What went wrong for Warren? 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. Did Warren think Sanders wouldn't run?: No one was surprised that Elizabeth Warren chose to suspend her campaign on Thursday, after Super Tuesday put an end to her hopes of being president. But it still felt like a shock, given that she seemed to be the frontrunner not that long ago. Reluctance to vote for a woman may have played a part, as did a November 2019 poll showing her losing to Trump in most battleground states. But by some accounts, the problems with her campaign really began years before that, when Bernie Sanders decided he would run again; if things had gone differently, Warren might have been able to consolidate the progressive vote instead of splitting it with Sanders: Throughout 2017 and 2018, she and her advisers believed that Sanders would survey the landscape and decide that his biggest contribution could be as kingmaker in a primary, one that would be fought out on terms that he himself had established. Bloomberg's permanent campaign: The Michael Bloomberg presidential campaign is over, with the former Mayor having spent an estimated $620 million of his own money setting up offices in places where he will never actually compete. He has already announced that his staffers will continue to be on the payroll through the summer, and in some cases, all the way to the general election, as he transforms the Bloomberg 2020 campaign into an advocacy group. The group was announced to the public before it even had a name, but it will focus on making digital ads targeting Donald Trump and urging that he be voted out of office. So far the $620 million has helped pay for an ad "which shows a mix of clips from popular movies like 'Star Wars' and 'Mean Girls.'" Sanders targets the Midwest: After getting thumped in Southern states, Bernie Sanders cancelled a planned Friday rally in Jackson, Mississippi, one of five states that will hold their primaries next Tuesday. With Joe Biden seemingly unbeatable in the South, Sanders chose to spend the day in Michigan, the biggest state up for grabs next week. Sanders was originally hoping to do better in the South than he did in 2016, but ever since Biden's campaign revived, there's been a feeling of déjà vu: The shift in Mr. Sanders’s schedule was also an acknowledgment that he had not improved his standing among black voters in the South four years after his first run for president. In 2016, he faced criticism for his inability to organize support from African-Americans, a weakness that contributed to his loss to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Romney vs. Biden investigations: Ever since Joe Biden became the frontrunner, Senate Republicans have — purely coincidentally, they say — been ramping up investigations of Biden and his son Hunter's job with a Ukrainian firm. These are the same investigations that Donald Trump was impeached for demanding, and now the Senate Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a vote for Wednesday on whether to issue a subpoena in the case, but they may have a problem: Senator Mitt Romney , the only Republican Senator to vote for Trump's removal from office, is on that same committee. Romney told reporters that he's worried it might look like the Republicans are trying to dig up dirt on Trump's likely opponent: “I would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body." As long as the Democrats on the committee all vote against it, the subpoena can't be issued unless all the Republicans vote for it. — Jaime Weinman | 
