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CNN Live Event/Special

CNN Projects Joe Biden Wins Texas. Aired 2-3a ET

Aired March 04, 2020 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[02:00:00]

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DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Don Lemon here, Super Tuesday coverage on CNN into Wednesday. You can call this wonderful Wednesday. It has been an extraordinary couple of hours here for Joe Biden. You can call him the comeback kid if you will.

In the last 72 hours since that win in South Carolina, he has really gained some momentum, winning a number of seats. All except for three, Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, states where he didn't really spend any money or even campaign.

And then there is senator Bernie Sanders' win in Colorado, Utah and Vermont. There you go, states where he obviously spent time and his hometown state as well.

This is where the votes are still coming in, in Texas they are coming in and in California as well and coming in and Maine. Let's put up the vote totals. There is Texas, 228 delegates at stake here. Joe Biden is ahead at 33.2 percent to Bernie Sanders' 29.3 percent. That's 82 percent in.

If you had asked folks a couple of hours ago, maybe a day ago, 72 hours ago if they thought Joe Biden would be in the lead, they would have told you no way. But 82 percent of the vote count is.

And let's go to California now where there is still a pretty healthy lead there but most of us would have thought that Bernie Sanders would be in the lead, maybe by 40 percent now. But he has almost 30 percent. Joe Biden has 20.2 percent. But that's only 37 percent of the vote count in.

Moving on to Maine, those votes are still out, 24 delegates at stake here, 91 percent of the vote and Joe Biden is leading, 33.8 points. A narrow lead here to 32.2 percent. Let's talk about delegates and what's at stake here. Let's bring in and speaking of Ron Brownstein, he is here with Laura Barron-Lopez, Mark Preston, Andrew Gillum, Jen Psaki and Scott Jennings.

Since I talked about you so much let's talk about the delegates who are at stake.

Do you want to talk about California?

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: You thought Bernie would have a bigger win.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: The Sanders campaign viewed --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: -- California as their biggest asset tonight. It is well suited to him. He is running well with Latino voters, they are dispersed across the state. He is running well with blue collar white voters; 30 percent for him is not a good number. They were polling in the mid-30s. They thought it was kind of moving further toward them and it continues what we saw across the country.

The Sanders coalition at this point is too narrow to win and he is not expanding it. If you look at what happened among college educated white voters, a large portion of them had been parked between three candidates, who are going nowhere, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar.

The question was, if it got down to more of a two person race, where would they go?

Biden won them in every state tonight except Vermont and California. Blue collar white voters, Bernie won them in each of the first four states. He did quite well with them in 2016. They are a critical factor in the next round of contests in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri.

Biden beat him in most states with those voters tonight. Sanders just could not -- the question from the first four states, could Sanders win when the race consolidated and the winning number went up from about 30 to 35 or 40?

The answer tonight was not in enough places.

LEMON: If we can put those three states back up and look at the percentages that are in. If we look at Texas, California and Maine. You say, there is Texas right there, 33.2, to 29.3.

You cannot say Sanders is leading in California because it is proportional. It is not winner take all. So you have to take that into consideration. Even if Joe Biden loses California, he still may get a healthy percentage of delegates.

[02:05:00]

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: We see this across the country. When you hear us talking about winners and losers, it is really not true, unless it is a very large win. Unless it is a substantial win.

Joe Biden won. Joe Biden won the night. He won in states where we didn't think he necessarily would win. He has certainly won by margins a lot greater than we thought they would be. I would caution this: a presidential campaign, like any other

campaign, is about moments. I know I say it is all the time. It is moments in time. If you go back 72 hours, who thought Joe Biden would be where he was at.

I got a text last night from a well-known person, I won't name who from South Carolina. They said the reason Joe Biden came back was six days ago you held a CNN town hall where he addressed the pastor of the AME church --

(CROSSTALK)

PRESTON: -- Reverend Anthony Thompson, who lost his wife. That was the turnaround for Joe Biden. If you think about that, that seems to make sense, because it comes on the same day that Jim Clyburn had endorsed him.

You start to see Joe Biden's heart and things started to roll. I would caution that tomorrow is another day or today is another day.

