Interrupted by protesters who were able to charge the stage. And in an instant everyone watching realized thats why we have the u. S. Secret service. As the 11th hour gets under way on this wednesday night. Well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 1,140 of the trump administration. That leaves 244 days to go until the 2020 president ial election. And speaking from this studio, if last night was super tuesday, this was exhaustion wednesday. It was a late night not only here but across the country. We dont know all the results yet, but make no mistake, this is a whole new race for the white house. Joe biden won 10 out of 14 states last night. California, still outstanding. We dont know what this means long term. But his victory was so sweeping and so surprising it reordered the democratic race in a matter of hours. It was the opposite of the establishment, the opposite of big money. He spent no money. No commercials, no campaigning. He won a ton of states that he didnt even visit. This was something of a political prairie fire that started in South Carolina. This was powered by the africanamerican vote. That started on saturday in South Carolina. And the Biden Campaign has proved that endorsements still matter in this day and age if theyre from the right person at the right time. Like congressman james clyburn, who started it all. Like klobuchar and buttigieg and orourke. And just like that joe biden now leads in delegates. Joe biden is the frontrunner. Today he looked ahead with our own savannah guthrie. I think the one thing the president doesnt want to do from the very beginning is face me. Because i will beat him. Period. Period. By the way, the rest of bidens interview will air tomorrow morning on today. If he does go on to become the democratic nominee, and weve got a lot to get through between now and then, he will likely get a big assist from Mike Bloomberg, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make a run for the white house. Former new york city mayor and fulltime billionaire made his debut on democratic primary ballots yesterday, and he won a single race, in american samoa. Today he ended his campaign by endorsing joe biden. Ive always believed that defeating donald trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. And after yesterdays vote it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great american, joe biden. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren won zero super tuesday states. In fact, she finished third in her home state of massachusetts. She spent today with her team assessing the way forward. Tonight the Washington Post reports, top surrogates and allies of senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda with the expectation that warren is likely to leave the president ial campaign soon. In fact, this evening Bernie Sanders appeared live on this network and told Rachel Maddow that he he did speak to warren by phone earlier today. It was a private conversation. But i think, you know, senator warren has worked really hard over the last year. She has run in many ways an excellent campaign, bringing on a whole lot of ideas which i think have expand political consciousness in this country. She is now assessing, you know, where she wants to go, and she deserves the time and the space to make that decision. Last nights results made it very clear, Bernie Sanders could not dent joe bidens support among africanamerican voters. Today the Sanders Campaign released a new ad not attempting to be coy about the message here. It prominently features barack obama, who by the way has not yet endorsed any candidate. Politico describes it this way. The super tuesday shellacking was so thorough that Bernie Sanders strategy changed overnight. It had to. The decadeslong refusal to air negative tv ads is out. Spots highlighting former president Barack Obamas praise of him are in. Looking ahead now, the next set of democratic races right here is on tuesday march 10th in idaho, michigan, mississippi, missouri, north dakota, washington state. Theres a debate on march 15, two days later on march 17 the primaries in arizona, florida, illinois, ohio. Big night. Bidens resurgence last night represents the latest political challenge for this man, president trump, who in his day job is trying to fight off a pandemic. The president has been under fire for his handling of the virus thus far. Today he met with airline ceos to talk about the outbreak and he ended the meeting by bringing up the democratic primary results. No questions on the election . This has to be lets go. One thing this whole thing has shown thaurks cant buy an election. Its a beautiful thing. In the case of Elizabeth Warren had she gotten out it would have been a very different situation i think. It would have been a very different night. Had Elizabeth Warren endorsed bernie, youre talking about a whole different subject. He would have gotten 80, 90, almost he would have gotten most of those votes. Late this evening donald trump also hinted at what his potential Campaign Strategy against biden would involve. Focusing on the Vice President s son and his time serving on the board of a Ukrainian Energy company. That will be a major issue in the campaign. I will bring that up all the time because i dont see any way out. I dont see any way out for them. I dont see how they can answer those questions. Maybe they can. I hope they can. Id actually prefer it that they can but i dont believe theyll be able to answer those questions. That was purely corrupt. Here with our leadoff discussion on a wednesday night elizabeth mir miller, assistant managing editor and the Washington Bureau chief, i knew that was going to trip me up, for the new york times. Annie karni, White House Reporter, also with the new york times. And nancy cook, White House Reporter for politico. Elizabeth, you get to go first. What just