A new OH Predictive Insights poll in Arizona finds Joe Biden leading President Trump in a hypothetical presidential election match up, 49% to 44% with 7% undecided.
A new Morning Consult poll finds Joe Biden picked up another four points, leaving him with 40% of the Democratic primary vote share and a 21-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is quietly building out its national footprint. The California Democrat has taken a more methodical approach than some rivals in amassing ground troops!” Politico reports.
“On Tuesday, Harris’ team will take another step, launching a national training program designed to harness volunteer energy on the ground that it could later tap into.”
“When Joe Biden came to Philadelphia for a high-dollar fundraiser with powerful lawyers and executives on the first day of his presidential campaign, Elizabeth Warren blasted him,” the Philadelphia Inquirerreports.
Wrote Warren in a fundraising email: “How did Joe Biden raise so much money in one day? Well, it helps that he hosted a swanky private fundraiser for wealthy donors at the home of the guy who runs Comcast’s lobbying shop.”
“Some of Biden’s top donors have bristled at the criticism, because they remember attending expensive private events for Warren in Philadelphia as recently as last year.”
The Atlantic: “Multiple people close to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio gave up trying to talk him out of running for president earlier this year. Now he’s reportedly going to try to win Iowa and New Hampshire without most of his friends—or even people on his payroll—supporting him.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg suggested that if God did have a political affiliation, it wouldn’t “be the one that sent the current president into the White House,” CNN reports.
Buttigieg went on to say “what we see in the White House is so different than what I hear in scripture when I am in church.”
He elaborated: “I hear about taking care of the marginalized and defending the weak and supporting the poor and visiting the prisoner and welcoming the stranger and humility and decency. These are the things that are taught in Sunday schools around this country. And so the idea that that is the property of the Republican Party, especially this Republican Party and some of the choices they have made in recent years, it just doesn’t add up to me.”
Rev. Al Sharpton told the Daily Mail that he found Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) “more impressive” than he expected and expressed confidence that the U.S. would someday elect a gay president.
Said Sharpton: “I was impressed that he was pretty certain what he stood for and what he didn’t. I did not feel he was patronizing. He said things that he knew I may disagree with, and he was firm on things that he and I may agree with.”
He added: “The most impressive thing about him is he seems comfortable in his own skin. You meet a lot of political people that you feel they’re insecure or trying to mold themselves to what they think you like. He seems to be who he is. And I think that’s impressive and refreshing.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) “revealed Monday that he will not announce his 2020 presidential bid this week after all, despite insiders’ widespread belief that he was planning to take the plunge,” the New York Daily News reports.
Said De Blasio: “There was a story that assumed some specific thing that never was and you can’t have an announcement before there’s a decision.”
New York Times: “About 200 bundlers from across the country are expected to gather Tuesday at the Trump International Hotel for a series of meetings and workshops about the campaign’s new fund-raising program. Vice President Mike Pence will address the group. Brad Parscale, President Trump’s campaign manager, will play host. Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Wall Street billionaire, has R.S.V.P.’d yes.”
“The group will be divided into tiers, based on success in raising money. The ‘Trump Train’ donors, or those who raise $25,000, will be given a lapel pin and access to a national retreat and leadership dinners. ‘Club 45’ members, or those who raise $45,000, will get all of that, as well as monthly conference calls with Republican Party leaders. And the ‘Builders Club,’ or those bundlers who raise $100,000 or more, will be given access to national campaign events.”
“It is the kind of traditional campaign fund-raising apparatus that Mr. Trump thumbed his nose at during his 2016 run. And it involves some donors who only grudgingly accepted him once he was the Republican presidential nominee.”
Peter Hamby: “Since Vietnam, every time a Democrat has won the presidency, it’s because Democrats voted with their hearts in a primary and closed ranks around the candidate who inspired them, promising an obvious break from the past and an inspiring vision that blossomed in the general election. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. Barack Obama. All were young outsiders who tethered their message to the culture of the time. When Democrats have picked nominees cautiously and strategically—falling in line—the results have been devastating, as Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton made plain.”
“It’s not a perfect rule: While Gore and Clinton didn’t quite electrify the country, they still won the popular vote. And George McGovern was a heart candidate who got slaughtered by Richard Nixon in 1972.”
“But the McGovern wipeout is kind of what Biden and his loyalists are clinging to: the idea that this Trump moment, like the wrenching 60s, is so existential and high stakes that Democrats will overlook their usual instincts and do the sensible thing. Theatrical and Irish, Biden surely is hoping that he can be a vehicle for both passion and pragmatism. But if he wins the nomination next year, it will be because Democrats went with their heads, not their bleeding hearts.”
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