A new Monmouth poll finds 57% of Americans say that House managers should be able to introduce new evidence in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.
Most also say that Trump and members of his administration should be asked to appear at the trial.
Said pollster Patrick Murray: “Public opinion on allowing new evidence and compelling witness testimony in the Senate trial breaks sharply along partisan lines. But it is interesting that solid majorities in every partisan group would like to see Trump and members of his administration at least asked to appear.”
A new Suffolk/Boston Globe poll in New Hampshire finds Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic presidential race with 16%, followed by Joe Biden at 15%, Pete Buttigieg at 12% and Elizabeth Warren at 10%.
“Fueling Warren’s drop was a loss of support among men. Just 4 percent of male respondents said she was their first choice, compared to 13 percent of men in the earlier Suffolk/Globe poll. Her support among women remained steady at 14 percent.”
Philip Bump does a deep dive into the latest CNN and Monmouth polls and finds a remarkable result:
“There is more support for throwing Trump out of office than there is support for his administration. In what might seem alarming to the Trump reelection campaign, that holds both in battleground states (according to CNN) and in swing counties where the 2016 margin was 10 points or smaller (according to Monmouth).”
A four-hour docuseries about Hillary Clinton will premiere in its entirety March 6 on Hulu, the Hollywood Reporter reports.
In it, Clinton slams Sen. Bernie Sanders: “He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
She refused to say whether she would endorse him if he won the Democratic nomination.
Ok. I love ya Hillary, and I know this is just a teaser for a documentary and not you choosing to affirmatively enter the primary contest with this statement, but seriously, it is time for you to leave the stage. I may agree with you about Sanders, but you are a lightning rod whose reappearance only makes three people happy right now: Trump, Bernie and the latest target of the Bernie Bros: Elizabeth Warren.
The Atlantic: “Did you know he was running for president? Probably not. If you did once know—Delaney was actually the first Democrat to declare his candidacy, way back in July 2017—you probably forgot. And if you did know he was still running, the question you’re probably asking is the one I am here to explore: Why? Why is a candidate who’s barely registering in any poll still traipsing across Iowa day after day when he has absolutely no chance of winning, or even of seeming like more than an outlying blip on the radar?”
“It took Sen. Josh Hawley just two years to make the jump from state attorney general to U.S. senator. After only one year in Washington, there are signs that the Missouri Republican is preparing for another promotion,” the Kansas City Star reports.
“Hawley has established himself as a national brand within the GOP in ways that could serve as a prelude to a presidential run. He’s carved out a niche issue with his push to crack down on the tech industry and begun to articulate a foreign policy vision, which would shift the nation’s focus from the Middle East to China.”
“He’s become a fixture of cable news, a sought-after speaker for events hosted by high-profile conservative groups and has repeatedly generated national media attention with legislation that plays to the conservative base.”
“Mike Bloomberg plans to shift his television ad message this week to directly call for President Trump’s removal from office, with a new spot that will run in states with Republican senators who face competitive reelection fights this year,” the Washington Post reports.
“The decision to spend money on impeachment ads in the states of vulnerable senators like Cory Gardner (R-CO), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) fits into a larger strategy by Bloomberg since he started running for the Democratic nomination for president.”
“He has tried to direct spending for his own long-shot presidential bid to also benefit other goals, like defeating Trump in November, even if he is not the nominee, and helping other Democrats down ballot.”
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an effort by Democrats to expedite a challenge to a lower court’s ruling striking down a key tenet of Obamacare, narrowing the possibility that the court takes up the contentious case this year,” The Hill reports.
Politico: “The decision deals a blow to Democrats’ hopes to elevate the issue in 2020, but it will come as a relief to President Donald Trump and Republicans, who’ve been wary of the lawsuit’s potential to scramble their election hopes.”
A new Morning Consult/Politico poll, which asked voters to grade President Trump on a scale from A to F, found 38% gave him an F and 11% gave him a D.
In contrast, 21% of respondents said the president deserves an A while 17% said he gets a B.
Gallup: “Eighty-two percentage points separated Republicans’ (89%) and Democrats’ (7%) average job approval ratings of President Trump during his third year in office. This is the largest degree of political polarization in any presidential year measured by Gallup, surpassing the 79-point party gap in Trump’s second year in office.”
A new NPR poll found that 51% of respondents thought President Trump had encouraged malicious activities related to U.S. elections. A slightly higher number, 56%, said that Trump had done nothing to prevent future interference in U.S. elections from occurring.
Miami Herald: “Two-term Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, whose time in City Hall mirrors Bloomberg’s mayoral tenure in New York, is joining the campaign as a policy advisor and surrogate weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2020 presidential primary season. Diaz will serve as the campaign’s national political co-chair, along with former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Diaz will also co-chair Bloomberg’s Florida campaign.”
“The Iowa caucuses have ended a long line of weak White House bids, traditionally culling the presidential primary field to just two or three viable candidates. But this year’s unique dynamics have a very real scenario shaping up that could mean at least a half dozen — or maybe more — candidates move to New Hampshire and beyond,” Politicoreports.
“The probability that Iowa fails to produce a breakout frontrunner and instead sends through more than a half-dozen candidates is the latest turn in a tumultuous primary that began with a historically large and diverse field. It’s indicative of a contest that’s long from settled; with just two weeks until the Feb. 3 caucuses, there’s still a looming question over what, exactly, the Iowa results will mean. Aides with [Amy] Klobuchar, Steyer and [Andrew] Yang indicated that there’s almost no scenario that would cause their candidate to drop out before New Hampshire.”
“Michael Bloomberg’s big-spending, shock-and-awe TV ad campaign has made politicking more expensive for everyone from his 2020 rivals to Senate, House and state legislative candidates around the country,” Politico reports.
“Eight weeks into his presidential campaign, Bloomberg has already spent more money on advertising — $248 million — than most candidates could spend in years. That amount has squeezed TV ad inventory in nearly every state, lowering supply and causing stations to raise ad prices at a time of high demand, as candidates around the country gear up for their primaries.”
“On average in markets around the country, prices for political TV ads have risen by 20 percent since Bloomberg began his campaign. Meanwhile, some local politicians have already found difficulty trying to reach their own constituencies.”
“Sen. Bernie Sanders made a plea Monday to his supporters in Des Moines: It’ll be up to them to carry his Iowa campaign across the finish line,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump means he won’t be spending as much time in Iowa as he would have liked, he said at a Des Moines rally. But, he joked, it just means his campaign slogan — ‘Not me. Us.’ — will need to be a little more literal in the homestretch of the first-in-the-nation nominating caucus.”
Said Sanders: “Ironically, the ‘us, not me,’ is becoming very much a reality in the last two weeks of this campaign, because I’m not going to be able to be here as much as I would like.”
Trump is absolutely being propped up by a media establishment that only makes big money from close races. It’s disgusting.
There is more support for throwing Trump out of office than there is support for his administration. In what might seem alarming to the Trump reelection campaign, that holds both in battleground states (according to CNN) and in swing counties where the 2016 margin was 10 points or smaller (according to Monmouth).”