The Press Box - Super Tuesday Aftermath: Biden, Bernie, Bloomberg, and Warren | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are back after a Super Tuesday blowout that left Joe Biden with the majority (03:00) and Bernie Sanders reevaluating his campaign (13:00). Also: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (27:45), the end of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign (30:30), Mike Bloomberg’s exit (44:15), and listener mail (49:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, this is Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Recently, on the Winging It podcast, Vince Carter and Annie Finberg sat down with NBA all-star Kyle Lowry and recording artist for Timmy. This week, 2017 first overall pick Markell Fultz joins the show to talk about living up to expectations and working his way back from injury in the NBA. Make sure to check out Winging It on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, the New York Post reports today that Al Michael sportscaster Al Michaels may be traded from NBC to ESPN. What the hell is going on? Do you think that, because this is not the first time this has happened or certainly not the first time it's been proposed.

I remember in the Grantland days, I wanted to go into details, but there was a proposed trade between Fox Sports and ESPN that didn't go through. Do you think because the people in sports in sports media spend so much time, hovering the trade market that they are more inclined to actually engage in trade talks on the business side of their operation? We are, yeah, we are all woge, right, at some point. We want so desperately to be wheeling and dealing like Dary that we're willing to just, like, offer up our copy guy for whoever's like, you know, like delivering Starbucks at your, anyway.

Just to state the obvious, you cannot be traded as a media member without agreeing to be traded. No, of course not. Like if Bill wanted to trade me to Time magazine. for Molly Ball and boy with the ringer beginning the better end of that deal I couldn't just betrayed it I would have to both of us would have to agree

that that was a good idea They couldn't just be like here's where you have to show up to work tomorrow make sure you bring a new number two pencil like that wouldn't No but that it is kind of amazing right what if the media had just as little agency as NBA players I think we I think a lot of people in the media

would have a whole new take on a sports labor relations if that were the case They sure would. We are the Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit of Media Podcast. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Featuring Molly Ball. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Man, there's a lot of news to talk about today.

David Elizabeth Warren is out of the presidential campaign. Mike Bloomberg is out of the presidential campaign. Plus list or mail on the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Put all that aside. for a second because we got to start with the aftermath of Joe Biden's big night on Super Tuesday. Biden is mind-blowingly now the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. I want to attack this in two ways, David. Number one, how Biden won it.

It is safe to say that we are all still kind of gobsmacked by this. Dave Weigel noted that Biden had no campaign offices. in Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Tennessee. He won all those states. He never campaigned in Massachusetts and spent $15,000 on ads there. He won that state. The New York Times has Aestead Herndon had this really good list of the events that all sort of came together in a week and a half that put Biden in the poll position.

Let me go down them and you just jump in any time here. Okay. Event number one, Elizabeth Warren destroys Mike Bloomberg, who is Biden's biggest potential foil on Super Tuesday. That was huge. Number two, Biden had a really good debate in South Carolina. Uh-huh. Number three, South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn endorses Biden, giving his campaign rocket fuel in that state. Number four, you had the very quick Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar dropouts after South Carolina.

and then endorsements of Biden, which set him up for Super Tuesday. And number five, and I think this one's kind of important, what Herndon calls longstanding uncomfort slash discomfort with the other options. And I think that's key here because there's no way that the entire, that so many Democratic voters jump onto the Biden train unless they have almost. no lasting attachment to the other non-Bernie candidates in the race. And they didn't, right? Bernie has this incredible energy with his base, with the number of voters.

I don't believe any of the other candidates had much of an attachment. Hence, everybody, as soon as they get the signal, as soon as the other candidates drop out, they jump on to Biden. Yeah, or else in a version of Bernie Sanders. Right? I mean, that would be the combination of the two. Yeah, that would be the other way of looking at that. It is, I mean, of everything, everything that on that list that you just read that instead of Herndon put together makes complete sense. I can't help it.

And I don't have an answer to what I'm about to say. Let me preface this. I can't help it feel like it's missing several pieces. And I don't know what they are, right? I mean, but there's that it's just so, it just feels so unusual for an electorate that broad, that disparate, that diverse to act. of rationally in the way that would have to be necessary for it to be described here. And I'm not being conspiratorial. No.

I just mean like I just don't quite, I can't quite wrap my mind around how everything went so well for Joe Biden after, especially after the previous couple of months. I think you're absolutely right. And the case that I was making and I think you were making of why we felt Bernie had a really good chance to win this thing was all those things would not happen that smoothly. there's no way that everybody would get on the same page at the same time. And yet they did. Well, and I think we saw enough, especially in just like, you know, the various voter interviews in New Hampshire and Iowa and stuff like that, we saw enough irrationality.

And we talked about that on the show. People were like, well, Elizabeth Warren's my first choice and my second choice is Pete Buttigieg. I mean, things that didn't make complete sense to us. I think sort of lulled me into believing that all of the candidates were sort of on equal footing amongst a certain, or not equal footing, but not on a really discernible footing. If in fact the case is, I mean, if in fact the truth is that Bernie Sanders was separate from everyone, including Elizabeth Warren in most, in many voters' minds. I mean, clearly he wasn't the second choice for a lot of voters on Super Tuesday, right? I mean, the people that came over from Klobuchar, from Buttigieg, even potentially from Elizabeth Warren, from Mike Bloomberg. Safe to say, yes.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that part is, you know, something we're going to have to wrestle with moving forward, too. Another thing I want to add to this list, this comes from consultant Kevin Kate on Twitter. He says, between South Carolina polls closing Saturday and 7 p.m. Eastern Super Tuesday. Okay. So that's from Saturday night to Tuesday night of this week. Joe Biden earned $71 million worth of almost entirely positive national media. That's what we call earned media in politics. It really just means people on television are talking about you and saying nice things about you instead of saying your campaign is doomed.

