Bernie, Pete and Amy get tickets punched in N.H.; Joe, Liz just get punched

Win, place, show and uh-oh

New Hampshire has made its decision: The race for the Democratic nomination will remain wide open.

After their virtual tie in Iowa, Sen. Bernie Sanders narrowly beat Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday night. With 95% of the precincts counted, the venerable Vermont socialist won 26% of the vote, and the young former South Bend, Indiana, mayor was close behind at 24.4%. The biggest breakthrough was achieved by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose third-place finish at 19.7% elevates her to the top tier.

Down, if not out, were two 2020 candidates who had looked stronger through 2019 — before voters started to weigh in — and accordingly were the top targets of President Donald Trump's derision. Sen. Elizabeth Warren got only 9.3%, and former Vice President Joe Biden came in fifth with 8.4%. For up-to-date New Hampshire and Iowa vote tallies from Newsday, click here. (See the delegate-total tracker.)

While Sanders has solidified his advantage with the progressive wing, it was hardly a dominant performance. The combined vote of the moderates in the race topped 56%, compared with about 35% for Sanders and Warren together. Even as the candidates talked up unity, the fight over the party's direction remains unresolved.

Sanders proclaimed his campaign is about more than defeating Trump — "it is about transforming this country." In counterpoint, Buttigieg said, "We have been told by some that you must either be for a revolution or you are for the status quo. But where does that leave the rest of us?" Klobuchar, who represents Minnesota, told her backers: "Donald Trump’s worst nightmare is that the people in the middle — the people who have had enough of the name-calling and the mudslinging — have someone to vote for in November.”

The fight to come out on top among the moderates remained very much up for grabs. Biden still could do better in states with larger black and Latino shares of the electorate — constituencies with which Buttigieg and Klobuchar barely have made a dent. Sanders also has shown strength with black and Latino voters.

And coming soon to the primary contests and the debates is former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the 800-pound, $62 billion gorilla who sat out Iowa and New Hampshire and is placing his chips on the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states next month.

Biden's early bye-bye

Biden's front-runner status was growing more distant in the rearview mirror as he decided to skip out on his New Hampshire primary night party and fly earlier than planned to a coming stop on the trail.

“It ain’t over, man. We’re just getting started," he told supporters in South Carolina.

Another national poll, from Monmouth University, showed Sanders on top, with 26% to the former vice president's 16%. Biden's support in a January poll was almost twice as high.

In a morning MSNBC interview, Biden seemed to undercut one of his selling points: that he stands out as the Democrat best positioned to beat Trump. “I refuse to suggest any Democrat can lose. We can run Mickey Mouse against this president and have a shot,” Biden said.

Biden, who has played up his past partnership with Barack Obama, shrugged off a Bloomberg ad with a clip of the former president calling the former New York mayor a “leader throughout the country.” Biden told reporters who asked about it: “If I had that money, I guess I’d run ads, too.”

Warren, as always, has a plan

Warren was prepared for a disappointing showing in New Hampshire. But the Massachusetts senator has a plan, and she's sticking to it, Politico reported.

In the week since her third-place finish in Iowa, there have been no messaging shake-ups or public shifts in strategy.

“Drown out the noise. Get off the pollercoaster,” tweeted her Massachusetts director, Jossie Valentin, on Monday. “Focus on her and her message. That is what we have done for the past 12 months. That is what we will continue to do.”

Warren's campaign manager, Roger Lau, put out a memo offering theories on why her rivals will falter. It argues that Biden's support from older and black voters is eroding, Sanders' "ceiling" is lower than the support he had in 2016, Buttigieg hasn't demonstrated he can do well in states with "more diverse electorates" and Klobuchar has no campaign infrastructure in place for the long haul.

Warren, in remarks to supporters Tuesday night, said, "We still have 98% of the delegates ... up for grabs." But she also gave Klobuchar, her Senate "friend and colleague," props for "showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out."

Yang's number is up

Andrew Yang, a once-unknown entrepreneur, exceeded politico pros' expectations by lasting for as long as he did in the 2020 race. But as New Hampshire's results came in placing him eighth with 2.9%, behind billionaire Tom Steyer and Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, he called it quits.

"I am a numbers guy,” Yang told The Washington Post. “In most of these [upcoming] states, I’m not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign.”

Yang's central message warned of the societal and economic changes automation would bring to the United States. He said he wanted to remain in public life and was open to becoming another candidate’s running mate or joining a presidential Cabinet. Not ruled out: a 2021 run for New York mayor.

Colorado's Sen. Michael Bennet, who never made much impact and failed to qualify for recent debates, also dropped out on Tuesday. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who entered late and couldn't crack 1% in a neighboring state, said he'll decide Wednesday whether his campaign has a future.

