Valerie Biden Owens, the former vice president’s younger sister, says that one lasting impact of his childhood stutter is that it has given him more empathy and compassion for others’ trials, and it uniquely equips him to handle Trump’s taunts.

“Trump is a bully, and Joe has been standing up to bullies his entire life,” Owens said in an interview. “Joe’s stuttering, I think, is one of the principal reasons — a major, major, major reason — that he is the good and compassionate and kind man that he is.”

About 3 million Americans suffer from the speech impediment of stuttering, marked by involuntary repetition of sounds, syllables or words. According to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, most children outgrow their stutter, but for 25% of them, stuttering is a lifelong challenge.

Biden has overcome the serious stutter of his youth, but remnants of it resurface on occasions such as when he is very tired, he said in a 2016 speech. Experts on stuttering who follow him closely say they have noticed it on several occasions during the campaign, such as an interview on “The View” when he addressed complaints about his tendency to touch and hug women while campaigning, and an April speech in Pittsburgh launching his campaign, when he struggled with words.

Cory Booker will have at least one Democratic primary challenger next year for his Senate seat if his presidential campaign doesn’t take off — a Bernie Sanders supporter from his hometown.

Lawrence Hamm, a longtime Newark civil rights activist who chairs the People’s Organization for Progress, said Thursday he plans to run for U.S. Senate in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Hamm, who announced his plans on social media, said in a brief phone interview he will seek the nomination and wants to appear on the same ballot line as Sanders.

"I support Bernie Sanders for president because I believe in the agenda and the platform that he’s running on," said Hamm, who is the New Jersey chairman for Sanders’ campaign. "And if Bernie Sanders becomes president, he’s going to need a senator from New Jersey who will fight wholeheartedly for those reforms and agenda items and platforms that he campaigned for as president."

After rising in the national polls for a while, Buttigieg seems to have taken a step back. He fell from 11% in our last poll to 8% in this one.

Part of Buttigieg's problem is he continues to pull basically no nonwhite support. He's at just 2% with nonwhites in this poll.

It goes deeper than the topline. His favorable rating among white potential Democratic primary voters is 60% to unfavorable rating of 11%. Among nonwhites, his favorable rating is a mere 33% to an unfavorable rating of 22%. So despite being far less known by nonwhites, his unfavorable rating is double than that among whites.

It also seems to me that it's getting worse. In our October poll, his favorable rating with nonwhite potential Democratic primary voters was 35%, while his unfavorable rating was 12%. That is, Buttigieg has become better known over the last few months among nonwhites. And what they have learned about him has made them like him less.

To put this another way, Buttigieg is getting less of the nonwhite vote than Bloomberg (5%). Bloomberg has been critiqued by Democrats for his previous support for stop and frisk, which some have argued inflamed racial tensions in New York City.