From TPM Reader NL …
JoinI am conflicted about this matchup. Let me get this off my chest first. I do not like Sanders. It has zero to do with policy, age, or electability. It is entirely about his unwillingness to be a team player and my fear that he will be a governing disaster because he will make the perfect the enemy of the good. This manifests in a lot of ways — unwillingness to join the party, unwillingness to call out his more toxic backers (assuming they are not FSB bots), unwillingness to make the case to his core supporters that change requires 50.1% percentage of the vote and get there requires, well, Democrats. What is the problem with making the case the Democratic party needs new blood and that the best way to change the party is by joining it?
Most about this night speaks for itself. I suspect the margin of this win will get Biden into contention in enough Super Tuesday states to gravitate this relatively quickly into a two person race. I doubt Michael Bloomberg will stay in the race long if thinks his impact is only to pull potential support from Biden, or if he sees no path for himself to the nomination. Steyer is dropping out tonight. I suspect others will follow next week.
JoinIf this margin holds, Biden will have over-performed his best recent South Carolina poll by about 10 points and some polls by as much as 25 points. It’s really quite a blow out.
We’ve got live updating election results out of South Carolina along with our staff live blog here.
A short time ago we were having an editorial discussion about how to capture in a headline President Trump’s claims of a Coronavirus “hoax.” We wanted to be clear that he did not appear to be saying that the novel Coronavirus itself didn’t exist. He was saying that the public discussion of it by Democrats was “the hoax.” This was distinct from his other claims that media coverage of it by news organizations he perceives as his enemies were a “hoax”. In each case of course he has insisted that public discussion has the sole aim of damaging him politically and is simply part and parcel of the Mueller probe, impeachment and the binary world in which every public issue is really about Donald Trump.
What became clear to me is how easy it is for news organizations to get lost in the President’s rabbit holes. The truth is the President is usually just tossing out random claims and accusations and attacks to get whatever response or rise he’s trying for at the moment. It’s very hard and in many cases simply impossible to reverse engineer or retrofit these statements into something having any coherent or logical meaning. The best you can say is that while the virus is spreading around the world and his administration is beginning to treat it as a grave and critical issue he is simultaneously out on the campaign hustings calling it a “hoax” while also at the same time bragging about how good a job he’s doing combatting it.
None of this makes any sense. Yet, there he is. The President of the United States. Claiming over and over at a raucous campaign rally that it’s all a “hoax.”
TPM is basically a political news and investigations website. We cover a range of topics. We cover the big stories of the day even when they are not inherently political. Where we can we do it with an emphasis on their political and policy dimensions. But political news is the core of what we do.
We are all now in position in which the key big story of the day is the COVID-19 virus outbreak. It is fundamentally a public health story. But in addition to having major economic impacts, the COVID-19 is now impacting almost every question tied to politics, policy and governance.
So I wanted to share a few thoughts about how I and we will cover it.
From TPM Reader XX …
A few thoughts on the silencing:
Fauci has a lot of Congressional access and has for decades. He has many ways to get out a message.
Birx did some of her early research under Fauci. She also worked for Robert Redfield, the Director of CDC when she was at the Army and cleaned up after some problems he had there (look up gp160 including Jon Cohen’s reporting). She is also very politically adept and that’s why she continued in her position in this Administration.
One of the striking patterns in the federal government’s crisis response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been the extent of the disconnect between the federal infectious disease professionals and the White House. Until the President’s press conference it was almost as if they were operating on two separate planets – with the former issuing a frank and increasingly serious set of warnings while the President and his top advisors ranged from happy talk to lashing out at political enemies. That disconnect is not entirely a bad thing. At least the people at the CDC weren’t clearly being muzzled by the White House. The President has the bigger megaphone. But their message was getting out as well.
And why wouldn’t he?
As stock markets plummet — the Dow Jones has plunged the most since the 2008 recession in recent days — and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle criticize President Trump’s handling of the spread of the coronavirus, the President is looking for someone to blame for his negative press. Up until this week, Trump had barely mentioned the spreading pandemic and when he did, his tone — as it often is in situations that require delicacy — was deaf.
JoinMike Pence victimized by Trump yet again:
The decision to put Mr. Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after the president told some people that the vice president didn’t “have anything else to do,” according to people familiar with the president’s comments.