Axios reports that Bernie Sanders has undergone emergency heart surgery this morning after he experienced chest discomfort after a campaign event last night. He had two stents inserted. A spokesman for the Senator says he is “in good spirits” and “resting up.” Campaign events are cancelled “until further notice.” He is lucky this was caught before he suffered a major heart attack. I hope he is well and gets better.
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds Elizabeth Warren leading the Democratic primary field with 26%, followed by Joe Biden at 22%, Bernie Sanders at 14%, Pete Buttigieg at 7% and Kamala Harris at 5%.
A new Monmouth poll finds Elizabeth Warren leading the Democratic presidential field with 28%, followed by Joe Biden at 25%, Bernie Sanders at 15%, Pete Buttigieg at 5%, Kamala Harris at 5%, Andrew Yang at 2% and Mairrane Williamson at 2%. The remaining 11 candidates included in the poll register 1% or less.
The same poll finds just under 39% of registered voters feel that Trump should be reelected in 2020, while 57% say it is time to have someone new in the Oval Office.
Nate Cohn: “Elizabeth Warren is gaining. She has breached 20 percent of the vote in recent national surveys and might hold a narrow lead in Iowa and New Hampshire. The prediction markets now consider her a clear favorite to win the nomination. It can be hard to see how her Democratic rivals will attack or stop her.”
“But the challenge facing Ms. Warren, if past primaries are any indication, isn’t those rivals. It is whether she will hit a wall: the rank and file of the Democratic primary electorate.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “appeared to revel in the ongoing political maelstrom in the U.S., jokingly admitting to plans for future election meddling,” Politico reports.
When asked if Russia would interfere in the 2020 election cycle, Putin leaned into the microphone on stage and mimicked a whisper: “I’m going to tell you a secret. Yes, sure, we’re going to do that. Don’t tell anybody.”
“Andrew Yang raised $10 million in the third quarter of the year — a huge jump in support for the outsider Democratic presidential candidate,” Politico reports.
“The haul is more than triple the $2.8 million Yang raised in the second quarter, as he has started to outpace sitting senators and other elected officials in polls.”
“President Trump’s political advisers have concluded a monthslong effort to tighten the rules for choosing delegates to the Republican National Convention, all but ensuring there are no dissenting speeches at the gathering of party officials in Charlotte next year,” the New York Timesreports.
“In 37 states and territories, there have been changes to the rules that will all but stamp out the possibility of any raucous divide on the convention floor. Those kinds of schisms have plagued party conventions in years when a Republican incumbent went on to lose his re-election bid, Republican officials said. Mr. Trump himself confronted an effort to strip him of delegates in 2016.”
“Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat dismissed by many Republicans as an “accidental governor” when he was elected in a major upset in 2015, may be on the brink of winning a second term next week,” Politico reports.
“Edwards is running a classic red-state Democratic campaign, campaigning on an anti-abortion, pro-gun record — while Republicans want to nationalize the race in a state President Trump won by 20 points in 2016. But with Republicans Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone sniping at one another, Edwards could win reelection before the GOP even picks its candidate.”
“That’s because, under Louisiana’s unique open-primary system, Abraham and Rispone are jockeying for second place in a potential November run-off against Edwards. But Edwards can win outright by getting a majority on Oct. 12.”
“The DNC announced that it is funding full-time staff in eight presidential election battleground states, showing its commitment to state-level investment early in the election cycle,” the HuffPost reports.
The states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking the company to suspend President Trump’s account for violating its user agreement with his tweets about the Ukraine whistleblower and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
“President Trump is using his powerful social media presence to push back against the impeachment inquiry, tweeting and retweeting more than 100 times over the weekend and his reelection campaign has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads on the topic over the past week,” CNN reports.
Boston Globe: “Though almost all the presidential candidates take photos with potential voters, Warren has become famous for her ‘selfie’ lines, which can last hours and involve hundreds or even thousands of people. She has said that if she wins the nomination, she will continue to do them. But right now, with Warren climbing in the Democratic primary polls, these photo lines have a kind of intimate, now-or-never feeling to them, like meeting Taylor Swift when she was still strumming her guitar at a bar in Nashville.”
“Warren’s campaign sees the photos as a form of grass-roots canvassing, offering individuals a chance to talk to their candidate face-to-face. They also, of course, offer Warren the opportunity to appear in potential voters’ Snapchat stories and Instagram feeds without paying a cent. The ritual showcases the 70-year-old candidate’s stamina, too: She really will stay until the last person who wants one gets a photo. Recently, after a rally of 20,000 people in Manhattan, Warren snapped selfies for four hours.”
Also interesting: “Far from the existential despair and rage that one usually encounters among people who are waiting in a very long line, the people sticking around to meet Warren at Keene State were eager, rule-abiding, optimistic — matching almost perfectly the tone of the event. Occasionally, shouts of spontaneous joy would erupt.”
Washington Post: “Sanders and Warren say they’re running presidential campaigns funded ‘100%’ by grass-roots donors. It’s a big claim with no wiggle room. Money is fungible, so it’s an artifice to claim that money from wealthy donors last time around isn’t being used this time around. The key here is that Sanders and Warren define their presidential campaigns as entirely grass-roots-funded because of their self-imposed restrictions: no hobnobbing with rich donors in closed events and no PAC money, for example.”
“But Warren held high-dollar fundraisers for her 2018 Senate run, and then transferred $10.4 million from that campaign account to her presidential committee. Her Senate run raised $6 million from donors who gave $1,000 or more, and she also took some PAC contributions. Sanders in 2015 sought and received big checks from wealthy donors. Sanders’s 2020 committee so far has gotten $4.6 million from his prior presidential campaign. These are omissions worthy of Two Pinocchios. As a share of total fundraising, however, Sanders was less dependent than Warren on high-dollar contributions in his previous campaign.”
Associated Press: “Steve Bullock will apply to be the first — and perhaps only — Democrat in the presidential primary who accepts public financing for his campaign, a potentially risky move that could give his struggling fundraising a boost but would also require the Montana governor to abide by a cap on the amount of money he can spend.”
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