://t.co/ncuBD2hUMM
— amy walter (@amyewalter) February 14, 2020
Why have I been throwing Bloomberg’s name around? This is why:
When they (whomever they may be) finally engage with him in the run up to Super Tuesday, it'll be too late for things to really sink in; 2/3 of the delegates are going to be awarded in March.
— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) February 14, 2020
Is it working? Well… look.
New national poll of the Democratic primary from @MorningConsult, fielded entirely after New Hampshire. Support + change vs pre-NH Sanders: 29% (+4) Biden: 19 (-3) Bloomberg: 18 (+1) Buttigieg: 11 Warren: 10 (-1) Klobuchar: 5 (+2)https://t.co/00YEl7Zd2g
— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) February 13, 2020
Sanders' numbers call to mind the "rainbow coalition" Jesse Jackson tried to assemble in the '80s, built around leftist/working class politics. But while he got ~95% of the black vote, Jackson's ceiling with whites was around 10% with many more refusing to even consider him.
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) February 13, 2020
Norm Ornstein/Daily News:
Learn to get comfortable, voters: Weaning ourselves off instant gratification on election night
The New Hampshire primary played out the way journalists and pundits love: as a close contest with excitement, and a declared winner before the night was out. Contrast that with Iowa. The night of the Iowa Caucuses saw television anchors, reporters and analysts openly angry in a way we rarely see them. The anger was in part at the Iowa Democratic Party’s comedy of errors, a Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight creating havoc and uncertainty that still reverberates. But a good share of that anger was from the frustration that their coverage had no conclusion, no opportunity to declare winners that night and then do their panel evaluations of what it all means. They wanted results and wanted them now.
I will give no aid and comfort to Iowa’s Democratic Party. But the fact is that with a complicated process, including the party’s commitment to report every column of results in the caucus version of rank-choice voting, where initial supporters of one candidate would move to their second choices if their first did not cross a threshold of 15% support, it could well have taken a day or more to sort out winners and losers, even without an app disaster and backup-phone-line gridlock
In the “most important news” category, unhappiness with Bill Barr at DOJ bubbled over and forced a farce:
"The most important role of the attorney general is to protect Department of Justice from improper political influence, including from the president... https://t.co/6RJzMEIrP7
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 13, 2020
And here is an instructive tweet with a lot of truth:
I am one of those people who: -thinks the health care debate is the most instructive difference between Dem presidential candidates -doesn�t think there�d be much governing difference between them on health care because Congress Embrace the paradox.https://t.co/ZY29Tc8s5X
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) February 13, 2020
On coronavirus:
How deadly is the new coronavirus? Scientists race to find the answer
Of all the questions scientists hope to answer about the new coronavirus sweeping across the globe, the most pressing is this: How deadly is it?
The only way to know is to figure out how many people have been infected — and that’s the real challenge.
More than 60,000 infections have been confirmed, but experts are certain there are at least tens of thousands more. Some cases haven’t been counted because patients didn’t have biological samples sent to a lab. Some never saw a doctor, and others had such mild symptoms that they didn’t even know they were sick.
Without a true picture of the total number of cases, it’s impossible to calculate a fatality rate. That’s why scores of epidemiologists and mathematicians are working to solve one of the most complex modeling problems of their time.
About six weeks ago, China was reporting on the first 41 cases of confirmed #coronavirus in that country. Singapore and Hong Kong have now each hit 50 cases. Modeling suggests that the time from first introduction to epidemic spread is about 10 weeks. https://t.co/YvYRjjFFeS
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) February 12, 2020
Nate Cohn/NY Times:
The Math That Could Add Up to a Sanders Nomination
Why 15 percent is so important to him, and how Bloomberg could scramble those calculations.
It had been thought that Mr. Biden could perform well in more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina to consolidate the moderate wing heading into Super Tuesday. But it is not at all clear whether he is strong enough to take advantage of more friendly terrain, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. His standing in post-Iowa national polls has taken a far greater hit than Mrs. Clinton’s four years ago, and his standing could drop further after New Hampshire.