Who knows what will happen in this campaign?

We have seen many twists and turns. Bernie Sanders was on his deathbed and he came back in October from having two stents put in his heart. I would suggest what we have seen tonight or in the last 24 hours only means that we are headed for a contested convention. We are headed for a contested convention.

BROWNSTEIN: It's less likely today than yesterday.

ANDREW GILLUM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The road is longer and you are right, we should take this as a moment. That's not the only moment. The truth is that Bloomberg got into this because a lot of moderate Democrats were looking for a way out of Joe Biden.

And a lot of state polling, 2,000-plus staff being deployed all around the country, they start to line up and then this happened. Almost in a two-hour moments debate, Elizabeth Warren shredded it, creating a moment for people to once again survey the field and say, what are our choices right now.

And they went back to Joe Biden as a legitimate choice. He is being buttressed in South Carolina, as well.

LEMON: Wins beget wins. Confidence begets confidence. You had the endorsement from James Clyburn. And you also had that empathetic moment in a CNN town hall. And I think everything came together.

JEN PSAKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I will also say, sometimes candidates, I have worked for many of them, are best when their back is up against the wall. Joe Biden knew that South Carolina, it was either win big or go home.

The speech he gave the night is the best speech he has given in years, beyond this campaign. The point Mark raises is important. Campaigns, tomorrow is not the general election. There is a long time to go before the nomination is done.

And Joe Biden has found the sweet spot of being empathetic and speaking to his personal story. That works for him. But he also needs a forward-looking vision as people are seeing and digesting this.

LEMON: The last interview with Joe Biden was in New Hampshire right after Iowa. I saw on Mark Mackinnon's (ph) show, at the circus, we were at one of his rallies. Not a lot of energy. And I saw on the show, his campaign manager saying, this is not what he should be doing.

He had very low energy. He was talking about his family and going through losses. These are great stories. But he should be rallying the crowd and he wasn't. Suddenly that turned around.

Let's talk about what's happening now. The polls are still open. People are waiting six hours in line. No one in America should be waiting six hours in line.

BROWNSTEIN: That is a feature, not a bug. Texas, a Republican run state, has taken a whole bunch of steps to make it harder to register and harder to vote. They have closed a lot of polling places.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, "POLITICO": Yes, 750 polling places have been closed since 2012. Specifically that's in black and Latino neighborhoods in Texas; 542 polling sites have been closed.

LEMON: Look at these photos as we talk about this. These were taken earlier in the night. Look at these people waiting. Our Ed Lavandera was at one of these polling places. These people have been waiting for hours. Six hours after the polling places should be closed.

PRESTON: You could get on an airplane tonight and fly from Washington, D.C., to California quicker than it would be to vote in Texas.

[02:10:00]

GILLUM: This is by design. I watched it happen in Florida through Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, in communities that were largely made up of folks of color.

LEMON: Most of the people in those lines are black.

GILLUM: Where I vote, my wife and I live in a pretty good neighborhood, if we are there longer than 15 minutes, people are starting to hit their watch and say, what is going on. Something is wrong with this system. Many of these neighborhoods are used to having to wait an hour, two hours and for it to be the norm.

That is unacceptable. It is deliberate.

(CROSSTALK)

GILLUM: We no longer have free clearance. You now have state legislatures that are deliberately creating laws that are systemically intended to suppress a part of the constituency that they don't want to show up.

Look at Florida. They passed a law which basically said you must allow voting precincts on college campuses. They go back to the Florida legislature and say, you can have them on college campuses as long as there is enough parking on the campus to support people coming there to vote.

There is not a college campus in America that has sufficient parking for the students that exist there, let alone adding additional parking. The point of putting it on campuses so that the students that are already on the campus can walk and vote.

Why is it possible for a hunter's license to be accepted as a legitimate form of voter identification, yet a student idea is not accepted for a legitimate form of voter ID?

Why is it that the my signature this year, if it mismatches the from two years ago, my ballot could be invalidated?

These are the laws that have been put in place to disenfranchise voters.

PRESTON: John Roberts, that decision voting for Democratic appointed justices, John Roberts said that voter suppression was a thing of the past. He threw out the preclearance in a decision he wrote himself.

