The Press Box - Super Tuesday Emergency Podcast | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Joe Biden’s successful Super Tuesday, how quickly Bernie Sanders lost the centrists, the future of Mike Bloomberg’s campaign, Pete Buttigieg's and Amy Klobuchar's exits from the race, Chris Matthew quitting ‘Hardball,’ and more. 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. No media consumers. Ryan Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here.

With your instant reaction to Super Tuesday, the biggest night on the Democratic primary calendar, we're going to get to everything. Mike Bloomberg's landslide victory in American Samoa. We've got former cable news host Chris Matthews being sent to a land far, far beyond the sea, an ESPN hiring Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to replace high noon. I'm kidding. But David, weirder things have happened in the last 72 hours. Like, for instance, our top station.

story, Joe Biden just crushed Super Tuesday. It is 1107 Eastern. So this will be a snapshot rather than a full accounting. But as we sit here, Joe Biden won the primaries in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. Bernie Sanders has won Vermont, Colorado, and Utah, Texas and California still out there. So a lot could change. But the first thing I think you and I need to do is stand back and marvel at the idea that Joe Biden, who as of Saturday, had won one state over three presidential campaigns. Yeah. Who had almost no advertising or field operations in any of the states he won tonight.

Yeah. How do you even process that? So many questions. I guess my first reaction is that, you know, when Bernie Sanders was just, you know, kind of winning or tying, you know, in Iowa and New Hampshire and the kind of Craven news channels were doing all, we kept showing those graphics where it was like Sanders won, but he actually lost versus every other moderate candidate combined. And I guess that was kind of turned out to be true, didn't it?

Once all the other moderates dropped out and all went and all went on the Biden and all went towards Biden, then like, yeah, yeah, he can really run up the score. The other part, I mean, my other initial thought is you mentioned it about the lack of, you know, organization and field operations and in all these states. I mean, we've talked over and over again about Biden sort of running this frontrunner campaign. and a lot of those decisions or lack of decisions, whatever, you know, however he decided to build this campaign to this point, seem to reflect a sort of national, you know, frontrunner strategy. But I wonder what, I mean, I wonder how we're supposed to read this. I mean, I'm zooming out really quickly in this podcast, but do we read this as politics has changed that, you know, the vague concepts of momentum and electability

pushed forth on Twitter and other social media is more powerful than any ground operation in years past? Well, that's a great question. I like this tweet from political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald who said tonight that one of the losers of tonight is campaigns. Like campaigns, period, right? Joe Biden with one field office in Virginia.

She says, spent outspent seven to one by standards and almost a hundred to one by Bloomberg in Super Tuesday states. And yet here we are. I actually wonder if it's not a kind of new vision of politics, but an old one. Because as I was sitting there watching and talking to my wife tonight, we were saying, now wait a second, the popular former vice president, you know, somebody who has incredible name ID within the Democratic Party, is having a fantastic night. And the other guy who's going to have a big night

and who was the frontrunner until 20 minutes ago is the runner up from the last Democratic campaign. Yeah. Who is representing the leftward wing of the party, right? Or just outside the party. So in a way, Bernie versus Biden is the most obvious possible result you could ever imagine. And it just seemed, and again,

I hope the political pundits who called that step forward, that just didn't seem like it was going to happen. And again, I'm not talking about it didn't seem like it was going to happen last October, didn't seem like it was going to happen a week ago. Yeah. But I agree with you. I think not only was there this big block of centrist, curious voters out there. I'm just shocked they were able to all consolidate so quickly. yeah i mean first of all credit where credits do you called the uh the the the the dropouts of um buddhajohn and clovisar and almost like just step for step the the the the the the judge uh buddhajaveh leaving

the leaving you know ending his campaign and then supporting announcing his support for joe biden and sort of uh back to back um you called that in our last show i i i I mean, my biggest reservation about that idea or one of them was that I just did. It was hard for me to imagine it having a significant level and a significant effect on the Super Tuesday balloting. I was completely wrong. It's stunning how, like you just said, how quickly they were able to consolidate. Now, I think that for just about everybody who was running for president on the Democratic side in this, in this, this, this, this. year, you know, it's easier to run as an underdog. You have narrative on your side, you know,

for every win, every win that you score, gets a new round of news stories about you. I think with Joe Biden, he's the only candidate, and I called him a frontrunner earlier, or that just wasn't the case because all that everybody was waiting for, I guess, was, well, there's two things. One, just a glimmer of life. And even though everybody had predicted he, he, he he would win South Carolina. There was no surprise. I mean, his South Carolina victory was so much less surprising than Bernie Sanders in Vermont. I mean, Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.

