Well, california, were here in Universal Studios in los angeles on the very same stage i learned a little while ago a bunch of episodes of murder she wrote were filmed, which is cool, i like that show. Were here because its super tuesday eve, the big day is tomorrow. This is the biggest state in that. Before we get to that news, i just want to take a moment to acknowledge my colleague chris mathews. Just about an hour ago he announced on his program hes announcing his retirement effective immediately. After more than two decades. So that took us all by shock because chris has been such a fixture of american political coverage for so long. I remember personally watching his coverage of the last president ial impeachment in my dorm room during clinton. And hes a legend of a broadcaster. Has had a durability and say stamina that almost no one in the industry can match. Its quite literally the case political coverage in this country will not be the same without him. Political coverage is why we are here in california. Today is, of course, the biggest day or tomorrow is the biggest day in the president ial primary. Right now we are between acts 1 and 2 as it might say in this town, right . So in the democratic primary, act 1 was the first four states and it sort of ended with a cliffhanger, right . Bernie sanders did very well in the first three, and not so well in the last one, South Carolina, and that is where joe biden had this huge convincing victory that exceeded the polling expectations and seemed to bring his campaign back from the dead. Act 2 is tomorrow. Super tuesday, there are going to be 14 States Holding primaries tomorrow. After a lot of people had written joe biden off and left him for dead politically, all of a sudden very quickly were seeing this rapid consolidation effort by the centrist portion of the Democratic Party that is most invested in stopping Bernie Sanders. So within just 24 hours of the big win, joe biden raised 5 million online which is a lot more than hes been raising. Yesterday Pete Buttiegieg dropped out of the race. Earlier today Amy Klobuchar dropped out. Tonight, in fact, just a few minutes ago, Pete Buttiegieg appeared at a biden event in dallas where he endorsed former vicepresident biden ahead of texass super tuesday tomorrow. Klobuchar is expected to do the same in a few minutes. [ applause ] you can tell who the biden supporters are. You have a whole bunch of people together. [ applause ] to the extent we can tell from National Polling, there biden got a bump in the National Polling post South Carolina. The important thing to think about as you think about tomorrow where the race is, momentum is not what wins the contest, delegates are what win the contest, right . The delegate count is the thing to watch. Thats the score. The candidates are competing for your votes, but what theyre really competing for are pledge delegates to go to the convention. Those are the people that are going to go to that convention in milwaukee and then theyre going to vote for their choice in the official nominating contest to see who is going to be the democratic nominee. So theres just shy of 4,000 delegates youre all looking at me, oh, god, is he going to do math . [ laughter ] i am going to do math. Just stay with me, okay. So, if a candidate gets 1991 delegates, which is just over half, right . Over half plus one, they automatically become the democratic nominee. In order to be guaranteed the nomination, you have to win an outright majority of the available delegates. And the way it works is this. Every state has a certain number of delegates based on the population. California, for instance as you know, the biggest state, its got the most delegates. Within the states themselves, it gets a little complicated. Some of the delegates are awarded at the statewide level, some at the congressional level. You know that, right . The other complication and then were basically done with the math portion of this, there is this 15 threshold, okay. If you dont get 15 of the votes statewide, you get zero statewide delegates. Even if you get 14 and. 8, 9, you dont get 15, you get zero delegates from that congressional district. The point is getting over 15 across a large Geographic Area in a lot of different states and a lot of different congressional districts is really important so you dont get shut out of delegates. Right here in california, multiple polls sort of earlier in the week, they had joe biden at like 13, 14 , 15 . California is the biggest state. It has 415 delegates at play tomorrow. And a 14 finish for joe biden would be pretty disastrous because it would mean heed basically essentially got zero delegates. Maybe picked up uh few here and there in congressional districts, but basically that would be really bad. And in that scenario Bernie Sanders, who is leading in all the polls here, he could get a huge delegate gain just out of this one state. But if biden got 17 and Elizabeth Warren got over 15 , Mike Bloomberg got over 15 , thats a totally different universe, right, in terms of how the delegates are getting apportioned. So the 15 threshold is huge. Tomorrow super tuesday is the single most important day of the whole primary calendar bar none. The biggest chunk of delegates are awarded all at once on one day. Weve never had one this big. California moved up this year which is a big deal. Texas moved up. So 14 states plus American Samoa are going to hold their primaries. 