Threw out the preclearance Voting Rights Act of 1965 and since then, there has been this tremendous explosion of laws, in Texas in particular, the strategy of closing polling places to create these kinds of lines.

What you are seeing is not an accident. It's not that states don't know how to administer elections. They know what they are doing and what they are doing is supposed to produce exactly what we are seeing.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It should be easy to vote, I think. The idea of waiting that long to vote is outrageous, number one.

Number two, I have been thinking about the general election.

What was turnout in 2016?

About 60 percent?

BROWNSTEIN: About 139 million.

JENNINGS: This time it could be 66 percent.

What states do we think are going to have problems?

Maybe all of them with this crush and influx of people. Many people may never have gone to a polling place before. New people will be coming out for both parties.

On Election Night in November, even though we have a lot of early voting and a lot of vote by mail, we may be sitting there in the wee hours, watching lines around the block not just in one or two states but many because of the crush of people.

BROWNSTEIN: Imagine a race where everything is decided except for Arizona. Maricopa County took weeks last time. Kyrsten Sinema ultimately won. Nothing untoward; it just took a while. Trump was tweeting about it every day waiting for it to happen.

LEMON: Why does it seem it is always in minority communities and it is Republicans who are somehow fighting it or it appears to be creating the issue?

JENNINGS: Some of what has been said is true and some is untrue. I have been in a lot of campaigns. I have never heard a Republican elected official say, let's have a meeting and figure out how to suppress voters.

LEMON: They are not going to say that, though.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: Certainly, I am a proponent of easy to vote. So I can't speak to what's happening in Texas. They know more about it than I do. I just think it should be easy to vote. It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, where you live.

We are seeing this manifest itself now. Turnout will be high in November. We need to have a conversation about what the lines are going to look like in November. The nation won't accept this.

We have weeks and weeks of counting because of lines and fights over lines. In a close race --

(CROSSTALK)

GILLUM: -- right now, Mitch McConnell is sitting on a election protections bill right now in the United States Congress.

LEMON: Lots more to talk about. I know this is bad English but it ain't over yet. The two biggest states in the union, the counting is still going on. All the ballots are not in, Texas and California, so high jinks, drama, mystery on CNN.

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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, everyone. I'm Rosemary Church with your CNN news now.

(HEADLINES)

CHURCH: The vast majority came from Hubei province, where the virus was first detected. CNN's Steven Jiang is in Beijing with more.

What is behind this reduction in cases reported across China?

STEVEN JIANG, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER, BEIJING BUREAU: Officials will tell you're their containment plans are working.

The newly reported cases outside of Hubei continues to drop to single digits. More than 2,600 patients got discharged Tuesday as well.

Very promising, especially compared to outside of China. That's why the authorities here are increasingly concerned about imported cases instead of exported ones. The government has recorded in total 75 confirmed cases now involving people returning from overseas, especially from Italy and Iran.

That's why you have seen nationwide officials are strengthening their screening and quarantine rules targeting international arrivals, including a 14-day medical observation to anyone returning from these high-risk regions.

At the same time, we are seeing growing signs of life returning to normal, including traffic jams returning to cities like Beijing.

The government has been encouraging businesses to reopen. In Shanghai, over 95 percent of large factories have resumed operations. The challenge is to have smaller businesses and factories reopened as well.

To that end, the government and the companies have been offering incentives.

CHURCH: Steven, many thanks to you.

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Big night, what does the data tell us as we look at California and Texas. Texas, 80-plus percent of the vote is in but it is not over. Joe Biden, the big surprise headline for him of the night is that he is competitive, let alone in the lead in Texas.

When you look at money spent on Super Tuesday, when we rank the people, Biden is not even on the list. He didn't spend enough money to make it into the top five people spending on Super Tuesday.

What is the story of the night as we look at California trickling in?

And that will be the big decider of who got the most delegates tonight. Let's go to Harry Enten, the wizard of odds.

The data behind Biden's big night, what do you see?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the key statistic is, after South Carolina, there was a wave of support that grew for Joe Biden. Among the states that had exit polls, people who made their decision in the last few days, Joe Biden got 49 percent of that vote.

