>> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm natalie morales. thank you for watching. this sunday, growing coronavirus fears. the covid 19 threat is going across the united states. >> across the country and around the world, northern italy now on lockdown. the death toll is rising. fears are increasing. and doubts about u.s. preparedness are growing. >> i'm not happy about the lack of the appropriate number of test kits, that's for sure. >> this amid concerns that the trump administration is not being honest with the public. >> anybody that needs a test gets a test. and the tests are all perfect. like the letter is perfect.

the transcription was perfect. >> plus, reversal of fortune. joe biden's super, super tuesday, winning ten states and grabbing the delegate lead from bernie sanders. >> have we been as successful as i would have hoped in bringing young people in? and the answer is no. >> four candidates drop out leaving no women with a plausible chance at the nomination. >> one of the hardest parts of this is all those little girls who are going to have to wait for hour years. >> this morning, i'll talk to bernie sanders of vermont. >> joining me, hallie jackson, helene cooper, and matt bye, contributing columnist for "the washington post." welcome to sunday.

it's meet the press. good sunday morning. we have two stories dominating the news this week 37 the coronavirus and joe biden running for president. more than 100,000 reported cases and over 3,000 deaths. italy has seen the worst outbreak and this morning, the pope simply waved to the people in the square some airports are largely empty.

the swiftness in the change and the political landscape has amazed even the most cynical of political observers. four candidates dropped out with three now endorsing biden and the remaining contests largely tilt in biden's favor. >> from milan to tokyo' disney land, in the u.s., events have been handled. on friday, the first ncaa tournament plays without fans.

at least 19d people have died. governors are asking for more federal help. >> we are the tip of the spear nationally on this. >> this is like the flu on steroids. >> we envision the need to have more testing capacities. >> on friday, president trump visited the cdc after signing an $8.3 billion emergency funding package. >> anybody that needs a test gets a test. they're there and they are beautiful. >> i have every confidence that your physician will contact state health officials and have it tested. only about 1900 people have been

tested for the virus nationwide. then there's the issue of testing capacity. >> the cdc puts out guidance. anyone who wants a test, come and get a test. vice president pence says oh, we can't do the test. >> not happy about the appropriate number of test kits, that's for sure. >> president trump connected testing for the virus to his own impeachment. >> and the tests are all perfect. like the letter is perfect. the transcription was perfect. >> and mr. trump said he would prefer not to allow passengers on the grand princess cruise ship on u.s. soil. 21 people aboard the ship still docked off the coast of california have tested positive for the virus out of just 46

tested. more than 3500 people are onboard. >> i told them to make the final decision. i would rather, because i like the numbers being where they are, i don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault. >> the grand princess is scheduled to dock in the port of oakland on monday. >> like being in a little prison cell at sea. >> joining me is dr. anthony fauci, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases. welcome back to "meet the press." >> good to be with you. >> all right, so the issue of testing. we heard the president say anyone who wants a test gets a test. i understand that's not quite where we are. are we still on only a few thousand people have been tested? >> what's happened now is we really are accelerating dramatically. early on, there were some missteps with regard to the tests and some technical aspects to it, but right now, i believe

1.1 million tests have already been sent out. by monday, there will be an additional 400,000. by the end of next week, probably around 4 million. >> what does that mean -- or what about the testing capacity? by the end of next week, what kind of data will you have to allow you to make new decisions? >> there are a couple things about testing that are important that people need to understand. there's testing of an individual doctor, a physician, who wants to know if a person is infected or not. that physician has a responsibility of asking for the test and getting it. then there's another aspect of testing where you do surveillance in the country to determine if there are under the radar screened a number of individuals. both of those things are going to be going on now at full speed. >> so when do you feel like you'll have a better sense of the scope of this outbreak? >> i think we're getting a better sense as the day goes by. unfortunately, that better sense is not encouraging because we're seeing community spread. whenever you see community spread, you can do contact tracing, but as more community spread becomes logistically more difficult. >> is it a waste of time almost,