1400 delegates are up for grabs which is more than a third of the total. After that, there are still about 2,500 delegates that are still yet to be decided. So theres still a lot that could happen even after super tuesday. But to give you a sense of where we are in the process right now, okay, because weve been covering this race for like 60 years [ laughter ] and the only four states that voted in a tiny, tiny proportion of the delegates have been awarded. Right now Bernie Sanders has an eightdelegate lead over joe biden. A tiny percent of the people voted. The thing to watch out for tomorrow, once all the votes are counted, right, once we know the results, the thing to watch out for is the delegate lead. And its going to take awhile tomorrow night. So prepare yourself for that. Particularly here in california, im actually unclear why it takes you all so long to count votes. Like theres a lot of absentee ballots and stuff like that so i get it, it will take awhile. If you can go a little faster wed all appreciate it. But the big open question coming out of tomorrow once we know all the results is the delegate lead. History has shown, and this is the key thing to take away about where the race is going now. Once the candidate has a delegate lead, even if its not an enormous one, it is very hard for other people to come back and take the lead. Thats because the person in second place, they have to blow out the delegate leader by big margins in a bunch of states over and over again. Thats a hard thing to do. And weve seen this before, right . In 2016 Hillary Clinton basically won that rice very early on when she built up a substantial delegate lead pretty early in the race. Even though Bernie Sanders stayed in the race he had surprising wins in wisconsin and michigan, it was never enough to claw back and overcome that lead. Same thing happened in 2008. The day after super tuesday, barack obama was topping Hillary Clinton by only 13 delegates, tiny little margin. And david plough, who was the campaign manager, shot out this email explaining they were not going to give up the lead, the wind was behind them, the math was in their favor with a 13delegate lead. Thats right. Barack obama never gave up the delegate lead. The most likely scenario for super tuesday, okay, when all is said and done, if the polling is accurate, which is a big if. A lot has happened in the last 24 hours, is that sanders will emerge with some kind of delegate lead out of the day, and that depends a lot on his performance in this one state, depending on how things go tomorrow. He could notch like 100 delegate lead just from this state, right . There is a huge range of options. And if he has a delegate lead coming out of tomorrow, 50 delegates, 60 delegates, 100 delegates, more, thats going to be hard for anyone else to overcome. But [ laughter ] but, there is a big catch, right . In order to win the nomination, you have to hit 1991. You have to get a majority plus one of all the delegates. The last few democratic primaries we had 2016, 2008, right, those essentially became oneonone races and in a oneonone race someone is going to get the majority. You have a pie, youre cut ing it in half, right . But this time its different. Because this time youve got a lot more candidates in the race, right . Youve got right now youve got four people in the race, the number of people. Youve also got proportionate representation and youve got Mike Bloomberg, this x factor, this billionaire who is going to keep playing state after state and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. Heres the crazy thing. Mike bloomberg is playing a destructive role, incredibly destructive role to the ostensible cause he joined in. Do you remember this . Early on when biden had flagged, right, and everyone in the establishment was looking for like the great white knight that would come save them from Bernie Sanders who they want to defeat. It was like Mike Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg can get it done. He was going to be the guy to ride in with his billions of dollars and stop bernie. Bloomberg right now is playing a role that is going to produce the following situation. He is almost single handedly going to be responsible for taking delegates from joe biden on super tuesday and handing the delegate lead to the democratic socialist that he wants to stop Bernie Sanders. Right . Like, if bloomberg really wanted to help joe biden, if he really thought sanders was an existential threat, he would drop out right now. His presence on super tuesday will help Bernie Sanders. The other thing is hes going to suck up enough delegates on super tuesday that its really likely no one is going to get an outright majority. No one is going to hit 1,991. According to 538, in fact, the odds no one gets a majority are 68 right now, which means a contested convention where they fight for the nomination on the floor. And a contested convention might be fun for journalists to cover, but its hard to think its the best thing for the Democratic Party as they prepare to take on donald trump. So for more on the dramatically shifting ra shifting race, im joined by host of love it, host of kpfk, and actor rob reiner. [ applause ] hey, guys. How are you doing . How are you . So a lot has happened. Were waiting for this endorsement rally, Amy Klobuchar is going to be there, Pete Buttiegieg came out and endorsed already. Beto orourke was a little surprising. What do you understand has happened, john, having covered this race . What is happening . I just want to point out that when you said contested convention, this audience got a look on their face like someone just walked in with coronavirus. [ laughter ] it was a pretty brutal expression. You know, one thing, one thing that seems to have been happening in this race is things that should have happened a month ago keep happening later. The first debate, the debate where bloomberg first appeared and everybody mixed it up