Establishment Democrats endorse Biden Welcome to the Maclean's Politics Insider: America 2020, launched for readers who crave U.S. political news during primary season. If you want to receive this new newsletter, take no action, it will arrive in your inbox every weekday at noon. If you'd rather not receive it, please unsubscribe here. Klobuchar, Buttigieg and co. for Biden: After Joe Biden won big in South Carolina, it's now widely believed among establishment Democrats that the former Vice-President is the only person who has a hope of stopping Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination. That's why Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete Buttigieg both suspended their presidential campaigns and endorsed Biden at a rally in Dallas on Monday night. The two self-proclaimed moderates, who seemed to have barely-disguised contempt for one another during the debates, buried the hatchet and urged their supporters to vote for Biden on Super Tuesday. They were joined in Dallas by an almost-forgotten special guest star: former Texas Representative Beto O'Rourke, whose campaign for president ended all the way back in November 2019, but returned to sum up the establishment case for Biden: "We need somebody who can defeat Donald Trump." Obama gave Buttigieg a call: Another sign that the Democratic establishment may be closing ranks around Biden: after Pete Buttigieg suspended his campaign on Sunday without endorsing Biden, he got a call from a very established Democrat, former President Barack Obama. As in the past, Obama avoided making a direct endorsement, but reportedly told Buttigieg "that he now has leverage and should consider how to use it." That seemed to be enough of a hint for Buttigieg, who endorsed Biden the next day. #WarrenEndorseBernie hashtag trends: After Klobuchar and Buttigieg announced their Biden endorsement, a top trending topic on Twitter for hours was #WarrenEndorseBernie. This hashtag urged Elizabeth Warren to end her seemingly-moribund campaign and throw her support behind Bernie Sanders, to do for progressives what Klobuchar and Buttigieg were doing for the establishment side of the party. This topic was also taken up the same day, in non-hashtag form, by New York magazine's Sarah Jones, who argued that a Warren endorsement could make all the difference for Sanders: Sanders performs poorly with the white, college-educated voters that make up the bulk of Warren’s base. If she can make the case for Sanders, she’ll help build a progressive front against a moneyed and well-organized moderate force. Warren has indicated so far that she intends to stay in until the convention, and while the hashtags were flying, she was releasing another of her detailed plans, this time for dealing with the coronavirus. Chris Matthews out at NBC: One person Sanders won't have to kick around anymore is Chris Matthews, the longtime host of MSNBC's Hardball, who announced on his show Monday night that he was leaving the show immediately and ending his association with its parent network, NBC (and their parent company, Comcast). Matthews had already been forced to apologize on the air after he compared Sanders' takeover of the Democratic Party to the Germans taking over France in 1940. But the host had also gained damaging new scrutiny in the post-#MeToo era for some of the comments he had made to or about women, and last Friday, journalist Laura Bassett alleged that he said "keep putting makeup on her, I'll fall in love with her" while she was preparing to go on his show. In his farewell speech, Matthews apologized for his past remarks and said: "the younger generations out there are ready to take the reins." —Jaime Weinman | 