His collapse in New Hampshire and Iowa certainly offers additional reason to think he could fade down the stretch, whether it’s because he has been outspent on advertising, because some of his rivals have gained as they have become better known, or because his performances on the debate stage and stump have raised doubts among his supporters.
Even if one of the three moderate candidates emerges as plainly the strongest of the bunch, it remains unclear whether any has the resources or broad appeal necessary to reunite the disparate elements of the typical establishment-friendly coalition.
Striking chart in this @foxjust Bloomberg piece on Trump's steel tariffs. There are less people employed in the steel/primary metals industry than there were before the tariffs were announced in March 2018... https://t.co/U5QX75h5Sk pic.twitter.com/l23vLkITl7
— Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) February 13, 2020
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Time for Democrats to get much tougher with William Barr
This leaves Democrats no choice but to escalate their oversight of Barr in any way they can. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who has been prodding them on this, suggested to me that a handful of leading Democrats should devote themselves to going on the airwaves and “hounding Barr from office.”
This is so utterly weak. You don�t get to work closely with Trump in implementing some of his most indefendible policies, stay silent for a year after leaving, wait until AFTER the president has been acquitted, and then expect applause when you speak up https://t.co/97rsCCxCTM
— Quinta "Pro Quo" Jurecic (@qjurecic) February 13, 2020
There is this odd phenomena among those who work for Trump and later try to spin what they did. It�s as if they think integrity and decency are items that can be sold to a pawn shop and reclaimed at a later date unharmed and no one will notice.
— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) February 13, 2020
The degradation of William Barr’s Justice Department is nearly complete
The most important role of the attorney general is to protect the department from improper political influence, including from the president. Mr. Barr should have ensured that Mr. Stone’s case was handled with strict professionalism, as the career prosecutors sought to do, and shielded them from White House pressure, direct or indirect. To all appearances, he did the opposite. Mr. Trump evidently thinks so: “Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” he tweeted.
White House officials say since President Trump's acquittal on impeachment charges, he is determined to assert an iron grip on government, pushing his Justice Department to ease up on friends while exacting payback on real and perceived foes. https://t.co/6XwztcOeTq
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) February 13, 2020
McClatchy files for bankruptcy, likely ending 163 years of family control and setting up more consolidation in local news
The hedge fund that will likely soon control America’s second-largest newspaper chain, Chatham Asset Management, is also majority owner of the National Enquirer and Canada’s largest newspaper chain. It is advancing its “fundamental thesis on late-stage media consolidation in North America.”
And McClatchy’s own Sacramento Bee, the newspaper that started the chain in 1857:
The Chapter 11 filing will allow McClatchy to restructure its debts and, it hopes, shed much of its pension obligations. Under a plan outlined in its filing to a federal bankruptcy court, about 60 percent of its debt would be eliminated as the news organization tries to reposition for a digital future.
The likely new owners, if the court accepts the plan, would be led by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management LLC. They would operate McClatchy as a privately held company. More than 7 million shares of both publicly available and protected family-owned stock would be canceled.
“While this is obviously a sad milestone after 163 years of family control, McClatchy remains a strong operating company and committed to essential local news and information,” said Kevin McClatchy, chairman of the company that has carried his family name since the days of the California Gold Rush. “While we tried hard to avoid this step, there’s no question that the scale of our 75-year-old pension plan — with 10 pensioners for every single active employee — is a reflection of another economic era.”
(It’s oddly comforting that the McClatchy story is by far the best and most detailed of the bunch.)
Jim Jordan's name comes up during Statehouse testimony on an OSU abuse victims bill. "Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling� begging me to go against my brother�That's the kind of cover-up that�s going on there." https://t.co/KJ3ofDhsQW
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 13, 2020
