On today’s BradCast: It was another big night for Joe Biden, as he appears to have been the clear winner in 4 of the 6 states (Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho and North Dakota) which held Democratic Presidential primaries on Tuesday. But Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that he is not out of the running just yet. [Audio link to show is posted below.]
In the meantime, the fallout from the coronavirus — now officially a global pandemic according to the World Health Organization with more than 1,000 cases in the U.S. — continues to have a growing affect on nearly every aspect of life in the U.S. and around the globe. Aside from school closures, town lock-downs, industries directing employees to work at home, cancellations of large festivals, conventions and now sporting events, including the NCAA’s March Madness tournaments set to be played without spectators in the arena, the Dow took another tumble today, falling more than 1,400 points and ending the 11-year bull market begun under Obama in 2009.
We discuss all of that today, and the bumbling Trump Administration’s egregious failures in managing the worsening epidemic, before breaking down the reported results from Tuesday’s 6 primary states, where voters appear to have chosen Biden in MI, MO, MS and ID, while preferring Sanders in ND and maybe WA, where the Vermont Senator currently leads by a hair as Vote-by-Mail ballots continue to be tallied.
Once again, voters on Tuesday were forced to shamefully wait in hours-long lines to cast their ballots in locations in both Michigan and North Dakota, even as many voters on social media persist in forwarding unsupported charges that the DNC is somehow behind the numerous failures of local and state officials to run efficient, reliable, and publicly overseeable elections.
We share extended excerpts from Biden’s remarks following his victories on Tuesday night, offered to a nearly empty hall in Philadelphia were coronavirus concerns resulted in only media and campaign staffers in attendance. And we also share Sanders’ remarks from Vermont today, vowing to stay in the race at least through Sunday night’s scheduled debate, the first head-to-head forum between the last two Democratic candidates still standing.
We are then joined by the great progressive journalist JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation to try and make some sense of this remarkable moment in history and the surprising state of play in the increasingly bizarre 2020 election. He argues that Sunday’s one-on-one between the two candidates is likely to be “the most consequential debate of 2020,” adding that he “suspect[s] it will matter more than the fall debates between Trump and whoever is nominated at this point, presumably Biden.”
Citing Sanders’ remarks on Wednesday, Nichols believes Sanders “left himself an exit ramp, and left Biden an entry ramp. Because he essentially told Biden what Biden’s got to do” in order to win support from Sanders’ movement. “I genuinely think that Sanders is proposing a debate where, if Joe Biden really steps up, he’s going to narrow the lane for Bernie Sanders — which is already narrow. If Joe Biden steps up, he’s got a lot of opportunities here as an entry lane into the fall campaign [to]bring the movement on board and this will sort out.”
Whether Biden seizes that moment, however, remains to be seen. His subdued and even Presidential remarks from Philadelphia on Tuesday certainly suggest he is capable of it. But we’ll see. “Is he the right candidate?,” Nichols asks rhetorically. “If you can’t build your movement, your coalition, and you can only do it by kind of forcing people to make choices rather than inspiring or exciting people, then that’s a problematic situation.”
Among the other oddities and ironies of this moment, Nichols observes in his column today that while voters in MI, MO and MS voted for Biden on Tuesday, exit polls reveal that they actually support Sanders’ central campaign proposal for single-payer Medicare for All by huge numbers in all three states. What explains that irony? Nichols offers his thoughts on that and much more on the state of the race in very dark times during our conversation today…
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[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman-Coronavirus-ProbsResultsMI-WA-MO-MS-ND-ID_JohnNichols-SandersBiden_031120.mp3]
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“the first head-to-head forum between the last two Democratic candidates still standing.”
Tulsi Gabbard is still standing.
Lot’s of shit still going on still. Same as 15 years ago.
DNC would rather lose to Trump with dementia Joe than Bernie I see. Stupid fools.
Maybe one positive about the coronavirus is that ‘touch screens’ may have to shut down 🙂
GWN @1:
Tulsa may be “still standing”, and still asking for campaign donations, but she’s not actually campaigning. She reportedly campaigned in ZERO of the states on the ballot last Tuesday before the primaries there.
She is in the race, it seems, in name only at this point.
In response to your question as to whether no small part of Sanders’ 2016 support was anti-Hillary rather than necessarily pro-Sanders, I can say that here in Nashua, NH, Bernie had a passionate following that has only grown stronger this time around, and that Hillary’s disdain for Bernie, among other things, made her increasingly unpopular as the campaign progressed. I don’t know anyone who didn’t vote for her in the general, though.