of resources, or not? >> that's a great question. there comes a time, chuck, when you have containment which you're trying to find out who's infected and put them in isolation. i hope it's if and not when, you get so many people infected, the best thing you can do is mitigation in addition to containment. >> we saw the extreme action taken in italy. we have seen warnings, washington state is out there saying anybody over the age of 60 needs to take extra precaution, maybe stay home, don't go to large events. what's the likelihood we're going to have to do more extreme quarantine? >> i think right now, something that's important that i hope the american people appreciate is that the risk of getting into trouble with this infection, mainly, if you are infected, is overwhelmingly weighted towards people with underlying conditions and the elderly. that's the reason why if you're an elderly person with an

underlying condition, if you get infected, the risk of getting into trouble is considerable, so it's our responsibility to protect the vulnerable. when i say protect, i mean right now, not wait until things get worse. say no large crowds, no long trips, and above all, don't get on a cruise ship. >> no cruise ships. how about no airplanes, no trains? where are you on transportation? >> here's the recommendation from the cdc. i feel this way strongly. this would be a recommendation. if you're a person with an underlying condition and you are particularly an elderly person with an underlying condition, you need to think twice about getting on a plane on a long trip, and not only think twice. just don't get on a cruise ship. >> so where are we going over the next three months? are we go to the point -- there have been different points. do we need to prepare for a spike? is our job of mitigation to level out the spike, which means it will be here for a while, but in a low-level way? what is success going to look like? >> it's going to be two things. it's going to be try and prevent the actual spread. there are a couple ways of doing that.

prevent from without and within, the kinds of travel restrictions we impose and even the airlines and others impose upon themselves. and in here, to take a look at what you have. that if you can do containment with contact tracing, great. you don't want to give it up, but also, start seriously looking at this kind of mitigation. they call it social distancing, but it's commonsense stuff. you don't want to go to a massive gathering, particularly if you're a vulnerable individual. >> are we talking church services? are we looking at anything 15 to 20 people? is that the recommendation? >> again, it depends on who you are. the question is, if you're a vulnerable person, take it seriously, because particularly when you have community spread, you may not know at any given time that there are people who are infected. >> sporting events? what would you tell the ncaa if they came to you right now? that's coming up, opening day.

these may seem superficial, but part of the economic engine, part of the health issues. what would you do? >> chuck, in realtime, you have to evaluate the situation. if we continue to see the community spread go up, you have to seriously look at anything that's a large gathering. again, i have to underscore, chuck, particularly if you're an individual who has an underlying condition and are vulnerable. >> what's the most realistic way this ends, where immunity is what kills this, meaning enough people get it, and overtime, it just stops catching, a vaccine is what ends this, or it will burn itself out? >> it's probably a combination of both. we're not going to have a vaccine that's deployment for at least a year to a year and a half. >> what does that vaccine look like? is that part of a flu shot at the end of the day? is that what that looks like? >> certainly not flu, but the same sort of thing. you'll probably go in and get an injection.

>> so that's vaccines. >> that's not today. if this cycles through, maybe even goes down a bit and comes back next year, that's when you get public health plus a vaccine. we hope this just goes away, burns itself out the way sars did. if it doesn't, and it cycles in a seasonal way, that's when a vaccine comes in. >> how uncomfortable is it that perhaps china's authoritarian ways prevent this. meaning had they been a free and open society, this might have spread faster. >> in the beginning, chuck, they were not as transparent as we would have liked. they were saying at the end of december that that cluster of 24 cases were related to contact with an animal reservoir. that wasn't the case because there was human to human to human going on a few weeks before. if the chinese themselves had known that, the health authorities, people i know, my colleagues, they would have given social distancing right away instead of having a 40,000-person block party is what they had, unfortunately. >> but their extreme quarantine, has it worked? >> it has. that's not the usual thing you

do. that's something we wouldn't ever be able to do here, but even though there's a lot of things that have unintended negative consequences of that, i think it did help dampen what would have been a broader chinese -- wuhan was terrible, but they prevented a bigger spread. >> are you more optimistic this week than last week? >> it depends. now that we have tests out and can get a better handle, but clearly, i'm concerned about community spread. you have to realistically be concerned about community spread. >> dr. anthony fauci, thanks for coming on, sharing your expertise with us. we're all listening. >> always good to be with you. a handful of states have declared a state of emergency amid the coronavirus outbreak, including maryland. joining me is maryland's governor, larry hogan. welcome to "meet the press." you heard from dr. fauci. you already declared a state of

emergency. what does that declaration allow you to do? >> it gives us a great deal of flexibility to try to coordinate with all of our state agencies, all of the local health departments and emergency management agencies, and it allows us to tap in to a lot of resources we couldn't otherwise do. we also put in emergency legislation to enable us to tap into our rainy day fund. we put in the supplemental budget to provide funding so we can do some of the things we need to do to ramp up and be prepared to protect the people of maryland. >> you have a resource in johns hopkins probably nice to have in the state of maryland. walk me through the testing kit issue, and do you feel as if you have gotten enough support from the federal government? >> we're also the headquarters of the nih. john hopkins. we're lucky in that we have some of the best health operations in the world located in our state. or right here surrounding the nation's capital. at this point in time, we have the necessary resources.

i think we're about to double the number of test kits we have, but this is obviously an issue that dr. fauci talked about, that we have been hearing a lot about, ramping this up as the crisis escalates is a concern among all of the governors. >> you heard him say, he doesn't sound as if containment is going to work. we're probably in a mitigation standpoint, and he seemed to indicate, i gave him every opportunity to sort of give us good news, and he was being very cautious. it tells me it's likely this community spread is going to get worse. what does that mean to you now? >> the governors are really on the front lines. we have had -- look, i think there's been pretty good cooperation at the federal, state, and local level, but this thing is escalating so rapidly. information is changing not only on a daily basis, but almost on an hourly basis. i'm the chair of the national governors' association. we had all of the governors here in washington a couple weeks ago, and a number of experts came to brief us on the virus. we have been working on this for several weeks. but just in the past week, we went from having no cases to finding our first three positive tests to now we have done 52 different tests in our state, we had a situation of somebody coming from new jersey, coming

to maryland at the cpac conference. we have a person from maryland that went to the state of pennsylvania. >> like in the last 48 hours, exponentially grown here. >> we had press conferences we started last week, we did wednesday, thursday, friday. ramped up to multiple different levels and we have ongoing, as we're sitting here right now talking, more things are happening in our state. >> there does seem as if politics gets in the way of this a little bit. the president even took a shot at a fellow governor of yours on the other side of the aisle. are you concerned it looks like partisanship is being invoked at the top, it will just devolve? >> i think it's critically important, particularly in any kind of a crisis, i think clear, direct communication is critical. and i think it's really important that you try to take all the politics out of it on both sides of the aisle. this is not the first time i have been involved in crisis

communication. right after i became governor, we had the riots in baltimore. being transparent, being direct, keeping the public informed with the facts is critical, and it's not a time to play politics. i sat down with all of our democratic leaders in the state, with both u.s. senators, with our congressmen, our elected officials, the speaker of the house, they immediately passed my emergency legislation in a day to give us the flexibility. i had a long conversation with the vice president last night. i was in the situation room with him and secretary azar, the head of the cdc on monday. we had 52 governors on a video conference across the nation. >> are you concerned the president may undermine the efforts of the federal response? >> look, i think it was a really smart move for the president to elevate vice president pence to work across all the different agencies and to coordinate, as a former governor, he knows the governors are on the front lines. he is doing, i think, a good job of coordinating everybody and communicating with us.

i think that's the way the messaging ought to go. has the president been perfect in his communication? i would say he hasn't communicated the way i would and the way i might like him to. but i think the rest of the team has been doing a pretty good job. >> governor larry hogan, republican of maryland, i know you have a tough job on your hands. good luck with it. we're all pulling together on this one. >> thank you, chuck. >> as we go to break, a quick programming note. tonight on msnbc, richard engle goes inside the worldwide fight against the coronavirus. >> when we come back, we're going to turn to the presidential race. senator bernie sanders joins me next.

