The consensus electoral map has been updated based on the latest forecasts. It shows just five states as Toss Ups: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
However, if Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball says there would be just two Toss Ups: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Test your own scenarios on the interactive map.
A new Monmouth poll in South Carolina finds Joe Biden leading the South Carolina primary with 36%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 16% and Tom Steyer at 15%.
All other candidates fall below the statewide delegate viability threshold: Elizabeth Warren at 8%, Pete Buttigieg at 6%, Amy Klobuchar at 4%, and Tulsi Gabbard at 1%.
Another 15% of likely primary voters remain undecided and do not lean toward any candidate at this time.
Corey Brettschneider: “Speculation that President Trump might pardon Roger Stone has reached a fever pitch after Stone’s sentencing by a federal judge and the president’s repeated hints that he thinks the verdict unfair. But fortunately, the Constitution’s framers imagined this nightmare scenario—a suspected criminal president pardoning a co-conspirator—and they put in the Constitution language to legally prohibit the pardon power in exactly this kind of case.”
“Many scholars agree that once a president has been impeached, he or she loses the power to pardon anyone for criminal offenses connected to the articles of impeachment. Less noticed is that even after the Senate’s failure to convict the president, he or she does not regain this power.”
Goldman Sachs revised its earnings estimate for the year for U.S. companies to $165 per share, representing 0% growth in 2020, as a result of the coronavirus, CNBC reports.
This is a dramatic break from the consensus forecast of Wall Street, which still calls for earnings to climb 7% this year.
Bloomberg: “The biggest sell-off in U.S. stocks in two years is just getting started, strategists at two of Wall Street’s biggest banks are warning.”
A new AP-NORC poll finds considerable skepticism about the democratic process in the United States.
“While a third of Americans say they have high confidence in an accurate count, roughly another third are only moderately confident and a remaining third say they have little confidence.”
Nate Silver looks at how his forecast model views three plausible scenarios in South Carolina: “a big Biden win (by 10 percentage points or more), a modest Biden win (by less than 10 points) and a Sanders win (no margin specified). As of Wednesday afternoon, the chance of these outcomes happening according to the model was 41 percent (big Biden win), 33 percent (small Biden win) and 23 percent (Sanders win), respectively.”
The bottom line: A big Biden win would reorder the race, but the other scenarios look pretty good for Sanders.
“Vice President Mike Pence, already the administration’s point-person with conservatives, evangelicals and advocates for religious freedom, is building up his team to keep them close as the president dives into the 2020 reelection,” the Washington Examiner reports.
Jonathan Bernstein: “Yes, he used his usual juvenile nicknames and petty insults for the Democrats he’s going to have to work with. Yes, he blamed the stock market drop on Monday and Tuesday on — wait for it — the Democratic debate Tuesday night. Yes, he repeatedly praised himself for solving the problem (setting up a potential ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment in the likely event the pandemic spreads in the U.S.) and had administration officials praise him as well. All entirely inappropriate and counterproductive.”
“But it was worse than that. He was at times barely coherent even for someone who knew what he was trying to say. I can’t imagine what it was like for the bulk of the nation, folks who only sometimes pay attention to politics but might have tuned in because they want to be reassured that the government is on top of the problem. He must have been almost completely incomprehensible to them, rambling on about how he had recently discovered that the flu can kill lots of people and referring in a totally oblique way to the budget requests he had made to Congress and their reaction. He occasionally said something that sort of made sense, but mostly? Not. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s reaction was what I thought: ‘I found most of what he said incoherent.'”
“At no time over the course of the news conference did Trump supply evidence that he had any idea what he was talking about.”
New York Times: “Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. Since Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, The Times has interviewed 93 party officials — all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention — and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority.”
“Such a situation may result in a brokered convention, a messy political battle the likes of which Democrats have not seen since 1952, when the nominee was Adlai Stevenson.”
Politico: “When Harry Reid needed to clinch a deal to save the beleaguered Veterans Affairs Department in 2014, he left much of it to Bernie Sanders. Three years later, when Chuck Schumer sought a powerful ally to build public support to save Obamacare, the new Democratic Senate leader teamed up with Sanders to hold a rally in Michigan.”