happened in this race and what had to happen inside democratic voters in all those states to bring this about . You know, it happened in four days. After South Carolina it became clear that to a lot of democrats certainly, a Big Coalition of democrats, that joe biden was the best case they had against donald trump. And that is what happened across this country. You look at the suburbs of virginia, the northern suburbs. And what you see there is that biden against all the debate he expanded his map. He got the africanamerican vote. He got the suburban vote. Especially among women. He even did well with latinos in northern virginia. It was the same with suburbs across the country. It shows you how much how little we actually know ahead of these races on how bad the polling is in some of these states, and it completely turned this race upside down. Nancy, when you remind everybody, we just had an impeachment which was over the bidens, how does this now affect the president . Well, i think the president is going to try to bring up some of the themes that republicans were trying to bring up during impeachment like biden is corrupt, like saying that hunter biden was on this board of this Ukrainian Company that he shouldnt have been. And as my colleagues from politico reported today, hes going to have the help of gop lawmakers who are already viewing that as a major target. Theyre saying its not political, but they are already pursuing that line of inquiry. And trump gave a very interesting interview with sean hannity tonight which was broad and wideranging to talk about his response to the coronavirus. But he did talk about, you know, sort of attacking the bidens in this sense for being corrupt. So i think that will be a theme well see, and i think that it does catch the Trump Campaign a little bit flatfooted. I think they had really been gearing up to have Bernie Sanders be the nominee and have this contrast between their worldview and socialism. And so i think this scrambles things for them. Annie, youve reported on the president feeling perhaps hes losing control on three identifiable fronts. The democrats, the coronavirus, and the stock market, which has been up and down, wild swings. How does he regain control short of opening a fourth front we havent anticipated yet . That is the question. And this is kind of a unique moment for the president , who is used to kind of controlling the narrative through his twitter feed, controlling institutions and people around him. This virus is the first really crisis, Public Health crisis not of his own making hes having to deal with. Hes betting the farm on a good economy. His whole campaign is based on touting how good the economy is doing under him. And the stock market has been up and down. Up only today not because of donald trump but what analysts are saying was because of the news about joe bidens super tuesday sweep. And the democratic primary, hes been kind of kibitzing from the sidelines this whole time, trying to do nicknames and handicap the race. And what we saw last night was that all of trumps commentary, while his base enjoys it as entertainment, it really had very little effect on what actually what democratic primary voters actually went and did. He didnt really affect this race. Hes tried for months to the point of to paint joe biden as corrupt. An effort to led to his own impeachment. And that turned out not to move the needle with voters, who see joe biden as electable. This is a strange moment for donald trump. And the only thing he really affected last night was that clearly electability was front of mind for so many voters who really want to just get behind the person who can beat donald trump. Elizabeth, i want to read you a headline from buzzfeed which if true we will completely forget about in 72 hours. The headline reads, the surreal year where only the last 72 hours seem to matter in politics. Elizabeth, i think they may be on to something here. Im curious to get your thoug s thoughts. Not to overstate the case. But youre one of the people who get to control what we see on our phones every day. You give me a lot more credit than i probably deserve. Oh, no. Well, yes, weve gotten used to it in washington. And one of the things we we respond much quicker than we ever used to. Annie can tell you the story she wrote today, there were three versions of it. Theres the early version, the middle version and the late version. Theres probably a fourth version. We write stories when donald trump appoints someone. We usually have a story in the basket saying that he fired that person. Just ready to go. Weve changed the way we do things. Its right. Look at what happened the last four days. The stock market, you know, its been dizzying the last week. I dont know what else to tell you but thats how we do things in the Washington Bureau, just anticipate the unexpected every single day. Sometimes if theres five different events in a single day we have to run around and react to. Hey nancy, i want to show you a picture that made the rounds earlier today. This is congressman gaetz from florida reviewing the coronavirus supplemental appropriation and preparing to go vote. It really did happen. He really did wear that in the halls of congress today. And then we heard from retired u. S. Army general mark hertling. A kind of very civically minded retired army officer who in reality would be a dandy and able special master if you put him in charge of Something Like the response to coronavirus. He writes, this is the most immature and unprofessional things ive ever seen from a member of congress. Comport yourself with some dignity, mr. Gaetz. You represent people in florida. I guess the question is, nancy, god forbid, what will the congressmans reaction be . What will his constituents reaction be if and when there is again, god forbid, a fatal case of this in his district in