The Fox News Poll from yesterday produced devastating news for Trump today. It shows Trump’s approving rating falling to 42% approval and 56% disapproval, and it shows him in the 30’s when matched with the top four Democratic candidates. Here are the matchups:
Biden 50, Trump 38.
Sanders 48, Trump 39.
Warren 46, Trump 39.
Harris 45, Trump 39
“But for Trump, the most alarming takeaway from Fox’s survey may be this: Even if the president does manage to turn the Democratic nominee’s favorability steeply negative, he could still lose in a rout. In 2016, Trump won voters who disapproved of both major-party candidates by 50 to 39 percent margin in national exit polls. Respondents who disliked both Biden and Trump in Fox’s poll favored the Democrat over the president by a whopping 43 to 10 percent margin.”
David Byler: “But we’re not completely in the dark about who is going to be the Democratic nominee. National primary polls taken at this point in the process don’t have a great track record of picking the eventual winner. But one of the candidates in the top three or four in the national polls often does become the nominee. And while true polling longshots — those polling at zero percent or close to it — do still have some chance of winning, the historical record doesn’t provide much reason for optimism.”
New York Times: “[President Obama] has communicated his frustration that Mr. Biden’s closest advisers are too old and out of touch with the current political climate — urging him to include more younger aides.”
“In March, Mr. Obama took the unusual step of summoning Mr. Biden’s top campaign advisers, including the former White House communications director Anita Dunn and Mr. Biden’s longtime spokeswoman, Kate Bedingfield, to his Washington office for a briefing on the campaign’s digital and communications strategy with members of his own staff, including his senior adviser, Eric Schultz.”
“When they were done, Mr. Obama offered a pointed reminder: Win or lose, they needed to make sure Mr. Biden did not ’embarrass himself’ or ‘damage his legacy’ during the campaign.”
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: “Warren’s campaign rests on the theory that the past decade has transformed the way class is felt in America, so that instead of the uneducated against the educated, or the heartland against the coasts, it is now also possible to run a widely inclusive, populist campaign against the ultra-rich. If you keep your eye on what the capitalists get away with, you can run on economic populism with the support of doctors and lawyers and the P.T.A.”
Cook Political Report: “There hasn’t been any reliable polling to date, but it’s a good bet that Collins is ahead, but that Gideon, assuming she in the Democratic standard bearer, has lots of room to grow. This could well end up being one of the closest Senate contests of the cycle and is in the Toss Up column.”
“In the unlikely event that Collins doesn’t run, Republicans’ chances of holding the seat decrease enormously.”
“President Trump has made the strong economy the central selling point of his presidency, and his advisers believe it is the key to winning a second term,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“But this week’s damaging economic developments—resulting in fresh warnings of a possible impending recession—threaten to complicate that message 14 months before the election.”
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) said former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), his fellow Coloradan and former rival in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, would make an “excellent senator” should he decide to challenge Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Politico reports.
Said Bennet: “I believe — because he’s been, you know, an excellent mayor, an excellent governor — I don’t have any doubt that, if he decided to run, he’d be an excellent senator.”
Former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) said that he is “growing ever closer” to mounting a Republican primary challenge against President Trump following a visit this week to New Hampshire, the Washington Post reports.
“Forbes dug into the details—examining financial disclosure statements, scouring local real estate records and calculating pension benefits—to figure out the finances of the 2020 candidates.”
“There were some surprises. Bernie is a millionaire. So is “middle-class Joe” Biden. Elizabeth Warren is richer than both of them, worth an estimated $12 million. But she’s a long way from John Delaney, whose $200 million fortune makes him twice as wealthy as every other Democratic candidate not named Tom Steyer. The hedge fund tycoon, who announced his candidacy in July 2019, is worth an estimated $1.6 billion.”
Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) told MSNBC that host he will not be running for the Senate. Sad O’Rourke: “I will not in any scenario run for the United States Senate. I’m running for president. I’m running for this country. I’m taking this fight directly to Donald Trump and that is what I am exclusively focused on doing right now.”
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