A new Atlanta Journal Constitution poll in Georgia finds Joe Biden leading President Trump in a potential 2020 match up, 51% to 43%.
In other match ups, Bernie Sanders tops the president, 48% to 44%, Elizabeth Warren leads, 47% to 44% and Pete Buttigieg is ahead, 46% to 43%.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) “told senior Democrats that he will enter the presidential race, according to two party officials, reversing his decision last year to forgo a run and adding yet more volatility to an unusually fluid Democratic primary,” the New York Timesreports.
“Mr. Patrick was calling a list of Democrats to inform them of his decision and is expected to begin his campaign with a video before appearing in person in New Hampshire to file his paperwork to be on the primary ballot there.”
New York Times: “Both men [Bloomberg and Deval Patrick] have concluded in recent weeks that Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is not the imposing adversary they had expected him to be, interviews with aides and allies show. Both also believe there is room in the race for a more dynamic candidate who is closer to the political middle than Mr. Biden’s two most prominent challengers, Ms. Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders.”
“Should Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick enter the race, they would test that proposition in different ways: Mr. Bloomberg with a powerfully funded campaign that would take on President Trump directly and contest the biggest states on the primary map from the start; Mr. Patrick with an insurgent candidacy that would begin in next-door New Hampshire and run through South Carolina, where black voters are likely to decide the primary.”
Politico: “The center of the Democratic Party is throwing a fit.”
Ryan Lizza: “The degree to which the Democrats in Congress who are running the impeachment inquiry are disconnected from their colleagues running for president cannot be overstated. Impeachment and the presidential primary are like two planets slowly pulled together by gravity that are finally about to collide — nobody seems to know who will survive impact.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is launching a new attack on the billionaires who have criticized her proposed taxes and policies with a new ad set to air on CNBC this week, CNBC reports.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential bid Wednesday, saying the former vice president has the ability to win swing states President Trump won in 2016, CNN reports.
Jonathan Bernstein: “The point of these hearings isn’t to learn new things. The House intelligence committee will be bringing out witnesses who have already been interviewed behind closed doors. So this is about making a case in public.”
“If Democrats want to actually remove Trump from office, then pushing down his public approval is key. So far, the Ukraine scandal hasn’t really done that. According to the FiveThirtyEight estimate, the president’s approval rating is now at 41.1%, down about a percentage point from when the story broke in September. That’s a very weak number, to be sure; Trump ranks 10th of 11 polling-era presidents after 1,027 days in office, and his disapproval number is now up to 54.6%.”
“But bad as that is, it’s probably not enough to make the party abandon Trump out of electoral self-interest. At 41%, he’s still not a lost cause. Perhaps the polls are off, or maybe he’ll still improve a bit before the election. He might even win without getting 50% support. But if Trump were to slip back to match the lowest point of his presidency, when only about 37% of the public approved of how he was doing his job? Then Republicans might start to wonder if the risks of sticking with him outweighed the risks of removing him.”
“Julián Castro won’t qualify for the next Democratic presidential primary debate, the only candidate still in the race who participated in the October debate to miss out on November’s,” Politico reports.
Ten candidates are projected to participate in the debate on November 20: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.
The Trump campaign is hiring and promoting to prepare for the double-headed onslaught of 2020 campaigning and the impeachment inquiry.
According to ABC News, the move includes internally promoting Capitol Hill veteran Erin Perrine and hiring Ali Pardo, who previously worked for the House Republicans and the President’s inauguration.
The team is much more swampy than the 2016 group, as Trump has shifted to relying on longtime D.C. operatives rather than ragtag outsiders.
Per ABC, they’ve grown the team to 16 people, sometimes marrying the two goals by using anti-impeachment messaging to rake in campaign cash.
New York Times: “Well before Rep. Peter King announced that he would retire next year, enough evidence existed that his prospects for re-election on Long Island as a Republican were narrowing.”
“Democrats now outnumber Republicans on Long Island, a once unthinkable development in a traditional conservative stronghold where voters backed every Republican presidential candidate, bar two, from 1900 to 1988… The numbers on Long Island enumerate the challenges for Republicans. In 1996, registered Republicans in Nassau County outnumbered the Democrats, 360,000 to 257,000. By this year, the number of Democrats had rocketed to 411,000. The number of Republicans, by contrast, had dropped by more than 30,000.”
“Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney will overtake Iowa televisions Sunday with a slate of half-hour infomercials set to air across seven different media markets throughout the day,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“Some Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping a half-dozen candidates in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer,” the Washington Post reports.
“The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.”
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