bluewater
bluewater's JournalBiden's AVERAGE lead down to +7.6, lowest for the primary season
According to RCP POLLS tracker of AVERAGE major poll results, Joe Biden's is now down to a single digit lead of +7.6 over nearest rival Elizabeth Warren.
This is the smallest AVERAGE lead from the major polls to date in the primary contest.
Biden's AVERAGE support is currently at 29%, which is lower than the 29.3% he had on April 25th, the date he announced his campaign.
Over the last 2 months, Biden's support has been fluctuating in the 26-30% range.
Warren's AVERAGE support has broken the 20% level for the first time, and now stands at 21.4%.
Sanders' support stays relatively flat in the 16-17% range over the last 6-7 weeks.
See all the polls and the Trend line tracker for yourself at RCP POLLS:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
As I always say, the polls are what the polls are. 
Elizabeth Warren on the bus after the NYC rally
https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1174506433137782785My heart goes out to @WhipClyburn and his family after the loss of his wife, Emily.
https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1174746533176233984Elizabeth Warren: Border Patrol agents are not asylum officers.
https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1174767923807830016"I'm f****** moving to Iowa," Sen. Kamala Harris joked
https://twitter.com/MattLaslo/status/1174363966614773760https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1174668304583200769
Smart move! Iowa is the gateway for later success in the primaries, especially for lower polling candidates.
shocking result: Only 9% of Democratic primary voters say they've made up their minds
Joe Biden is still ahead. But Elizabeth Warren is closing in.
By Paul Waldman
A new poll out from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal contains a shocking result: Only 9 percent of Democratic primary voters say they’ve made up their minds about whom they’re going to vote for. Nine percent!
Nevertheless, this and other polls show a race that has a particular shape: Joe Biden is holding, Elizabeth Warren is rising, Bernie Sanders is stuck, and everyone else is struggling or fading.
Depending on which candidate you support, just describing this lay of the land may seem unfair. But so is the entire process. And if you think the horse-race distracts from the real issues, please read what I’ve recently written about climate change, health care, national security, immigration, homelessness, gun policy, or many other issues.
To repeat, the process is unfair. We don’t choose party nominees based on who’d make the best president. Kamala Harris, for instance, seems like a capable public servant with much to recommend her, but her campaign has been hampered by her inability to offer a guiding theme, a rationale for her candidacy that communicates to voters why she and only she ought to be the nominee. In most polls she’s mired in the single digits (in the NBC/WSJ poll she gets only 5 percent, down from 13 percent the last time they conducted their survey).
If you look at charts showing the progression of the race (see here or here), you see that the only candidate with a steady upward trajectory is Warren. While she trails Biden in most polls, she often matches him or even beats him on alternative measures, like which candidates voters are considering or how favorable they feel toward them (see here, for example). Some Iowa polls have shown her ahead there, such as this new Civiqs/Iowa State University poll, which has her at 24 percent and Biden and Sanders both at 16 percent.
And right now, Warren is in the heart of a cycle every candidate yearns for. Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she’s doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/18/joe-biden-is-still-ahead-elizabeth-warren-is-closing/
Jimmy Carter says he couldn't have managed presidency at 80
Weeks shy of his 95th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter said he doesn’t believe he could have managed the most powerful office in the world at 80 years old.
Carter, who earlier this year became the longest-lived chief executive in American history, didn’t tie his comments to any of his fellow Democrats running for president in 2020, but two leading candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, would turn 80 during their terms if elected.
Biden is 76. Sanders is 78.
“I hope there’s an age limit,” Carter said with a laugh as he answered audience questions on Tuesday during his annual report at the Carter Center in Atlanta. “If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.”
Carter’s observation came in response to a jovial inquiry about whether he had considered running in 2020 since he’s still constitutionally allowed another term. The 39th president left office in 1981 at the age of 56 after losing his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, who served two terms and left office as the oldest sitting president in history, at 77.
