What A Day - Don’t You (Forget About Pete)

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

The government is beginning to dole out COVID-19 testing kits, and hundreds of medical centers in the US have begun developing their own version of testing in the meantime.The South Carolina primary was this weekend, with former VP Joe Biden scoring a decisive victory. A poor showing from former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg led him to drop out on Sunday. Now, it’s onward to Super Tuesday, where 14 states and one territory will vote.And in headlines: a union representing Starbucks workers says minority baristas have faced discrimination, the acting director of the USCIS was never really appointed, and the latest on adult child Lizzie McGuire.

It's Monday, March 2nd. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What A Day, where we're both currently auditioning to be Public Enemy's new Flavor Flav. That's right. Nobody loves New York more than me. Flavor of Love, starring... New York Tiffany Pollard. And me, as well. On today's show, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg drops out of the race.

The results from the South Carolina primary and some headlines. But first, a coronavirus update. The mysterious coronavirus. The coronavirus in China. Deadly new strain of coronavirus. Endangers coronavirus from China. More than 200 cases of coronavirus. Coronavirus.

Coronavirus. Coronavirus. As the coronavirus spreads and people, economies, and daily lives are affected, we do want to keep you up to date and informed. So today we're going to be talking about testing for COVID-19. It is an essential part of tracking the virus and slowing down its spread. Last week, we reported on a shortage of testing supplies in the United States. Akilah, what is the latest on this? All right, so on Saturday, Vice President and coronavirus helper, I want to say,

Mike Pence, appeared on CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper to address the lack of testing kits in the U.S. The South Koreans have been able to test more than 90,000 of their citizens for their coronavirus. The U.S. has had trouble manufacturing the kits. The CDC has struggled a bit and distributing them to local labs. The latest numbers show only maybe around 500 people in the U.S. have been tested. Why are we so behind other developed countries on this? And when will there be more of these testing kits delivered to the frontline health care providers? It's a very fair question. And it was one of the first issues that governors I spoke to raised with me. I'm happy to report that this weekend,

more than 15,000 testing kits have been released. Also, the FDA has approved a testing regimen that state and local officials can be using. Yeah. Okay. So last week, there were 200 kits in California total. Now, Vice President Pence says there are 15,000 kits available, which, dear listener, still doesn't seem like enough. While the government doles out those kits, the FDA also said Saturday that 300 to 400 medical centers can begin their own version of testing in the meantime. So too long didn't read. There's usually an emergency use authorization process that these centers that develop testing protocols have to go through. And the FDA is like, nah, go ahead. Do your thing. Whatever. Look, I trust everyone involved in this process. Yeah, I'm not me.

I'm feeling good. And for comparison here, what's happening abroad in regards to testing for COVID-19? All right. So a really interesting development in South Korea. They've begun to do drive-through tests for the virus, which is genius. The idea being that one, you can test more people in a shorter window simply because it'll be on a first come and first serve basis. One official said that waiting times have decreased by a third. And two, that the spread will be contained because if you're healthy, you won't be sitting in a waiting room with people who are infected. So maybe something like that will be implemented worldwide if it's successful. Yeah, I mean, Americans do love drive-thru sites. We do, we love them. All right, well, is there any other miscellaneous news regarding COVID-19 that we need to cover? Yes. All right. So the Louvre in Paris has closed for the coronavirus, which is alarming since they really only closed for war in Beyonce. Near Seattle, there's been six confirmed coronavirus cases

at a nursing facility in Kirkland. Fifty people have fallen ill and are awaiting test results. On Sunday, Seattle Health Officer Dr. Jeff Dutchin confirmed that one of the people who contracted COVID-19 at the nursing home has died, making him the first coronavirus death in the United States. Dutchin went on to say he considers the situation a, quote, outbreak. And as we go to recording, there's now been a second death in the Seattle area as well.

So we will have more information as it is available about this illness. But remember, wash your hands, cover any coughs, don't touch your face. And if you can, stay home if you're not feeling well. A lot of 2020 news to get you up to speed on over the weekend. Former Vice President Joe Biden decisively won the South Carolina primary by a wide margin, giving him his first primary win in his three runs for the presidency and a jolt to his struggling campaign before Super Tuesday. But first, on Sunday evening, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay major candidate, ended his bid for the presidency.

And so we must recognize that at this point in the race, the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together. So tonight, I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency. I will no longer seek to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, but I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new Democratic president come January.