[02:20:00]

ENTEN: Well ahead of Bernie Sanders who only got 20 percent. It is very clear that victory in South Carolina helped propel Biden to the big margins we are seeing tonight across the board.

CUOMO: The comeback kid.

Is that a fair assessment or would you go even bigger?

ENTEN: I think the comeback kid is a perfectly good assessment. It is up to you if you want to be more grandiose, as you often like to be.

But he lost in Iowa and New Hampshire. It was 26 days until the primary season when he got his first win and that was in South Carolina. But was a huge win by 29 percentage points. That is a real example of a comeback kid, if I'm being honest with you.

CUOMO: I would like to remind you, you are referred to as the wizard of odds. I am referred to as Chris.

Next, diversity in the upcoming primaries.

What do you see coming up that tells us a bit of what the future might hold?

ENTEN: I would say a few things. In terms of diversity, take a look. Here in the upcoming March primaries, at least 20 percent of voters in a number of primaries coming up are African Americans. Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida.

If you look at the margins that Joe Biden is winning across the board tonight, those are some pretty good primaries coming up, specifically in the South. Mississippi, Georgia, Florida. I think he will run up big margins in those and it will be up to Bernie Sanders to try and stop him.

CUOMO: We know that Sanders is still the only person who can claim a movement. We learned in 2016, do not sleep on a movement.

Given that, have you ever seen a turnaround like what we have seen over the past week with Joe Biden?

ENTEN: If I were to use one example, it would be Bill Clinton in 1992. I think that is the key example. If you look, it is basically the same thing that happened with Biden. He lost Iowa. He lost New Hampshire. It took three weeks until he got his first victory and it was in Georgia by about 30 percent.

To me, that is very similar to what we have seen with Joe Biden. And Bill Clinton went on to win the primary and the presidency.

CUOMO: Time: this is a big deal tonight. It is called Super Tuesday for a reason. We are now well over a third into delegates. A month from now, 60 percent into delegates and then beyond.

When you look at time factors, how does the race feel like more of a toss-up because of time?

ENTEN: There are years like 2000 and 2004, when there was basically a clear nominee after Super Tuesday. Oftentimes, especially on the Democratic side, it takes a long time. In '88, it took 58 days; '92, it took 48 days. 2008 took 87 days. 2016 took 49 days. It was not clear until New York voted in April and Clinton won that primary handily.

I think we are still in for a fight. Obviously, Biden likes his position after tonight. I think Sanders also likes his position. But the fact is, I think we are in a dogfight here at least for the few weeks to come.

CUOMO: Sanders has to like his position. He just doesn't like the coverage, because there is a lot of talk about Joe Biden but because it is a shock. This is a compliment to Bernie. He had the machine. He had the money. He has the momentum. And he is showing it in the results.

It is Biden who is being a surprise here.

Let me ask you this, Wiz, what do you think the chances of a contested convention are?

ENTEN: They are climbing higher, insofar as if Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren stay in this race. When we get three or four candidates in there, that's when the chance of a contested convention goes up.

That means there's a greater chance that they will hit that 15 percent threshold in order to take delegates away from the leaders like Sanders and Biden. But let's say Warren and Bloomberg decide maybe it is not worth it to stay in the race, then obviously it goes down significantly.

Right now, there's a pretty decent chance of it. If you are looking across a bunch of different metrics, it's probably a little north of 50 percent, at least that normal claim. Whether that's worked out before or after the convention, that remains to be seen.

CUOMO: Harry Enten, well versed.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Shalom.

David, Kirsten, I think it is fair that Sanders supporters are probably saying, aren't we kind of killing it tonight?

Are you forgetting that?

When California comes, in it will be that he will get the lion's share of delegates. We do not know. It's a very slow state, barely at 40 percent reporting.

How do you see the night if Sanders, a week from, now has gotten the lion's share of what is divvied up in California?

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The reason Biden is getting so much attention tonight is because it was unexpected. Whenever anyone overperforms, then you get a lot of coverage for that, because he was written off by a lot of people before South Carolina.

