February 3, 2020

Biden in Cedar Rapids calls his plans 'significantly progressive'

By James Lynch


CEDAR RAPIDS — On the stump, Joe Biden never criticizes the Democrats running against him for the party’s 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

In fact, he doesn’t mention them except in oblique “some folks say” sorts of references.

However, in a Gazette interview Saturday, there were a few cracks in Biden’s speak-no-ill rule. Some of his rivals in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, he said, are proposing dangerous agendas and lack preparation for the job they are seeking.

He also seemed to bristle at a suggestion that unlike those progressives in the races, some supporters see him as the “safe” choice.

Read more: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/biden-in-cedar-rapids-calls-his-plans-significantly-progressive-20200202
(Cedar Rapids Gazette)

February 3, 2020

Democrats make final Eastern Iowa sprint before caucuses

By Brian Morelli


CORALVILLE — As the window closes on the 2020 caucus season in Iowa, candidates including Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer on Sunday crisscrossed Eastern Iowa, making last-minute pitches to voters with a number of undecideds still looking for cues to make up their minds.

Count Kim and Grant Keiser, of Cedar Rapids, among them. Trying to decide, they caught three candidates each over the past two days. Seeing the presidential hopefuls in person — how they present themselves, how they interact with ordinary people and “what they’re about” — has helped firm up their preferences, they said.

“I decided to support Amy after seeing and hearing her in person,” Kim Keiser, 46, said from a Steyer event in Coralville, not long after Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator, spoke earlier in the day.

Hearing Steyer, a San Fransisco businessman, made her like him more, but it also reassured her support for Klobuchar. She struggled to see how the billionaire Steyer could relate with everyday Americans.

Read more: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/democrats-make-final-eastern-iowa-sprint-before-caucuses-20200202
(Cedar Rapids Gazette)

February 3, 2020

Joe Biden looks back on Iowa

By Bob Saar for The Hawk Eye


Joe Biden is likely the last presidential candidate southeast Iowa will see this year, and that’s appropriate: Biden already has spent more time in the White House and on the world’s political stages than the current U.S. president.

Democratic candidate Biden spoke Friday at The Loft on Jefferson Street in Burlington to a crowd of nearly 200 voters, fans and onlookers as they gathered to hear the former vice president talk about the upcoming Iowa caucuses.

It was the largest caucus crowd in our neck of the woods since Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke at the Pzazz Convention & Events Center.

A media swarm of about three dozen national, regional and local news outlets flooded the back of the room on the Loft’s second floor.

Read more: https://www.thehawkeye.com/news/20200131/joe-biden-looks-back-on-iowa
(Burlington Hawkeye)

February 3, 2020

In Iowa, anxiety and unpredictability cloud caucus finish

By Julie Pace and Sara Burnett, The Associated Press


DES MOINES, Iowa — On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidates hustled across the state on Sunday trying to fire up voters and make one last appeal to those struggling to make a final decision about their choice in the crowded field.

Campaigns and voters acknowledged a palpable sense of unpredictability and anxiety as Democrats begin choosing which candidate to send on to a November face-off with President Donald Trump.

The Democratic race is unusually large and jumbled heading into Monday’s caucus, with four candidates locked in a fight for victory in Iowa and others still in position to pull off surprisingly strong finishes. Many voters say they’re still weighing which White House hopeful they’ll support.

“This is going to go right down to the last second,” said Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden campaign.

Read more: https://www.thehawkeye.com/zz/news/20200202/in-iowa-anxiety-and-unpredictability-cloud-caucus-finish/1
(Burlington Hawkeye)

February 3, 2020

Yang talks student loan debt, economy Saturday afternoon

Democratic presidential candidate and American tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang stopped into La Carreta in Boone Saturday to speak to a crowd of roughly 100 people with the Iowa Caucuses just two days away.

According to most polls, Yang trails top Democrats, coming in sixth or lower and well behind front-runners former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are in a statistical tie for the lead, and behind a group of others that include Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who are all jockeying for third place.

Yang’s platform focuses heavily on the economic strength of the U.S. that he said has been struggling due to job animation.

“Seventy-eight percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, 40 percent cannot afford one medical emergency away from bankruptcy,” said Yang. “A wave of automation, some call the fourth industrial revolution, is coming that will displace even more American jobs.”

Read more: https://www.amestrib.com/news/20200201/yang-talks-student-loan-debt-economy-saturday-afternoon
(Ames Tribune)

February 3, 2020

Jill Biden rallies volunteers as Caucus Day nears

Dr. Jill Biden was joined by former Iowa governor and U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack at a local campaign office in Ames Saturday where they thanked volunteers and asked them to keep their work going through Monday in hopes of propelling Biden’s husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, to a win in the Iowa Caucuses, the first-in-the-nation test in the 2020 presidential contest.

They were also joined by Vilsack’s wife, Christie, as they spoke to a group of more than three dozen volunteers and supporters in Biden’s campaign office on Douglas Avenue in downtown Ames.

Christie Vilsack spoke about her and her husband’s more than three decade relationship with the Bidens, and used that history to encourage voters to support the former vice president on Monday.

“We trust Joe Biden and Jill Biden as much now as we did 33 years ago,” Biden said. “I have always chosen rock solid in my personal life as well as my political life, and I’m choosing rock solid again. I’m urging every to choose rock solid.”

Read more: https://www.amestrib.com/news/20200201/jill-biden-rallies-volunteers-as-caucus-day-nears
(Ames Tribune)