The Guardian: “Joe Biden has embarked upon an eight-day tour across Iowa as the former US vice-president attempts to arrest his flagging poll numbers in the key state, which is the first to vote in the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee.”
“Biden started his election blitz on Saturday, telling supporters in a fundraising email that he was undertaking an ‘eight-day, 18 county, ‘No Malarkey’ barnstorm’ across Iowa.”
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 53% of Republicans said Donald Trump was a better president than Abraham Lincoln, while 47% chose the Civil War-era leader.
“Democrats say a very realistic scenario now calls for Pete Buttigieg to win Iowa, Elizabeth Warren to win New Hampshire, Joe Biden to win South Carolina and Bernie Sanders to win Nevada,” Axios reports.
“Mike Bloomberg, who’s bypassing the early states, thinks a split decision opens a path for him to make a big statement on Super Tuesday (March 3), which includes California.”
“That’s part of the reason Bloomberg’s candidacy is so fascinating: No one has tried a self-funded race with anything like the spending Bloomberg has already unleashed.”
Struggling to keep his presidential campaign afloat, Sen. Cory Booker appealed for donations in a CBS News interview to ensure he can qualify for the next debate and continue his months-long pursuit of a spot in the top tier of the Democratic primary field.
Said Booker: “If you want me in this race, if you want my voice and message — which is resonating — then I need help.”
Dan Balz: “Two months of campaigning remain before the first votes are cast on Feb. 3 in Iowa. In December, impeachment proceedings in the House will overshadow what the candidates do and say; then the holidays will offer voters a possible timeout from everything political.”
“In January, an impeachment trial in the Senate could tie up the senators in the race — Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, Booker and Michael F. Bennet (Colo.) — but notably not Biden or Buttigieg. Whether that gives the non-senators an edge in the weeks when many voters will be making their decisions is the question.”
“More than in some past campaigns, Democratic voters appear torn between heart and head. Many are looking for a candidate who will inspire them while also being somewhat risk-averse. Those conflicting impulses could be one reason the race seems to shift and shift again and why the answer to the question of what and whom it will take to beat Trump still lies at the center of it all.”
On Sunday, Joe Sestak announced that he is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, leaving the total number of Democrats left in the field at 17, Axios reports.
Now, on Monday, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who pitched himself to Democratic voters as a campaign finance reformer who could win in red states, is ending his bid for the party’s presidential nomination, the Washington Post reports. Said Bullock: “While there were many obstacles we could not have anticipated when entering this race, it has become clear that in this moment, I won’t be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowded field.” He again said he would not run for U.S. Senate in Montana.
Andrew Yang’s campaign told Politico that it had raised $750,000 on November 30 — from over 18,000 people — his single best fundraising day to date of his campaign.
Associated Press: “Democrats are narrowing President Donald Trump’s early spending advantage, with two billionaire White House hopefuls joining established party groups to target the president in key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome of next year’s election.”
“Priorities USA and American Bridge, two of the leading Democratic outside groups, are ramping up operations. The organization ACRONYM recently pledged to spend $75 million. And former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged to spend $100 million on ads targeting Trump, while California billionaire Tom Steyer promised $50 million.”
“The billionaires have come under fire from some Democratic rivals for trying to buy the presidency. But the influx of cash is soothing anxiety in some corners of the party that Trump, who has repeatedly broken fundraising records, was off to an unprecedented early start in the 2020 advertising wars. Some had argued that the Democrats’ overwhelming focus on the sprawling presidential primary field allowed the president to burnish a reelection narrative unchallenged ahead of what is expected to be an exceptionally close election.”
London Playbook: “The U.S. president represents the sort of random factor you frankly do not want in play when you have a soft-ish but healthy lead in the polls and just want everything to carry on as it is in the runup to polling day. The weekend papers were full of stories that the PM will be keeping his distance as much as possible, but in the end there will be no restraining Trump if he decides to stick his oar into U.K. politics this week.”
Google and YouTube have removed more than 300 Trump campaign ads for violating the services’ policies, according to a 60 Minutes.
Washington Post: “The irony is that a candidate whose political identity has been built in part on her reputation as a policy wonk — a potential president who boasts of having a plan for nearly every challenge facing everyday Americans — has been tripped up by a policy issue that has dominated politics and defined her party for years.”
“In some ways, the health-care debate was uniquely suited to entangle Warren, who as a senator had never made the issue a central element of her worldview.”
President Trump’s 2020 campaign announced Monday it will no longer allow reporters from Bloomberg News to obtain credentials to cover Trump campaign events, Axios reports.
Tom Steyer purchased the domain name for President Trump’s campaign slogan, “Keep America Great,” which now redirects visitors to a web page calling Trump a “fraud” and “failure.”
No malarkey? Gee, he is woke.