Super Tuesday Reads
Posted: March 3, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Chris Matthews, coronavirus, Donald Trump, Super Tuesday 46 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
Super Tuesday has arrived, and by tonight we should have a better idea of how the Democratic race for the nomination is going. If you live in Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, or Virginia, today is your day to vote. Here’s the state of the race after Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O’Rourke endorsed Joe Biden last night.
The Washington Post: Power Up: Is this a two-person race or a slog? Waiting on Super Tuesday results.
YOUR (PROACTIVE) GUIDE TO SUPERDELEGATES: With 1,357 pledged delegates at stake today, Super Tuesday will go a ways in determining if there’s a clear front-runner in the Democratic primary or if we have a long slog ahead.
Meaning there’s still a chance the nomination battle drags on through the Democratic convention in Milwaukee this summer, resulting in a rare contested convention that hasn’t occurred for either major party in almost 70 years.
That became less likely as the moderate wing of the party moved rapidly to coalesce behind former vice president Joe Biden after his South Carolina win over fears that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the front-runner so far, is gaining unstoppable momentum. But Biden’s push to make this a two-person race isn’t guaranteed, and the party is still fractured enough that there could very well be a muddled picture and continued infighting moving ahead.
Nonetheless, Biden’s campaign rolled out endorsements all yesterday from party bigwigs and ex-rivals and appeared in Dallas last night with former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), as well as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas).
“We need a politics that’s about decency, a politics that brings back dignity. That’s what Joe Biden has been practicing his entire life,” Buttigieg said at an event ahead of Biden’s rally.
Klobuchar declared at the rally: “I cannot think of a better way to end my campaign than joining his.”Yet former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) remain in the race and might very well prevent Biden’s push to make this a two-man race. Depending on the delegate picture in a post-Super Tuesday world, it’s possible no candidate successfully captures a clear majority of delegates (1,991) necessary to secure the Democratic nomination.
Read more at the WaPo.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews shocked viewers at 7 last night by announcing his “retirement.”
The Daily Beast: MSNBC Host Chris Matthews Resigns After Accusations of Sexism and Harassment.
Longtime MSNBC host Chris Matthews announced on air Monday night that he was resigning following a slew of on-air fumbles and allegations that he made sexually inappropriate remarks to a political columnist in 2016.
“I’m retiring,” he said. “This is the last Hardball on MSNBC, and obviously this isn’t for lack of interest in politics.”
Over the past several weeks, the cable news veteran has been under increasing scrutiny due to allegations about previous offscreen conduct, as well as a number of eyebrow-raising on-air statements. Observers took note when Matthews, normally a staple of election coverage, did not appear on air on Saturday during the South Carolina primary.
“After my conversation with MSNBC, I decided tonight will be my last Hardball,” Matthews said on his show Monday night. “So let me tell you why. The younger generations are ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, the media, and fighting for their causes. They’re improving the workplace. We’re talking about better standards than we grew up with, fair standards… Compliments on a woman’s appearance some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK were never OK. Certainly not today. For making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.” [….]
After Matthews delivered his resignation announcement, Steve Kornacki took over for the remainder of the hour, expressing shock over his colleague’s retirement.
The New York Times: Chris Matthews Out at MSNBC.
Chris Matthews, the veteran political anchor and voluble host of the long-running MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” resigned on Monday night, an abrupt departure from a television perch that made him a fixture of politics and the news media over the past quarter-century.
Mr. Matthews, 74, had faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.
On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an essay accusing Mr. Matthews of making multiple inappropriate comments about her appearance, reviving longstanding allegations about the anchor’s sexist behavior. By Monday, his position at the news network he helped build had become untenable.
Accompanied by his family, Mr. Matthews walked onto the “Hardball” set inside NBC’s Washington bureau shortly before 7 p.m. to deliver a brief farewell. His longtime crew members, who had been told of his plans roughly an hour earlier, looked on stunned.
“I’m retiring,” Mr. Matthews told viewers in a solemn and brief monologue as his broadcast began at 7. “This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC.”
His sudden signoff took many colleagues by surprise — “Wait. What?” the MSNBC anchor Katy Tur wrote on Twitter — but it followed days of discussions with Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC and one of the early executive producers of “Hardball.”
Unfortunately, most of the news today is still about the coronavirus, which appears to be spreading rapidly in the U.S. and the testing situation is still problematic.
Last night a woman in Seattle posted her experience on Twitter. She says she has chronic bronchitis and is immunosuppressed. She works in a health care facility in Seattle and has symptoms.