welcome back. whoever said a week is a lifetime in politics apparently was underestimating things, considering the democratic race for president. joe biden started off as a

front-runner. then after kamala harris had her moment in the first debate and sent biden's numbers tumbling, elizabeth warren briefly took the lead and faded just as fast, prompting michael bloomberg, until bloomberg's debate face plant left the surging sanders as the prohibitive favorite, only to see him crash super tuesday leaving joe biden as the front-runner. it would appear to put biden on the path to the potential winner, but if we have learned anything, it's that this race can change in a hurry. joining me now is senator bernie sanders of vermont. welcome back to "meet the press." >> good to be with you. >> before i get to the campaign, i want to start with the issue of the spread of this coronavirus. what would your response look like as president sanders? >> very different than what president trump is doing. unlike trump, i believe in science. i would not appoint somebody

like mike pence to be the head of the effort. pence's record in terms of disease, in terms of hiv outbreak, was not a good one. we have to have confidence among state officials all over this country and people all over the world. so we need scientists running the operation, not pence. second of all, you cannot have a president who every day is saying absurd things. i mean, touting the fact, i think just the other day, that he is somehow very, very knowledgeable about an issue about which he clearly is not knowledgeable about. we have to work with the entire world, reach out, adequately fund the national institute of health and the cdc. we need regular reports coming from leadership in washington, the state officials all over this country. we have to make sure that doctors, nurses all over america are protected as they do their job, because if they get the virus, we're going to be totally unprepared to deal with the general population. we don't have adequate test kits right now, we don't have icu

units, enough of them. nurses will tell you they have not received the kind of instructions and preparations they need. there's a lot of work to be done. bottom line is, from washington, the american people need to know that there are scientists, there are doctors who are running the operation, communicating with people all over the world, because this is a global crisis. we're not seeing that in washington from trump. >> i just spoke with dr. anthony fauci. i know you know him well, know his reputation well. he said the following this morning. he doesn't think people over a certain age should be traveling right now, particularly not going on cruises. if you have an underlying condition, there really does need to be some self-quarantining of sorts or being careful going into large

groups. let me ask you this. has your campaign made a decision on whether to hold large rallies right now? >> that's a decision, we just held a rally in chicago yesterday. we had about 15,000 people out. and what i will tell you, we are talking to public health officials all over this country. and obviously, what is most important to us is to protect the health of the american people. this is an issue, obviously, not just for our campaign. this is an issue for the national basketball association, an issue for every organization in this country that has large events. all i can tell you is that is an issue we're looking at and talking to public health officials. >> was just going to say, who makes that call for you?

if a public health official in michigan says, i know you have a big rally scheduled here, wherever it is, if they say don't do it, you're not going to do it? >> look, we're not going to obviously, we're not going to endanger the health of anybody in this country. again, this is an issue that every organization, every candidate has got to deal with. >> let me go to the state of the campaign, and specifically michigan. michigan was the start of your comeback the last time. how important is it to you this time? >> michigan is obviously very important. that's where i am right now, in grand rapids. we're going to be holding a rally later in the day in ann arbor. to my mind, i think we have a real shot to win here in michigan because the agenda that we are talking about is an agenda that works for the working families of this state and furthermore, it really contrasts my views with joe biden's. now that we're down to a two-way race, i think it's clear for the american people to see where biden's record is and where my record is. one of the issues is here in michigan trade has been a disaster.

trade agreements like nafta and permanent normal trade relations with china which forced american workers to compete against people making pennies an hour has resulted in the loss of 160,000 jobs here in michigan, some 4 million jobs all over this country. i helped lead the effort, as you might recall, against the disastrous trade deals. i worked with the unions. on the other hand, joe biden strongly support these agreements. i think you could look at the campaigns and the people in michigan. how we raise our money. joe biden has received funding from 60 billionaires. we're receiving money from working-class people all over the country. i think people instinctively understand when you're indebted to billionaires and super pacs, you're not going to stand up for the working families of the country. >> are you concerned joe biden can say look at what the obama administration did for the auto industry? and that counters your trade argument.

and in michigan it will resonate stronger than some of your trade arguments? >> i don't think so. look, obviously, everyone worked together to try to save the automobile industry. but right now, what you're seeing is in -- >> you voted against that bailout. you voted against that bailout. >> no, i did vote against the wall street bailout, you're right, because i do not believe the crooks on wall street should have been bailed out. >> that included -- >> i understand, sometimes you have to make that choice. but the bailout was a disaster. my view was the billionaires in the country should have bailed out wall street, not working families. and by the way, wall street got trillions of dollars in zero-interest loans. a direct gift from the taxpayers of the country. that was a mistake.

