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A new Commonwealth Fund/NBC News survey finds that 31% of voters were worried about being able to afford their health insurance in the next 12 months, 29% feared they wouldn’t have enough money to pay for out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and 32% worried about being able to afford other out-of-pocket costs.
Nearly 80% of likely voters said they thought reducing health care costs should be a high priority for the next president.
“The discovery that a California woman was likely infected with the novel coronavirus by a previously unrecognized case in her community is proof of an enormous problem the country is facing at the moment, according to public health experts. It’s clear that the virus is spreading undetected in the United States — but how broadly it’s spreading is an utter mystery,” STAT reports.
“Before Thursday, a perfect storm of problems in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s development of test kits — and the agency’s reluctance to expand its recommendation of who should be tested given the limited availability of kits — meant very little testing has been done in the country. As of Wednesday, the CDC said that 445 people had been tested — a fraction of the number of tests that other countries have run.”
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“Federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible exposure to the coronavirus without proper medical training or protective gear, then scattered into the general population, according to a government whistle-blower,” the New York Times reports.
“Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature three times a day.”
Washington Post: “The whistleblower is seeking federal protection because she alleges she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.”
Mike Bloomberg told the Houston Chronicle he would shutter his presidential campaign operation if Bernie Sanders won the nomination and rejected his support, as an aide to the frontrunner pledged to do earlier this week.
Said Bloomberg: “What do you mean, I’m going to send a check to somebody and they’re not going to cash the check? I think I wouldn’t bother to send the check.”
A new Marquette University Law School poll in Wisconsin finds Bernie Sanders leads in the Democratic primary with 29%, followed by Mike Bloomberg at 17 percent, Joe Biden at 15%, Pete Buttigieg at 13%, Amy Klobuchar at 11% and Elizabeth Warren at 9%.
Meanwhile, in general election match ups, only Sanders beats Trump, 48% to 46%.
Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar all tie with Trump, while Bloomberg trails Trump by one point and Warren trails by three points.
“Pete Buttigieg, whose presidential campaign was a surprise fundraising machine in the lead-up to 2020, is counting on a stripped-down, grassroots-driven style of organizing to keep his candidacy alive in and after next week’s Super Tuesday primaries,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg brushed aside his poorly reviewed debate performances, saying he’s ready to be commander in chief, not “college debater in chief,” The Hill reports.
Said Bloomberg: “I don’t talk until the cows come home, and as you’ve seen in the debates, I’m not someone who just yells slogans even when they’re not true. That’s what they did. Two of them, that last debate, they had the same answers no matter what the question was.”
“Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has made overtures to Democrat Andrew Yang, courting the former candidate’s endorsement and floating the possibility of Mr. Yang becoming his running mate,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
First Read urges some caution about South Carolina polling, noting it often under-rates the candidate with support from older black voters.
If that holds this year, Joe Biden could win by a much larger margin than current polls show.
“Michael Bloomberg’s campaign disclosed new information on Thursday about the health of the presidential candidate’s heart, and called on Bernie Sanders, who suffered a heart attack last year, to release the same data — a clear attempt to bring the issue of the Democratic frontrunner’s health to the forefront in the 2020 race for the White House,” CNN reports.
A new Muhlenberg College poll in Pennsylvania shows President Trump and the leading Democrats in a tight race for the state’s twenty electoral votes.
Bernie Sanders is the only one who actually leads Trump in a general election match up, 49% to 46%.
However, Trump ties Biden, 47% to 47%, and Warren, 47% to 47%. He holds slim leads over Amy Klobuchar, 45% to 44%, Pete Buttigieg, 46% to 45%, and Mike Bloomberg, 48% to 45%.
“Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who held elected offices in Baltimore for two decades and was elevated by voters to lead the city following the upheaval of 2015, was sentenced to three years in federal prison Thursday for a fraud scheme involving a children’s book series,” the Baltimore Sun reports.
“The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to clear all statements and public appearance with the office of Vice President Mike Pence,” the New York Times reports.
“The vice president’s first move appeared to be aimed at preventing the kind of contradictory statements from White House officials and top government health officials that have plagued the administration’s response.”
“Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the country’s leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.”
Gail Collins: Let’s call it Trumpvirus.
The Economist: “Start with the absurdity of counting on Mr Sanders’s moderate rivals to peg him back. They are the main reason for his rise. There are too many of them and none is a standout. Their bickering over tiny differences has fragmented the center-left—and is utterly dull. This center-left logjam has made Mr Sanders’s small left-wing base more potent, his leftist rhetoric more distinctive and, until now, his candidacy only indirectly threatening to his main rivals, which is why they hardly attacked him.”
“The vanity campaigns of the Democrats’ billionaires have been even more helpful to him. Tom Steyer, a retired financier with no original ideas, has risen in South Carolina at Mr Biden’s cost by outspending the field. Mr Bloomberg, whose lavish campaign and dire political skills (again on display in Charleston) are drawing inevitable comparisons with the Wizard of Oz, has also badly reduced Mr Biden in the Super Tuesday states. Mr Sanders would be in a weaker position without them.”
“The only way his rivals could pull back the populist senator would be by quitting and thinning the field. But, having a well-judged sense of each other’s weaknesses, they will not.”
“The Democrat Party, as it’s currently constituted, poses a much greater threat to this country than the coronavirus does.”
— Rush Limbaugh, quoted by The Hill.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar refused to promise a coronavirus vaccine will be affordable, The Verge reports.
Said Azar: “We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price, because we need the private sector to invest… Price controls won’t get us there.”
The Economist: “Should Mr Sanders win the nomination, November’s election will pit a right-wing nativist with authoritarian tendencies who wants to Keep America Great against a democratic socialist who wants to turn it into the Sweden of the 1970s. The horseshoe theory of politics holds that the extreme left and extreme right sometimes resemble one another more than might be thought. Mr Sanders does not share Mr Trump’s contempt for the rule of law, which is important. But they do share a populist dislike of elites.”
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.
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