Max, give us your top level take away because both
Biden and Trump won.
But President Biden is winning by significantly more.
Sure, you know it's interesting because what the Republicans will
say tonight,
they'll try to draw attention to that uncommitted vote which
in many ways is is a vote is an expression
vote.
It's trying to send a message to a president that
they still believe in but they're looking to express themselves,
which is democracy at its finest.
But when you look at the Republican side,
right, there is no one with a pulse who believed
that Nikki Haley could win tonight.
And nonetheless, nearly 1/3 of voters came out to vote
against Donald Trump and vote for her.
That right there is a vote about where they will
stand in November,
and that's the essence of Donald Trump's weakness here.
Donald Trump is a former president should be winning
90% of the vote, 85%
of the vote. But what he's constantly seen in primary
after primary is yes,
he's got the base locked down,
but he is struggling with a ceiling.
It's that same ceiling that the Republicans saw in 22
in 20,
and it's that ceiling that hates maggot extremism.
And nonetheless, today, once again,
we see evidence of it.
Republicans are a party divided and people often like to
say,
well, both parties are divided,
but is that even true?
No, because just look at Congress,
right? President Biden agenda, right.
He has had a largely centrist foreign policy agenda,
a progressive economic agenda, and they've worked.
If you look at how Democrats have voted in Congress
since he took office,
they're basically all on the same page.
Republicans, they cannot even get their faction in order.
Well, you know, they used to say I'm not
a member of an organized political party.
I'm a Democrat. Those days are long gone.
Of course, Speaker Pelosi had a razor thin margin and
I was able to successfully advance out of the House
monumental legislation and literally the Republican caucus with a similar
margin couldn't organize themselves out of a paper box.
So it's they are totally disorganized.
They can't get their act together.
And that's also being reflected in these electoral results time
and again.
There's a really strong electoral block that wants nothing to
do MAGA based extremism.
That bloc is in the Republican Party.
That bloc is in independence and that bloc is of
course amongst swing voters.
Michael, the Biden team knows how crucial Michigan will be
in November.
What are they taking away tonight?
What are you hearing from them?
Well, Stephanie, when you think about why the Biden campaign,
why the DNC, and why President Biden himself wanted Michigan
to be part of this early voting window,
right, This is the earliest they've ever voted in a
nominating contest.
It was because they wanted to highlight some of the
strengths that President Biden has among key voting coalitions,
among black voters, among union workers who have been so
important to President Biden.
That's the event he came here to do with those
auto workers ahead of the primary.
But what is also done is expose some of the
vulnerabilities that the president does need to work on if
he's going to carry Michigan by the margins he needs
to in order to be re elected president.
Now we talk about Dearborn.
I spent all day talking to voters in Dearborn and
they are very animated and motivated to vote against the
president,
to vote for this uncommitted ballot line because they wanted
to send a message
about what's happening in Gaza right now.
But that you're not going to see that replicated across
the country because obviously the Arab American population is significant
there in a way that it's not elsewhere.
But whereas Steve Kornacki was laying out,
there was also a significant uncommitted vote was college campuses.
We know that the Biden campaign has struggles with younger
voters.
You're going to see that on college campus across the
country.
The president, just last week,
I was with him in California.
He was holding an event about student loans.
He didn't do it on a college campus,
in part because they're concerned about the protests that have
been emerging at these events.
So yes, this is a good night for Joe Biden.
He's going to win the state.
He's going to show some strength among those key voting
groups he wanted to highlight.
But it also does show some warning signs that a
lot of Democrats have been trying to raise with the
campaign that they need to address.
But Stephanie, they do have time to address it between
now and November.
But Mark, those uncommitted voters are voting against the president
for now,
as Max put it, an expression vote because they are
not happy about his support for Israel.
But we also know that right now the president is
pushing for a ceasefire.
So is that proof that their efforts are working?
He's listening.
It could be. I mean,
I think we're going to see a few things.
