Roman Emperor Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned. It's a myth. Violins (or "fiddles") wouldn't exist for another 1,500 years or so, making the very concept impossible. That's not to say Nero might not have blatantly ignored a flaming crisis, of course, it's just quibbling about the literal meaning of the maxim. Now, American Emperor-With-No-Clothes Donald Trump didn't fiddle while the country was hit by a pandemic, either. Instead, he played golf. Twice. That's right -- in the midst of a huge crisis, Trump spent the entire weekend playing golf.

The stock market reacted Monday morning by dropping a further 2,000 points. This puts it down over 5,500 points from its all-time high less than a month ago. The reason I begin with this statistic is because it is one of two (the other being the unemployment rate) that we know Trump actually pays attention to. So I'm anticipating some wild flailing from the White House in the next 24 hours or so, because Trump dearly wants to run his entire re-election campaign on how great the economy is doing. If the coronavirus puts that at risk (as, indeed, it already has), then Trump will reluctantly have to make some sort of attempt to deal with the situation. Knowing Trump, it'll probably be the wrong thing to do; but to Trump the only thing that's important is whether Wall Street investors see him "doing something" and are calmed enough to stop the financial panic.

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The stock market is crashing daily, a pandemic is sweeping America, a tornado in Tennessee just killed two dozen people, so of course First Lady Melania Trump decided to reassure the public with a message designed to calm people in these perilous times. The message? Don't worry, everyone -- the construction of the new White House tennis pavilion was still on track. No, seriously -- you just can't make this stuff up. She even donned a hard hat (in order to look fabulous) while making this tone-deaf announcement.

The internet's reaction, as usual, was not kind. Many referenced Marie Antoinette, either directly or indirectly. Perhaps the best response: "Let them lob serves." Just another week in Trump's America, folks.

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I know, I know -- it's way too early for this.

Still, it's fun to speculate about, so we're going to push right ahead anyway and engage in some ridiculously-early ponderings of who should be chosen to round out the Democratic ticket this time around. If you are horrified of even the prospect of such meanderings, I'd advise you to do something else with the next 10 or 15 minutes of your time. There's always plenty of cat videos out there to watch, after all.

Ahem. Sorry, it's been a rather punch-drunk sort of week, as the Democratic nomination race enters an entirely new phase. We are now down to two candidates (well, plus Tulsi Gabbard, to be strictly accurate), which is certainly a big change from having to keep track of 29 of them. But while perusing a list of the also-rans today (after hearing the news that Elizabeth Warren had dropped out), we began wondering which one of them would make a good pick for each of the two remaining candidates with a chance to win the nomination. So we decided to share our musings. We'll take them one at a time (assuming for the sake of argument that they become the eventual nominee), and consider who would be a good veep pick for both of them.

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The 2020 Democratic presidential nominating contest is ending as it began. If you look at the polling over the entire course of the race so far, Joe Biden led almost from beginning to end. Up until the voting actually started, Biden was the clear favorite to win the nomination. Indeed, there really was only one other candidate -- out of a total field of 29, mind you -- that showed the strength to even be competitive with the former vice president, and that was Bernie Sanders. Bernie held onto second place in the polling pretty consistently, and this remained almost unchanged from beginning to end. Only one other candidate ever even rose into the ranks Bernie and Joe occupied, but while Elizabeth Warren enjoyed a big spike upwards (briefly snatching first place away from Biden), it almost immediately fell back to where she was really only challenging Sanders for second place. For all the media swooning over this candidate or that (this week it's Beto... no, no, it's Mayor Pete... wait, Kamala's looking pretty good!... hey, how about Amy's debate performance?), none of them ever saw their poll ratings live up to the lavish attention bestowed upon them by the media. The entire race, from even before Biden announced right up until the Iowa caucuses, was really one between only Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Which is where we now find ourselves, once again.

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Welcome back again for our continuing series where we attempt to pick the winners of all the 2020 Democratic primary contests. This is really the second part of a two-part article, as yesterday I discussed at length the shifting nature of the contest after three of the moderate candidates dropped out (Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar). Today we're going to forego the "big picture" analysis altogether and just dive right in to the state-by-state predictions.

Before we begin, we've got to update our totals for the race so far. In South Carolina, I only made picks for the top three positions, which all turned out to be correct. Personally, I was rather astonished at the margin of victory Joe Biden racked up, after predicting it would only be in the single digits (my worst prediction of the year so far, I humbly admit). Even so, going 3-for-3 in the South Carolina standings selection gives me a new total of:

Total correct 2020 primary picks so far: 13 for 18 -- 72%.