>> i want to get your reaction to something. joe biden is up with an ad that pushes back at you, particularly on social security. >> super tuesday, state after state after state called for joe biden. bernie sanders goes on the attack. politifact has called the sanders' campaign's attacks false. negative ads will only help trump. it's time we bring our party together. >> i'm sure you know, it's pretty clear what the biden campaign is doing. they're trying to make that any attack you do is helping donald trump. do you accept that criticism? are you concerned that the two of you could overattack each other? >> look, joe biden is a friend of mine. he has indicated that if i win the nomination, he'll be there for me. i have said if he wins the nomination, i will be there for him. together, we're going to beat donald trump, the most dangerous president in the modern history of the country, but we live in a democracy. we have to contrast our records and our ideas and our vision for the future. here is the fact. this is undeniable. joe biden has been on the floor of the senate, was on the floor of the senate time after time after time as part of an effort for a boles simpson, that's undeniable. that's including cuts to social security, cuts to programs. those are the words joe biden used on the floor of the senate. when i say i have spent my life fighting against cuts and to

expand social security, that is a very different record than joe biden has. i voted against the war in iraq. he voted for the war in iraq. we have very different records. >> on super tuesday, you have said, when more people come out, you believe you will do well. well, on super tuesday, where we saw spikes in turnout, it was joe biden that did well. you saw spikes of turnout of suburban voters, of african-american voters. we didn't see the spike in turnout in enough places of your voters. what's your explanation? >> well, my explanation is that we won in california. we won in utah. we won in colorado. we won in vermont. i think the explanation is not complicated. the establishment put a great deal of pressure on pete buttigieg, on amy klobuchar, who ran really aggressive campaigns. i know both of them. they work really, really hard. suddenly, right before super tuesday, they announced their withdrawal. if they had not withdrawn from the race before super tuesday, which was kind of a surprise to a lot of people, i suspect we would have won in minnesota, we would have won in maine, we would have won in massachusetts. the turnout would have been different. but i think what we're doing in this campaign is we're taking on fought only the entire political establishment, we're taking on the corporate establishment as well.

i'm very proud a year after i introduced this campaign, a campaign which has taken on wall street and the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance companies, you know what, we're just a few delegates behind joe biden, and we have a real shot to win this. >> final question, senator. can you win this nomination without the support of elizabeth warren? >> yeah, well, i certainly would love to have the support of senator warren, but yes, of course we can. we can win this because we're going to win the support of working people all over this country who agree with our agenda that among many other things, the time is long overdue to recognize that health care is a human right in this country, not a privilege. we must have medicare for all single payer program. >> does it concern you one of the hesitations it appears senator warren may have, as she told rachel maddow, is that some of your supporters have been, i think she called it, pretty ugly, said some pretty dangerous

things? are you concerned that is holding her back from supporting you? >> well, i am concerned about the kind of ugliness that exists on the internet and the twitter world in general. it is very ugly. i will not deny for a second that we have some people who claim to be supporters, although i have a hard time understanding why they think they can support me and make vicious personal attacks against people. that's not what our campaign is about. but i have to tell you something. take a look at the stuff coming in to our campaign. talk to some of the african-american women who are in my campaign about the racist and sexist crap they have got to deal with. it's an ugly world out there. i hope very much in the weeks and months and years to come, we can clean that up. >> that is something everyone can endorse. senator sanders, campaigning in michigan this morning, thanks for coming on and sharing your views. stay safe on the trail, sir. >> thank you very much. >> when we come back, how good a job has the trump administration done in combatting the coronavirus? panel is next.