Vermont. But, you know, but people just, I think, were just really, you know, were, had to see that he was capable of winning a state. And then second to that, yeah, everybody else had to clear the field. I mean, they had to just say, this is the guy to vote for. And just to back up so that people can appreciate the timeline of this, Joe Biden wins South Carolina on Saturday night, Saturday night by 28 points. As you mentioned, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar within what 36 hours have dropped out of the race. Monday night, they are Monday afternoon. I believe Buddha Judge endorses him. Klobuchar comes out and does the same thing Monday night. It is now Tuesday. So that was in three days. And I noticed that Dave Wasserman, who does great work sort of putting together and mashing together all the data on Twitter says, in my lifetime, I've never seen an election where late deciders have broken so sharply from early voters than this one. So I guess the point I'd make here is let's not undersell what a Hail Mary inside straight pick your cliched metaphor of choice. This is, right? Joe Biden had to win South Carolina. He had to win it huge.

he had to get very quick dropouts from his competition, two of whom were happy to do that, whether they saw no path, whether they want a good job in the Biden administration, we will see. And then he had to win late deciders by an overwhelming margin to put together the kind of night he's putting it. That is a Hail Mary.

And then I'm borrowing that word from TV. That is a Hail Mary in politics that worked. It's true. the sequence of events that led us to where we are at this very moment. I mean, everything had to work just right. Now, we can, I guess, argue over the details. How much of this was serendipity, how much of this was political, you know, I mean, great politics and how much of it was whatever happened behind the scenes.

I mean, no, absolutely not. But listen, I mean, if there's anything that the Democrat, that the, that the, that the, institutional democratic machine got wrong. And I mean, assuming everything went according to plan here. I mean, certainly somebody was pulling the strings to get to time these dropouts and these messages support. Maybe it was all serendipity, like I said. I kind of doubt it. But it's just a really, it's kind of shocking that they got that that all of that happened, but they're still doing it in like the week when like the New York Times is running stories about how the superdelegates are going to flip on Bernie Sanders. I mean, it's, I don't, listen.

Tonight was the night. Tonight was Joe Biden's night. And this was really, in some ways, the last stand against either Bernie Sanders winning or a widespread perception that Bernie Sanders got screwed, right? So congratulations to the establishment. Congratulations to Joe Biden. And I guess that sounds kind of dismissive. Joe Biden's a fine fellow, a great lifelong politician.

but it was serendipity I think is maybe a little bit too generous. Well, a couple of things. One is the word establishment is really interesting because you have seen Bernie people invoke that word on Twitter over the last 24 to 48 hours, right? Yeah. Bernie himself. Bernie himself. That's right. Here comes the establishment. Here comes the machine, which seems to me in the kind of hidden levers of the Democratic Party, which, either did or maybe conspired against him in 2016, right? Well, the first part of that quote

unquote establishment was African-American voters in South Carolina. Sure. And there's been some pushback both from Biden and from the media that, wait, that's what you're calling the establishment? You're calling African-American voters in states like Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, tonight, the establishment? You know, I don't think that's exactly what that word means in this case. I'm not sure how that word can be twisted to mean that. So that's one thing that's a little bit different here. If if if if it means that the that rank and file Democrats were desperate to beat Bernie and to stop Bernie because they feared that was going to be an election. And so there was this bat signal that went up and whether it's out of the self-interest of Buttigieg and Klobuchar

or where they got whatever it is. Absolutely. Absolutely. I buy that. Yeah. But I think but I think the other point about this is if you look at these results tonight, and again, I'm borrowing from cable news, Biden did very well with the white working class, much better than Hillary did with the white working class four years ago against Bernie. That has really complicated Bernie's coalition, right? That's true. Because if Biden does well enough with that, he's doing incredibly well with African-American voters, that's a very powerful coalition and a very, you know, good path for him to win the nomination. Yeah, I mean, there's, I don't want to accuse Joe Biden. the man, I mean, and potentially not even his campaign of doing anything underhanded.

But it is a, you know, there is, I guess, you're right about black voters in South Carolina. But, you know, being able to line up all of these drop out candidates in such short order is a measure of kind of institutional power. Just like Biden, I mean, I mean, you know, there's a long relationship behind it, but just like how his, how. James Clyburn endorsing him in South Carolina was, you know, sealed the deal with a lot of those African-American voters. And that's something that, you know, that's, it's a measure, like I said, of institutional power. Now, that's not taking anything away from what he did because that's politics, right? I mean, that's the way that these things always go. I think that, you know, I mean, one thing that we have looking forward, I mean, looking into tomorrow.