Kate writes, add local media in those markets and the number easily tops $100 million worth of earned media in 72 hours. So add that in too to this to all these things coming together. Joe Biden has 72 hours of essentially a campaign commercial running on all the TV networks. Yeah. That's very, very big. A final piece of this. And again, because there are like nine pieces to this, this is a Hail Mary. This is all coming together at one time.

The other piece of this is the coalition he put together. We already knew he was strong with African American voters. and has been essentially since the beginning of the campaign. He was able to do really well on Tuesday night with suburban voters, right, especially in places like Virginia. He was able to do really well with the white working class, a big part of the Sanders coalition and a big part of what Sanders had used to make a very close race out of the 2016 nomination with Hillary Clinton. He also won, as you pointed out, almost every late deciding voter. CNN exit polls. these are people that decided in the last few days. Let me give you a few examples. In Minnesota, 55% of people that decided the last few days went Biden 21 Sanders. In Texas, it was 49 Biden 21 Sanders. Maine, a state Biden somewhat surprisingly won 42 Biden 19 Sanders. So that's the final piece, right? All of those things coming together. And now Joe Biden, right? It's still surprising. Joe Biden is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

Yeah, you mentioned the black voters, suburban voters, white working class. A lot of people have pointed out that that's what we used to call the Obama coalition, right? So if Bernie Sanders is indeed able to find new voters to attract nonvoters or, you know, otherwise disengaged people to politics and to the polls, he still is a long way to go just in capturing, well, I mean, I guess what we would broadly define as the base in the last successful, you know, Democratic presidential campaign. I do want to add this. We've hit this note, I think, on the last two editions of the press box, but I can't get over it. And I don't think Democrats should get past it. This is still Joe Biden. Yeah. This is the guy. We made a deer antler spray joke on Tuesday night.

But this is the guy you saw sort of stumbling through the primary since last April. I don't believe he has reinvented himself completely. there are stories that he is really tightened up his verbal presentation. And in fact, Jim Clyburn, this is according to the Washington Post, Matt Weiser, comes to Biden and says, I told him there's a reason preachers deliver their sermons in threes, you know, the father's son and the Holy Ghost, telling Biden essentially, you can't give these rambling performances on the stump. You got to give the voters one, two, three, father's son, holy ghost, here we go. Here's why you should vote for me. but this is the same guy. And the idea that we have, you know, he won 10 primaries and then South Carolina, so 11 primaries total,

who, Democrats are going to wake up if he wins the nomination and realize, oh, oh, right, it's Joe Biden, right? It's not a different dude. Well, okay, a couple of things on that. One, I think that it's clear that he has tightened up his presentation. I was talking to somebody earlier today about how I felt like his, especially in debate, his style was his verbal style was sort of like he had tripped and the entire thing everything came out of his mouth was a like fall forward he was just sort of like being propelled forward into the unknown and then he hit the ground by saying like oh was my time up and there was this incredible awkwardness to just the propulsion and the way that he spoke and certainly a lot of that has changed but I do think that it's not it's true that this is still Joe Biden but for the length of his career his delivery has been has been has been in indicative of his entire political presence, right?

I mean, his entire, like, merit as a politician. And if he can pull that together for the next six months, then I don't know that we need to, like, disassemble what, who Joe Biden is and how, and what matters about that. If he's a, if he is a net positive public speaker, then that's kind of all, I mean, then that might be all it takes to be a successful, the successful candidate. Now, I saw that point made on Twitter that we've priced all this in to whatever our idea of Joe Biden is.

And so it makes less of a difference than it would be with a candidate who was unfamiliar, right? So if we found out like Pete Buttigieg had some weird speaking tick or was really bad at something that might shock people six months into the campaign. But America sort of feels that, as they say on the campaign trail, they know what's in Uncle Joe's heart. And, you know, so if he trips and falls all over the place, verbally speaking, of course, they're more forgiving. Yeah, I think that that's true. And I also think that there is a certain level of gravity that is imbued upon him by the virtue of being the frontrunner and by being one of two candidates left and just the kind of the seriousness of the moment. I mean, I saw I'm talking today in a clip addressing Bernie Sanders directly saying just like, you know, this isn't the kind of point you made on the last show. Like this isn't like the cap of the corporate institution or Democrat institution.

This is black voters. This is suburban moms. This is whatever. Who's voting for me. And it's true. The way he said it, I felt it was just like on the verge of being something that we would have all kind of gotten on him for, or at least had a little joke about if it were a month ago. But I think we're in a different landscape now. And I don't think that, and I think that he's going to be forgiven not just because he's, you know, we know what's in Uncle Joe's heart, like you said.