Then we wanted to see what kind of bump he would get out of it. It looks like he got a really good bump out of it. It has changed the shape of the race and so it looked like Bernie Sanders was kind of running away with it.

[02:25:00]

POWERS: And now it looks like it is more neck and neck. Sanders may end up a little bit ahead in the delegate count and he should be happy he is ahead or basically tied.

But I think this is going to be a little like 2016. We will start looking at each night, where you see one person up and, in the next primary, you see another person up. This will probably go for a while.

CUOMO: Except, in 2016 on the Democrat side, you did not have this incredibly deep pocket sitting in a third position, who could mean everything to the person called Joe Biden.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Let's see if the deep pocket, Michael Bloomberg, is still in this race. Let's see if his deep pockets get transferred. He has always said that even if he isn't the nominee, he will spend all that money on defeating Trump and on keeping his organization there.

Does he, in the context of this primary, since he did not want Sanders to be the nominee, if he sees I am not helping the cause here, does he get out and get that money over to Biden as a PAC?

I just want to say one thing you are saying about Sanders. Biden overperformed tonight. But Sanders is underperforming a bit in certain places, places like Minnesota and Massachusetts.

And right now Joe Biden is ahead in the vote count in Maine. These should have been Sanders territory states. These are states he did well in four years ago. So it is not just that Joe Biden is besting expectations. It is that Bernie Sanders is -- again, I think he will have a delegate lead out of tonight. I am not trying to suggest that he is not a real contender for the nomination. He is.

But in terms of the performance tonight, we are not seeing the dramatic reshaping of the electorate, the revolution, the huge, big increase turnout in young voters. We aren't seeing that. I think there is some underperformance on the Sanders side that they are going to have to assess and figure out going forward.

CUOMO: Maine is bad fact. But you also have a bigger race here. That does not take away the young voters not coming out. We will have to see what happens in California and a couple of other states. But you are right. There are challenges ahead, certainly on both

sides. We have never seen, if you want to talk about that, Joe Biden was not even on the money board for Super Tuesday. He did not make the list of people who spent money. He spent $2.2 million; $2 million of it was in the last 10 days.

To win this type of amount of votes with that little spending in a race of this magnitude, unheard of. That means there will be a lot of surprises coming forward. Stay with CNN.

[02:30:00]

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CUOMO: CNN can now project that Joe Biden will win the State of Texas. This is the story of the night for Joe Biden. It's the biggest projection of the night. Now obviously, it's the second-biggest state, right? California has the most delegates. But for Joe Biden to win Texas, this is the story of the night, such a surprise. He didn't even spend enough money going into Super Tuesday to make the list of people who had spent money in any kind of reasonable amounts.

Now, if you look at what that tells us about the standings, look, Bernie Sanders is going to have to deal with his own success in the past and what was his expectation. He has three states, Colorado, Utah, Vermont. You have Biden obviously now with eight states on his side of the ledger, Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, as I just told you, and Virginia, big steak of delegates.

Now the important part is to understand how, why. Why did this happen? And that obviously means Phil Mattingly. What do we see in the story of the state?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So there's a couple of things I want to point out that kind of underscore why Joe Biden is at this point. First, let's look at the top line. Just remember a couple of hours ago, Joe Biden was down by seven, eight, nine points at times. At this point, obviously, we've called state for him up 72,000 votes right now, about 84 percent reporting.

And the reason there was such a dramatic shift was because primarily of the two biggest counties in the entire state. You got the second largest county in the state, Dallas County. As we were talking, there was 10, 15, 20,000 votes dumping into this county. That new data basically pushing Joe Biden's margin up. At one point, he had been trailing in this county, pushing them now over 10 percent, almost 20,000 votes. That was also mimicked down in the Houston area.

Another big suburban area, also some urban vote in here as well, largest county in the state Harris County, Joe Biden winning by 22,000 votes. So those are the two biggest counties in the state, Joe Biden winning handily in both of those counties, really driving up his margin over the course of the night.

And then there's another thing you need to focus on. And that's these smaller counties over here. They're not huge amounts of votes. Obviously, look, 40 votes here, separate the two, but look at the margins. And that margin is repeated as you move through the smaller counties in the state. That vote starts to add up.