And again, I believe this was a Brian Curtis call was that we're recording this without seeing final returns from California. I don't even do we know Texas yet? We're still waiting on Texas. And so the narrative is being set right now. And that's exactly why Joe Biden chose to speak tonight when he did to set the narrative for tomorrow that this was a landslide victory for him. And we may wake up tomorrow to find out that it's still a pretty close race or it's Joe Biden just a hair's breath ahead of Bernie Sanders, which, you know, despite Iowa, despite New Hampshire, that's sort of where we've been all along. I mean, that's where we expected to be two months ago. Do we expected Joe Biden to be in a tight race with Bernie Sanders for the nomination?

I did not expect that. You're right. I mean, there are a lot of other variables. I'm going to raise my hand. You gave me credit for predicting things. I did not predict that. I did not see this coming. I did not see us getting here.

And to your point about, am I surprised that a candidate who stumbled around for months and months and months? Yeah. Was able to pull it together? Yeah, was able to pull the party around him that quickly. Yes, that is incredibly surprised. I did notice that basically beginning with the South Carolina debate, which was now a week ago, Joe Biden all of a sudden seemed like he had new energy.

If Bill Simmons was writing about politics, he'd be making deer antler spray jokes about Joe Biden right now. what in the hell do you make of that? I mean, and even tonight in his victory speech where in pure Biden fashion, he mixed up his wife and his sister, you know, he, he just seems like he's found a different gear rhetorically. It's not perfect. It's not going to remind anyone of Obama or even Joe Biden in 2000. but it has way more power, way more energy, way better lines than we've seen from Biden over the last several months. I agree. I don't know what happened. I mean, he managed to,

he managed to find that Joe Biden, that sort of mythical Joe Biden year that, you know, here to four has existed mostly in our imagination. But when he's, when he's there, he's a really compelling candidate. It has to be said. Yeah. I mean, and, and it, it, compelling is about as far as I'll go, right? Because there's a difference between having a great night and being a great candidate. And I haven't forgotten that this is Joe Biden. I don't think this is a great candidate by any stretch of the imagination yet. But the lines have improved, right? He had won his rally last night in Dallas. He says, most Americans don't want the promise of a revolution. They want results. I think that's a pretty good way of crystallizing

the difference of his worldview and Bernie Sanders. Here's another good one. And and I'll see if Jim can play this clip. He uses Saturday night right after he won in South Carolina. And if the Democrats want a nominee who's a Democrat, Democrat, an Obama Biden Democrat. And again, you see that signaling to that large amount of the party out there that we do not see probably represented on Twitter on a daily basis, signaling them, remember, I'm a Democrat, right? You self-identify as a Democrat. That's important. to a lot of people out there. And again, we always say this and I feel we're always sort of

winking at the audience, but you and I are related to Democrats, right? And I know in my case particular, there are Democrats I'm related to who have been waiting for a signal from someone to say, who am I supposed to vote for? I like a lot of these. Bernie scares me a little bit. This is me speaking for them. Bernie scares me a little bit. And I just don't know who to vote for. and that bat signal went up after South Carolina. And as you see, they all came home tonight. It seems a little bit archaic, doesn't it? I mean, that Democrat talk, and maybe it's because Obama for eight years plus

and continuing this day seemed to sort of be above political parties in his way. And now we have sort of the Sanders moment. But, I mean, the way that just a growling his voice when Biden called himself a Democrat, I mean, we're going to talk about Chris Matthews, I'm sure later. But I mean, he might as well said I'm a Tip O'Neill Democrat. You know, I mean, it just sounded like something of this sort of, again, just sort of fanciful past when people worked across the aisle. But, you know, but you're right. It's effective because there are, I mean, there are a lot of people who have been waiting to hear that for a long time. I mean, I think, I think that, you know, there's a lot of people in our generation, particularly those younger than us who, you know, identify more as liberal than as Democrat, you know, the idea of aligning oneself permanently with a political party has a little bit, leaves a little bit of a bad taste in one's mouth.

But, you know, for the voters that are coalescing around Joe Biden, I mean, that's what they're, that they've been waiting to hear. Totally. I think it's easy because there's so much energy with young people. people, very, very, you know, honest energy saying, I'm tired of the Democrats. Democrats are the people who've let me down. I want to nominate somebody who's not a Democrat on purpose because of this reason, right, who will demand better of this party. That is, that is absolutely real and absolutely present. What's also real is a whole bunch of people that say, I'm a Democrat, full stop. Yep. I want a Democrat to vote for. And at least tonight they found Joe Biden. Let's talk a little bit about Bernie Sanders, David. Sanders campaign tells

Sydney Ember of the New York Times that they were really surprised about how quickly the centrist's got behind one guy. They always knew this was coming. I think the Bernie people in their blue sky vision of the election thought at some point we're going to get a one-on-one campaign. And then it's going to be challenging for us, right? They didn't think just like the rest of us, it was going to come that quickly. I thought what was interesting about Bernie tonight in his speech that he gave in Vermont was, first of all, he really buried the results. They were like nine tenths of the way in the speech. He was not interested in talking about those. He was much more interested in starting to draw the contrast with Biden.