welcome back. the panel is here. matt bai, contributing columnist for "the washington post." helene cooper, hallie jackson, and al cardenas. happy first wedding anniversary, sir. we took note of the day. thanks for spending it with us. i'm sure ana will give me a hard time about that.

i want to show this map. last sunday, this was the state of what we thought were reported cases of the coronavirus. one week later, here's where we are. hallie jackson, inside that white house -- >> yeah. >> this is not a surprise to everybody involved in the task force, but it's something the president seems to be in denial about. >> i have been talking to sources over the weekend. the president, to protect himself politically, he has to go out and talk about this. there are two sort of push/pulls. underneath the president's level, there are some people in the administration who want to take serious measures, who want to go further than what the administration has done so far. there's another faction who says we cannot be alarmists. there will be serious economic impacts. the other tension is the other way, between the president and almost everybody else, where they understand they're getting out there and need to put out accurate information, or there is a sense they know there is pressure on them to do so. the problem is, the president then goes out and does what he

did on friday afternoon and says things that simply are not accurate, simply are confusing and misleading, objectively, no matter how you look at it. that creates more messaging problems for the people around him. >> al cardenas, dr. fauci said this morning, if you're an elderly person with an underlying risk condition, having the president say that would be more impactful. >> i don't understand the politics of it because whenever you have national disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, if you're a leader and looking at this through a political lens, your expectations ought to be within reason but as high as possible so that whenever things turn out to be less damaging than you originally predicted, you're doing well as a leader. he's trying to underestimate and undermine what the reality here is, and so when it turns on him and becomes far worse, he's going to get the blame for not handling the matter properly. if i was a leader of the free world, i would say look, it's a virus. it's very serious. we're going to take a hit in

2020 economically and otherwise. it's time for our nation to come together. i'll keep this transparent. i'll keep informing you, but the main thing here is for us to trust the process. that's not what he's doing. >> instead, matt, let me play the president at the cdc. >> i like the numbers being where they are. i don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault. and it wasn't the fault of the people on the ship either. okay. it wasn't their fault either. and they're mostly american. so i can live either way with it. i would rather have them stay on, personally. >> the president is referring to the cruise ship in oakland. 3500 people on the ship, we can worry about the math on that. he's worried about metrics. >> but he can live either way with it, so we're okay. you know, this president talks

on and on about the deep state. right? the deep state that's out to get him. there is a deep state in washington. it's called the government. we even have a union for it, called the civil service. these are the people who have expertise, who run agencies, who devote their lives to public service. when you -- there is a cost for continually discounting that expertise. there's a cost for continually appointing people to jobs who aren't qualified or just because they're loyalists, of throwing people out when they don't say the thing you want. right now, he needs to fall back on what he calls the deep state, and he doesn't have it. and i think there's a looming political cost for that. >> he's been advised, i'm told by people, by his allies on capitol hill, to put public health officials out more as the face of this than politicians, for example, people like dr. fauci who you just had on,

but so far, they want to make sure the white house is the face of it, led by vice president pence and secretary azar. >> this is a case where nobody out there -- well, there are trump supporters out there who will listen to the president, but the world is not looking for president trump to lead on this because at this point, i think people expect that he's not capable of leading on this. what's really interesting, and one of the things i learned during the ebola outbreak of 2014, is that the first instinct of any government in the middle of a public health crisis is to calm people down and to underplay it. we saw that in liberia for the first few months, they were worried about the economy so people were in denial. you saw that in china at the beginning of this coronavirus. you saw that in other places. you see it still playing out in iran. we have seen that play out in the united states. it's not until governments accept and then go into beyond acceptance and get aggressive that they're able to get this thing controlled.