Either Biden or Sanders would be older upon their inauguration than Reagan was on his final day in the Oval Office. At 73, President Donald Trump is a record setter, as well. He eclipsed Reagan’s mark as the oldest newly elected president in history and would become the oldest president to be reelected. Age has been a flashpoint for some critics of Trump, Sanders and Biden.
Carter, who turns 95 on Oct. 1, said the Oval Office requires a president “to be very flexible with your mind,” particularly on foreign affairs. He was speaking on the 41st anniversary of the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement he negotiated with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
“You have to be able to go from one subject to another and concentrate on each one adequately and then put them together in a comprehensive way, like I did between Begin and Sadat with the peace agreement,” Carter said.
“The things I faced in foreign affairs, I don’t think I could undertake them at 80 years old,” he continued, before adding with a smile: “At 95, it’s out of the question. I’m having a hard time walking.”
Carter said he remains undecided in the 2020 primary.
https://thegrio.com/2019/09/18/jimmy-carter-says-he-couldnt-have-managed-presidency-at-80/
Well, President Carter might be 95 years old, but he remains sharp as a tack. He has been president AND he has been 80 years old... so he is speaking on a subject he is uniquely qualified to comment on.
Let's respect that.
President Carter is both a very honest and very humble man.
NBC/WSJ POLL: Warren leads with liberal dems, Biden with moderate/conservative dems
https://twitter.com/CarrieNBCNews/status/1174068926403272704NBC/WSJ POLL: Warren leads on enthusiasm, best combined 1st and 2nd choice of any candidate.
https://twitter.com/CarrieNBCNews/status/1174066955067830272Elizabeth Warren Declared War on Corruption in the Heart of Lower Manhattan
Corruption is not merely unethical or undemocratic. It gets people killed. That was what Elizabeth Warren sought to illustrate to the many thousands who gathered Monday night to hear her speak beneath the towering marble arch in New York's Washington Square Park. The Massachusetts senator and Democratic candidate for president held her biggest rally of the campaign a block or so from the building that once housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the site of a 1911 fire that, in the space of 18 minutes, became the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city. 146 garment workers perished, mostly women and many of them new Italian and Jewish immigrants. They were locked in the facility to prevent unauthorized breaks or theft of materials, a standard practice of the time that condemned them to the inferno.
The fire was the opening and centerpiece of Warren's speech Monday night, because for her, the fire was about power. The appalling conditions in garment factories were widely publicized by the time of the Triangle atrocity, yet the industrial bosses had captured enough of city government to stop any kind of reform. Workers, many of them the most marginalized people in society, were subjected to excruciating hours and horrific conditions and inadequate pay while the people up top made a killing. "Sound familiar?" Warren asked the crowd just after 7:30, and soon enough she was off to the races, regaling the crowd—which her campaign said numbered at least 20,000, though that was not independently verified—with all the familiarities.
Warren’s podium was crafted from wood gifted from the homestead of Frances Perkins, the activist who led labor reform efforts after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
"Giant corporations have bought off our government," she told the crowd to boos and cheers. She listed off the offenders: fossil fuel companies, the gun lobby, health insurance companies, drug companies. She spoke in plain terms about the current state of lobbying in this country: "It's the very definition of bribery," she declared, her voice rising, "and we're going to put a stop to it." For this, she said, she had a plan—"the biggest anti-corruption plan since Watergate," featuring a lifetime ban on lobbying for federal officials like senators or congressmen or Cabinet members. Warren wants every meeting between a lobbyist and a politician on the record, so constituents can know who's got their representative's ear. She wants anyone who enters public life to give up their private business interests while they serve.
"Take care of the people's business or your own business," she said, "but you can't do both at the same time." It wasn't hard to decipher who had entered the piece. "Donald Trump," Warren said simply, "is corruption in the flesh."
It's this combination of detailed policymaking and straight-and-simple communication that has drawn people towards Warren's campaign in growing numbers, even if she and Bernie Sanders still consistently trail Joe Biden in Democratic primary polling. Many of the rallygoers cited Warren's ability to make complicated things simple, at least on the stump, as fundamental to her appeal.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a29085183/elizabeth-warren-rally-washington-square-park-corruption/
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