and for the first time Elizabeth Warren made a case against Bernie Sanders and others began to treat Bernie Sanders like he might be the nominee. That happened late in the game. Now we have this latestage rally around joe biden right before super tuesday when, by the way, 30 to 40 of californians may have already cast their ballots. Who voted early here . How many of you voted for someone who is no longer running for president . Thats a lot of hands on the verge of getting 15 . Whats really happening is i think everybody is afraid and acting from a place of fear. There was sorry. There was a moment where everyone thought, owe joe biden is going to be the savior and they looked at him. He had some really rough debates and really rough performances. They went looking to Pete Buttiegieg and Amy Klobuchar and kamala and cory booker. And now here we are in the final stretch. Were on the verge of Bernie Sanders, an insurmountable delegate lead. Bernie is getting that white hot light of scrutiny. Every candidate has an electability case with deep weakness. Every one. Suddenly that weakness becomes what were banking on and people look elsewhere. I think whats really happening is the billionaire class is panicking and consolidating the support behind the only candidate that they think could beat, not donald trump, but Bernie Sanders. And by the billionaire class being in a panic and putting their weight behind a figure like biden, theyre putting all their eggs in the basket of a person who can barely remember hes running for president. A week ago he salt in front of a bunch of south carolinians, im running for senate and if you dont like it you can vote for the other candidate. Donald trump is going to make mince meat of him. There is interest in the Democratic Party that dont like Bernie Sanders its not just them. Theres literally hundreds of thousands of voters who arent billionaires who dont like Bernie Sanders, they like biden. That cant be reduced to the billionaire class. The billionaire class is running and hes running for joe bidens votes. Also the socalled centrists have run out of money. Now the only people who can run in the elections is tom steyer or bloomberg who have unlimited numbers of dollars at their disposal and someone like sanders who can draw small donations from huge numbers of people. The traditional model of Democratic Party fundraising is almost its almost dead. Yeah. Youre supporting joe biden. Yes. Do you have a lot of people [ applause ] a lot of reason this consolidation happened late is exactly what john said, which is in the beginning it was like biden is the presumptive nominee, front runner, claim the obama legacy. He was not great on the campaign trail, not great in debates. Democratic voters and professionals and obama world people were like, im nervous about his ability to campaign. Nothing ideological, nothing im nervous about that. Theyre nervous and thats why bloomberg as you stated in the opening came into the race. And then we had South Carolina with the biggest concentration of africanamerican voters voting overwhelmingly for joe biden. You have to i think of this why did that allay your concerns if you had them about his campaigning ability . Was that the thing that turned it for you . It didnt turn it for me. I was a joe biden supporter for a year. And my position always was if joe biden i knew there was going to be a lot of candidates. I knew who all, you know, Elizabeth Warren, i knew bernie was coming back, cory booker and all that. I said, if he can somehow make it through the democratic primary process, hes by far the best candidate to beat donald trump first of all, to unite the party, to beat donald trump, to hold onto the congress, to get the senate, and to be able to govern and to be able to bring back the world to americas side. [ applause ] i dont say that wait. This is important. One primary race and multiple president ial candidacies, i mean, if hes the one to unite the party, the party will alienate the incredible youth surge that weve seen behind the Sanders Campaign. New voters, majority peoples of color, demographics nationwide supporting sanders. Biden may have one primary, but its one race out of four. Well have to see what happens. Well see what happens tomorrow. Well see what happens tomorrow. By the way, im not suggesting that Bernie Sanders cant win the presidency. Im not saying that. What i am saying is theres a Bigger Picture here and i spent a lot of time at the Convention Last time in 2016 where you have a lot of young voters who wont vote for biden, who wont vote for hillary, who didnt. And what you say to them is, okay, you have a choice. You can either have donald trump and we know what he is now. We might not have known then. We know what he is now. Hes a liar, hes selfinvolved, he is he doesnt understand how Public Policy works. Or you can have joe biden. Or you can have Bernie Sanders. For the biden people to say, im not voting and im going to allow donald trump to become president is moronic for the same reason that bernie biden people to say, im not going to vote for bernie. You cannot do that and its up to Bernie Sanders and up to his supporters and biden, too, right . Biden, too. Biden too. What holds for sanders holds for biden. 100 . But give me this. If for some reason biden gets the nomination, we have to go allin. We cant let this man [ applause ] this is important. This is important. This is very, very important. We are looking at two existential crises. Democracy and the world, the earth. If we dont take this presidency away, were going to lose democracy and were going to lose our ability to live on the earth. And i want to just remind people, bush gore. And people who ar