But I think he's going to be forgiven because we are where we are and the stakes are higher than they were. Yeah. He's also dropped Sly Fox Uncle Joe. and replaced him with fighting Biden. You saw that at his victory speech Tuesday night. You know, it's all very, it's like one notch below yelling into the microphone. And, you know, that to me, it's a cliche of every single time a candidate turns their campaign around. There is always a mandatory paragraph where somebody says, you need to show the, you know, the people you care.

you're playing it too safe. You need to go out there and just let a rip. I swear that was Al Gore in 2000. That was Obama after he blew the first debate to Mitt Romney in 2012. Every one of those. And by the way, the Biden turnaround stories actually include that paragraph at the behest of his various supporters telling him, hey, you got to do this. But that sort of fighting for you, fighting for you, Joe Sixth. pack and Jane Sixpack, whoever you are, wherever you are, is much more effective than,

you know, Uncle Joe sort of coasting through and, you know, running off the fumes of the Obama administration. Speaking of the fumes, the Obama administration, this seems like a neat segue into Bernie Sanders playing a clip of Obama endorsing him as his new campaign. So that was weird. I mean, weird. Frankly, I think that the biggest, I got a little bit concerned. conspiratorial on the last episode about the, you know, the litany of endorsements of Joe Biden.

But there's a point, I mean, I'll walk that back to this, to this extent. There's a, there's a large degree to which, like, that's politics and that's not necessarily an insult. I mean, these people are, these are candidates running for a political position, right? And getting people to align with you, to, to co-sign your candidacy, to endorse you is, is not so separate from finding common ground to pass legislation or to, you know, or to push an agenda forward. And Bernie Sanders has been, you know, forcefully opposed to that, right? I mean, he's in all the conversations.

And every time someone's asked him how he plans on getting anything passed, he just sort of like waves his hand and says, we're going to have a wave election and I'm just going to, you know, the American people are going to make this stuff happen. And, you know, and Joe Biden said some really kind of laughable stuff at times about working across the aisle and his history and doing that. And, you know, I don't think, I think that. We were probably paying, I would give him too much of a compliment by saying your mileage may vary on that.

But he is, you know, he's showing evidence of that. And the reason why I say all of this is because this is, I mean, that Obama commercial was sort of Bernie Sanders first foray into what, like, popular politics. Is that the right way to put it? Like, is his first attempt to be like, now I can work across the aisle? I mean, or not across the aisle. I can work with the sort of institution. I don't know what the implication was. Was it just as popularity? Well, here's my question. Why doesn't he cut that ad right after his big win in Nevada? Right.

Isn't that the time to cut that ad? I mean, I think he's scared. I mean, not scared or whatever I think, but this is that. This is the moment of political necessity. My guess is that he would have rather not had to do that at all. But now it feels late because you're doing it against Barack Obama's vice president in a one-on-one race. To me, after Nevada, there's a moment. Bernie doesn't have to compromise his ideas because, look, it's pretty much impossible for

to compromise the ideas. He's not that kind of guy. I don't even think he has to give up his insurgent mantle that has powered him, powered him in 2016 and powered him as far as he's gotten this year. But to me, after Nevada, there's a moment where if you want to cut the Obama ad, you can cut it then, but you start rhetorically to say, look, rest of the Democratic electorate, I am, you and I are going to disagree on a lot of things. I'm going to be way more ambitious than you. I have a different label maybe in front of my name than you are accustomed to. But here's why I can be your nominee. Here's why I can be a nominee that you can get behind, that you can be proud of, that you can know is fighting for the things you care about. There's nothing strange

about that. That's a very basic political move, right, to reach out to other people. And I'm not sure why he didn't do it then. Well, and you talk about signaling to those people, right? And I think that there's a weird, I mean, listen, I'm speaking in generalities here. I mean, I'm not going to be right to the point on everything I say, but I was watching Bernie talk today. We're going to talk about Elizabeth Warren, but Bernie was talking, he's done this before, but speaking directly to Warren voters, he was like, listen, we're opening the doors to you, right? We're willing to let you in. And it sort of emphasizes this walled off aspect to the campaign, right? I mean, he's, I'm not going to go into, like, you know, decrying Bernie bros here for, you know, one of other things to talk about,

But like, but it does, he does feel like he's deliberately, he deliberately positioning himself as the other and not just as a bold new vision for what politics could be, but as a, like, a silo. He's like, you know, we have, we, we, we, we, I live in a fortress. We have a wall erected. And, and you will live with Warren voters for, you know, the next 48 hours, we will lower the drawbridge. But after that, you know, the archers are back on duty, you know. And I mean, it just feels, you, you can signal it. But the, but almost to have to say it out loud. sort of, you know, gives a lie to the whole thing, right? I mean, the fact that you have to say we are willing to accept you as voters almost just says the opposite, right? That we don't want you as voters. And I just wonder if when you're in insurgent mode, it's just really hard to do that. It's, you know, a line from Bernie stump speech, right, is I'm running against both

the Republican and Democratic establishment. So, and again, I'm not talking about Bernie turning into Chuck Schumer. I personally don't want that to happen in addition to laughing at that idea. Bernie is right where he wants to be politically. It's true to himself and that's where he should be. But there is something about not saying, and you talk about his online people too, saying the revolution is happening and you better get on board, right? That will take you a certain amount of the way.

Then there's got to be another step. And look, there are also, forget just the rhetorical stuff, there's also practical parts of this. Bernie's argument, every time you hear him saying it is, I am going to turn out all these different voters who are not part of the process, right? That's who I'm going to bring to the polls. That's how I'm going to beat Trump. Well, at least in the primaries, as Bernie himself admitted, a bunch of new people turned out, but they were older voters who were turning out for Biden on Tuesday night. Places like Virginia. You saw that really big. So, and the other part of it, of course, is with Bernie an African. American voters. Again, did quite well with them. And Nevada has done better with that group in the West.