So you had the big population centers, you had these smaller counties throughout the center of the state here, rural counties as well, kind of a heavier white population here that Joe Biden was racking up. And then there's one more thing too. You talk about Texas, and obviously you talk about the Latino vote. And I think that's obviously important. The Latino vote is a big deal. But there's also a significant African American vote.

I want to take this away. Where you see a deeper shade of kind of orange-yellow here, kind of in this area, red showed a little better. This area right here, also right here as well. There's more of an African American vote. All right, so you kind of have that line right there. Let me take this down and show you exactly where things stand. Almost all of that is dark blue.

So the black vote in Texas as well would heavily -- I think David Charlie was talking about the exit polling as well, something we've seen throughout the course of the South. So you have the suburban vote, you have the black vote, and the urban vote in the big cities as well. And then you have Joe Biden just cleaning up votes throughout these smaller counties.

[02:35:02]

CUOMO: African Americans delivered for Joe Biden but in a way that could have never been anticipated. A point that you made earlier something that Biden's going to have to deal with going forwards head to head with Sanders is in here you have large Latino populations. How does Biden make a pitch to them or does Sanders take them with him to the convention?

And also, it really does shed light Texas into why President Trump was so desperate to go after Biden. If he's winning those suburban voters, if he's winning anybody in any kind of population that even comes close to being a rural population, it explains his anxiety. He's saying vote for Bernie. He's saying Biden, you know, attacking him, literally taking him into impeachment. We're seeing it tonight in this state.

MATTINGLY: Yes, you're seeing it tonight. And I think the concern if you're the Trump campaign, or if you're Republicans in general, is because all you have to do is think back to the midterms and 2018, right? In 2018, there was a county and I'll actually pull it up here.

You go right here, this is a county one by Colin Allred in 2018. Pete Sessions is a long-time member of the House, Republican member of the House, had been a stronghold in this seat for years on end. Colin Allred flipping that county. This is -- he's flipping this district. This district went firmly towards Joe Biden tonight.

This is the type of thing we're talking about in the suburbs of Dallas, in the suburbs of Houston, places of that nature, that's where Joe Biden did well. So that's one thing I think to keep in mind. But you talk about the Latino vote, as well. And one thing to make very clear, it's not monolithic, right? What you saw in Nevada doesn't necessarily carry over into California. And Laura Barron-Lopez who's on another panel, a room away from us right now has done some amazing reporting on this.

But I do want to show where Bernie Sanders had strength. You talked about this right here. Let's pull out the Latino vote and actually show what it actually looks like, where the deeper kind of brownish- orange is where the Latino vote is.

CUOMO: He did very well.

MATTINGLY: And so again --

CUOMO: Bernie Sanders

MATTINGLY: Light this up for Bernie Sanders. Kind of look right there, and then pull right here, well, this is all Bernie Sanders to some degree. So obviously, he didn't win the state, but did very well in that area.

CUOMO: Very important analysis. Thank you very much, Phil. The big headline, CNN can now project Texas will go to Joe Biden. Nobody saw this happening just days ago. Literally, it is an entirely new race for the Democrats. We have more numbers coming in. The biggest prize of the night, California is still very much in play. Stay with CNN.

[02:40:00]

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DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Well, CNN has projected that Joe Biden wins Texas. Joe Biden wins Texas. Despite a better ground game from the Sanders campaign, despite not spending any money or not very much time in Texas, Joe Biden wins. The question is, how did he do it? Well, the person to ask is our political director Mr. David Chalian. David, it doesn't look like he relied on the black vote. It looks like he got at least a good number of white voters there. So tell us. What did he do?

CHALIAN: He did. Although I think the black vote helped here too, Don. I'm going to show you but first, it's that term the campaign is using Joe-mentum that helped him. Well among people who decided in the last few days, that's 22 percent of the Texas Democratic primary electorate. Joe Biden won them 49 percent to Sanders 20 percent, a 29 point victory among these late deciders. That momentum from South Carolina forward all the news coverage about the endorsements, his event in Dallas last night with Buttigieg, then Klobuchar, and O'Rourke. This all matters to those voters clearly, so that was one key factor.