florida . Well, there havent been fatalities in florida yet but there certainly are cases in florida. And i thought it was interesting because he is such an ally of the president. He was just on fox news tonight complimenting the president for his response to coronavirus. But so much of what the white house has been trying to do this week is basically do this balancing act of seeming prepared and on top of things and giving these daily briefings which they havent done in months on the coronavirus, but at the same time theyre trying not to be alarmist. Theyre trying to downplay the spread of the coronavirus which has spread pretty quickly in the past week throughout the u. S. And so its interesting to me he was wearing that face mask around capitol hill. I dont know if it was a stunt or if he was trying to make fun of the supplemental funding bill. I wasnt on capitol hill today. But is it definitely drew attention to him and the republican response to the coronavirus maybe more so than the white house would have liked. Annie, give our viewers the 30second version of Jeff Sessions having been forced into a runoff. Hes trying to return as a trumpist republican to the u. S. Senate from alabama. The president took a whack at him today for that. Why would the president do that . The bigger question is how his aides got him to hold off on doing that for the entirety of Jeff Sessions campaign. Hes been egging to do it. And our reporting and our story today showed this was kind of his reward for having held himself back, he finally got to take another whack at sessions. It makes him feel good. Its a goto place. It was a contrast with the democratic race, where his sustained blows on Jeff Sessions actually did hurt the candidate. Its a lot to talk about. Its been a busy wednesday following an endless super tuesday night. Elizabeth bumiller, annie karni, nancy cook, thank you the three of you for coming on and lasting this long to explain it all. Coming up for us, the man who got it right for the democrats in 08. Also the first to admit he might have been wrong in 2016. Tonight David Plouffe is here with strong thoughts on defeating the president in 2020. And later, more on the battle to contain the coronavirus including what one state is asking voters not to do. The 11th hour is just getting under way on this wednesday night. Dnesday night. We made usaa insurance for members like martin. An air force veteran made of doing whats right, not whats easy. So when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. Thats how you do it right. Usaa insurance is made just the way martins family needs it with hasslefree claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. Because doing right by our members, thats whats right. Usaa. What youre made of, were made for. Usaa its more than just fast. It keeps all your devices running smoothly. With builtin security that protects your kids. No matter what theyre up to. It protects your info. And gives you 24 7 peace of mind. That if its connected, its protected. Even that that petcamera thingy. [ whines ] can your internet do that . Xfinity xfi can because its. Simple, easy, awesome. [ barking ] while he doesnt look it, its been over a decade now. Our next guest David Plouffe had a bestselling book called the audacity to win. He wrote about managing the obama campaign, which of course elected our first africanamerican president. This year young mr. Plouffe is out with a new book with a message more practical than aspirational. In it he writes, and we quote, your mission is not to turn every person into a lifelong voter. Its not to encourage everyone to become active in politics. Its to get them to cast one vote in one election to get rid of one really horrible and dangerous president. Thats it. And with us tonight, the author of the aforementioned, David Plouffe. The book is called a citizens guide to beating donald trump. First of all, lets go back to where i last saw you, in this studio last night. What happened . What did we just witness last night . One of the most remarkable 72 hours in american politics. Not just this election. In a long time. So joe biden is now the frontrunner. Youd rather be him than anybody else. And you know, hes got some good states coming up. You talked about them earlier. Florida. Weve got georgia, mississippi, louisiana. So heres what i would say. He was the national frontrunner. He was polling in the 30s, even 40s. I remember. So its always easier in politics to get back supporter vote you once had than never had at all. So that left him. Bad debates. Bad performance in new hampshire, iowa. Flirting with mayor pete, bloomberg. Amy, beto, all that comes together and a lot of that vote went back to him. What really was interesting last night it wasnt just the africanamerican vote which was a cornerstone. He really ran up big margins in suburban areas. Which actually gives him real strength in the upcoming primaries. Its actually a strong electability point to because thats what fueled 2018 at the congressional level. For the people who want to get busy, want to knock on doors, want to play a role on your side of the aisle, it used to be you could tell them to just go out and work like hell. Then russians and cell phones happened. So what will buyers of this book learn from a guy like you . Well, some people were super active in politics and they learned a thing or two, and people whove never done it before hopefully will get encouraged to try it. So part of my message in the book is he does hes got fox and sinclair and putin and foreign governments and his phone. And his phone. And he knows how to communicate in todays age. So hes got a lot of assets despite his approval ratings. We dont have any of that infrastructure. And we have a nominee whos going to come out of this broke and tired and has to unify the party. Its on all of us to go out there and talk