That was really powerful and good for him for getting in formation. So that was a big whirlwind. How did we get here? Well, I think two big things on Buttigieg and sort of the trajectory of the last month. First, there was a strategy that the campaign had that they were arguing if he did well in those earlier states, the more homogenous, whiter states like Iowa and New Hampshire, which he did, that that would lead to better numbers with voters of color, that they just needed to see more of him, see that he was a winner. But as evidenced by results in Nevada and South Carolina, where we were starting to see voters of color come out, that just wasn't happening for him. In Nevada, Buttigieg was a distant third, very, very far

behind with voters of color in that state. And in South Carolina, he was in fourth with about 8% of the vote and exit polling showing him having, you know, just 2% of African American voters in the state. And then the second thing was he was positioning himself in a very specific way. And that was to be the sort of moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders in this sort of crowded group of people trying to do the same thing. That became a lot harder with this Biden victory over the weekend, because there's this sort of like natural gravitating towards a person of that level that had been in the arena before. And one of the major things that Biden,

one of the major things that propelled Biden to the victory were African-American voters in South Carolina. And then you add to that these money issues too. Buttigieg spent $2.5 million on TV advertising in the state, which was more than anybody but Tom Steyer. And he also really did visit quite a bit more than I think most of the other candidates. And it just wasn't catching on for him. And I think that was when they really decided that those factors combined meant, you know, it was the end of the line. For sure. Well, Buttigieg did earn delegates already and millions of people have voted ahead

of Super Tuesday, presumably with votes in there for Buttigieg. So what's going to happen to all of those votes? I know it's kind of a strange situation, right? On the delegate front, Buttigieg was third with 26 behind Biden and Sanders. And for now, the delegates can technically go to the convention uncommitted. Or if Buttigieg makes the choice to endorse another candidate in the future, they can go to that candidate. But it's worth pointing out that we're so early on in this that 26 delegates isn't a ton. There are around 4,000 delegates overall that will have their say in this. And then for the votes, those are unfortunately baked in now. And we won't know the extent of it until Tuesday and after. But if you look at results for any of the early states,

you're kind of scrolling through and you're like, oh, at results for any of the early states, you're kind of scrolling through and you're like, oh, John Delaney's face is in here, Cory Booker's face is in here. So there are people that still vote for candidates even when they're out of the race. But you know, on the early vote front, there are still lots of votes to be cast. We're looking at some of the rules around this. And at least in Michigan, there is a way to recast your absentee ballot. So it's worth checking to see what the rules are in your particular state. And you know, where these Buttigieg voters go is anyone's guess. Some of the supporters could go to basically any number of the candidates, Klobuchar, Biden, Sanders, Warren, whatever. Yeah, so that was the news on Mayor Pete. Let's go back to South

Carolina, though, for a second. We saw a huge Biden win there. All those who've been knocked down, counted out, left behind. This is your campaign. Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead. Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we've just won and we've won big because of you. So you want to explain how he did it and what it means for the rest of his campaign? Yeah. I mean, so just to go through a few of the numbers here, because I think, you know, a lot of people saw this and were pretty surprised by the margin. I mean, Biden got over 48% of the vote, followed by Sanders at 20, then Steyer at 11, and then

Buttigieg at eight, Warren at seven, and Klobuchar at three. So one of the kind of key things that appears to have happened here, we talked on the show last week that in prior primaries, support for Democratic candidates among black voters had been undercounted. Yeah. In the South Carolina polls. You did say that. And go off, Gideon, because a lot of people weren't saying it. I'm glad you called it.

I stole the idea from other smart people. But, you know, I'm glad through this group think we got here. And, you know, the same thing appears to have happened again on Saturday. We had seen polls where the margins looked like quite a bit slimmer for Biden, but exit polling indicated that Biden won 61% of the black vote compared to 17 for Sanders. This was also an older electorate overall with more than two thirds of primary voters, 45 or older, and Biden cleaned up with those voters too. So really across the board did very well.

Turnout in South Carolina too was way higher than 2016. It approached record 2008 levels. I know that's something that people are looking at in a lot of these states out of concern to make sure that people are staying engaged throughout the year. And we were also talking on the show about Jim Clyburn endorsing Biden and how that was impactful in the state. But if anything, I think it was undersold. You know, again, going off exit polling, which is about as much as we can gather this early on, almost half of the voters referenced his endorsement in exit polling, which is pretty astonishing.

And it was no surprise then that one of the first things that Biden did on Saturday was to basically thank Clyburn for helping to push him over the line. Yeah. And it does seem like as we get more and more states coming in, the things that maybe we have been baked into as a society and we think this is going to be the two front runners or one front runner or whatever, everything's shaking up. Super Tuesday is going to be a big deal. Yeah. All right. Well, before we move on, Buttigieg wasn't the only candidate to exit the race this weekend.

Correct. Tom Steyer backed his ass out of the race as well. Oh. A real groaner. We encourage everyone to go watch the clip of him on stage with Juvenile in South Carolina. It's surreal. But if you don't have the opportunity, he is holding his hands out stiff like he's riding a big invisible motorcycle.

A lot of Tin Man energy to what's going on there. I think his shoulders might be a little hurt. You know, a couple more nights in South Carolina and I think he would have pulled the dance off. But Steyer had spent a whopping $191 million on advertising nationally with a specific focus on South Carolina. And I think he would have pulled the dance off. But Steyer had spent a whopping $191 million on advertising nationally with a specific focus on South Carolina. And he just didn't get delegates in the state or anywhere else throughout the campaign. So again, another moment where reality sort of met what the expectations were. Yeah, maybe he should have given that money to Juvenile, had him do a cross-country tour. We'd be looking at different results right now. We could certainly, yeah, we could certainly get tickets.