But then you look at like the results from places like Alabama. I found this in the New York Times today. Sanders lost African American voters in Alabama by more than 60 points. And if you put all of those southern states in the, not just in the Biden column, but in the Biden blowout column, Bernie's really behind the eight ball. Where are Bernie's blowouts going to be? I heard somebody say on TV Tuesday night. How is he going to match that and stay with Biden and the delegate hunt? And that's a really, really good question.

Yeah, especially with the upcoming campaigns, you know, seeming to be, you know, in Biden's pocket or at least closer into the Biden column. The one thing that's clear above all else from, you know, South Carolina is that in the modern media age, however you want to delineate it, momentum is a real thing that means. a whole lot, right? That like just identifying Joe Biden as the the moderate candidate with the best shot was all it took for him to become the leader. I mean, like the the the out front leader. And just in just a matter of days. So if he runs up, you know, in the next group of primaries, that could be it, you know, that that could be absolutely, absolutely everything. Before we get

away from bridge building and we were talking about South Carolina. It's always infrastructure week here on the press box. Instead, Herndon, who you mentioned earlier, was in a Twitter conversation earlier about the fact that Bernie Sanders came out and said publicly that he did not even pursue James Clyburn's endorsement in South Carolina. The quote was, Eric John, who was the initial tweet on this. The quote, oh, this was on Matt Alasn. He said, it's no secret as politics or not my politics.

and they said that he and Clyburn worked together on things before but he knew there was no way that Claiborne would back him so he didn't even seek it out and that sort of again there's some logic to it but it just sort of underscores

the entire problem like if you can't if you don't even pursue it for fear of I mean because you're just so sure that you're going to get shot down and how are you going to get I mean then what is the what is

what is the plan for getting anything passed or more immediately for winning the election well and that that surprised me because in fairness to Bernie, he worked like hell in South Carolina. Yeah. Since getting beaten there by Hillary Clinton, a loss that really changed the trajectory of that race,

or at least made it much likely that Hillary was going to win. Like he worked on getting to know people in South Carolina. It just didn't work. And it got to the point where, you know, when he says that about Jim Clyburn, there's a sort of hopelessness there, right? This is just not, I'm not going to be able to build that bridge. and he hasn't and here we are

by the way we're not counting out Bernie at all because we're not that dumb and we don't know what's going to happen just like anybody else does

and I still think Bernie could there is a plausible path again here's your here's your reminder Joe Biden is the frontrunner that Bernie could win this nomination I mean I've said it before we've discussed it before

there's almost no more powerful force in politics today than being the underdog right I mean that there's nothing better you can have in your column than like not being the expect not being the frontrunner and Joe Biden might be the exception of that rule because that's his that's his you know his candidacy is frontrunner frontrunnerism in a nutshell but yes yes but don't you think Biden surfed off this weird underdog energy oh no 100% he did he got

lost in the weeds for a while and we're treating him like an underdog rather than a guy who you know was the favorite to win the nomination totally and my point is only that I'm not sure he's going to get hurt by not being the underdog anymore I mean he might be able to hold serve a little bit. But Bernie Sanders, I think, certainly stands to benefit from fighting from underneath again for a change. You know, I mean, that's, it's, it's, to predict what's going to happen next is a Mug's game right now. So we'll, you know, we'll see what happens in the next round. I just think that to predict anything that's going to happen next is, is crazy. But there is, I mean, we're not doing a post-mortem on Bernie's campaign, but I think everything that we're saying is important. I mean,

it's important for the Sanders campaign to really take a look at what got them to the place. they're in and what happened on Tuesday because they're going to have to correct some of that moving forward. The Obama ad is the ultimate admission of that. Sure. And the ultimate admission they realize something has to be done. Can we say a word about the phrase one-on-one matchup? Sure. Which is kind of the phrase of the week. Now that it is basically a Bernie versus Biden race, if you want to tell me Tulsi Gabbard is still alive in some form, then go for it. Two delegates from American Samoa. one-on-one matchup is one of those phrases that sounds really exciting. Makes me think of that old Dr. J versus Larry Bird video game from our youth, David.

Love that game. Wasn't it Jordan versus Bird 101 when it got to Nintendo? Yeah, I think it had a few iterations there. It was the same game. Yeah, go on. Here's the thing. As we saw with Hillary versus Bernie and Obama versus Hillary, one-on-one is actually much more of a slog than four-on-four or whatever it is,

one on one on one, one, whatever the previous iteration was. That's much more fun. That's much crazier on election night. And I know that first Bernie versus Biden debate, which is coming up in about a week and a half, is going to be amazing to watch as Bernie assails Biden for NAFTA and, you know, bankruptcy and the Iraq war and everything else he voted for. But just remember, the truly sort of wide open portion of the campaign may be coming to a business. close. Just to just a right. One-on-one matchup sounds exciting. It might not be as exciting. Let us also set you up for the next week. America votes again on Tuesday. We don't get to take a

breath. There are six primaries, Michigan, Washington State, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho, and North Dakota. Michigan, David, feels like the big one. It's a state Bernie Sanders won in 2016. It kept his challenge to Hillary Clinton alive. It could play that. role here with Biden, even if he wins a narrow victory that effectively splits the delegates, it could be a sign that Bernie is not done yet. Of course, it's also a state the Democrats have to flip in November against Trump. Your programming note is the press box will be back Monday afternoon, a day earlier than normal, so we can all have 24 hours to marinate and get ready for the Brian Williams Fest that will greet us on Tuesday night. All right, David, time for the

Overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Please send your nominees to At the Press Box Pod, where I am always happy to receive them. How about an all-super Tuesday edition, David of the Overward Twitter joke? Let's do it. Okay. We begin here. Upon hearing the news that Amy Klobuchar was dropping out of the race, it was an

overwork Twitter joke to write, for Amy, the Chase is. is over. That's a Kevin Smith joke. Oh my gosh. I had a poster of that with Jason gave me on my wall in college. I can't believe I didn't get that right away. You did. I can attest to that. Thanks to Kirk A. Beto for that one. Upon hearing the news

that questing billionaire Tom Steyer was dropping out. These all come from reporter Ariel Edwards Levy. Steyer Stier. Oh, God. Goodness gracious, great fall of Steyer. All right.

Halt and cash Steyer Like C-A-C-H-E Can we just say dumpster Steyer? Is that okay? Throw it in and finally I like this one

Stire Festival. Oh, that's good. Thanks to Ben Gibson Upon learning that Elizabeth Warren exited the race, Edwards Levy was back with Liz

better to have run and lost. That is high tone. A rest Warren. Warren Beattie. That's so bad. That's so bad. It's wonderful. And probably her best work,

Warren Pieces. Yeah, that's good. Warren Pieces. David, upon learning that Joe Biden had dominated the primary in Alabama, where he won 63% of the vote, it was an overworked Twitter joke to write, Roll Bide. Oh, that's good.

Roll Bide. Thanks to Jake Witton. Whittaker. Upon the news that Mike Bloomberg's campaign was dead in the water. It was an upward Twitter joke to write Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg Terminal, thanks to David Kignonas. That is concise and wonderful. And the New York tabloids wish they thought of that one.

And finally, this great one I missed last week from Jeff Weiner, somebody went to DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., and took a very funny picture. The apartment on the first floor had a Pete Buttigieg sign in the window. and the apartment in the basement had a Bernie Sanders sign in the window. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Parasite 2019. If you didn't give up on 2020 and Oscar's crossover jokes, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week.

In the notebook dump, Mr. Shoemaker, we got to talk about Elizabeth Warren. A few hours before we recorded this, on Thursday, Warren dropped out of the race. she had spent the day after Super Tuesday reassessing her campaign does anyone reassess their campaign and then decide to actually continue it

so you reassess your campaign you're like oh oh that's how I can win if only I had assessed sooner yes now back to the trail yeah I think smart pundit take TM today is that it's not obvious that Warren is going to endorse Bernie nor is it obvious that her voters are going to Bernie

at least all of them. Mm-hmm. Because in addition to some real tension between those two campaigns, remember a woman can't win, Gate? Yeah. Warren's coalition seems much more diffuse. Listener EF asked us to come up

with a theory of Warren's demise. Oh, man. I've been trying to put words to this for a long time, both on the air and off. I think that she was a victim of a lot of really like like Ely sort of like hard to

hard to latch on to factors. I mean, certainly, I mean, people are going to keep saying, uh, institutional misogynyer. And I think that's real.

I think that there's an element to which she just got the short end of the stick in terms of like timing and narrative. You know, I think that the, that, that, that, that, that,

that, the, uh, fall came at a really empty news time where, where people, where that became like an enormous story that influenced voters moving forward to a degree that was outsized compared to, when other candidates have hit their various peaks in valleys.

I think that she's that, you know, maybe if the presence of Bernie Sanders muted her or kind of tempered her message enough to the point where some of the volume that she might have had in another cycle was lost. I think that's the biggest one, to be honest. I think, yeah, there's a lot of different aspects, but that's a big one. It's a whole bunch, but to me, her campaign was in trouble the moment Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president. because you'll remember she announced first. And then you, of course, have the backstory that Bernie only ran in 2016 because Elizabeth Warren didn't get into that race. So there was this idea that, okay, Warren's in 2020. Maybe Bernie will say, okay, my ideas are represented here.

I'll stand down. He didn't. No. And we saw her struggle for months and months and months to tell us how she was different than Bernie Sanders. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not sure I still know really the answer to that question. you know the I just don't she had this kind of idea of okay I signed on to Bernie's health care plan back when health care seemed to be literally only you know topic that would be brought up at debates then she got attacked for okay well you didn't explain how she's going to pay for it she came out with the explanation but I just never got a sense that she could look at a camera and say here's why you should vote for me instead of Bernie Sanders in a way that was very convincing. I mean, everybody's had a trouble with that

when it comes to Bernie Sanders, which is why I keep going back to like, somebody needs to come out and just be like, yeah, nobody likes Bernie. Like, nobody in the Senate is friends with this guy. And that's, I mean, that should be a campaign consideration. I don't know if that's true. I need to be very clear.

I just mean that, like, there's something going on unsaid that's just sort of like shockingly absent at this point. David just got four Pinocchio's for that. Yeah, exactly. I think that, I mean, I think that the explanation I mean, even amongst the best of us. And I consider, I count Elizabeth Warren amongst the best of us.