“Despite his anti-establishment rhetoric and a handful of high-profile breaks with his party over 29 years in Congress, the Vermont independent is typically not the headache for his Democratic leadership that Ted Cruz and Rand Paul once were for the GOP. Sanders, it’s often forgotten, actually serves on Schumer’s leadership team.”
“Sanders has known both Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi for decades — relationships that will become pivotal if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination and the party is fractured. And if Democrats do win the White House and control of Congress, their ability to work together will be crucial.”
Washington Post: “This is a make-or-break moment in a political career that began 48 years ago, and has taken him to the heights and back down again. Biden has run three presidential campaigns and has yet to win a primary or caucus. In three contests this year, he has finished fourth, fifth and second. His hopes are poured into turning his campaign around by winning South Carolina and rocketing into the Super Tuesday contests next week.”
Politico: “Pete Buttigieg is going delegate hunting. Despite a brutal Super Tuesday map unlikely to hand him any statewide wins, the former South Bend mayor is looking to reinforce his claim as a Democratic alternative to Bernie Sanders by racking up delegates in individual congressional districts on Super Tuesday.”
“It’s a national version of Buttigieg’s path to first place in Iowa’s state delegate race — crossing the viability threshold everywhere, pending a recount — which Buttigieg hopes to replicate on Tuesday, when 14 states weigh in on the Democratic primary, despite a splintered field and limited resources.”
“Buttigieg’s campaign said in a memo that its objective on March 3 is to ‘minimize’ Sanders’ margins and maximize ‘delegate accumulation by [congressional] district, not states.’ Anticipating a drawn-out primary process, Buttigieg is looking to survive deeper into the calendar, making it to mid-March contests in the Midwest that might provide more opportunities for him.”
Politico: “Bloomberg, who spent months ignoring his Democratic opponents and focusing his firepower on Donald Trump, is still counting on a big delegate haul next week. But several sources close to and involved in the campaign have acknowledged concerns about his recent internal and public polling.”
“They said they were relieved by Bloomberg’s improved debate performance in South Carolina Tuesday night, including his opening attack on Sanders and his handling of a repeat grilling from Elizabeth Warren on his private company’s treatment of women. (After Warren tore into him in the first debate, he agreed to allow women who signed non-disclosure agreements related to him to speak freely.)”
New York Times: “The no-end-in-sight nature of the contest for the Democratic nomination is alarming those in the party who are hoping to blunt the momentum of the front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The most likely way they believe that could happen — a critical mass of the senator’s rivals drop out so voters can coalesce around a single alternative — seems like the least likely outcome.”
“The irony is thick. Mr. Sanders, the candidate many establishment Democrats fear would have the most trouble beating President Trump in November, is benefiting from some of the same dynamics that helped Mr. Trump stampede to the Republican nomination four years ago.”
“A new coronavirus case in California could be the first in the U.S. that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in a U.S. community,” the AP reports.
Washington Post: “Community spread would represent a significant turn for the worse in the battle against the virus. To date, the United States has 60 known cases of the infection, with 59 among people who traveled to Asia or were close contacts of people who went there.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who has been leading the coronavirus task force, was blindsided by the White House decision to put Vice President Pence in charge of the response to the virus outbreak, the Washington Post reports.
Azar learned of the decision only moments before the Wednesday evening press conference.
U.S. stock index futures fell as President Trump’s speech failed to assuage investors’ concerns of the novel coronavirus derailing global growth, Bloomberg reports.
“March contracts on the S&P 500 Index were down 0.4% as of 9:19 a.m. in Tokyo, after slumping as much as 1%, as the president held a press conference to update the country on the administration’s response to the growing crisis. The underlying index is mired in a five-day losing streak that wiped out more than $2 trillion in value from American equities.”
Washington Post: “The president was contradicted almost in real time by some of the government experts who flanked him as he stood in the White House press briefing room.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.