I mean, first, when you see the exit polling coming
out and what voters,
how angry, basically a lot of these protest voters are,
whether they're planning to come home or whether they're not
going to vote for Biden under any circumstances.
He'll get a sense of whether
the situation in the Middle East,
no matter how it changes,
will be so intractable that it could change their vote.
I think the bigger issue is frankly young voters.
I mean as as Steve was saying earlier,
I mean places like Ann Arbor,
East Lansing, big, big college towns which have,
you know, growing suburban populations around them.
I mean, are these voters going to come home?
And I think in the whole of it,
I mean by and seems to have had a pretty
good night just like he did in New Hampshire,
even though he wasn't on the ballot.
I mean there was some talk that Dean Phillips he
was going to way over perform and embarrass him there.
He didn't. South Carolina he did fine.
Whereas Trump seems to be underperforming his polling to some
degree,
which I think could be very,
you know, troubling for for the Trump campaign.
But ultimately, I mean we're going to see,
you know, whether Democratic voters are going to come home
in the long term.
And there are certainly warning signs here.
But also so it looks like the whole of the
party seems to be solidly behind Barton Biden.
Mark, you have covered Governor Gretchen Whitmer extensively.
What kind of position is she in?
While she is a superstar surrogate for the president,
she's also in a complicated position,
needing to be sensitive to her constituents who are casting
those protest votes.
Yeah, she's been extremely cautious.
I mean, her her rhetoric has been,
I mean, really, really scripted.
And she's usually a fairly,
you know, freewheeling rhetorical politician to some degree.
And in some ways, I mean,
she's run ahead of Biden,
certainly in polls. And I think that,
you know, I think especially on the abortion issue,
I mean she's been very,
very solid with suburban, a lot of suburban,
even Republicans that had sort of fled the the Republican
coalition over the last few years.
She's been very strong there.
But, yeah, I mean, I think she's kind of riding
in miniature,
the same kind of wave or the same kind of,
you know, delicate situation that Biden has.
And I think, you know,
I think she is, you know,
in a little bit better position now.
But I think Biden is the one that's going to
really feel the brunt of it going forward.
Max, nobody thought Nikki Haley was going to win,
but she's still staying in the race with this idea
that she's running as an understudy.
She's running as the backup quarterback.
But let's say Donald Trump does get knocked out.
She's not going to control the delegates.
And I cannot imagine they will turn and say the
person who is the thorn in Donald Trump's side,
now we're going to back her.
Yeah, Mitt Romney would have a better chance of winning
the Republican nomination than Nikki Haley at this point.
And, you know, it's almost commendable,
the way in which she's burned basically every bridge and
relationship that she had in the party because the party
is not representative of that old school Republicanism any any
longer, or at least only a small sliver
of it. You know, in the end,
the Republican Party, we like to talk so much about
this cult of personality.
I actually think it's gotten beyond that at this point.
It is centered around a MAGA extremism that goes well
beyond Donald Trump and will live well beyond him.
And we would certainly see that
should there be an open,
contested primary with Trump not on the ballot.
Michael, explain this one to US.
President Biden made history in Michigan last year when he
joined an auto worker picket line.
No president has ever done that before.
But new numbers from NBC show he's actually losing ground
among union households to Donald Trump since 2020.
Why is that? Is it about the everyday inflation cost
of groceries that have people down?
You know, it's a it's a fascinating question.
It's one that the Biden campaign is spending a lot
of time working on.
And we have seen that the
at the leadership level, some of the nation's largest unions
and their leadership have come out enthusiastically to support President
Biden.
But we are seeing something of a disconnect with some
of those rank and file members of those unions.
And it is for issues like inflation.
You also can look at
the Teamsters union, the firefighters union.
They have not yet endorsed President Biden.
The firefighters union were the first union to endorse candidate
Joe Biden 4 years ago,
in fact even did it before he got into the
race.
And when I spoke with one of the firefighter union
representatives about why that is,
he said well, our members have other issues too.
He mentioned in collation, but he also mentioned Second Amendment
rights.
That as another example of ways in which these rank
and file
members maybe aren't lining up with the leadership.
