Former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis has been hospitalized in Los Angeles with bacterial pneumonia but has twice tested negative for the new coronavirus, his son said Tuesday night.

Dukakis and his wife, Kitty, were staying at their second home near the University of California, Los Angeles, where Dukakis teaches each winter quarter, when he experienced respiratory symptoms, John Dukakis said.

Dukakis, 86, who served as governor from 1975-1979 and again from 1983-1991, was admitted to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Friday night, his son said.

He was tested twice for COVID-19, both tests came back negative, and he has been diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia.

The former governor’s condition is improving, his son said, but because of precautions taken by the hospital in response to the coronavirus pandemic, he cannot have visitors. He is able to speak by phone with family and friends, and he has been speaking daily with his son.

“He sounded better today than he did yesterday,” John Dukakis, 61, said Tuesday night by telephone from his home in Brookline. “He’s only upset that he doesn’t have a copy of any newspaper. He’s been savoring the New York Times from yesterday, just going through it. There’s not much he can do, so he’s a little bored. This is not his kind of thing.”

March 3rd 2020 will be a day that will be studied by political scientists for a long time to come. How did Joe Biden, only winning one state, South Carolina, merely three days before with no money, no ground game, and no ad presence win Super Tuesday?

Merely a week before this jaw dropping performance, Bernie Sanders wracked up a 2nd place finish in Iowa, 1st place in New Hampshire, and a 1st place finish in the Nevada caucus was on a trajectory that pundits warned could be possibly not stopped. The Bernie alternative lane was clogged with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer. Elizabeth Warren was positioning herself as the true alternative progressive to Bernie. Mike Bloomberg wasn’t on the ballots but his $250 million ad campaign was in full swing.

Bernie’s Revolution was the only campaign with a movement. Millions of anti capitalist, anti establishment progressives under the mantle of Democratic Socialists marched to the Sanders drum with great consistency. Then Bernie had a message for America.



What was going on in the background?

Pete Buttigieg was in the background working a strong ground game. The night of the Nevada Caucus Pete went to Denver for a rally. 8500 people amassed to hear Pete speak and embrace his message of unity and “turning the page.”

February 17 Pete was in Salt Lake City amassing a crowd of 4500 people.

February 24 Pete was in Arlington Virginia amassing a crowd of approximately 10,000 people.

Why didn’t people know about the crowds Pete was drawing? The media was not covering it.

Pete For America had ground games in Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, and Massachusettes.
Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar was polling very well in her own State of Minnesota where for the first time, Minnesotta was utilizing primary and not the caucus. In 2016, Bernie handily won Minnesota.

Amy’s army was not going to let Minnesota out of Amy’s grasp regardless of Bernie’s past win and Ilhan Omar, Minnesota’s progressive Congressional superstar.

Tom Steyer would pour millions into the state of South Carolina, which he would come in third. His most impressive finish.

Joe Biden lost Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. The punditry was ordering the tombstone for Joe. Even if he were to win South Carolina, his connection to white voters in the first three contests was more than dissapoiting. Joe had another issue, he was broke.

Joe received an endorsement that would prove highly consequential from Jim Clyburn. Jim Clyburn, the stalwart and historic man said, “We know, Joe.”

Joe would go on to win South Carolina. Not just win, but dominate. He would win 61% of the Black vote. The one category Joe did not do well? The youth vote.

Tom Steyer would drop out the night of the election.

The next day was the historic Selma march. All candidates attended, minus Bernie Sanders.

It would appear that this walk had more significance than just a walk. After having breakfast with former President Jimmy Carter that morning Pete had some math to do and some honest reflections to take. What was his path? Pete had an answer.

Pete would head back to South Bend, Indiana to suspend his campaign. His path was not viable. But one thing was clear, he did not want his presence to be a vote splitter. Pete made no qualms that while he respects Bernie, he did not believe Bernie would be good at the top of the ticket.

Pete would go home and give a speech that sounded more Presidential than former contestant. He was going to be endorsing Joe Biden.

Following Pete’s lead of not wanting to splinter the party, Amy would drop out the next day and endorse Joe Biden. Pete and Amy would head down to Texas to live endorse Joe Biden and to the surprise of many, Beto O’Rourke would also endorse Joe on the stage.

What was happening?

Democrats were reminded that the soul of the party was harnessed by the Black vote in South Carolina. A rallying cry went out doing what they do every election. They voted. Let’s be clear, the African American community vote in greater numbers and cherish the right to vote. Jim Clyburn lit the fire, the confligration was only growing.

Team Pete, still heartbroken, jumped on phones. The ground game and digital presence of Team Pete were making calls for Joe Biden and boosting digital presence. The message to all the states? Team Pete for Joe Biden. The army was making calls to promote Joe in all the states they had presence. Those large crowds and ground game would come into play.

Amy’s Army manned the phone banks for Joe in Minnesota proving Amy’s strength in her home state. She made TV and radio ads endorsing Joe that played overnight.

Do you feel it yet?

Super Tuesday
The forgone conslusion by punditry was that Joe would do well in the South, but New England, Texas, and California were going to be Bernie bastions. Who would think the man who spent zero dollars in many of these states and never visited would win Virginia? Massachusetts? Maine?

Then came Texas.

Are you feeling it now?

Texas started out as thought of loss for Biden, Sanders strong hold with the latino community. The conversation was how could Joe keep the Sanders win down to a minimum?

