Welp, at Least New Hampshire Counted the Votes on Time
Plus: FTC goes fishing for tech company ammunition, changes coming to Utah polygamy laws, and more...
New Hampshire complicates things for Democrats. Andrew Yang is out. Establishment and leftist favorites are faltering. The Klobuchar moment may finally be upon us. And an old socialist and an Indiana mayor continue to compete as the front-runners right now. So, the New Hampshire primaries were weird and discouraging in many ways.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) was the winner of this round, with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg taking second place and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) taking third. With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders was the top choice for 25.9 percent of New Hampshire Democrats. Buttigieg got 24.4 percent of the vote and Klobuchar 19.8 percent.
Sanders is projected to get nine New Hampshire delegates. Buttigieg will likely get nine and Klobuchar will likely get six delegates.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren earned a mere 9.3 percent of the Democratic vote in New Hampshire, and former Vice President Joe Biden just 8.5 percent, placing fourth and fifth respectively.
Joe Biden has never finished higher than 4th in any primary or caucus in 32 years of running for president https://t.co/PN948wjlNX
— David Dayen (@ddayen) February 12, 2020
Rounding out the New Hampshire Democratic primary were Tom Steyer with 3.5 percent, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard with 3.3 percent, and Andrew Yang with 2.8 percent.
Yang, who finished sixth in Iowa and eighth in New Hampshire, announced that he was ending his presidential campaign. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet also dropped out.
"The likely prospect now is that Sanders and several other candidates will divide the vote and delegates the rest of this month and into March, when more than 60 percent of the pledged delegates will be chosen," writes Dan Balz at The Washington Post.
With support among the center-left candidates divided, Sanders could emerge from Super Tuesday with a lead in delegates. He would then be in a position to do what few Democrats thought possible before the campaign started, which is win the nomination—but not without a major fight.
In the New Hampshire Republican primary, President Donald Trump got 85 percent of the vote and Bill Weld—who was Gary Johnson's Libertarian Party running mate in 2016 and is now running for president as a Republican—got 9 percent.
FREE MINDS
Utah considers lessening penalties for polygamy. "If SB102 becomes law, polygamy among consenting adults would be reduced to an infraction—a level below many traffic offenses," reports The Salt Lake Tribune. "Infractions in Utah carry no jail time. Punishments can be fines of up to $750 and community service."
FREE MARKETS
Trump tells companies they have MAGA as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launches investigation into them. "For 144 days, we set a record stock market," Trump said on Tuesday. "Four trillion-dollar companies: Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. You have MAGA. The trillion-dollar club."
CNBC points out that "MAGA has also been used on Wall Street for the group of stocks that have led the market higher," in addition to being a Trump slogan.
Meanwhile, the FTC announced yesterday that it will review prior mergers, dating back to 2010, for all four of those companies, plus Facebook. The move is in keeping with a bipartisan wave of anti-tech animus in Washington.
Google didn't invent YouTube. Facebook didn't invent Instagram. And the list goes on and on.
That's why I voted to order @Google, @Facebook, @Amazon, @Apple, & @Microsoft to hand over a decade of records about their buying binge. https://t.co/JjlJzsRUdo
— Rohit Chopra (@chopracfpb) February 11, 2020
Read more on the new tech trustbusters from Thomas Hazlett here. "Antitrust was recently pushed to advance consumers' welfare. That was part of the liberalization trend," Hazlett writes. "Now it's being tugged back to form a support system protecting 'competitors'—guarding against low prices, escalating quality, and market rivalry."
