March 10, 2020

Biden Wins Mississippi and Missouri Primaries

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

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Joe Biden won the primaries in Mississippi and Missouri, two of six contests on Tuesday that will add to his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders. Both races were called as soon as polls closed.

Biden’s campaign has been propelled forward by African American voters who make up the majority of the Democratic Party in Mississippi. Sanders, by contrast, has struggled with this black voters, especially older black voters, since 2016. He canceled an event scheduled in Mississippi, signaling that he had all but given up on winning many delegates. As the Washington Post noted, the mayor of Jackson, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a Sanders supporter, spent the weekend campaigning for the senator not in Mississippi but in Michigan. Initial exit polls showed Biden winning the state overall with a nearly 60-point margin.

Missouri, on the other hand, was less obviously in Biden’s column. Sanders nearly won the state four years ago against Hillary Clinton. But early exit polls showed Biden ahead by more than 20 points, an indication that voters have continued to shift away from Sanders and toward Biden.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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