Super Tuesday: Bloomberg endorses Biden in bid 'to defeat Trump' as Sanders launches fresh attack on frontrunner

To recap...

So, as things stand, the confirmed primary wins are as follows:

Joe Biden: Massachusetts, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.

Bernie Sanders: California, Utah, Colorado and Vermont.

With Maine and Texas still awaiting confirmation but expected to go to Biden that leaves Barack Obama's former vice president in the lead nationally with 453 delegates and Bernie back in second place with 382. Elizabeth Warren has 50.

Warren and Michael Bloomberg now appear to have little choice but to drop out.

'Elizabeth Warren destroyed Bloomberg and we haven't said her name tonight'

CNN contributor Van Jones has been giving credit where it's due to the Massachusetts senator who may have suffered a humiliating night and lost her home state but deserves to be remembered for eviscerating the New York billionnaire on the debate stage in Nevada, so brutally in fact that his Wikipedia entry was listed to name her as his "cause of death".

'Warrior' Jill Biden becomes a meme after shoving protester from stage to protect husband

The press photo below of Dr Jill shielding Diamond Joe from a "Let Dairy Die" activist at his rally in Los Angeles is one for the ages.

The moment - also featuring a stellar rugby tackle from press secretary Symone Sanders, who says she "broke a nail" in the incident - has already gone viral and become a meme.

Here's Clark Mindock with more.

'Texans don't want their land taken for Trump's border wall'

For Indy Voices, Sierra Juarez offers this insight into why her state turned out so decisively for the Democratic primary. It was actually Biden, and not Bernie as she predicted, who won the day there, with the veep claiming 34 per cent of the vote to 30 per cent.

We're still awaiting confirmation from Maine, incidentally, where Biden is ahead by just one per cent of the vote with 81 per cent of precincts reporting.

Last voter in Texas goes home

Respect to this gentleman for queueing for hours on end to cast his vote and not waivering in his commitment to the cause.

Here's Conrad Duncan on those delays sparking outrage in minority precincts.

'A brokered conference is the worst nightmare for the Democrats - but we are likely heading for one'

For Indy Premium, Matthew Norman warns that the prospect of the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July descending into horsetrading is becoming "a ghoulish inevitability".

Trump mocks Bloomberg as he 'considers dropping out'

How's the president doing?

As we've seen, he was up late taunting Elizabeth Warren and his pinned tweet is currently a video of Michael Bloomberg licking his fingers.

While Trump derides his fellow New Yorker as the "biggest loser" of the night and says his advisers "took him for a ride" that saw him wash $700m (£548m) "down the drain", Bloomberg is understood to be meeting with advisers to plan his next move.

He was talking big about winning the Florida primary in two weeks yesterday but he's surely just throwing more good money after bad at this point.

Richard Hall has more on this.

Trump 'will dump Mike Pence for Nikki Haley' to upstage Dem convention, declares CNN pundit

Speaking on a panel at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, ex-Crossfire host Paul Begala had this forecast to make on the president's likely tactic for disrupting the Democratic National Convention:

“This is not a prediction. It’s a certainty. On Thursday, 16 July - that’s the date the Democrat gives his or her acceptance address - on that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms.

"You watch. Guaranteed," he continued. “Trump put Pence in charge of coronavirus to throw him under the bus."

(John Lamparski/Getty)

Haley is Trump's former ambassador to the UN who has remained a staunch advocate for the administration since leaving office. Given Trump's recent resurrection of Sean Spicer and Reince Preibus and his love for a limelight-stealing gesture, this all seems highly plausible.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has meanwhile called the president the "most dangerous person in the history of America", which he will probably take as a compliment.

Ilhan Omar hits out at lack of progressive unity

The Minnesota Democrat - an avid Bernie supporter - has pointed to the party establishment closing ranks to back Biden post-South Carolina as the key reason the ex-veep won her state and so many others on Super Tuesday.

Many on her side of the divide would now like to see Elizabeth Warren back out to avoid further splitting the progressive vote and perhaps even run alongside Sanders as a forward-thinking dream ticket, although how likely this is remains to be seen.

Here's Andrew Naughtie with a little more on that.

How Biden won Texas

Here's a handy breakdown of how the Obama man beat Bernie to win the biggest state in the union and secure the shock of the night.

Whereas the Sanders team bet big on tying down Latino support, Joe's team concentrated on blanketing major cities and suburbs to reach a broader demographic of left-leaning residents.