Minnesota is won easily by Joe Biden.

Texas begins to narrow and evenutally Joe takes the lead and wins.

What in the world was going on? How could Joe Biden win all these states?

Sanders would win California and at first appeared it was going to be a big win. Joe? Joe was looking viable but in a distant third. But wait sports fans, as of writing this, Joe is in second place, 9 points behind.

How did this happen? Rigged? No. Though that is a twitter commonality among certain Sanders corners. So, what happened?

A Democratic Revolution.

After a year of being told Bernie was coming after the Democratic establishment, he accomplished the revolution, just not the revolution he was thinking.

After a year of rat emojis. After a year of snake emojis. After a year of non progressives being told they didn’t care about children, healthcare, student debt, or anyone other than themselves came together and said something simple.

You’re wrong.

Bernie and his more vocal and darker parts of his campaign did something. They galvanized the Democratic party to come together. But there is another person that needs to be thanked for the Democratic Revolution: Donald J Trump.

Democrats looked to the rise of Donald J Trump and how he infiltrated the party and changed it forever. Trump would gain his nomination because of the crowded GOP field that refused to consolidate.

Democrats were not going to allow this to happen. They consolidated. They rose up in one voice to say no. They were not going to allow radical politics fueled through anger and an angry base.

Let’s be clear. Democrats are the Democratic establishment. Black voters are the Democratic establishment. Whites are the Democratic establishment. Latinos are the Democratic establishment. Asian Americans are the Democratic establishment. LGBT are the Democratic establishment. Christians, Muslims, Athiests are the Democratic establishment.
The Democratic establishment did come together. In two days they created a wave that overcame Bernies inevitableness to say, we are the establishment. Unlike other movements, there is room for everyone in the Democratic establishment.

Young people, you’re welcome to stand with us. We want the same goals, we just have a different path to get there. Is the Democratic Revolution perfect? It’s not, which means, there is room for everyone. There is no purity test here except your desire for unity and helping America heal from the past four years and yearning to overthrow the most cruel and non-empathetic President in our history.

It’s not the revolution Bernie was thinking, but it was a revolution none the less.

Asked about his past backing of Fidel Castro’s communist government in Cuba during an interview with 60 Minutes, Sanders began by saying, “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba,” before adding, “but, you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad.”

In a 1985 letter newly obtained by HuffPost in which Sanders debated running for governor, he wrote: “Whether I run for governor or not is really not important. What would be a tragedy, however, is for people with a radical vision to fall into the pathetic camp of the intellectually bankrupt Democratic Party.”

Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once said that he was "physically nauseated" by a speech made by President John F. Kennedy when Sanders was a young man, because Kennedy's "hatred for the Cuban Revolution [...] was so strong."

"Kennedy was young and appealing and ostensibly liberal," Sanders reminisced in a 1987 interview with The Gadfly, a student newspaper at the University of Vermont. "But I think at that point, seeing through Kennedy, and what liberalism was, was probably a significant step for me to understand that conventional politics or liberalism was not what was relevant."

In the same interview, he also criticized Jesse Jackson's decision to try and affect change by "working within the Democratic party" and offered some pointed remarks about Walter Mondale.

Sanders told The Gadfly that endorsing the Democratic ticket in 1984 and "campaigning for Mondale [...] was a very difficult thing to do."

"When I'd go around talking about Walter Mondale I would say that if elected president, I felt, Walter Mondale was going to be a pretty bad president," explained Sanders. "Now sometimes you may have to make painful decisions."

"If you go around saying that Mondale would be a great president, you would be a liar and a hypocrite," concluded Sanders. "That is not what I was saying."

Sanders's remarks about Kennedy, Jackson, and Mondale are in keeping with the Independent senator's long history of criticizing the Democratic Party.

In a Rutland Herald article published the following year, Sanders explained the crucial difference between himself and Jesse Jackson: "'Jesse believes that serious social change is possible within the Democratic Party. I don't.'"

And in a 1989 op-ed in the Burlington Free Press, Sanders lambasted "the corporate-controlled Democratic and Republican parties," and praised the National Organization of Women "for supporting the need for a progressive third party in this country."

"Like millions of other Americans, NOW understands that the Democratic and Republican parties are intellectually and morally bankrupt," Sanders wrote.

"We do not have an effective national political movement which is prepared to fight for power," argued Sanders, "and which challenges the basic assumptions and priorities of the corporate-controlled Democratic and Republican parties – two political parties which have no substantive ideological differences and are, in reality, one party – the party of the ruling class."

“I am not now, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat,”

“They have no ideology. Their ideology is opportunism.”

In an op-ed in the New York Times in January 1989, he called the Democratic and Republican parties “tweedle-dee” and “tweedle-dum,” both adhering in his estimation to an “ideology of greed and vulgarity.”

"I think that nationally, the party has on issue after issue sold out so many times that if you go before the people and say, 'Hey, I'm a Democrat,' you don't usually generate a lot of enthusiasm."

In November 2011, Sanders criticized Democrats for their response to the Budget Reform Act of 2011, saying the super committee to develop a deficit reduction plan shouldn't look at cuts in social security or Medicare.
"My suggestion was literally to the Democratic leadership, simply change the name of the party from the Democratic Party to the Republican-lite versus Republicans and say, 'Yeah, we're bad, but we're not as bad as these guys,'" said Sanders on the Thom Hartmann Program.