There are primaries in Arizona, Florida and Illinois today. Ohio’s primary was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After today, the majority of delegates will have been selected.
Results: Joe Biden is projected to win in Florida, Illinois and Arizona.
Leave your reactions in the comments.
“The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents,” the New York Times reports.
“The main federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry.”
Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News that there has been “irresponsible rhetoric” from people who have downplayed the seriousness of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.
However on Monday, President Trump himself downplayed the threat saying the “fake news media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything to inflame the coronavirus situation.”
Congressional negotiators on Wednesday clinched a bipartisan emergency $8.3 billion funding package to combat coronavirus, which both chambers are expected to pass by the end of the week, Politico reports.
“Mike Bloomberg is weighing dropping out as early as Wednesday after losing a string of Super Tuesday states where he invested a fortune in advertising,” Politico reports.
Washington Post: “Bloomberg has vowed that the campaign he built will go on even if the candidate himself pulls out, with the goal of boosting whoever the Democratic nominee is. The data program he is assembling, called Hawkfish, would continue its work, aides say, and hundreds of campaign staffers in swing states would continue to work through November.”
Earlier for members: What’s Next for Warren and Bloomberg
“President Trump has told aides he wants fewer people working for him in the White House and only loyalists installed in key administration positions,” CNN reports.
“Trump’s allies have provided him lists — not always solicited — of people they’ve identified as disloyal and of names they say would work better toward advancing his agenda. The lists have been generated over the past three years, but some are being dusted off in the post-impeachment purge.”
President Trump has commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, the Democrat who was convicted of trying to essentially sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain, the New York Times reports.
“By commuting the sentence, the president would free Mr. Blagojevich from prison without wiping out the conviction. Republicans have advised the president against it, arguing that Mr. Blagojevich’s crime epitomizes the corruption that Mr. Trump had said he wanted to tackle as president.”
Trump also pardoned former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, and financier Mike Milken.
Dan Pfeiffer: “Rather than obsess over 2016, Democrats should focus on 2012—the last year a challenger took on an incumbent. There are more parallels than you’d think: Barack Obama was a president hugely unpopular with the opposing party, but the economy on the upswing; the Republicans had a big field and took a while to coalesce around a consensus choice. In the end, that choice was Mitt Romney—and his campaign misread and misplayed the election in ways that the Democrats desperately need to pay attention to now.”
Pfeiffer’s new book is Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again.
“Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) posted a picture of herself in a camo blouse and orange safety vest, with a shotgun over one shoulder. One of her critics quickly discovered she couldn’t have been using the weaponry to hunt,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“The Republican incumbent doesn’t have a Georgia hunting license.”
NBC News: “The U.S. attorney who had presided over an inconclusive criminal investigation into former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe was abruptly removed from that job last month in one of several recent moves by Attorney General William Barr to take control of legal matters of personal interest to President Trump.”
“On Tuesday, all four line prosecutors withdrew from the case against Trump associate Roger Stone — and one quit the Justice Department altogether — after Barr and his top aides intervened to reverse a stiff sentencing recommendation of up to nine years in prison that the line prosecutors had filed with the court Monday.”
“But that wasn’t the first time senior political appointees reached into a case involving a former Trump aide… Senior officials at the Justice Department also intervened last month to help change the government’s sentencing recommendation for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. While once the prosecutors in the case had recommended up to six months in jail for Flynn, their latest filing now says they believe probation would be appropriate.”
For members: How We’ll Lose Our Democracy
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign released a memo downplaying expectations in New Hampshire and laying out a delegate path in granular detail, the New York Times reports.
“The memo provides, by far, the most detailed projections released by any campaign of delegate viability heading into Super Tuesday, predicting a ‘three-way race’ between herself, Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator. She omits Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., even though he received more support than her in Iowa and could do so again in New Hampshire. Candidates need to reach 15 percent support in each congressional district to win delegates, as well as statewide for statewide delegates.”
For members: The New Hampshire Expectations Game
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John Cassidy: “The key point is that Trump is now sufficiently popular, and the economic environment is sufficiently benign, to make his reelection a real and live danger. (In the online betting markets, for what they are worth, he is already a strong favorite to win.) This year, again, the result will most likely come down to ten battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and, of course, the three Rust Belt states that Trump flipped in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to the data-research firm Morning Consult, Trump’s disapproval rating currently exceeds his approval rating in all of these states apart from Florida. But the gap has narrowed in a number of places, including Arizona, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.”
“The identity of the Democratic candidate will obviously be vitally important, but so will the manner in which the campaign is conducted. Everyone associated with the Democratic Party—from grassroots activists to elected officials and Party operatives—will need to unite behind the winner of the primary, whoever it is, and avoid scoring any own goals. During a hard-fought primary election, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the various candidates and their supporters to project this sort of unity and discipline.”
“Democrats are bracing for a more emboldened President Trump now that his acquittal is at hand, beginning with Tuesday’s State of the Union address before a nationally televised audience,” the Washington Post reports.
“Rather than seeking to unify Congress and the nation with remorse, Democrats expect Trump to ratchet up his rhetoric of grievance on the eve of Senate impeachment votes that are all but certain to acquit him for abuse of power and obstructing Congress.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA.) endorsed Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, citing what he said was the former vice president’s ability to build a coalition within the party and proven foreign-policy credentials, the Wall Street Journal reports.
BuzzFeed News: “With the series of polls showing Sanders at the top of the field in the first states — two more came out on Sunday alone, along with a national poll that has Sanders and Biden nearly tied — there is a feeling of palpable anticipation inside and around the campaign over what backlash, if any, might be coming.”
“Some rivals are already trying to capitalize on establishment anxiety. Pete Buttigieg asked supporters twice on Saturday to fend off Sanders by contributing to the mayor’s campaign.”
Said Sanders at a rally: “We are taking on the Democratic establishment, and all across the country, let me tell you that the big money interests are getting very nervous. They’re looking at recent polls in New Hampshire and in Iowa and they’re saying ‘Oh my god, Sanders can win!'”
Washington Post: Sanders faces barrage of attacks from rivals as polls show him surging in early states.
A new HuffPost/YouGov survey found that 43% of voters said they supported President Trump’s order to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Among that pool, 30% said they strongly approved of the decision.
Thirty-eight percent of voters said they disapproved of the military action.
Jennifer Rubin has an idea:
“Pelosi can wait to transmit the articles, now that impeachment is complete, until such time as the cases involving senior officials wind their way through the courts and reach a final ruling (likely at the Supreme Court level where cases concerning production of documents now rest). In short, she can wait until the Supreme Court frees up former White House counsel Donald McGahn and former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman (whose case Bolton said he would rely upon for guidance) to testify. (If the Senate still won’t call them as witnesses, the House can hold additional hearings and supplement the record.)”
“Faced with a client frantic to get a Senate acquittal, Trump’s attorneys might then have a real incentive to get the courts to expedite a determination on witnesses.”
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.