Well, we will return to it again tomorrow. But where does this leave the race and everyone else? Yeah, so other candidates that we haven't talked about yet. Warren has all but conceded that she is not going to win the nomination outright, but rather preparing for a contested convention and gearing up to try to hold on to her home state, which votes on Tuesday. Klobuchar is hoping to win her state as well. And as Buttigieg demonstrated on Sunday, sometimes these campaigns say things publicly and they're gearing up for certain realities and they change their minds. So we'll see what everybody decides to do in the next 48 hours for the rest of the week. Sanders is banking on kind of flooding the zone and driving up numbers on Super Tuesday

in places like California, where if you get a big lead there, you can have a big delegate lead overall. He also announced a crazy $46.5 million fundraising total in February. Biden is in the meantime, hoping to kind of catch up organizationally and financially. He's starting to bring in a lot more money in his campaign, too, compared to where he was at before. And, you know, he wants to be the consensus pick of moderate Democrats. And we're seeing that with a lot more of the endorsements that he's been getting just in the last 24 hours. And then we'll see Bloomberg for the first time on the ballot, which will give us a real sense of whether his strategy is working because we've been mostly operating in the dark there. Yeah. Oh, well, we are going to be doing a live stream tomorrow for Super Tuesday, where 14 states in one territory are going to be voting. You don't have to drive yourself crazy with cable news. I would advise against that. But we do promise

key race alerts. So come on. Yeah, come hang. We got it all. Watch the results come in with us starting at 8pm Eastern 5pm Pacific on youtube.com slash crooked media. We got it all. Watch the results come in with us starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific on youtube.com slash Crooked Media. We'll be there along with John, John, Tommy, and Dan. And Dan dogs? Can we say that? I think there may be some pups. Maybe a dog or two.

And now for some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. A union representing Starbucks workers at airports says immigrant, transgender, and black baristas have faced discrimination. And a survey of its members, Unite Here, found that median hourly pay for black baristas was $1.85 less than for white baristas.

That more than one in four immigrant workers have been told to stop speaking their preferred language at work and multiple instances of harassment of LGBTQ employees, as well as repeated misgendering. HMS Host, which operates Starbucks and other coffee shops and airports across the country, has denied any discrimination. Representatives for the union say they want Starbucks to pressure HMS Host to bring its workers in line with what Starbucks offers its employees. When asked about the story, Starbucks has referred questions back to HMS Host. Hmm, Host. Hmm, Host.

That's how we say it. A federal judge has voided new strict policies from the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, because he was never lawfully appointed to his job in the first place. This is like if you took the SATs and the Scantron couldn't read your answers because you used the wrong pencil. Except that it's good because all your answers to the test were evil. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act requires a federal agency's, quote, first assistant to assume leadership when the top role is open. So what Trump did, which was create a made up assistant to assume leadership when the top role is open. So what Trump did, which was create a made up assistant to the regional manager style title for Cuccinelli

and then appoint him acting director, was simply not good enough. Side note, the judge actually referenced that running joke about Dwight Schrute in his decision. The office is universal. We all have Netflix and we all love it. That judge is having a great time. The laws that will be set aside reduce the amount of time asylum seekers got to seek legal counsel after crossing the border and restricted the ability of officers to grant applicants extensions. And quickly, just want to catch everyone up on some pretty impactful news about a girl who's also a talking cartoon. Lizzie McGuire was slated for revival on Disney Plus this year, but after completing two episodes, production was halted and showrunner-slash-creator Terry Minsky was fired. Last week, we found out why. Apparently, both Minsky and star Hilary Duff

wanted to depict an authentic version of Lizzie's life 15 years on, while Disney wanted her to be some kind of 30-year-old virgin who was still worried about what to wear to school dances. This weekend, Duff made a personal plea to Disney to move the show to Hulu, also Disney property, where Lizzie can do things real 30-year-olds do. Hopefully that happens because I need to see animated Lizzie haggle for used furniture at a yard sale and do her taxes really, really badly. We all need to see it.

And rest in peace to the god of microwavable chicken tikka masala, Joe Colombe, who founded Trader Joe's in 1967 in Pasadena, California. Colombe envisioned a new type of grocery store, which would target customers who had traveled enough to have sophisticated taste in food and drink, but who couldn't always afford to buy premium. Can relate. He paid his employees well and offered full benefits,

and as a result, he said in 2014 that the typical tenure at Trader Joe's was 35 years. Colombe is survived by his wife, three children, and six grandchildren. Thank you for giving food stupid guys like me frozen dinners that don't make me hate myself. We survive on your meals here at What A Day. God bless you, sir. And those are the headlines. That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe leave a review make us fan art but please don't spend more than two minutes of your time on it and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just yelp reviews of restaurants you are currently eating at like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out and subscribe at cricket.com subscribe i'm akilah hughes i'm hidden resnick and we'll see you at trader joe's i'm gonna get all the peanut butter pretzels before you can get there. Probably.

What a day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.