I don't believe he even mentioned his name. But he sort of said he sort of put it out like this. There's one candidate in this race who voted for the Iraq war. there's one who voted against it. There's one who voted for NAFTA. There's one who voted for the bankruptcy bill, et cetera, et cetera. He wants that two-way race so he can go to voters and make the populist case against Biden, right? Remind all those people who maybe have not been looking at Joe Biden's record over the last couple of weeks,

just been looking at Joe Biden's success and say, look, the reason, I did so well in 2016 was because of the issues. Now I'm going to remind you why I'm better on these issues than Joe Biden is. That's the game plan, right? And I just, the dynamic of that in a one-on-one is very hard to get my mind around. Bernie did incredibly well in that scenario against Hillary Clinton, if not well enough to ultimately win the nomination. but if it's Biden and it's a fairly

Biden-friendly map coming up of states like Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Ohio over the rest of the month, how does that play out? Yeah, I mean, I talked about during the South Carolina, or after the South Carolina debate, how it seemed like everybody was ready to, to, you know, escape to a smaller

debate stage. And you're right. I mean, at some point, this is going to be a two-person race. Now, we're going to talk, I'm sure, about Elizabeth Warren in a bit in Bloomberg, too. I mean, who knows how long they're going to stay in it. But a one-on-one, a hypothetical one-on-one between Biden and Sanders is really interesting to think about. They have very different debate styles, just very different, you know, speaking and philosophical styles.

And I'm not sure. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's tempting to think that they'll just sort of talk past each other for an hour. But, um, it's suit the, and if we do end up in a two person race, especially in, in, in two person debates in the near future. Um, I mean, we kind of have to think of it as just sort of resetting the, the primary, you know, from that point forward. Yeah. I mean, it's an amazing, uh, choose your fighter moment here. And I'm just talking purely in who you think is going to win. Do you pick Biden, who's had a shaky performance on the stump nearly everywhere in this campaign, except for the last week, who has a campaign team that doesn't seem to have done much right so far, who has no organization, who has no money, but, as we pointed out,

has the support of almost every rank and file member of the party? That's door number one, or door number two, do you want? Bernie, who's good on the stump, great organization, fired up supporters, tons of money, $46 million he raised in February. But he's still got the trickiness of capturing the Democratic nomination from the outside. Yeah, I don't think the money is going to be a problem for Biden moving forward. I mean, I think there's a lot of big money donors and bundlers who were happily jumping on that bandwagon right now. Like Mike Bloomberg maybe after tonight?

We'll see. I mean, Bloomberg, it seems very likely that maybe even by the time people are listening to this podcast, Bloomberg will be out of the race. I don't think you let it leak to multiple news organizations that you're going to take a step back and rethink your campaign unless you've already done the thinking. But, you know, he stayed in this long. Now, obviously, he spent a lot of money on these Super Tuesday states, and it would have probably seemed like, I mean, sunk as those costs may be. I'm sure he's sure he wanted to see that part see that much through but um but yeah i mean that's obviously that's a real possibility and that's and that's got to be you know kind of halting for the for the Sanders campaign um yeah yeah i mean i think that those two doors are are really really interesting but the and i think even more than the money what joe bide might have going for him is you know i mean Donald Trump won in a wave election and what Joe Biden showed us tonight was a wave election in a microcosm, right? I mean, he's going to need to just on some level turn out voters in a shocking way to combat what Trump did four years ago. And we saw a little bit of that tonight.

Yeah, and certainly with the white working class, you can imagine that's going to be part of his part of his pitch going forward, given both the importance of those voters and beating Trump in the Midwest and the Punditocracy's absolute obsession with those voters. Let's talk about Bloomberg a little bit, David. This was originally supposed to be

Mike Bloomberg's big entry into the campaign. That was before two absolutely miserable debate, excuse me. And by today, by this afternoon, we had a report from Gabe Sherman and Vanity Fair that Mike Bloomberg's campaign advisors were lobbying Bloomberg to drop out of the race before Super Tuesday. So including his campaign manager, Kevin Sheiky.