As of this morning, she still has no further information. What’s in the headlines about the virus:
Associated Press: More testing sheds light on how virus is spreading in US.
SEATTLE (AP) — An increase in testing for the coronavirus began shedding light Monday on how the illness has spread in the United States, including in Washington state, where four people died at a nursing home and some schools were closed for disinfection.
New diagnoses in several states pushed the tally of COVID-19 cases past 100, and New Hampshire reported its first case, raising the total of affected states to 11. Seattle officials announced four more deaths, bringing the total in the U.S. to six.
In Seattle, King County Executive Dow Constantine declared an emergency and said the county was buying a hotel to be used as a hospital for patients who need to be isolated. He said the facility should be available by the end of the week.
“We have moved to a new stage in the fight,” he said.
Vice President Mike Pence met with the nation’s governors and pledged to continue updating them weekly by teleconference. President Donald Trump met with pharmaceutical companies to talk about progress toward a vaccine.
The deaths at a nursing home in suburban Kirkland, Washington, were especially troubling to health care experts because of the vulnerability of sick and elderly people to the illness and existing problems in nursing facilities.
“It’s going to be a disaster,” said Charlene Harrington, who studies nursing homes at the University of California, San Francisco. Infection is already a huge problem in U.S. nursing homes because of a lack of nurses and training.
In Texas, tension between U.S. and local officials brewed over the planned release Monday of more than 120 ex-passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in quarantine in San Antonio. Mayor Ron Nirenberg declared a public safety emergency in an attempt to continue the quarantine. He and other officials in San Antonio called for more lab testing of the passengers after one woman tested positive after release.
Read the rest at AP.
The New York Times: Defense Secretary Warns Commanders Not to Surprise Trump on Coronavirus.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper has urged American military commanders overseas not to make any decisions related to the coronavirus that might surprise the White House or run afoul of President Trump’s messaging on the growing health challenge, American officials said.
Mr. Esper’s directive, delivered last week during a video teleconference call with combatant commanders around the world, is the latest iteration of Mr. Trump’s efforts to manage public fears over the disease, even as it continues to spread around the world.
Mr. Trump has said Democrats and the news media are stoking fear about the disease, even calling their concerns a “hoax” during one rally last week….
Mr. Esper told commanders deployed overseas that they should check in before making decisions related to protecting their troops.
In one exchange during last Wednesday’s video teleconference, Gen. Robert B. Abrams, the commander of American forces in South Korea, where more than 4,000 coronavirus cases have been detected, discussed his options to protect American military personnel against the virus, said one American official briefed on the call.
In response, Mr. Esper said he wanted advance notice before General Abrams or any other commander made decisions related to protecting their troops.
So it sounds like pacifying Trump is still the top priority–not protecting Americans.
Anthony Fauci might be the one person everyone in Washington trusts right now.
But at 79, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is in the thick of one of the biggest battles of 35 years in the role: The race to contain coronavirus when the nation is deeply polarized and misinformation can spread with one tweet — sometimes, from the president himself.
“You should never destroy your own credibility. And you don’t want to go to war with a president,” Fauci, who has been the country’s top infectious diseases expert through a dozen outbreaks and six presidents, told POLITICO in an interview Friday. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”
And the truth about coronavirus? “I don’t think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed,” he said. “I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad.”
The plainspoken scientist with a heavy Brooklyn accent has navigated outbreaks from HIV to Ebola, Zika and the anthrax scare with an ability to talk frankly yet reassuringly about threats, to explain science, public health and risk to the public in a way few can match.
But in this outbreak, he’s not always the comforting public face amid crisis.
More headlines, links only:
The New York Times: As Coronavirus Numbers Rise, C.D.C. Testing Comes Under Fire.
Business Insider: The Trump administration says Medicare and Medicaid might not cover all healthcare for coronavirus patients.
The Washington Post: Major airlines, U.S. officials clash over passenger tracking related to coronavirus cases.
The Daily Beast: Defense Intelligence Agency Bans Some Domestic Travel, Sources Say.
The Atlantic: Trump’s Playbook Is Terribly Ill-Suited to a Pandemic.
That’s all I have for today. What stories are you following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Have a great Super Tuesday, Sky Dancers!!
pulled these for you and put them on monday downthread … here they are here …
oops you just posted the second one from the Singapore minister.
I deleted it. Can you post it again?
Thanks!
Very helpful info. I bet Dumbo has no clue, even now, how this spreads.
That Ryan Cooper article has problems. He spends a lot of time talking about distributing vaccines, when we already know that there won’t be a vaccine until well into next year.
Yeah. I wondered about that.
Right. It takes many months of development and testing. Six months would be unrealistically fast. So many people don’t understand you can’t speed up biological reality.
I saw that thread earlier about the Seattle woman trying to get tested for Corona Virus. I finally got to talk to the doctor kids last night and Jean said they had a horrible time getting any tests kits out of the CDC/HHS. That the entire thing would probably be slightly more contained if they’d have sent the tests but evidently every one was trying to convince Trumperz at the time it wasn’t a democratic hoax. They’re still trying to get enough tests too. You’d think they’d know that Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii were likely to be the first places to get it given the back and forth in trade, etc there between those states and China but then you’d need to have a functional “deep state” in health science to get ahead o things.
She’s going to a meeting tomorrow morning on next steps. Amit didn’t really have much to say, He’s mostly at a radiology clinic. I’m assuming he sees xrays of lungs a lot these days. Just found out they’re both warren supporters too and were asking who to vote for next week.
Meanwhile, Nashville got slammed with tornadoes last night and there’s death and destruction. And of course, FEMA’s not staffed either.
We have to get fucking Trump out of there.
Thanks for the info from your daughter.
Senators, including my own Patty Murray, have been trying to get tests out. Sounds like the administration officials are dodging and obfuscating to try to cover their own incompetence. Of course, Trump having slashed funding and staff has a lot to do with it.
PAGING FUCKING FEMA!!!!!
The lack of testing here in the US is unforgivable. South Korea testing thousands and we can’t test this woman??
Would be fine if everyone had been masked and gloved.
Well, this looks like it will be the Dem ticket …
and that tweet disappeared hmmmmm
Quarantine Pence!!!
RFLMAO – I dunno, maybe let’s put him in an elevator with Dumbo for a few hours.
better yet send him to a MAGA rally and let him shake all the hands he can!!!
Some very interesting data in this Vox article interviewing Bruce Aylward, a WHO epidemiologist.
The most interesting to me: unlike flu, there are few asymptomatic cases. People get fever, dry cough, shortness of breath symptoms, and test positive. But there’s not a huge reservoir in the community.
Take home message from that: the population needs to be aware of the first symptoms and there needs to be numbers they can call so symptomatic people’s contacts can be traced.
Since there’s not a lot of asymptomatic virus, the main way to stop the spread is case identification and contact tracing.
China also made all testing and treatment free so that people wouldn’t hesitate to come forward. Employers are mandated to provide sick leave.
So: effective public health response to testing probable cases (ie showing any symptoms, not “have you travelled to China” as per CDC now) and tracing their contacts. And being sure that being tested or being sick doesn’t carry a price tag for individuals.
In all respects, the evidence-based response is the 180 opposite of the Dump’s idea of what to do.
Good info! I definitely agree. I suspect there are more mild cases than are realized, simply because those people don’t complain and don’t get tested.
“China also made all testing and treatment free so that people wouldn’t hesitate to come forward. Employers are mandated to provide sick leave.” What a concept! Merely one of the best practices in Public Health Guidelines.
That’s the thing: his group actually tested the community. There were few mild or asymptomatic (but carrier) cases. Kind of the first good news we’ve had about this thing.
Except you can pass it on even if you’re asymptomatic.
Yes, you can. The point is that unlike flu, there are many fewer of those people than epidemiologists thought.
If there were many, community testing would make a lot of sense.
Since there aren’t, case ID (which means the general public has to know what the first symptoms are) and contact tracing are the most effective.
Wonder just how many persons in the community were tested. If it was a large enough sample, then the results could be extrapolated to the general population; otherwise, not. I’ll re-read the article to see what I missed and track down other sources.
They could just put the period after “exposes the stupidity of Trump.”
There’s not one thing he does that isn’t roach-brained. The consequences are not usually as immediate, that’s all.
Excellent article!!
From what I hear in my area, I agree with this appraisal.
Biden projected winner in Virginia. Sanders wins Vermont. Biden is now ahead in delegates.
Biden wins North Carolina.
Ayup. Sanders actually made me start rooting for Biden (still a Warren voter ATM). If I have to vote for Biden in the general I can do so now at least without holding my nose.
Results so far:
Looks like Biden wins Mass, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, NC and Virginia.
Sanders Colorado, Vermont.
(chortles)
Biden’s string of victories threatens to erase Sanders’s delegate advantage
And another headline:
Joe Biden romps in Super Tuesday presidential contests
Sanders is his own worst enemy. People told him not to ignore “identity politics”, but he refused (and still does probably) to acknowledge systemic racism for what it is. Ignore black voters to your own peril, Bernie.
No clue why Hispanics like him.