National:
Cohen: The major political event yesterday was Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony. The basic summary is that Cohen aired a lot of sketchy details and Trump dirty laundry, but there is still no smoking gun on things that would be a serious political danger to Trump. Meanwhile, Cohen might have wound up lying to Congress (again) as just about everyone else seems to be denying his claim that he never asked for a job in the Trump administration. It also probably doesn’t help Trump critics that Cohen seems eager to cash-in on his new fame.
Also-Rans: As a reminder, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Buttigeig are still actually running for President. CNN figured that shoot, they had a free afternoon on their calendar and all their camera equipment was already going to be setup at the SXSW on March 10th so they might as well give them all some coverage. But all on the same day right after each other. Needless to say Delaney and Buttigeig need to make some significant headlines if they want to be taken seriously for the race, and I don’t even know what Gabbard would have to do to reach even that level, as I imagine well over half of all Democratic primary voters would never in their lives vote for her.
New Hampshire-2020: A UNH poll of the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary has Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden leading the pack with 26% and 22% respectively, with Harris, Warren, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, and Booker in the mid-single digits and the also-rans at <1%. This represents a big drop for Warren from their previous poll, and the poll also finds that she is the clear leader in the unfortunate “Democrat I will never support under any circumstances” category. Its far too early to call her candidacy dead or even dying, but she clearly needs to do some revamping if she wants to be more than an asterisk in this race.
Texas: A Quinnipiac poll of Texas has Trump with narrow leads over Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke in the Lone Star state, with more comfortable but still low leads over Harris and Warren. This is naturally concerning as the GOP is probably hoping they won’t have to play serious defense in what has been a Safe R state for the last 40 years, but Quin has always been an unfavorable pollster for Trump and Texas has historically had a large partisan gap between its overall population and who actually shows up to vote. Texas will be interesting to watch this cycle, especially finding out whether or not the Beto-driven 2018 D turnout surge was him just finding the state’s many non-voting Democrats or a more serious political realignment in the formerly blood-red Texas suburbs….