So now, I'm not an expert on politics, but when your campaign manager is telling you to leave the race immediately, your chances, the needle, the New York Times needle is probably not going your way. It's probably a bad sign. he won American Samoa tonight one of the funniest moments in the history of election night cable television because it came up really early

he edged out Tulsi Gabbard there was actually Tulsi Gabbard's going to have a delegate by the way Tulsi Tulsi Gabbard you know people were wondering why did you hang in there Tulsi Gabbard

hung in for at least for part of a reason anyway he won American Samoa. He is going to drop out tomorrow. I mean, there's no choice here, right? No. I mean, and we discussed this recently, too. I mean, what an incredible flash in the pan. This whole thing was. I saw Chris Hayes taking a victory lap on MSNBC, and he said, you said,

you know, I'm looking, I was looking at this going, I don't see a way that Mike Bloomberg is the Democratic nominee. And, you know, weeks went by and the money and the ad. And then he, you know, right, he's not going to be the Democratic nominee. Yeah. It's amazing. Go ahead. And it feels like the chapter in the campaign book, really, doesn't it? Mm-hmm.

Or you can just add this kind of little interstitial moment. You know, oh, everybody got excited and then, eh, not so much. No, I mean, you can, it's weird. I mean, you can be a billionaire and spend untold amounts of money on trying to turn yourself into the president. You know, I think Trump Carving. out a more effective path, which is just to sort of pretend to be a billionaire and let everybody else spend the money for you. But yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, there's, there's so much wrong with Mike Bloomberg as a candidate, particularly right now. But I think that, you know,

the timing was just really misbegotten. I think you saw there's too much at stake right now for, I mean, and Joe Biden was probably, I mean, it was clearly the, you know, the last one in the door But all these later rivals of the campaign, I just don't think it would have been really hard to imagine any of them having a shot. Yeah. And as a number of people pointed out, he only got in the campaign because he thought Biden was weak, right? Biden ideologically is where Bloomberg wanted him to be. He just didn't think he could win. And the other thing about Bloomberg that's so fascinating to me is there was a prediction going into tonight that, look, Bloomberg is going to turn into the worst thing to happen to Biden.

he's going to get peel away just enough of the vote. This was the prediction that he's going to keep Biden down and allow Bernie to slip in and win all these states. Well, guess what happened? He didn't prevent Biden from winning. And in fact, if you look over the history of this election, it looks like Bloomberg appeared on stage to get carved up by Elizabeth Warren. Yep. and allow Biden to sort of stand over to the side, concentrate on winning South Carolina,

which he did and put together this coalition. So I don't know, in some completely accidental way, it seems like he might have actually helped Biden. And again, let's describe anything to that. Accidental or 40 Chess. I'm not sure which one.

I mean, this is, and this is again, a Brian criticism, but like this is going to be just the primary campaign of why were we arguing with the wrong, guy or gal for so long. Like Joe Biden just flew

under the radar or exactly when he needed to to pull this thing off. Absolutely. And those very powerful debating skills from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were trained elsewhere. Speaking of Elizabeth Warren, a result has come in since we started this, which is that

Joe Biden has won the election in Elizabeth Warren's home state of Massachusetts. Wow. That's shocking. Here's something else. Elizabeth Warren finished third. Yeah. It went Biden, Bernie Warren. Does Elizabeth Warren have a campaign on Wednesday morning? Yeah, but if you if you add up Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they beat Joe Biden. I just say, well, I want to keep doing the bad math. The math worked before.

Yeah, let's flip this thing. I mean, I still think that Elizabeth Warren, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I still think that there's that there is a way in which she has a moderating effect on Bernie Sanders and does. his campaign a service by her present. I'm sure that her most diehard supporters will say that if we find ourselves in the not too distant future

on a debate stage with three people with her being number three then there's a glimmer of a chance, especially in a brokered convention and there's no reason for her to leave. Your theory, when you say moderating burning, your theory of the case is that she's been

by being sort of a bridge from Biden Democrats to Bernie Democrat, she seems she makes Bernie look less out there. She makes Bernie seem more sort of centrist if that's the word by just by her very present. If there's three people, if there's

three people on stage and two of them more or less agree ideologically it's kind of hard to paint that point of view as just so far afield politically right? I mean, but listen, I've been making, I've been complaining about this forever. That like whatever the

cases against Bernie Sanders, whether he's like secretly a asshole, you know, or like, or whether there is a deep-seated real fear that he's going to turn our country into some sort of socialist gulag. Whatever the real fear is, no one's saying it out loud. This idea that he's, that is, that Medicare for all is beyond the pale is mind-bogglingly stupid, right? I mean, you can, I guess you can say that the, that the dollars and cents don't add up, but when has that ever stopped a campaign proposition before, you know? And that's not a requirement. And the idea, and the idea that this is somehow degrees more socialist than what Barack Obama is proposing in his first campaign is just incorrect, you know? I mean, Biden's running on the Obama legacy

and Bernie Sanders is actually trying to fulfill it. I mean, so, I mean, so it's just, whatever, whatever your issue is with, with Bernie Sanders, it seems like, someone just needs, I mean, I just wish it would be, it would be said out loud. Now, the closest thing I think they get to telling the truth is that, is the, is the, is the electability argument. And I don't think that it's true. I want to say this really clearly. I don't think that he's, that it's impossible for him to beat Donald Trump, far from it. But I do think there's this sort of aspect of which they're telling on themselves a little bit, because Bernie Sanders is, you is theoretically unelectable. If you're, I mean, you can imagine Joe Biden calling Bernie

