“Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren bounced out of the second round of debates in Detroit with the most name-mentions in network and cable news coverage last week,” Politico reports.
“Deep Root Analytics, a Republican-aligned consulting firm, tracked the number of times Democratic presidential candidates were mentioned in the 48 hours after the two debates last week. The firm modeled those mentions against their projections for the number of swing voters watching the six network and cable stations during that time.”
“Biden, who came under fire from many of his primary opponents on the debate stage, reached 384.7 million impressions among swing voters nationally… Biden also accounted for about 40 percent of the conversation on all six network and cable stations in the two days following last Wednesday night’s debate.”
“Warren and Sanders reached 230.5 million and 208.1 million impressions, respectively, after last Tuesday’s debate, when the pair presented a progressive tag-team against several more moderate candidates. Together, Warren and Sanders accounted for more than half of the TV news coverage. Harris, who tangled with Biden on health care policy, reached 200.4 million impressions.”
Nate Silver: “In theory, the easiest way to win a presidential nomination is to bring the various wings and factions of your party together toward some type of consensus. Not every voter has to love you… But they should all at least like you. Usually, this is accomplished by adopting policy positions that represent a rough average of the voters in your party — and which are also fairly closely aligned with the views of party elites who can influence the nomination process.”
“Kamala Harris is one example of a candidate who has rather explicitly been pursuing this strategy. She’s not the most moderate candidate in the field, nor is she the furthest to the left. Rather, she has tried to calibrate herself somewhere in between….”
“But it’s worth remembering that the previous times parties have had very large fields, they produced eccentric nominees — George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Donald Trump in 2016 — who weren’t really pursuing any middle-ground or coalition-building or triangulation strategy. (The opposite, really, in the case of Trump and McGovern.) That isn’t a large sample, and Harris is still among the Democrats most likely to win the nomination. But she’s increasingly at risk of becoming the Marco Rubio in a field of candidates who have more distinctive pitches to voters.”
Rep. Ken Marchant (R-TX) will announce his retirement from Congress tomorrow, the New York Times reports. He’ll be the fourth Texas Republican in recent weeks to call it quits. Marchant’s district is highly competitive. After winning it by double digits, he only carried it by three percentage points last year.
Speculation is swirling that Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), a 32-year veteran and moderate who has broken with President Trump on critical votes, will announce that he will not seek re-election, the New York Times reports.
New research suggests that some men avoid “green” behavior — like using a reusable shopping bag at the grocery store or avoiding plastic straws — because they don’t want to be perceived as gay.
A new Gallup poll finds President Trump’s approval rating is holding steady at 42%.
A new IBD/TIPP poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in a general election match up by 13 points, 49% to 35%.
The other matchups were closer: Sanders leads 50% to 45%, Warren leads 49% to 45%, and Harris leads 47% to 45%.
In the Democratic primary, Biden leads with 30%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 17%, Bernie Sanders at 15% and Kamala Harris at 11%.
“Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign is taking proactive steps for the possibility of a contested convention, including an aggressive effort to court Democratic Party insiders who could cast crucial votes in such a scenario,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The South Bend mayor’s team held a conference call with a group of so-called superdelegates on Monday to ask them for their support… It was just the latest sign that the mayor’s aides are still playing catch up against competitors such as former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been cultivating relationships with party insiders for nearly 40 years. But it also signals that Buttigieg’s team sees a convention floor fight as a possible path towards securing the party’s nomination.”
Politico: “The back-to-back mass-shootings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend shook up the Democratic presidential primary, elevating the profile of lower-tier candidates, reorienting the focus of the contest and fusing the divisive issues of immigration, racism and gun control for the first time on the campaign trail.”
“The tragedies have the potential to change the dynamics in the broader campaign for the White House, as President Donald Trump and his supporters reeled from comparisons of their rhetoric about immigrants with that of a manifesto suspected of being from the shooter in El Paso, a border city with a mostly Latino population.”
“President Trump’s re-election campaign has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an ‘invasion’ at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter,” the New York Times reports.
“Since January, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word ‘invasion’ — part of a barrage of advertising focused on immigration, a dominant theme of his re-election messaging.”
“The Democratic National Committee is placing operatives in six states to focus exclusively on attacking President Trump and driving local conversation about his policies ahead of the 2020 election,” Politicoreports.
“It’s the DNC’s first round of staff hires in battleground states, drawing an early outline of the 2020 electoral map: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, four of the closest states that Trump won in 2016, as well as Arizona — which has slowly been moving to the left in recent years and voted for Trump by a narrow 3.5 percentage points in 2016 — and Ohio, a traditional swing state that some Democrats argue should be considered a second-tier priority in 2020.”
J. D. Scholten, a Democrat who nearly toppled Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in a heavily Republican district in 2018, will announce on Monday that he will run again for the seat in 2020, the New York Times reports.
“His decision sets up a possible rematch with Mr. King, whose history of racist remarks has made him a pariah among Republican leaders, though not always with voters.”
Said Scholten: “Last time, we were hoping to win. Now, we are expecting to win. We know how to do it.”
Politico: “For six weeks until the next debate, in mid-September, candidates will shift their focus more completely to the early primary states, grinding through a ritualistic run of picnics, forums, and party fundraisers: The Wing Ding, the Iowa State Fair, the Summer Sizzler, Londonderry’s Old Home Days.”
“For the frontrunners, the rigors of a month full of intimate, often less scripted public appearances will present a significant test. But the weaker contenders will also come under considerable pressure. Some will likely begin running out of money or will fail to qualify for the next set of debates, culling the now-sprawling field.”
A new Latino Decisions poll found only 21% of Latinos said they would probably or definitely vote for Donald Trump in 2020, with only 13% saying they “definitely” would.
An overwhelming majority —almost eight-in-ten (78%)—said they are strongly or somewhat “frustrated with how Trump and his allies treat immigrants and Latinos” and are worried thing will get worse.
Jewish Insider: “A neo-Nazi website took credit for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) qualification for the first two Democratic primary debates. The Daily Stormer, a notorious white supremacist and antisemitic website, proclaimed in April ‘we did it” — after the Hawaii congresswoman reached the 65,000 donor threshold needed to participate in the first two debates.”
“The Gabbard campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment.”
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