March 6 2024
Yuge Super Tuesday Political Debrief
FLASH Nikki Haley to drop out, Donald Trump wins Republican nomination
1 Trump wins 14/15 state primaries
2 Biden faces significant Democratic defection over war in Israel
3 Bipartisan group of lawmakers introduce bill to force sale of TikTok
4 Sinema (I-AZ) won’t seek reelection
5 Victoria Nuland resigns
3/4/2008 Super Tuesday II
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 Trump wins 14/15 state primaries
2024 general election a Biden-Trump rematch
It’s Biden vs. Trump. To me, that’s the only real takeaway from Super Tuesday, when President Biden and Donald J. Trump won nearly all of the delegates at stake. It will still be a week or two before they officially clinch their nominations, but at this point the primaries are effectively over. The general election is about to begin. On paper, Mr. Biden ought to be the favorite. He’s an incumbent president running for re-election against the backdrop of a healthy enough economy, and against an opponent accused of multiple federal crimes. Yet according to the polls, Mr. Trump begins the general election campaign in the lead. Mr. Trump’s lead is modest but clear. Over the last four months, he has led nearly every poll in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, along with the states he carried in 2020 — enough to give him 283 electoral votes and the presidency. He also leads in most national polls over the last month, including a New York Times/Siena College poll last weekend.
NYT
2 Biden faces significant Democratic defection over war in Israel
Jason Palmer, a previously unknown businessperson from Maryland, snatched American Samoa away from Biden, raking in 51 votes compared to 40 for the president, without ever having set foot in the island territory. In doing so, he kept Biden from sweeping Tuesday night. But it was in Minnesota, which hasn’t gone for a Republican for president since Richard Nixon in 1972, where Biden saw a less surprising but more threatening setback. The “uncommitted” option on the ballot there had as big a night as it did in Michigan, winning 19 percent of the vote with 89 percent counted. The state’s politically significant Somali population, concentrated around the Twin Cities, rebuked Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
come this fall, Biden can hardly afford such a defection in the pivotal blue wall state.
Politico
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/06/super-tuesday-trump-biden-takeaways-00145271
3 Bipartisan group of lawmakers introduce bill to force sale of TikTok
a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill that would force ByteDance, the Chinese technology company that owns TikTok, to sell the app due to national security concerns. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), chair of the House select China committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) co-authored legislation that would give ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok or face a ban from US app stores. The legislation would also expand the president's power to ban or restrict apps deemed concerning to national security. The news comes on the heels of years of scrutiny into TikTok’s collection and analysis of American user data. China’s national security law requires domestic companies to turn over customer data if requested by the CCP and, per its privacy policy, TikTok collects a laundry list of personal identifiers from each user, including IP addresses, usage information, unique device identifiers, connected audio devices, keystroke patterns, location coordinates, and “faceprints and voiceprints.”
Pirate Wires
https://www.piratewires.com/p/breaking-bill-to-be-introduced-to-force-bytedance-to-sell-tiktok?utm_campaign=BREAKING%3A+Bill+to+be+Introduced+to+Force+ByteDance+to+Sell+TikTok+%5BFREE%5D&utm_content=Longform+Newsletter+Design&utm_medium=email_action&utm_source=customer.io
Ed note: Gallagher (R-WI) is not seeking reelection in 2024
4 Sinema (I-AZ) won’t seek reelection
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said she won’t run for re-election and will retire after this term, ending for now the political run of one of Congress’s most productive and controversial lawmakers, a centrist who forged bipartisan deals while also regularly angering progressive Democrats.
The independent senator, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, would have faced a tough path to re-election had she decided to run. She was seen as having an uphill fight in a prospective three-way contest with Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican former TV host Kari Lake, a close ally of former President Donald Trump. Sinema was a pathbreaking figure in Arizona, becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat there in 30 years. She made her mark in several major legislation battles related to infrastructure, guns and same-sex marriage protections. She was most recently involved in bipartisan efforts to secure the southern U.S. border, which she described to The Wall Street Journal as “the hardest thing we’ve done.” That legislation, months in the making, stalled earlier this year after many congressional Republicans said it wasn’t tough enough.
WSJ
5 Victoria Nuland resigns
Victoria Nuland, the third-highest ranking U.S. diplomat and frequent target of criticism for her hawkish views on Russia and its actions in Ukraine, will retire and leave her post this month, the State Department said Tuesday. Nuland, a career foreign service officer who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe during the Obama administration but retired after Donald Trump was elected president, returned to government as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden administration.
Nuland will be replaced temporarily as under secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the country. He is currently the undersecretary of state for management.
AP
3/4/2008 Super Tuesday II
Mike Huckabee withdrew from the Republican Presidential primary on “Super Tuesday II” in 2008, and John McCain won enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton won 153 delegates to Barack Obama’s 9 delegates. Barack Obama eventually won the Democratic nomination and Presidency in 2008.
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