Sanders is unelectable because Joe Biden knows that everybody else is going to line up against him, right? I mean, everybody, I mean, is Joe Biden saying, don't waste your time because we've got this. It's, it'll be interesting to see, to see what happens. Now, back to Elizabeth Warren, I don't know if there's a path forward for her, but, you know, if you say that she's going to drop out, I will 100% buy whatever you're selling right now in your dropout predictions. I do feel like there's enough people that aren't, I mean, I don't feel those wins just yet. And I feel like people are actually trying to make the sort of speculative case for her. I don't know. We'll see. I felt that too on MSNBC. Just to repeat the data point, Elizabeth Warren finished third in

Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah. Right? The voters of her home state thought she was the third best candidate. Again, if you want to call Oklahoma, her other home state, she lost that too. I don't, I don't see it. And I just don't, the whole idea. of the kind of zombie campaign going forward, you know, it's fun to play with. I just, it almost never happens. And again, if you're Elizabeth Warren, do you want to go in and take 10% of the vote in a lot of these states that might go to Bernie Sanders, right? 8% of the vote that might, if you want Bernie Sanders to win the nomination,

that's got to be a consideration too. I want to leave you with two numbers, David, or two kind of numbers slash facts. They're incredible. One is that Joe Biden didn't have any staff in Minnesota. none he won the state tonight thanks in part to Amy Klobuchar Virginia

in mid-February polls had Biden tied or at a slight disadvantage to Bernie Sanders tonight he won Virginia by 30 points who love this tweet from Benji Sarland Biden is showing the world

that you don't need massive campaign cash to potentially win a national race but to be fair he's doing it a accident pretty much sums it up. As to where we go from here, we have six primaries on March 10th, a week from tonight,

including a big one in Michigan. Seven days after that on March 17th, you have Florida, Arizona, and Ohio. So there's a lot here. Like I said, I think the consensus is the map is pretty Biden friendly, but you know what?

We don't know anything. No, we don't know anything. So let's let that happen. Quick RIPs, David. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, aforementioned. They hate each other. It's pretty obvious. So as soon as they dropped out, there was all this incredible tea leaf reading. Like, did Amy Klobuchar stay in the race one more day so that she could say she outlasted Pete Buttigieg? That's a great question. And did she

endorse Biden immediately so she could say she endorsed Biden before Pete Buttigieg did? I wouldn't put it passed either one of them. Given the, given the stakes, they had these great tweets, which I think are best read through gridded teeth. Here's Pete Buttigieg on Klobuchar. Campaigning

beside Amy Klobuchar. I got to see firsthand the Midwestern grit determination and common sense that our country needs war of. I am thankful for her spirit and humor she brought to the race. And I look forward to working with her to build the country we all deserve.

Yeah, that sounded sincere. Thanks for that. I love it. Politics is all insincere. So when it's hyperincere, it's even funny. By the way, both ran pretty impressive campaigns. They did. Go ahead.

Cholbuchar outlasted senators with way bigger names than her. Cory Booker, Gerson Gillibrand, Kamala Harris. Nobody, we didn't know at the beginning of Pete Buttigieg's campaigned how to pronounce Pete Buttigieg's name. It's true. He won Iowa. He almost won New Hampshire. He did well. Can you read the Clovichar statement on Pete Buttigieg, too, to book in this? Let me reclench my teeth.

Pete Buttigieg has run an inspiring and historic campaign. I have so much respect for you, Pete Buttigieg. That part's funny. And know there are great things ahead. And both John and I are big fans of Chasen, exclamation point. That sounds like, both of these sound like, um, uh, book blurbs, uh, sent in by like relatively big name people who haven't actually read the book. You know, it's just like, I owe Brian Curtis a favor. And so my blur, my blurb will be this. Brian is an inspiring

and historic writer. It reminds me those book blurbs where they're obviously so uninspiring that they just put an ellipsis in the middle, you know, just take out some of them. Oh my gosh. certainly an elipsis in the first draft of this Amy Klobuchar statement, even though nothing was actually excised from it. And speaking of vanquished Democrats, at Biden's Monday night rally at Dallas, we got to see a now clean-shaven Beto O'Rourke basically functioning as the hype man. He rolls out on stage, does his Beto pointing thing, and then says he's going to take Joe Biden to Waterberger for dinner.

