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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2019 18:24:59 GMT
The ideological divisions between the leading Democratic candidates for president were on clear display at the rowdy Iowa Liberty and Justice Celebration on Friday evening. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took aim at her more moderate rivals during her remarks, slamming them for "vague ideas that are designed not to offend anyone." "If the most we can promise is business as usual after Donald Trump, then we Democrats will lose," Warren said, in a clear shot at both former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. "We win when we offer solutions big enough to touch the problems that are in peoples' lives."  Buttigieg was the first candidate to take the stage. The 37-year-old casting himself as both a voice of a new generation reminiscent of President Barack Obama that could also bring back a sense of calm and order to the Oval Office. "I didn't just come here to end the era that is Donald Trump. I'm here to launch the era that comes next," Buttigieg told the crowd. "Because in order to win, and in order to lead, it's going to take a lot more than the political warfare we have come to accept from Washington, D.C."  Warren is leading the current polls in Iowa, but Buttigieg has seen his numbers rise in the state lately. And both had the loudest and largest crowd of supporters inside the Des Moines arena. The annual Iowa Democratic Party dinner is part fundraiser and part pep rally that takes on an outsized role every four years. Each White House hopeful gets 10 minutes to make his or her pitch on an important stage just three months before the first Democratic 2020 voters will weigh in. Candidates pay for their supporters to attend, outfitting them with signs, lights, noisemakers and chants. They hold events and rallies outside the event and march with banners and signs into the dinner. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2019 18:10:45 GMT
“Pocahontas?” A racial slur unfit for discussion. Bernie’s heart attack? Out of bounds. Questions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings? Stop carrying Donald Trump’s water.  To listen to 2020 Democrats, some of the most volatile critiques of the top three polling candidates aren’t worthy of public debate — even though Trump and GOP operatives have made clear they’d hammer them on those issues during the general election. Some Democrats fear the crowded field is doing the eventual nominee a disservice by tiptoeing around their possible vulnerabilities while the GOP loads torpedoes into the tubes. It’s a dynamic reminiscent of the 2016 Democratic primary, when Democrats — including primary candidate Bernie Sanders — downplayed the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails, only to confront a vicious general election onslaught on those very questions from Trump. “Trump has more money than God, no embarrassment gene, no shame and no guardrail,” said Sue Dvorsky, former Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman, who has endorsed Kamala Harris in the race. “I worry when so many of our activists say: ‘I like all of them.’ It is not our job to like everybody, it is our job to pick one. I worry as this goes on that we are not having a vigorous enough debate.” The Democratic field has so far been chastened by a primary in which negative attacks on other Democrats have been frowned on by the grassroots. Fearful of alienating the base by seeming to channel Trump’s attacks, Warren’s rivals have barely laid a glove on her past assertions of Native American heritage or her legal work representing corporations. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2019 4:34:31 GMT
Biden’s competitors likewise haven’t challenged the former vice president over his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings — even as they hover near the center of the impeachment inquiry. They’ve only swiped at Sanders’ embrace of democratic socialism. And only debate moderators queried Sanders, who would take office 4½ months before his 80th birthday, about his recent heart attack.  Democratic strategists and campaign advisers also complain the media has been too soft on some of the leading candidates, failing to press them on vulnerabilities, especially on the national debate stage. Perhaps the biggest looming topic that has yet to come up in four debates is Warren’s past claims of Native American heritage. The issue has dogged Warren ever since she ran for Senate in 2012 — with Trump dubbing her “Pocahontas” — and blew up spectacularly last year when she was criticized for falling into Trump’s trap by taking a DNA test. In an acknowledgement of the DNA episode’s unpopularity, the Warren campaign recently took down videos, tweets and an information page on her website about her heritage. Republicans have hammered Warren over the claims, and several operatives say they will weave it into a broader attack on the Massachusetts senator’s overall credibility if she’s the nominee. In Biden’s case, the former vice president is under attack from Trump and GOP TV ads over his son’s work overseas. When Biden was pressed on the matter in the fourth debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper carefully caveated the question with a disclaimer that “there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.” After Biden answered, Sen. Cory Booker shamed the moderators for the question, accusing them of “elevating a lie and attacking a statesman.” |
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2019 18:23:09 GMT
Depending on which reputable survey you look at, President Donald Trump’s approval rating is somewhere between 41 and 38 percent — numbers that are underwhelming at best. But a new poll from the New York Times and Siena College illustrates how Trump has a clear path to winning a second term even as he remains unpopular nationally.  The NYT/Siena polling — which is framed as a look at the state of the 2020 race exactly one year before Election Day — indicates the Electoral College advantage that landed Trump in the White House (despite him receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton) is still very much in play. In hypothetical head-to-head matchups with Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren in six battleground states that Trump won in 2016 — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina — Trump is still extremely competitive. Trump is broadly unpopular in each of those states, with his approval rating ranging from 2 percentage points underwater in Florida to 11 percentage points underwater in Wisconsin. But the story is different when Trump matches up against the top Democratic contenders. Here’s the state-by-state breakdown, via Nate Cohn, who wrote the Times piece about the polling:  Beyond showing Biden better positioned to defeat Trump in battleground states than Sanders or Warren, the poll illustrates the “nightmare” scenario for Democrats outlined by David Wasserman in a July piece for MSNBC — one in which Trump loses the popular vote by as many as 5 million votes, but still prevails in the Electoral College. To put it succinctly, no matter how much the Democratic nominee runs up the score in states like California and New York, it won’t matter if they can’t win in a handful of the aforementioned states that Trump won in 2016. And as of now, only Biden is positioned to do that — and even in that case his edge over Trump is within the margin of error. What explains Trump’s enduring appeal in battleground states? According to the NYT/Siena poll — his overwhelming popularity with white voters who don’t have college degrees, which is just as strong now as it was three years ago. |
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