I think both Elizabeth Warren's campaign and Bernie Sanders' campaign, and you described it well, like, I mean, there was, I guess, some questions to whether or not he was going to run or at least that was floating out there. I just think that the most, that there's a lot of animating features

to have these campaigns work. But I just think that, you know, pride is a big one or that, you know, I don't know if the thirst for glory is exactly the right way to put it, but like these are people that are that like they want to win. I mean, you're in politics. If you, if you, if you entertain the notion of running for president and if at any point there's a circle of people around you who are saying, yeah, you should run for president, the likelihood of someone just being like, you know what, that guy's just as good as me and he's already going. I mean, that's just, that's just probably not going

happen, right? So, you know, these are the, the, the lights of, I mean, the leading lights of politics are, or, are not free of that kind of, you know, ego, I guess. And, and, you know, that's, I think that was part of it. But I get, but I think we agree. I mean, those two in the race, I think, benefited each other to some degree, as we've discussed in the past, but, but certainly it did not do any wonders for Elizabeth Warren's candidacy. No. Same problem as Bernie too, by the way, making inroads into the African American community. Asted Herndon, who we've now mentioned 19 times, heard about this as well. He said Herndon come on press box.

Yeah, exactly. Well, please, really do. He went to a rally she was doing with John Legend in South Carolina and found that the audience was just almost totally white at that rally. In a nutshell, and I think this happened after his piece came out, Warren won the endorsement of Kimberly Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality. But then at the same time did very poorly with African-American voters, which is kind of her campaign in a nutshell, right? You need to win that endorsement, and then you need to win actual African-American voters at the polls.

Yes. Large numbers. I don't know if you followed this whole theory of Warren's demise, which I think is not right, but is kind of fascinating. The New York Times did a poll back in November, and they measured how Democrats fared against Trump. Warren did worse in the Midwest in that poll than Biden or Bernie did. She was at minus six against Trump in Michigan, which was a big deal at the time.

It's one poll, right? Who cares? But guess what? That poll became an episode of the Daily where Michael Barbaro sold it as a major new poll. And I have seen regular references to this, including today, that that had the effect, because it was in the Times, because it was on the daily, of scaring the shit out of a certain sort of core of, you know, Democratic voters that. Warren needed to win. And it just shook them and she never really recovered from that. I don't know if that's true, but I think there is a deeper truth to that, which is the,

I think one of the most insidious, I'm going to God in the Limber. One of the most insidious things in this campaign is that everybody that's walking into a polling booth is being asked by somebody that works for MSNBC or CNN whether they would, whether they're going to choose between voting for somebody who shares their beliefs or someone who can get elected. And I mean, everybody walking in gets confronted with this stupid poll and every voter is suddenly put in the mind of thinking, wait, I have to choose between these two things. So by necessity, whoever I agree with philosophically is not electable. Like that, I mean, that's what's being put to everybody as they walk into the polling place. And, and I think that with

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, too, there is a lot of, I think that there is a huge percentage of the electorate out there who would have. agree that the case for universal health care, that the case for a lot of the economic reforms that both of them endorse is a moral one and not just a political one. But if you're, but if you're swallowed up by this political, political argument that like those things make you make one unelectable, then it really, I mean, it can absolutely torpedo a campaign. Absolutely. No, I think you're on to something there. It's, it's very strange how self for where seemingly democratic voters are in this and self-conscious about what all these answers

mean and what their vote means. I guess that period is finally coming to an end. I don't, by the way, I want to glide over misogyny either, which you mentioned earlier with Elizabeth Warren, because there was store brand misogyny. And then she faced this kind of weird ricochet misogyny from 2016, where Hillary Clinton lost partly because of misogyny. But then four years later, voters decided, well, you know, I love Elizabeth Warren, but, you know, I'm worried a woman can't beat Trump. And she just, it is so crazy to have to deal with that. A couple of good columns about that today. And again, if you don't think that is baked into Elizabeth Warren not taking off during this nominating process, I don't know what to tell you. No, yeah. I mean, I have personally spoken to people who just think, I mean, who have said that she like,

looks or feels too much like Hillary to give a shot to, despite the fact that her politics are different. She's a million times better politician. And Hillary won the popular vote. Let us not forget. If Elizabeth Warren had what we here at the ringer are contractually obligated to call a sliding doors moment, it would have to be four years ago. What if she had run for president against Hillary Clinton? Remember, Bernie doesn't get in the race. It's more or less a one-on-one matchup between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.

Warren. Gosh, she's got to think about that sometime. Oh, yeah. And how that would have turned out. I mean, I would have loved to see that campaign. I think it would have been saying Hillary and Warren doing, I mean, in a one-on-one debate would have been much more intellectually interesting than the way I'm looking forward to Biden and Bernie. But who knows? They might surprise me. Warren gave a farewell speech today, which was, which touched on, well, not directly on misogyny, but on the notion that, you know, there's a lot of women and girls in America who are not going to be, you know, not going to continue to see a female candidate for the presidency, and that meant a lot to her. That was one of her big considerations. But what she didn't do in that,

and in her farewell speech, was endorse anybody. And obviously, that's not shocking. But in this, in this campaign season, it seems like she's, you know, missed the logical window to endorse a candidate. You said that you point out there her voters don't neatly align with Bernie's even though that's sometimes the conventional wisdom A lot of people were speculating on Twitter how just much, how, you know, how Twitter, I guess this is very circular logic,

how Twitter would absolutely explode if she endorsed Biden. Oh, God. Remember the snake emojis she was getting tweeted? Well, that's just it. I mean, a lot of people like there's there's been a lot of weird, you know, kind of contraempts between the Bernie supporters and Elizabeth Warren for her not stepping back sooner