I thought that was a joke, but they rolled in. to a water burger. What did they get? Tequitos? So apparently Biden ordered a shake or, and this sounds like Joe Biden, a malt,

and then a bunch of burgers. Now, they did not do the late-night tequito thing, which would have been the correct order. I'm interested to know where they were immediately prior to that What a Burger trip because if memory serves,

the strawberry malt was what you drank to cover up alcohol on your breath when you're out with your parting before you went home to see your parents. I don't know that from first-hand experience, though. You think they went out and got some text max in Dallas

down to a couple of margaritas before that? Some marg maybe this went straight to the tequila shots. Who knows? Who knows? Is it weird that I'm, I mean, I know, I understand Betterer O'Rourke's politics. Is it weird that I'm sort of like more, I don't know, let down, caught off guard by the better or work moment, even though, I mean, he talked to Joe Biden before the campaign. They were just sort of like had a father and son vibe without, you know, behind the scenes forever.

This just seemed like a weird inclusion to the, to the procession of endorsements, but I guess this is Texas. Like he, this was the moment for him to do it. Maybe he just didn't realize that he was going to be one-uped by Klobuchar and Mayor Pete

coming right, you know, at the same time. I don't know the answer to that, but don't underrate ambition when it comes to the behavior, especially the mid-campaign endorsement behavior of any politician in this country. Yeah.

It's ambition, right? You want to be on the winning team because welcome to the party's secretary of the interior Beto O'Rourke. Well, and listen, I was just having this conversation earlier tonight as the results were coming in. It doesn't even have to be a promise in kind for a cabinet post or even a wink towards that. When you talk about ambition, it's ambition to the tune of you're going to be high on the list of like the Obama campaign staffers when you run for your next office. Right? Sure.

Like you're on the inside. You're on the first ballot for the machine to help you out. And that's a real, real thing. Goodwill within the party. I mean, absolutely. That's a real thing. I wanted to jam this in here because it's politics and it's an obsession of yours and mine. Sitting in my office at the Ringer Monday afternoon and I hear Alison Herman, our excellent TV critics say, Chris Matthews quit.

Must credit Alison Herman with this news. After a handful of on-air faceplants, David. Chris Matthews went on hardball on Monday night, and he quit. Listen up. Let me start with my headline tonight. I'm retiring. This is the last hardball on MSNBC. And obviously, this isn't for a lack of interest in politics. As you can tell, I've loved every minute of my 20 years as host of Hardball. Every morning I read the papers and I'm gung-ho to get to work. Not many people have had this privilege. I love working with my producers and the discussions we have over how to report the news. And I love having this connection with you, the good people who watch.

I've learned who you are, bumping into you on the sidewalk or waiting in an airport and saying, hello. You're like me. I heard from your kids and grandchildren who say, my dad loves you or my grandmother loves you or my husband watched it till the end. After a conversation with MSNBC, I decided tonight will be my last hardball. So let me tell you why. The younger generations out there are ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, in the media, in fighting for their causes.

They are improving the workplace. We're talking here about better standards than we grew up with, fair standards. A lot of it has to do with how we talk to each other. Compliments on a woman's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought we're okay. We're never okay. Not then and certainly not today. And for making such comments in the past, I'm sorry. I'm very proud of the work I've done here.

Long before I went on television, I worked for years in politics, was a newspaper columnist and author. I'm working on another book. I'll continue to write and talk about politics and cheer on my producers and crew here in Washington and New York and my MSNBC colleagues. They will continue to produce great journalism in the years ahead. And for those of you

have gotten into the habit of watching hardball every night, I hope you're going to miss because I'm going to miss you. But remembering Humphrey Bogart and Casablanca will always have hardball. So let's not say goodbye, but till we meet again. We'll always have hardball. Chris Matthews could do a lot of things, but when he invents a stupid bogey quote, he's gone too far, damn it. That is the worst, most forced thing.

We were just talking about how Chris Matthews stepped in it because he was fond of a quote. It was in his head or he'd read it in Bartlett's or wherever he got it. And he rushed to make it without real. it was about the Nazis. So then he signs off by saying, we'll always have hardball. Humphrey Bogart said in Casaplanc.

I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, clearly there's a connection between these things and it's sort of like the, I don't know, the pride that comes with thinking that like whatever the last thing you just read or encountered is directly applicable to the other thing

that's going on in your life, it's very deeply weird and I have enjoyed a lot of Chris Matthews over the years often as a guilty pleasure often as a you know watch what happens because anything could happen sort of experience this was the right time

if a little bit late I mean it's I don't think anyone's going to be missing Chris Matthews to the rest of this season was it a little weird to you that despite all of these controversies and by the way there was one I think John Van U sent this to us that we didn't even cover

when he mixed up Jamie Harrison is running for Senate in South Carolina with Tim Scott we got a terrible moment on the air but he was fired at some level for being Chris Matthews was he not?