Take a look at the electability issue. We should not miss what is happening with Joe Biden on this score. 56 percent of the Texas Democratic electorate today wanted a candidate who could defeat Donald Trump over one that agreed with him on the issues. And among that 56 percent, among the folks looking for a Trump defeater, Biden beat Sanders 39 percent to 26 percent, a 13-point victory among that huge swath of the electorate looking for a Trump defeater.

And then finally, the black vote did help him over the top in Texas, no doubt about it. 21 percent of the electorate, one out of every five voters in this Texas Democratic primary was black today. Look at this. Biden got 60 percent of African American votes compared to Sanders at 17 percent. Just a huge margin of victory for a group that is a sizable chunk 20 percent. So that -- put all that together, Don. That is how Joe Biden won the Texas primary.

LEMON: Color me wrong because I said he didn't rely on the black vote there but I guess around the country, but 60 percent, David, that is a substantial number of black voters in Texas that got him over. So I know you guys -- no, no, I did not mean it that way, but I'll take it. I'll take the play on words. Thank you, David. I appreciate that. Back now with my panel of experts here. You guys want to say --

PSAKI: You know --

LEMON: That'll be on the blogs tomorrow, even though I didn't mean it that way. So listen, people who decided late, Biden. People who wanted people who could -- someone who could defeat Trump, Biden. African American voters, Biden. And then even I heard David Chalian say earlier, white voters across the country, Biden. Everyone except for young voters.

JENNINGS: And Hispanics.

LEMON: Hispanics. Except for Texas, I think.

BROWNSTEIN: Something big happened this week, right? I mean, Bernie Sanders had between a quarter and a third of the vote in the first three states. And the rest was casting around. And then a series of events, Clyburn endorsement, town hall, South Carolina victory, incredible consolidation of former opponents.

While Sanders over this period as front runner, was attacking the Democrat. He said he's running as much against the Democratic establishment as the Republican establishment. And the two thirds to three-quarters of the party that hasn't been entirely convinced by Bernie Sanders consolidated far more than it had earlier, far more than Republicans did in 2016, and far more than even Joe Biden probably expected.

So now the question becomes, is Bernie Sanders who is kind of a three yards and a cloud of dust candidate because we've done this -- done this -- you know, part of his appeal is he's done the same message for decades, does he have a second act. Because the overwhelming lesson of tonight is that his coalition is too narrow. It's deep, it's passionate, but it's not broad enough to win.

[02:45:43]

LEMON: But you know, I hear folks saying, well, don't -- it's crazy to count Bernie Sanders out right now. He's got a better ground game everywhere. He's going to -- but ground game didn't show -- I mean, what the ground game --

PSAKI: I think --

LEMON: Biden is winning in places where he had no ground game, he spent no money.

PSAKI: Look, I think a piece that has been undervalued and often is undervalued in campaigns is the value of earned media and positive coverage in local newspapers and local television stations on cable, on CNN. And from Saturday to Tuesday morning, when a lot of people were late deciders, as we saw in those exit polls, people were seeing Biden as a winner. And that matters and it was way more --

GILLUM: Estimated 100 million positive.

PSAKI: Yes. And that is incredibly valuable. And so in Texas, where Bernie Sanders outspent Biden by 10 times, the earned media more than made up for him.

LEMON: Well, here's my question, though, and I want to get this in before we lose time here. How will Bernie Sanders -- how will his campaign and the supporters react moving forward? That's the question.

PRESTON: Look, how they're going to react? I think Bernie Sanders is going to try to be a little bit more conciliatory because he has to try to bring the party together. His supporters are not going to be conciliatory. They're going to think that the establishment is very much against them, and the Democratic Party as we've seen being ripped apart of the past couple of weeks, as we would see in any primary is going to be ripped apart in a different way, I think, for the few weeks.

BARRON-LOPEZ: But we also saw that tonight in his speech, Bernie went after Biden in more explicit terms than he has this entire cycle. He attacked him aggressively on the Iraq War, which we've heard in the past. But he also attacks him on the bankruptcy bill, which we had not heard him do in the past, something Warren hasn't even attacked Biden on and yet people expected that from her because she battled by them on that aggressively.