and taking up airspace. and this is the glory days for like tweets leading tweets about you know just general dislikes between candidates and campaigns and how and and and and may be most interesting to me how sometimes the candidates don't hate each other but their campaigns do and vice versa um all that is to say it occurred to me today that if you know there's this talk that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren don't like each other we certainly saw that

and at that one debate I mean saw a hint of that if it's true with that one debate I should say there's also talk to, you know, Sanders, I mean, that the Biden and Warren campaigns don't like each other much either. But does anybody like anybody? Nobody likes anybody, I guess, is the lesson. I wonder if she, I, this is total fantasy booking. But this popped into my head as we're, as we were discussing in the office, her potential endorsement. I mean, she has a few platform points that she, that she cares very, very deeply about. You know, Medicare for All is a good example. Um, certainly. that was a huge point of division

between the moderates and the liberals of the Democratic Party during the debates. But, you know, I don't think, I would find it hard to believe that Joe Biden cares particularly deeply about Medicare for all who want it as opposed to Medicare for All. Maybe he cares deeply about the budget,

but I don't really believe that either. I wonder what would happen if Elizabeth Warren went to the Biden campaign and said, if you come on board with Medicare for All, if you come on board with these three things, you say that you endorse them because, you know, now, then I will endorse your campaign. And that way she would become the far left liberal icon that she wasn't able to be during the campaign and also really have a significant amount of influence on potentially the next president. So I think that's exactly her calculation.

We know she cares about ideas, right? She is in that small subset of politicians that actually cares about ideas. So which one door is door number one or door number two? Which one do I walk through to have a bigger influence? right and maybe the calculation is you know if Bernie wins he's going to adopt most of the stuff I want to adopt anyway but I also think you know when we talk about leverage to me Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were like their leverage was going to expire in five minutes you know they had this really narrow window to be very to have a big effect on the campaign which I think

at least in in the aggregate they did I think Elizabeth Warren has a little bit of a longer period here she can think about this and you know maybe it's even, let's say Biden winds up winning the nomination. Maybe that is even later, you know, that's a moment to try to again, because Biden's going to try to be putting this Democratic coalition back together, right? He needs people that are at least in the vicinity of Bernie Sanders to win this race, right? So maybe it's Elizabeth Warren at the beginning of the summer and late spring sometime coming together and saying, let me explain to you more progressive voter why Joe Biden is going to work out, why this is going to work out. Maybe I can attest to that.

that. And I, and I, so I, I think there's, I think there are different points here. And again, I, I, I, I agree with you, though. She, she's, she's thinking about where can I have the most influence. And it'll be interesting to see where that is. Let us say a quick word, David, about the man Elizabeth Warren Smote. Okay. Mike Bloomberg. We're not going to spend much time in this because he didn't spend much time with us. After Bloomberg dropped out of the race Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was making fun of him on Twitter. Bloomberg had the obvious response, David. He posted a movie clip a young person on his social media team said would really own Trump.

Here it is. Your power's a weak old man. You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. As we were going in the air, I noticed that Donald Trump had posted a response from spaceballs. this is not a joke wait he he

responded to a Star Wars clip a Star Wars meme basically but with a Space Ball's meme yes wow you know the one

where it's like he's kind of holding there's a there's a seat I don't know I don't know if explaining the plot of the movie Space Balls is here but no no no

a large man is holding off a smaller man uh huh which the smaller man I believe was Rick Moranus in the movie so yes he posted that. Wow. I mean, what kind of special hell are we in when old men are regurgitating

pop culture from our childhood that they don't understand? Holy crap. You know how like when when, notably when like Republicans, when Donald Trump would ever would play like a heart song at his campaign and a campaign rally and then Hart would come out and just be like, no, you can't play our song anymore? Do you think Mel Brooks is getting on Twitter right now just being like Donald Trump stop meming my material? Oh my God. I'd love that. And by the way, George Lewis, Lucas, too, you know. George George Lucas, good liberal. He didn't want any of any part of this.

Mike Bloomberg's campaign was not good. He won only the primary in American Samoa on Super Tuesday, even as his commercials were running nonstop during MSNBC's Super Tuesday coverage. Truly a perfect microcosm of the Bloomberg campaign. Not winning votes, but running nonstop commercials during the coverage. McKay Coppins of the Atlantic, David, swooped in with the counterintuitive take. He writes, to me, the story of the Bloomberg campaign is how close it came to working,

puzzled by all these sweeping takes about the inefficacy of money ads, whatever, in politics. Is there a scenario where we can say that this gambit of not campaigning for very long, buying tons of TV ads trying to swoop in on Super Tuesday actually almost worked? Yeah, but I think that, I mean, I don't know, I feel like we're so deep in this. It's hard to look back more than like 48 hours at a time. I don't think it was particularly shocking to me that it might work.

