While @BernieSanders holds his virtual campaign event tonight from Vermont and rails against the ongoing Senate #Coronavirus rescue bill, important to keep in mind he skipped a key procedural vote tonight on the bill. https://t.co/01cY5qvbs8
— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) March 22, 2020
Disclaimer: A 78-year old recent heart attack survivor absolutely should be self-quarantining right now. On the other hand, someone who’s second only to Trump in the ‘It’s Always About ME’ sweeps… maybe could’ve been a little more temperate when it came to proclaiming the shortcomings of every other not-Republican candidate. Or at least required his paid surrogates to dial it back a notch, when it came to publicly hoping on social media that the current Democratic ‘Shadow president’ would either die of coronavirus or lose all his supporters to it.
(Give me a break, it’s 3am in my time zone, and this is my self-reward for putting up yesterday’s virtuous info & respite threads, prior to setting up some more for tomorrow.)
To be fair…he's not a Democrat.
— Black Dem Savage ⚖ (@Ldy_Shay) March 23, 2020
Sanders spox tells @AnnieGrayerCNN that Sanders skipped vote bc “the cloture vote would fail, and his absence was effectively a no vote, so he was engaging on policy remotely” and was “weighing in to influence the contours of the bill during negotiations remotely from Vermont.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 23, 2020
Sanders told me last week he was dealing with a “f—ing” global crisis and didn’t want to answer campaign questions. https://t.co/UEYGPTAmIZ At 7p tonight, he had a campaign event – a livestream discussion on the coronavirus – rather than showing up to vote an hour before
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 23, 2020
You can tell how badly the Very Media Serious People rate Bernie’s chances at this point, because they’re suddenly willing to name names. From the Washington Post, paper of record in the town where the monopoly industry is national politics:
Sen. Bernie Sanders has convened a series of weighty discussions about the future of his presidential campaign with his closest confidants, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations, and at least three potential paths forward have come up in the private talks.
One option that has been raised: Keep the campaign technically active with a goal of winning votes and accumulating delegates to the July nominating convention, but forgo attack ads aimed at delegate leader Joe Biden. Another: Stay in the race and aggressively compete for the nomination. A third choice: End the campaign…
With Biden staked to a solid lead and the future of the remaining primaries in doubt, many in the party are calling for Sanders to bow out, in recognition of the destructive divisions that could deepen if he sticks around. They are eager to pivot to a general election posture against President Trump and want to empower Biden to get started as soon as possible.