So the president, it really does have an economic story
to tell.
They want to spend more time over the course of
the year translating the statistics that we talk about that
you know so well,
Stephanie, in a way that the average voter will understand.
When you look at the State of the Union address
next week,
Stephanie, that's a major moment that the Biden campaign hopes
to really begin that conversation with voters,
including union workers. All right,
let's turn now to another major issue for Washington and
the country.
Congress now has three days to prevent a partial government
shutdown.
Again. My colleague Kelly O'Donnell has a look at today's
big meeting that took place at the White House.
Their meeting described as intense yet productive,
the president and congressional leaders facing urgent deadlines and differing
priorities from critical aid for foreign allies.
I think the consequences of inaction every day in Ukraine
are dire.
To House Speaker Mike Johnson insisting the border crisis requires
executive action from the president.
The first priority of the country is our border and
making sure it's secure.
On top of that divide threat of a phased federal
government shutdown
Friday, the 1st wave of government departments and agencies run
out of funds,
among them the FDA, Transportation and Veterans Affairs,
March 8th. The rest could close,
including Defense, Homeland Security and Justice.
A painful replay for 36 year Old Navy wife and
mother of two Nikita Fowler.
This is not our first or even second government shutdown
and it's just the continuous worry of how this is
going to impact our family.
Given the harsh consequences, talk of common ground shutdown would
damage the economy significantly and I think we all agree
to that
and we need a bipartisan solution optimism but no clear
path yet from the speaker.
We will get the government funded and we'll keep working
on that.
Well, they really, Max, you came into Congress in
2019 during a government shutdown.
When they come back from vacation,
what are these negotiations really going to be look like
and are they in good faith?
So here's the deal. The most important negotiations are actually
happening within the Republican caucus.
And you know, the speaker's challenge is that he's wasted
all his political capital.
Of course, after they kicked McCarthy out,
they said we can't do this again next week.
So you know, Johnson had
some room to maneuver. That's all gone.
The 2nd element of this,
though, is that there's a significant portion of the Republican
caucus that's never actually lived through a government shutdown.
Marjorie Taylor Green has never had to go through this.
And what they don't understand,
because they've never lived it,
is that when you instigate a government shutdown,
it is a guaranteed political loser.
This is to say nothing of the fact that the
Republican Party right now wants that government shutdown because they
want to cut funding for those most in need and
want to cut funding for our fight against extremism and
radicalism abroad and not to be there for our allies.
That's why they want to shut down government.
And the American people to a vast extent
don't support that. So what they're going to have to
see,
right, if they do shut down the government is they'll
start to see polls,
they'll start to see people going on social media turning
against them,
they'll start to get calls from their constituents,
and they'll have to experience that in order to come
back to the table.
So there's still a chance.
There's still a possibility, but it's not going to be
Speaker Johnson who's going to actually be the one leading
this.
It is the extreme flank of his own party that
kicked out McCarthy and now controls him.
Mark a government shutdown, does not help Trump.
It does not help Republicans.
But does it help depress the votes?
People might not get off the couch in November for
a government that doesn't work for them.
No, And it's. But typically people will look to Republicans,
especially since they control the House and will be seen
as driving this.
And there is a sense that,
look, there are a lot more grown-ups in the Senate,
in the White House at this point.
And every time that the Republican Congress is front and
center,
we've seen this repeatedly over the last certainly a year
and a half.
It's a really bad look for them.
It's nothing but chaos. And there's not a sense that
anyone is in charge.
And and look, I mean,
Speaker Johnson is in a really,
really rough position now. It's unclear,
you know, how he could navigate this and still keep
his job.
I mean, he could probably do a deal,
probably, you know, get it passed with a lot of
Democratic votes,
which would almost certainly lead to some kind of vacating
of the chair,
which is the same thing that happened to McCarthy.
And then they have the next iteration of chaos.
So look, I mean, it's it's never good,
I think, for Republicans when the House Republicans are front
and center and it looks like that's what's going to
happen here.