Trump thumb tilts Justice scale

If Roger Stone couldn't sleep after federal prosecutors on Monday recommended a 7- to 9-year prison sentence for his crimes, a glance at Trump's 1:48 a.m. tweet on Tuesday was a soothing reminder that he has friends in the highest places.

"This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!" Trump wrote.

Sure enough, in a remarkable about-face, a senior Justice Department official on Tuesday morning said the recommendation by career prosecutors in the case, brought by former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, was too harsh — "extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offenses." A revised recommendation said some incarceration is warranted but "far less" than 7 to 9 years and "defers to the court as to what specific sentence is appropriate."

Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon he didn't speak to the Justice Department about Stone but would have the "absolute right" to do so. A Justice spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said the decision by senior department officials to soften the recommendation came before the president's tweet. An official told ABC News the tweet was an "inconvenient coincidence."

The turnabout triggered fresh accusations that Attorney General William Barr has made the department a Trump tool. Before the day was over, all four Stone prosecutors — Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Michael Marando — quit the case in apparent protest.

Stone, a Trump confidant for decades, was convicted by a jury in November of obstructing Congress and witness tampering. During Trump's 2016 campaign, he was a contact point with WikiLeaks regarding emails hacked from Democrats seen as damaging to Hillary Clinton.

As the revised recommendation was pending, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted sardonically: "They’ll probably recommend no jail time, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a show on Fox News." Schumer also called on Justice's inspector general to investigate.

Trump misplays race card on Bloomberg

Trump has been on edge over Bloomberg's willingness to bury his reelection hopes — with a billion dollars in ads and a national campaign apparatus for supporting himself or whichever Democrat gets nominated. New alarms went off in Trumpland after a poll showed a shift of black voters from Biden to Bloomberg.

So on Tuesday, Trump's camp jumped on resurfaced reports on how the former New York mayor in the past bluntly defended his city's police stop-and-frisk policy. In 2015, Bloomberg told the Aspen Institute that crimes were committed overwhelmingly by young male minorities, and that it made sense to deploy police in minority neighborhoods to “throw them up against the wall and frisk them."

"WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST," Trump tweeted. But the post soon was deleted. Apparently, either Trump or someone with his ear noticed a problem: He has been an enthusiastic backer of stop-and-frisk tactics. Trump tweeted in favor of the NYPD's practice in 2013. He endorsed it for nationwide use during his 2016 campaign. As recently as 2018, the president called on Chicago police to use the policy to curb that city's gun violence.

As for Bloomberg, he apologized for stop-and-frisk just before the outset of his campaign. In a statement Tuesday, he said, "I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities." Still, Bloomberg tried to spin the policy as one he "inherited" and that he cut back 95% before leaving office. He left out that he lost a lawsuit in his final year as mayor, with a federal judge ruling the policy represented “indirect racial profiling” and violated civil rights.

Trump said Tuesday that Bloomberg's initial apology, delivered at a black church in Brooklyn last November, was "pathetic."

The jokes are on Trump

Trump tweeted out a clip from Larry David's HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm" that the president seemed to think showed "tough guys" support him.

In the scene, a motorcycle rider venting road rage at David turns friendly when he sees David don a MAGA cap. What Trump didn't know was the premise: David had discovered that the MAGA headgear works as "a great people repellent" in liberal Los Angeles for folks he wants to avoid.

For an attack on Bloomberg, Trump retweeted a post that featured an old photo of the two billionaires together in golfing gear.

The president's comment attacked Bloomberg as a lousy golfer: “Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!” Trump didn't notice, or didn't care, that the tweet (it also had the hashtag #BloombergIsRacist) came from an account named "BERNIE BEATS TRUMP."

What else is happening:

• Trump suggested the military should consider disciplinary action against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Iraq War veteran who gave damaging testimony against Trump in the impeachment inquiry and was kicked out of his White House job last week. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday signaled that won't happen, saying the Pentagon protects service members from "retribution or anything like that."
• The Ukraine allegations that Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani gave to the Justice Department are being vetted by investigators in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh, two U.S. law enforcement officials told CNN.
• At his Manchester rally Monday night, Trump revived a canard that he lost New Hampshire in 2016 because of massive voter fraud — "they had buses being shipped up from Massachusetts … Hundreds and hundreds of buses." Officials in New Hampshire said no evidence supports that claim. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a New Hampshire native, agrees with the state officials.
• The White House has won a lawsuit over Trump not having written records of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson said judges in Washington don't have the authority to oversee the president's day-to-day actions.
• Utah lawmakers said they won’t consider proposals to censure or recall Sen. Mitt Romney, the lone Republican who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial.
• Trump suddenly withdrew his nomination of Jessie Liu, recently the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, for a top post at the Treasury Department. No reason was given, but one was suspected: In her previous job, she oversaw the Trump-denounced prosecutions of Stone, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort.