Super Duper Tuesday

The Trifecta:  Yesterday, Joe Biden won the trifecta, he was endorsed by Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar who had dropped her bid for the presidency earlier in the day. They join early dropouts Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan who had earlier thrown their support Biden’s way as well as a number of other prominent Democrats including one time VP candidate/current Virginia Senator Tim Kaine and former Senate leader Harry Reid.  Trump responded by calling Pete, Amy and Beto’s endorsements out as proof that the Democratic mainstream was engaging in a quid pro quo to steal the nomination from his and Putin’s preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders.  During a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina Trump actually called for the three former candidates to be impeached whatever that’s supposed to mean.  Though Bernie didn’t call for their impeachment, he clearly isn’t happy about the turn of events possibly because so far the only two former candidates to endorse him are those influential in their own minds luminaries Bill De Blasio and Marianne Williamson so he too railed against the mainstream Democratic hierarchy and, taking a page from Trump, he also hammered the press, notably refusing to take a question from a Washington Post reporter since he still hasn’t forgiven WaPo for publishing the story about Putin’s preference for all things Bernie right before the South Carolina primary.  As to the mainstream Democrats, Bernie and Trump may not be totally wrong, word is that one of them, the Kahuna of former presidents, Barack Obama, has been exerting some influence behind the scenes, nudging those moderates without a path to the White House out of the race and onto team Biden.  Though its looking more and more like a Biden versus Bernie race, there are still two, well three if you count Tulsi Gabbard, other Democratic candidates out there.  Elizabeth Warren is holding on for dear life, it currently looks like she will lose today’s primary in her home state Massachusetts to Sanders, and Mike Bloomberg, who probably should have thrown in the towel yesterday, continues to say that he’s going the distance.  As to that distance, if Biden does well today, it could turn into a really short sprint as opposed to a marathon.   

March Madness:  Super Tuesday is upon us.  Before South Carolina, Pete and Amy’s dropouts and last night’s endorsements it appeared that it would be Bernie’s day.  Though it’s likely that Bernie will still rack up a large share of the 1357 delegates up for grabs before the day is out, or at least by the time the California results dribble in, Biden is now expected to do well too, especially notable given that last week the pundits were predicting that his run was over and even more remarkable because his coffers have, or at least were, before his South Carolina victory, running dry and as a result his advertisement budget was virtually nonexistent.  Regarding California, before South Carolina and yesterday’s endorsement trifecta, polls had predicted Sanders would win by a landslide with the distinct possibility that Biden would fail to meet the 15% threshold required to get any of the state’s 415 delegates.  However, though early ballots from around 20% of the state’s voters are already in, those polls are out of date, it’s now expected that Biden will manage to grab some of the state’s delegates by cobbling together votes from his supporters and some combination of the  Buttigieg and Klobuchar fanbase and maybe even from some Bloombergers who conclude that voting for Biden would be the best way to counter Sanders “socialist” machine. One indication that Trump and his Senate flunkies are concerned about Biden’s rise from the near dead is that Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is now planning to force a vote on subpoenaing Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden.

Viral Update: The Coronavirus continues to go viral, which is no surprise to anyone accept Trump and VP Pence, the head of his “mislead the public about the virus” task force.  Yesterday Trump continued to insist that a vaccination for COVID 19 is imminent; it’s not or at least the committee’s expert on such things, Dr Anthony Fauci, and just about every infectious disease expert continues to say that though a shot is being fast tracked it will still take a year or more before one is developed, tested and ready for public use unless the Trump family wants to serve as safety test guinea pigs.  Anyway, Pence held one of his “daily” news conference updates.  Having received lots of criticism for an earlier picture of his task force team, one that included only men, and despite the possible wrath from Mother, he stood with a woman on either side: career health official and dare I say one time Obama appointee Dr Deborah Birx and Medicare/Medicaid head Seema Verma who given her “client” base should have been on the task force from the start.  Anyway, Pence once again understated the number of people infected by the virus, while pushing back at criticism about the scarcity of functioning virus test kits. He also gave Health Secretary Azar plenty of speaking time, likely because, at least according to Politico, Azar who has been locked in a long term feud with token woman Seema Verma is likely to be the designated scape goat for anything that goes wrong, or in this case continues go wrong, on the virus front.   As to the viral thing, though the administration’s official position continues to be that it’s not a bigly problem, Washington state officials believe that it’s been circulating in their state for six weeks or so and that the only reason that they don’t have an accurate count of the number of people who’ve been infected is because both China and the Trump team have been engaging in obfuscation about its spread and because of the test kit shortage. Have you tried to buy any Purell lately?  Not to worry, soap and water work just as well, assuming you are near a water source. For the record, yesterday’s stock market rebound was all about possible interest rate cuts and had little to do with the virus going away.         

Et Cetera:  Trump bragged about his truce agreement with the Taliban during last night’s North Carolina rally, but apparently neither the Afghani government nor the Taliban are on board with its terms.  Yesterday the country’s government said that they had no plans to release the thousands of Taliban fighters that Trump promised would be released so the Taliban responded by launching a few lethal attacks. In Israel Bibi Netanyahu appears to have edged out his rival Benny Gantz but is still short the majority he  needs to form a government, if that sounds familiar it’s because it is.  And though Trump remains immune from all things related to the “MeToo” movement, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been caught in its clutches.  Last night he shocked watchers, his colleagues and his scheduled guests, by announcing his resignation during the first few minutes of his Hardball show.  He then left the stage for good, leaving it to a stunned Steve Kornacki, the station’s polling guru, to muddle through the rest of the hour.  Though his exit wasn’t supposed to go that way, Matthews’ resignation was imminent, he was being forced out by management in response to an article published in last week’s GQ  by journalist Laura Bassett who recounted Matthews repeated use of sexist language with female colleagues and guests.  It didn’t help that her Matthews takedown followed a recent interview where he hammered into everything Elizabeth Warren said giving her no chance to respond, nor did it help that last week he confused South Carolina’s black Democratic Senate candidate Jaime Harrison for the state’s Republican Senator Tim Scott because all black guys look the same?  For the record, Matthews lost me in 2018 after he repeatedly insisted that Democrat Doug Jones had to give up his pro-choice position to win the Alabama Senate seat over his opponent Roy Moore, the pedophile.  On the Supremes front, the Court declined to take up a case related to the banning of bump stocks but has agreed to look at Obamacare again and is scheduled to hear an abortion case this week.  What could go wrong? And naturally the White House has pulled the nomination of Defense official Elaine McCusker to be the Pentagon’s comptroller because she questioned the hold up of military aid to Ukraine and anyone who questioned that is no longer welcome in the Trump administration.