I mean all of this was of a piece with the guy who's been on the air for a couple of decades you know I understand the world's change as he alluded to there in his thing and I'm and I'm not defending him or anything please please we're wrong he was but he to the end he was Chris Matthews and it finally caught up with him and obviously MSNBC said we got to make a change well sure I mean that listen the the the seat of the pants sort of like he could say anything aspect of his persona is what is I mean that was not just a byproduct of putting his

you know, political genius on television. I mean, they threw them on live TV. That was part of the appeal, at least from a programming standpoint. But I think, I mean, all of these things, the Nazi thing was bonkers. The Jamie Harrison thing was just inexcusable. But I do think that the Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg moment was in the end really significant and really had to change the calculus for his employers because he, he was, you know, he had some accusations against him over the years and certainly could have,

if the timing had been different, could have been wrapped up in the Me Too movement to some degree or to a large degree. And I think that the comments that he made about Mike Bloomberg's settlements and making them to Elizabeth Warren, I think brought all that, all those, all that stuff back to the four. And it looks like there's some, at least one article coming. out on the subject soon. So, I mean, maybe there's more in the offing. But I just think that it's, you know, it became a bigger consideration than this guy will say anything on television.

It became, you know, a really urgent problem. And I don't have any reason to disbelieve what he said in that last statement, as bizarre as the moment was on television. I think on some level, he must see that the next generation is more. suited for what what's happening right now. But he hung on for a long time. I should say he, by the way, said that sold this as a retirement. There were people saying that clearly MSNBC, there was a conversation in MSNBC was ready

for him to go. But anyway, Chris Matthews says he retired. Well, he did seem to sort of take his ball and run off the way he like, you know, just sort of gave that announcement and then disappeared from the airwaves. I don't know. I mean, there's a, it could have been, it certainly could have been a you can't fire me, quit sort of moment, but, you know, yeah. Does he appear on Fox News in like 10 minutes?

Because Chris Matthews quitting in the middle of a campaign. Wow. I mean, Chris Matthews is just as political an animal as you could ever find, right? He's in this for the politics and for him to bail now and not turn up anywhere. I know he's writing a book, but he's always writing a book. Yeah, I mean It's just hard to believe he won't Turn up on our airwaves.

I hope he takes a couple of months. I'm watching ABC tonight and it's It's Rahm Emanuel and Chris Christie. I mean, you know, let's just say that There's a lot of weird stuff going on on America's airwaves tonight. I hope he takes a couple of months off

and pops up on Fox, you know, a little bit closer to the general, just like with a deep tan and a Hawaiian shirt, you know, and just like got the blonde back in his hair. Tan rested and ready, as they say. Yeah. It's closed tonight, David. I voted because I live in California.

Congratulations. And as you know, California does mail ballots. And you know how when you get the ballot in the mail, you get those instructions on how to fill it out, like a free floating page. And those instructions might have a sample ballot with fake names standing in for the candidates. Okay.

Would you like to hear the fake names from the Orange County ballot instructions? Sure. All right. Ready? This is absolutely real. Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, Captain America, and Hester Prynne. Are we to take from that that someone believes that Captain America's first name is Captain and less name is America? what I took to believe was that somebody who went to high school with us in the 90s

because when we graduated from high school in Fort Worth, Texas, our basically cultural horizon extended from Darth Vader to Hester Prynne. Yeah, that's true. That was it. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Do I know you person who made this? By the way, there were more names. The only ones that we would have really just not known at all when we were in high school.

Ansel Adams on this list John Muir I'm not sure you and I would have been able to ID him but the rest of them

are Paul Bunyan George Washington Carver Sam Spade Wow yeah I put it on Twitter and somebody

asked me who would you vote for given those names I said Sam Spade absolutely I know Sam Spade is certainly

amongst my favorites of those I don't know if he's the one I would vote for yeah maybe he's I think I'm more of a Darth Vader guy. You know, he's going to get stuff done.

But even this completely fictional ballot, there was one woman. They could have come up with one woman's name, and it was Hester Pryn. That was it. He is David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, researched by Erica Servantes and Chris Albeta. Production Magic by Jim

Cunningham. We'll set you up here for the rest of press box. We're back Friday at our regular time. with full results from Super Tuesday, and they're going to change a little bit. Bernie Sanders is looking very good in California. Texas is incredibly close. Maine is incredibly close. This ain't over yet.

We're going to have coverage of this whole thing through November and beyond. Plus your listener mail. So send it to us, and especially if you saw anything weird on cable TV tonight. We will, of course, naturally have more lukewarm takes about the media as well. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. We'll always have heartball. Possibly.

Do I know you? Oh, wow. Yeah.