The Next President of the United States

[MintTrav]

Some more of Monica's tweets:

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[Marky147]

Hahaha!

Very good

[MintTrav]

The President had important issues on his mind this week:

[Marky147]

Lol, he's such a bellend 

[MintTrav]

There are two separate races going on - one is pre Super Tuesday and the other is from that point on. The difference is Bloomberg. Steyer and Bloomberg have poured vast amounts of money into this in the hope of picking up some delegates along the way and being in a position to undertake some horse-trading at the Convention, but they have taken very different routes. This chart shows where they have spent. Steyer has mainly focussed on the early States (as have the others, with their cheaper campaigns), whereas Bloomberg has completely passed on those and has gone all out on Super Tuesday States and later ones. He is even chasing States that usually get little attention, eg $1m spent in Idaho already.

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The effects can be seen. Mike is generally about joint 4th (with Buttigieg) in national polls, whereas Tom is nowhere in nationals, but is polling well in some early States. While everyone else is concentrating on Iowa and New Hampshire, he has put a lot into South Carolina and Nevada. His ads aired 7,914 times in South Carolina and 5,721 times in Nevada in the period 1 Dec - 9 Jan, while all other candidates combined aired 2,195 times in SC and er...six times in Nevada. He was rewarded when he scraped into last week's debate at the last minute by returning 15% in South Carolina and 12% in Nevada in Fox News polls, having scored 4% and 5% in the equivalent polls in Oct and Nov. The South Carolina poll put him virtually joint third with Warren, and he was ahead of everyone except Biden with Black voters - 1 Biden 43%, 2 Steyer 16%, 3 Sanders 12%.

[MintTrav]

Presidents' approval ratings on Jan 1 of re-election year. Trump's is the lowest apart from Gerald Ford, who had pardoned Nixon post Watergate.

Ford, Carter and GHW Bush lost.

[MintTrav]

So, after attacking each other and calling each other liars, now Sanders and Warren are arm-in-arm. Weirder still is Tulsi holding onto Biden. Klobuchar in the middle of them all. Politics is strange sometimes.

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[MintTrav]

Two weeks to go til Iowa and there is a new poll out. I wouldn't have expected Focus on Rural America to be given the weight of a mainstream poll, but all the big media outlets are going on about it.
The FRA has Biden six points ahead on 24%, with Warren second on 18%, followed by Buttigieg (16%), Sanders (14%) and Klobuchar (11%).

However. Iowa is quite a rural place. On the question “which candidate is best for the needs and interests of rural Iowa?”, Klobuchar crushed with 29%, with the other four essentially tied on 13-15%.

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A Monmouth poll last week also had Biden six points ahead on 24%, but with Sanders on 18%, Buttigieg on 17% and Warren on 9%.

[MintTrav]

Hillary has put the boot in on Sanders.

[MintTrav]

“We expect this to be a long nomination fight and have built our campaign to sustain well past Super Tuesday and stay resilient no matter what breathless media narratives come when voting begins. The four early states contests are just the beginning.”

The consensus is that Warren needs to beat Sanders somewhere in the early States, but the above statement from her campaign seems like an admission that it’s not expecting to do well in them. Unlike others, she has avoided much advertising in Iowa in favour of a boots-on-the-ground approach, so it’ll be interesting to see how that works out. Iowa is a caucus, rather than a primary, which means that people have to give up an evening to listen to presentations and vote a number of times, and the personal touch is generally agreed to work best, so Warren may hold up better than expected.

With more staff than anyone except Bloomberg, she already has people working the post Super Tuesday States hard, so may be stronger than polls are suggesting. The strategy seems to be to sit out a Biden-Sanders feud, and swoop in later, having picked up supporters from others who have dropped out. As one of the leading progressives, she will have inherited a lot of Castro’s and Booker’s supporters, but she could also take a decent share of centrist Klobuchar’s, for example.

In an unusual move, she is planning to keep some Iowa offices open after the caucus and leave staff there, preparing for the general election against Trump. Must be nice to have people to spare.

[MintTrav]

Is Biden losing it?

Having held sizeable national and local leads, Biden has seen Sanders draw level and now pull ahead in some Iowa and national polls. Despite his cool image, Joe has always had a tendency for emotional reactions, but has held it together much better than expected so far. The stress may be getting to him a bit now though, and there’s still forever to go in the campaign. There have been a few odd over-reactions with voters who asked reasonable questions, and what about this?

[MintTrav]

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For one day, this man holds more power over the world’s future than almost anyone.

With three Republican Senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney) likely to vote for the trial to be extended and new witnesses to be called, the vote is tied and will fall. Those three go through the motions of weighing up positions but are reliable anti-Trump votes. The Dems need one more and Lamar Alexander seemed to be the man for the moment, but he’s decided he’s not going against the party. “It was inappropriate and wrong for the President to do what he did - and I think it was proved. The question is whether you apply capital punishment to every offence. And I think in this case the answer is no, let the people make that decision.” There doesn’t seem to be anyone else ready to fill the gap.

In truth, there is no guarantee that all Democrats will fall in line anyay. Joe Manchin from West Virginia is always likely to support Trump and one or two others, such as Sinema from Arizona, are wobbly due to tough re-elections.

[MintTrav]

Well!

The Democratic National Committee has just changed the rules for debate qualification, ditching the donor requirement in an obvious concession to allow Bloomberg onto the stage.The polling requirement has gone up substantially, with candidates now needing to hit at least 10% in four national polls or 12% in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina. But they will get right up to the day before the debate to do it. Alternatively, they can qualify by securing just one pledged delegate in either Iowa or New Hampshire.

Lots of complaints already about Bloomberg buying his way into the debate, and the DNC assisting him and blocking Yang, but surely it's right that the debates should be designed to enable the principal candidates to qualify and exclude the time-wasters.

[MintTrav]

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They've been forced to sit and listen for very long periods, but the Senators finally got a chance to engage in their favourite pastime of huddling.

Senate leader Mitch McConnell huddled with other Republican Senators, including John Thune (majority whip), John Barrasso (Republican Conference chair), John Cornyn (former GOP whip), wobbler Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz.

The Chief Justice is on the left with a group that includes Presidential candidate Michael Bennet.

An intriguing mini-huddle occurred between Mitt Romney (Rep, Utah) and Kyrsten Sinema (Dem, Arizona), who were seen in discussion as they both weighed up voting against their own party.

McConnell held a wobblers party in his office at the previous break, including Romney, Alexander and Murkowski, and it seems that it was agreed that the Senate will vote next Wednesday, which was also agreed by Dem leader Chuck Schumer. This is bad news for the four Senators still in the Presidential race, who were expecting to be released to go back to their campaigns from tonight.

[Marky147]

This isn't anything less than was expected, is it?

Even though it's all quite blatant, they knew they'd almost never get him ousted, because of how the senate is populated.

Who told him it would be a good idea to get Rudy on the firm? He's been hilarious all the way through.