If I could just talk about the Latino vote for a second. I mean, that is a big piece of why Bernie is doing so well. And what's interesting about the Latino vote, is that heading into 2020, they are expected to be the largest eligible voting bloc that is not white. And so a big question is how much they're turning out not just in the primary, but how much will they turn out in the general.

Will they finally be that sleeping giant everyone has been talking about and come out in greater numbers? Because a lot of Latinos are very upset with what's happening right now, the ones that you've talked to in California and even in Texas. And they are attracted more to a candidate like Sanders than to a candidate like Biden.

So if Biden does stay in the lead as we move forward, it'll be interesting to see how he tries to speak to Latinos. LEMON: Well, Bernie Sanders saying that he is not only fighting

Republicans, he's fighting the Democratic establishment as well. So it's going to be interesting to see how he reacts, how his campaign reacts, moving forward from now. So we shall see.

Listen, the polls are still open in Texas and California as well, but Texas now being called at least projected from CNN, Joe Biden -- it's fair to call it in upset -- wins Texas right now. The all-important delegate count when we come back here on CNN.

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CUOMO: Two big things to know. One, Texas goes to Joe Biden. That's CNN projection, big story tonight. The second thing is, California is a long way from done, and that's the big prize of the night. The question there right now is how big will Bernie Sanders margin be? How much of it will be compromised not just by Biden, but by Bloomberg and Warren and maybe a couple others.

So delegate count, very important. David Chalian, you were just explaining to me in simple form, of course, because we're talking about me. How many delegates there are tonight?

CHALIAN: Right.

CUOMO: And we still have a lot outstanding.

CHALIAN: A lot outstanding. So 1,344 delegates at state tonight, huge prize, obviously. I mean, this race is now in turbo speed. And we are able to push in about 35 percent of those delegates so far. Lots of more vote counting to do, got to see if people stay above that 15 percent threshold statewide or in a district.

268 delegates tonight so far for Joe Biden, 185 delegates for Bernie Sanders, 12 delegates tonight for Elizabeth Warren, four for Michael Bloomberg, and one for Tulsi Gabbard so far tonight.

CUOMO: So that's tonight. Still a lot of waiting. California a big part of the waiting. That will not be on our watch in all likelihood, right? It'll be over the course of days. Delegates today?

CHALIAN: Yes, this is the scoreboard that determines who's the Democratic nominee. You need up in the corner there, 1991 delegates to become the Democratic nominee. This is the scoreboard that matters. 321 delegates so far for Joe Biden, 245 delegates for Bernie Sanders. What is that? 86 delegates behind Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is putting up a lead but again, Bernie Sanders is going to catch up in California probably. 26 for Pete Buttigieg who dropped out of the race, 20 for Elizabeth Warren so far, seven for Klobuchar, also a former candidate, four for Michael Bloomberg, and one for Tulsi Gabbard. Again, you need 1991.

[02:55:04] CUOMO: 76 difference between these two guys.

CHALIAN: Oh, sorry.

CUOMO: You're waiting -- you're waiting for California -- it's only because they told me in my ear. I thought it was about 100 --

CHALIAN: Thank you. 76.

CUOMO: So you're still waiting on California. That is going to be a big metric there. But literally, you know, we've been doing this a long time. Just a few days ago, I would have bet you your name tattooed on my arm that we would not see Biden with 321 delegates in front of Sanders even at this point in the night. The biggest reason why?

CHALIAN: The biggest reason why, late deciders, he's riding momentum from South Carolina, and electability. I think people just came to him after maybe flirting with Michael Bloomberg saying this is the guy that we think could defeat Trump and nothing else matters that much to Democrats as that thing.

CUOMO: So when California is all counted -- and David, thank you very much.

CHALIAN: Sure.

CUOMO: Let's say Bernie Sanders winds up in front. Does that mean the story shifts? We got it wrong that Biden had a big night. No, because politics is about expectations. And when you perform, it's how do you perform based on what you were supposed to do? Bernie was always going to have a big night. For Joe Biden the pull this off will change the face of the race. How much? We'll discuss it next.

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