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A week ago, I wrote an article about what I considered the most important upcoming factor in the Democratic presidential race, which was who would drop out and when would they do it. That question is now at least partially answered, as the third candidate since South Carolina voted has just officially exited the race. This leaves four major candidates (and Tulsi Gabbard) still in the race. But how the loss of Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar will affect Super Tuesday is really anyone's guess at this point -- which makes predicting the outcomes a lot harder.

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I thought it'd be worthwhile to have a separate thread here for anyone who wants to comment on the incoming South Carolina primary results. Polls still won't close for another half-hour, but wanted to provide a separate comment thread for when we start to get results. One reader in particular may be interested to hear that Joe Biden seems to be doing very well, according to the exit polls....

Anyway, to anyone tuning in, here is where I'll be posting my reactions to the South Carolina returns tonight.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

File this one under: "If I doesn't laugh, I thinks I'm gonna cry!"

President Donald Trump, that noted stable genius, apparently has the answer to the coronavirus. Here's how an article in today's Washington Post began:

Trump administration officials are holding preliminary conversations about economic responses to the coronavirus, as the stock market fell sharply again on Friday amid international fears about the outbreak, according to five people with knowledge of the planning.

Among the options being considered are pursuing a targeted tax cut package, these people said.

Later in the article, Senator Chuck Grassley seemed to at least be open to the idea as well:

"At this point, the coronavirus has not had a broad impact on the U.S. economy and its effects have been limited. However, Chairman Grassley and the Senate Finance Committee stand ready to consider appropriate tax relief responses if that becomes necessary and the extent of the problem can be determined," Michael Zona, a Grassley spokesman, said in a statement.

"Tax relief responses." Seriously. That's what Republicans are now considering to fight a viral epidemic. There's an old saying that goes: "When you only have a hammer, pretty soon every problem starts to look like a nail." Republicans' one magic panacea for everything and anything that ails America is to cut taxes on the wealthy, because obviously there is simply no problem that cannot be improved by increasing the inequality of wealth in this country. Hammer, meet nail.

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Since my election forecast dominated last Friday's column, I've decided to post my picks for South Carolina early this week, to free up the format for tomorrow. Also, I sincerely doubt that one more day of polling is going to change my mind about any of these picks, so I feel it's pretty safe to put them out there a day early.

South Carolina will be the final of the first four states to vote, and Super Tuesday will follow almost immediately thereafter. Which brings up a technical note. Up until now, due to the breadth of the field, I've been posting my picks for the top five slots. But by now, I think that fourth- and fifth-place finishes are going to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, so I'm only going to pick the top three for South Carolina, and then only try to pick the winner of each state from Super Tuesday forward. Squabbling about who came in second versus third is going to become all but meaningless as we move deeper into the primary calendar, mostly because people will be much more focused on the total delegate count.

Before we get to this Saturday's picks, though, we've got to first bring our scorecard up to date. Pervious to the Nevada caucus, this stood at:

Total correct 2020 primary picks so far: 7 for 10 -- 70%.

My predictions for the Nevada outcome (based on the traditional delegate division percentages) were as follows: (1) Bernie Sanders, (2) Elizabeth Warren, (3) Pete Buttigieg, (4) Joe Biden, (5) Tom Steyer. As it turned out, I wildly overestimated Warren and wildly underestimated Biden. I did get lucky in the middle of that split, and wound up picking the first, third, and fifth places accurately. The Nevada results came in the following order: (1) Bernie Sanders, (2) Joe Biden, (3) Pete Buttigieg, (4) Elizabeth Warren, (5) Tom Steyer. This translates into 3-for-5 for my crystal ball, making my overall stats now:

Total correct 2020 primary picks so far: 10 for 15 -- 67%.

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Donald Trump is known to be a germophobe, but his fear of COVID-19 has nothing to do with any personal fear of actually contracting the virus. No, he's scared for a bigger reason -- because he knows that if the virus causes a sickness in the American economy writ large, then this will undercut his biggest campaign theme heading into the 2020 election. He's made this argument many times, essentially telling voters that they may not like him personally or appreciate his tweets, but the economy is so darn good that they have to vote for him so he can continue the good times.

That argument breaks down if the economy isn't doing well, obviously. Which is why it is no surprise that Trump reportedly was incensed at the stock market for tanking the first two days of this week, on fears of what a coronavirus pandemic could do not just to the American economy but to the whole world's economy. America is now so intertwined with foreign economies -- China's in particular -- that if they turn down it could cause America to enter a recession as well.

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