Girl Scout Cookies

S’Mores: Well, Mike Bloomberg will always have American Samoa, the islands not the cookies.  Despite his $500 million expenditure, an amount that comes close to the GDP of the US territory, last night was mostly about Joe Biden and his amazing comeback.  Counted out before South Carolina he’s now leading in the all-important delegate count, 453 to Bernie Sanders’ 382, or thereabouts the numbers are still in flux.  Although all the results are not yet in Biden appears to have racked up victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and probably Maine while Sanders appears to have won California, Colorado, his home state of Vermont and Utah.  Elizabeth Warren didn’t just fail to win her home state of Massachusetts, she came in third there, behind both Biden and Sanders who thought that he stood a good chance of winning the state and was stunned to lose it to Biden of all people.  Mike Bloomberg beat the 15% threshold in a few places and came away with around 18 delegates but only won one primary, beating out Tulsi Gabbard in American Samoa, the place where she was born.  A few takeaways from the night:  Biden owes a lot of his success to African American voters and should thank his lucky stars for that endorsement from the very influential South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn as it continued to pay dividends last night; educated white voters and suburban women who together with African American voters gave the House back to Nancy Pelosi in 2018, appear to be Team Biden; if the dramatic increase in voter turnout in Virginia where around twice as many voters showed up than for the 2016 primary means anything, Democratic voters are energized and lean moderate; and believe it or not money isn’t everything, Bloomberg spent a small fortune, Biden almost nothing but in the end the former VP came out on top. As to the gruff billionaire, last night some of Bloomberg’s representatives hinted that he is rethinking his options, considering dropping out of the race as early as this morning.  That would be great news for Biden who, unlike Bernie, would most likely be a willing receptable for some of that Bloomberg cash.  It’s not clear what Warren plans to do, she brushed away questions about her plans last night and though she’s sitting on some delegates it’s hard to believe that she has a path forward to the nomination.  It’s not clear where her supporters would go, they lean progressive so many may end up in the Bernie camp, but a lot of them are offended by his tactics and attitude so they might end up with Biden who despite his more than occasional gaffes positively oozes decency.  One last note, though it looks highly likely that Bernie has won California, final results take a while since so many votes come in through snail mail, he may owe his victory, or at the very least his wide margin of victory there to early voting as somewhere around 20% of the electorate cast early ballots for some of the drop outs and it’s likely that a significant amount of those votes would have ended up going to Biden or at least that’s what happened in a number of the other states. As to those drop outs, Biden should throw kisses and hugs, okay only air kisses and make believe hugs, in the direction of Amy Klobuchar who handed him Minnesota, a state that Sanders won over Clinton in 2016 and certainly Beto’s support had to help him with delegate rich Texas.

Tagalongs:  The fight for the Democratic nomination is far from over, the next round of primaries takes place on March 10 when Michigan will be up for grabs.  Until last week, Sanders had been expected to notch a victory there, but polls now indicate that the surging Biden could edge him out.  That said, Bernie’s a tough ground fighter so no chicken counting for Biden, yet.  If we learned anything this week it’s that the political ground shifts quickly and unpredictably.  In other election news, Jeff Sessions is one step closer to regaining his Alabama Senate seat, he’s headed to a runoff for the Republican nomination against former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville.  Whoever wins the run off will then face off against Democrat Doug Jones who won his seat by beating out Alabama’s most famous pedophile, Judge Roy Moore who ran again but failed to make the cut.

Lemon Ups and Do-si-dos:  The Fed cut interest rates by 50 basis points yesterday over concerns about the economic impact of the Coronavirus  but instead of calming the markets, the cut triggered further declines in both the stock markets and long term bond rates over a combination of fears that the economy is headed to a recession and that the cut was a response to that great economist Trump’s interference.  Economist Trump is also into biochemistry so yesterday, while continuing to insist that everything is under control, that the virus is no bigly, that its going to be gone by April and anyway a vaccination for COVID 19 is imminent, he headed to NIH headquarters where he was shown a life size version of a Coronavirus molecule.  He looked totally baffled and asked the scientists why doubling the dose of this year’s flu vaccination wouldn’t suffice.  He had little to say when a reporter asked him if his administration had a plan to help uninsured people infected by the virus pay for their care.  Separately it was reported that Defense Secretary Esper warned commanders not to take actions to protect their troops from Coronavirus that would upset Trump’s PR efforts to downplay the virus.  I did not make that up.  And while Trump continues to replace staff on the National Security Council with loyalists, his former national security advisor John Bolton’s book appears stuck in limbo with its publication pushed off from March to May or maybe never.