that's the case, what we're seeing -- we saw happen in china when they finally got their act together with their rather draconian measures. that's what you have to see here. >> how is he going to handle -- it was odd yesterday. it was mike pence doing the presidential meetings. the meeting with the cruise ship industry. the president went to his golf club. it just -- and you heard governor hogan really heap a lot of praise on vice president pence. by the way, governor inslee as well. >> then the president turned him around and called him a snake. you heard governor hogan say something interesting, which is the president hasn't been doing it, but everybody else has been doing a good job. there is a separation in the mind, a difference between the president and everybody else on this. >> al, we do it so naturally now, it seems. >> look, the president said publicly, his grandfather went to m.i.t. he himself has disability comfortable in science, his grandfather. my sense is he has convinced himself, and that's what we need to understand, that he's got a

grasp on the issue and he wants to talk about it. it's hard for people around him to convince him to take a step back and let the professionals and scientists take over the matter. >> matt, we were talking about it before the break. what the iran hostage crisis was to the final year of carter's presidency, not his fault but a test in realtime. this is what this seems to be for trump. >> one thing, what you're talking about. one thing when all the republicans in washington say he says some crazy stuff on taxes. it's a different thing when the president is out there leading publicly in a crisis and people are seeing it in realtime, taking their cues from it. there's a certain capacity for chaos in american voters. they don't like chaos, the markets don't like it, the voters don't like it. i'm frankly surprised that the exhaustion from that chaos has been as slow in coming as it has

in the american public, but this does hold the potential if it goes badly to become a kind of jimmy carter like scenario where the public can't wake up with this anxiety every day. we have to have leadership. >> when we come back, bernie sanders said he would bring new voters to the polls and they would vote for him. he got that about half right. stick around.

having dry skin is a struggle. turns out, my body wash was the problem. but with olay ultra moisture body wash, my skin went from dry and dull to visibly healthy in just 14 days. better skin from a body wash? you better believe it. with olay body.

welcome back. data download time. bernie sanders likes to say he's the one candidate who can energize a broad coalition of voters. specifically new voters, to go to the polls. but in the first 12 democratic primary contests for which we have data, we saw a different candidate do precisely that, joe biden. in 10 out of the 12, the vote was up in many places considerably. in 8 of those 10, biden won. and in 6 of the 8, he won by double digits. that includes north carolina, where the vote was up by 17%, where biden beat sanders by 19 points. south carolina's vote was up by

46%. where biden won by 29 points. in virginia, the vote was up by almost 70%. and biden beat sanders by 30 points. there are a few things those states have in common. suburban vote and high performance in african-american centers. compared to the 2016 democratic primary, voter turnout was up in african-american counties. in madison county, alabama, turnout was up 53%. it was up 57% in henry county, virginia. and in lancaster county, south carolina voter turnout was up 83%. then there was the help from voters who used to be reliably republican. college-educated suburbanites outside major metro areas. they turned out in big numbers in 2020, and they did so for joe biden. in charlotte, north carolina, charleston, south carolina, and louden county, virginia. turnout was way up, helping biden win all three states decisively. that's not say to say bernie sanders supporters aren't fired

up and reliable participants he can count on in these contests, but super tuesday proved joe biden is firing up democrats as well and reigniting the obama coalition while he's at it. and the upcoming primary contest is for the types of voters who are more likely to live and vote in those states. when we come back, "end game." looking ahead to tuesday's six contests. what is the bernie sanders path to the nomination? n?of the poste only cheaper get a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again.

back now with "end game" and the fallout from super tuesday. matt, you were hinting at this, another guy named matt wrote the following about joe biden. biden is the secure choice, the comfortable presence, the genial if slightly out of it grandpa you would like to have him around. you turn to him in threatening times not because of what he's done but because of who he is. it was interesting. he made an argument that eventually biden wouldn't feel like the right candidate in six months, but boy, when you thing about the moment we're in now, that might actually be the low-energy thing might be what the public doesn't want even in the fall. >> you could do worse than project calm and steady insurance. i think it's been a harder pitch in the primary when there was a lot of shouting going on.