I think it was galling to me, but I don't think it was shocking, right? I mean, I guess if it had worked, it would have, and that it worked a degree that it did, will probably inform future elections. Certainly there are people, I mean, if not Bloomberg, there are, you know, even Joe Biden who took a while to get in, everybody that jumped in late to the race or who was thinking about getting in and didn't get in has to be looking to the future like, man, if I just have a bunch of, if I just have a bunch of money deployed wisely, I can just like sit on a

beach for the first six months of this thing and then ride in on a white horse. I mean, I guess that'll, but yeah, I mean, I guess it's surprising in the sense that it goes against our expectations in terms of the way that these primaries usually operate. But I'm not totally shocked that you could spend a billion dollars and have a serious influence on an election. So Bloomberg's sliding doors moment has got to be this. You remember he got carved up by Warren the first time in the debate before Nevada. But he was only in that debate because one final poll dropped at the last second that

qualified him. So there is this whole interesting thing here of what happens if Bloomberg doesn't show up that week, right? Does he just get punched out a week later in South Carolina and nothing changed? That's a good question. Because as we said, like, and I'm not even, or maybe, you know, him getting punched out so early, as we said a minute ago, really helped Joe Biden. It really made, you know, a bunch of sort of moderate, centristy, rank and file Democrats go, oh, never mind this whole Bloomberg thing, back to Biden. Yeah. Well, Bloomberg was doing a great job of not getting punched out before he showed up and got punched out.

out. Now he resumes his role as the super PAC to the Democratic Party and maybe Joe Biden specifically. That will be interesting to watch. Yep. Listener mail, David, referring to our Super Tuesday pod that we recorded in the wee hours. Justin Franz writes, if the pod doesn't start with David, the old guy still got it, regardless of outcome, I'm turning it off. I actually meant to do this and forgot. On the upside with Biden, Bernie, and Trump, every pod through November can now begin this way. The old guy still got it. Just consider that a blanket statement. Mike Mullins writes, as Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Beto, and Bloomberg unite around Biden,

can you ask David what historical wrestling faction this most resembles? Oh, man. Like all of the, like the group of, like the, what's the, what's the Doris Kearns Goodwin? Team of Rivals? Yeah. I'm trying to think what the best team of, I mean, it would have, it would have to be like during the like the WCW invasion of of WW when like everybody else,

everybody was left. You know, you're united by your by your brand and not by your or I guess any of the Survivor series matches in recent years where suddenly like everybody on a show is is aligned despite being on different sides of the spectrum ideologically. In wrestling, don't we call this an uneasy alliance? An uneasy alliance. Yeah. God, there has to be something obvious that I'm not thinking of though. Jim says the NWO.

I mean, I think maybe the latter day NWO when just everybody who, you know, was interested in selling a T-shirt just joined up and started cutting promos for half every episode of Nitro. But I don't know. I don't know. The next episode of The Masked Man Show

will be considering this question at some length. Tune in. On Tuesday, David, we got to talking about book blurbs, how praising your hated political rivals sounded like a generic book blurb. Right. Gene Monta Ristelli writes, I always loved how Tony Kornheiser took an honest approach to book blurbs.

Quote, I haven't read it, but I've heard it is very good. That should be all book blurbs. That's hilarious. I'm not sure that's any less compelling than like, you know, the 17th Stephen King blurb you've read this month, even though I do think Stephen King has great taste. I think I'd want to read it because I'd know it was honest. Yeah.

We got some coronavirus-related mail. Greg Conner's writes, is there any greater news photo cliche than the worried looking traders on the floor of the stock exchange? It's kind of like NYSE without context because we don't actually know what they're reacting to. It could be that the coffee guy gave them the wrong order. You know what I'm talking about. Whatever, there's a Dow plunge. You get that picture of the worried looking people. Finally, this is from Josh Peterson.

Did you see this? I think I retweeted at some point. the Saturday star up there in Canada was this is I presumably the Toronto Star was looking for a way to describe the coronavirus that would help their readers understand just how big and serious and deadly this was this is what they came up with for the front of the paper this is not a joke February 29th the Gretzky of viruses it's the greatest of all time

the Gretzky of viruses. This is a huge headline above the fold. That is wild. I don't know. I don't know what to do with it. I didn't put it in the strain pun headline because you wouldn't have had a prayer. Speaking of which,

it's time for David Chewaker, guess it's a strain pun headline. All right. There we go. Last time, when did we do this last? Last Tuesday, we had a headline about a baseball player's secret career called Not His First Rodeo.

Fantastic work. This one, David, comes from Metro UK. Everybody's favorite publication sent in by Chris Dahl. He only sent me a screenshot of the head. So I'm going to kind of guess what happened here. There was a parrot who liked opera. And apparently the parrot was annoying the neighbors. Okay?

Okay. I'm guessing the parrot was doing the full Pavarotti. and was annoying the neighbors. This parrot was just a real, a real annoyance, really aggravating. What was Metro UK's Strain pun headline? I'm going to give you some help, don't worry.

Opera, irritating, parrot. Let me actually walk you up and see if you get... Is it a Pollywana Cracker joke? No, but that would be a good, that's a good idea. Let me walk you up and see if you can finish it off. All right, help me out here. Opera-Lovering Parrot, a pain in the...

Pain in the neck, pain in the... Pain in the butt? What is that... Is that what you're walking? We're looking for an opera. We're looking for an opera joke. Oh, oh, that's the whole thing. Opera-loving parrot, a pain in the...

I have no idea. All right, you're ready. Neighbors' opera-loving parrot, a pain in the arias. Oh, my God. Pain in the arias. He is David Shoemaker, I'm Brad Curtis, research paper. Erica Servantes and Chris Almeida, production magic by our pal Jim Cunningham. We're back a little earlier next week, Monday afternoon.

So glance at your phone and we'll get you all set up for not quite super but still quite special Tuesday. With more Luke Warm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian. David? All right. What the hell is going on? I have no idea. Here's the thing. There's nothing strange about that.

But just remember Okay This is not a joke Oh This is not a joke Oh What the hell is going on Dumb

shit