i think if he didn't win the margin he won in south carolina, he would not have been able to clear the field and put himself in the position he did. i think it was the intense margin he got and the turnout. then the party doing something i thought the democratic party would never do in my lifetime, performing effectively. you know, doing the right -- >> they acted like a party. >> they acted like a party. >> they acted like a party of the 20th century. >> that's exactly where you want him to be as a democrat. i think that might be the strongest case. >> i think circumstances have played a lot in this. >> oh, my goodness, yes. >> i thought the second-tier candidates, as i called them at the time, klobuchar, senator pete, had a resurgence when elizabeth warren in october was at the top. that made her come down a bit. then that made sanders look better. and my sense is at the very same time, voters mature. they start going from their favorite candidate to, you know, to then start thinking general election and who can best beat

trump, which is really a key piece to this voter thought process. and now, you know, it was pretty clear after sanders doing well in iowa and new hampshire, that, you know, if we let this thing go, he's going to be the nominee, and he can't beat donald trump. i think when that happened, people started thinking who can beat donald trump and who can we coalesce around? that brought biden right back. >> you know, helene, democrats are trying to do something they have never done before, win with a seasoned nominee. frankly, if either sanders or biden gets it, it's someone who has won before. that's not previously been the recipe for democrats. >> it really seems as though everything provided we don't have a major biden gaffe in the next couple weeks, it feels as if all the stacks are in his favor now. because keep in mind, last tuesday, so many people had absentee voted or voted already or early voted between south carolina and tuesday that i think you saw just the tip of the biden wave. i think what you're going to see

in a couple days and beyond that is a wholesale shift, and that will make me not want to be bernie sanders right now. >> it is. i do think his campaign has two weeks to live or prove that it's viable in the next two weeks. michigan and ohio being to me the two biggest tests he's got. >> you look, to al's point on electability. we know that's what democratic voters want. when you look at what i cover, donald trump and the white house and the campaign type of things, they want to talk about bernie sanders. the president wants to say the establishment is rigging this against sanders. they believe that's a message to the sanders voters, one of the studies was 1 in 10 sanders voters voted for donald trump in 2016. they are concerned about joe biden. you made the point we started off with bernie sanders and joe biden as the front-runners in the race. we start off a year ago and i was talking to sources in the scam pain about who they wouldn't want to go up against. it was joe biden. look where we are now.

concern about how joe biden will perform in places like south carolina. >> elizabeth warren had good polls on this. the fact she didn't endorse bernie sanders -- now, you have a conclusion that biden's going to pick a woman as a running mate, and so if he's weak on the base, elizabeth warren looks good. if he needs a black, kamala harris looks like a good one. frankly, i'm a big fan as a hispanic of picking a hispanic. we'll see where that goes. >> i want to play an elizabeth warren quote about the issue of sexism in the campaign because i think it rang true with a lot of women. >> if you say yeah, there was sexism in the race, everyone says whiner. and if you say no, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, what planet do you live on? >> helene. >> yeah. i mean, that's completely true. there was clearly sexism.

i still see people talking about not liking -- particularly elizabeth warren, i was shocked. i thought that had gone away with hillary. but people talking about not liking the tone of her voice and the way she picked on bloomberg. you see that again and again and again. it stuns me to this day that so many other countries have managed to elect a woman president, and this country, you know, that we think is so much ahead of all these other places, we can't seem to do it. i don't get it. i totally don't get that. >> can't people not like that about elizabeth warren without being sexist? i think the argument was true that she made, but i point to amy klobuchar. but in warren's case, look, i think she couldn't choose a lane. she wasn't socialist enough for socialists but too socialist for the moderates. you can't be everyone's second

choice. >> that i -- >> you like her? >> no, not because i like her. it's because she was not a waffling -- >> she made a lot of -- i think the campaign made some tactical mistakes. >> just to go back to the sort of point you're making which i think on the policy piece of it, you make an argument here. the argument that i think she is making is on the personality piece of it. people, for example, like the president who said i don't think she lost because of sexism. i heard because she's kind of mean. that's sexism. >> i am way out of time. that's all we have for today. thank you for watching. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

when things that previously have been done in the dark are forced in the light, that makes stuff happen. there is something about the effect of sunlight. with the number of coronavirus cases in the united states on the rise, there's mixed messaging coming from the trump administration. the president doesn't appear to be on the same page as some of his team. plus, dow futures are already deep in the red as oil prices plunge. and voters in six more states will focus on joe biden and bernie sanders is racking up more endorsements. good