The Good and the Bad….
Biden seems to be in tight place with Bernie Sanders in Iowa….
He also seems to be leaving New Hampshire to Sanders and Warren to fight over….
Iowa has more Democratic delegates then New Hampshire and Biden has comfortable leads in the other states going into Super Tuesday….
Former Vice President Joe Biden is launching his final television ad in Iowa ahead of the caucuses there, urging voters to imagine what a Biden administration could accomplish after President Donald Trump is defeated.
The ad, shared first with POLITICO, will begin running on television in Iowa markets on Tuesday and makes an implicit electability argument for Biden.
“Imagine all the progress we can make in the next four years,” Biden, who isnarrating the ad, says before listing affordable health care, fighting climate change and banning assault weapons. “What we imagine today, you can make a reality. But first we need to beat Donald Trump.”
The campaign told POLITICO that the ad would run in five Iowa television markets and statewide on Hulu through the caucuses, which will take place next Monday….
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Joe Biden has said he doesn’t need to win the first presidential primary state in the nation — and he’s campaigning like it.
Biden has been dark on New Hampshire television since the New Year. He has a smaller presence on the ground compared to his rivals, barely takes questions from voters, and he’s trailing in the polls here.
Biden’s New Hampshire media buys, events and overall footprint indicates it’s the early state that’s getting relatively short shrift so he can more effectively contest the other three before Super Tuesday.
The former veep’s campaign stresses he’s not writing off New Hampshire, that he has more major endorsements here than any other candidate and visited last Friday and Saturday. But in recent weeks, Biden has intensified his focus on the two states whose caucuses bookend the Granite State’s Feb. 11 primary — Iowa and Nevada — according to those familiar with the campaign’s strategy….
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In 2005, Joe Biden’s brother bought an acre of land with excellent ocean views on a remote island in the Caribbean for $150,000. He divided it into three parcels, and the next year a lobbyist close to the Delaware senator bought one of the parcels for what had been the cost of the entire property. Later, the lobbyist gave Biden’s brother a mortgage loan on the remaining parcels.
The Virgin Islands land deal, reported here for the first time, furthers a patternin which members of the Biden family have engaged in financial dealings with people with an interest in influencing the former vice president….
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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Monday evening said Sen. Joni Ernst had “spilled the beans” after the Iowa Republican gleefully suggested that the Senate impeachment debate surrounding the former vice president could hinder his performance in her state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses next week.
“Iowa caucus-goers take note,” Biden tweeted. “Joni Ernst just spilled the beans. She and Donald Trump are scared to death I’ll be the nominee. On Feb. 3rd, let’s make their day.”
During its second day of oral arguments in the impeachment trial Monday, President Donald Trump’s legal defense team argued that Biden, not the president, should be investigated for corruption or abuse of power for seeking the dismissal of Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, in 2016 — all while Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
“Iowa caucuses, folks, Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening,” Ernst toldreporters in the Capitol. “And I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucusgoers. Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not certain about that.”…
image…Biden in Texas…Houstonpublicmedia.org
More….
“What’s an old guy like you going to do to get the young people to come out and vote,” a person at a University of Northern Iowa (UNI) town hall asked Biden on Monday, noting “there’s not very many here.”
Biden, 77, joked that it can be difficult to get college students to show up before 4 p.m. and, indeed, a few more young people appeared at a later campaign event at the University of Iowa.
He then pivoted to a core argument of his campaign – Biden is the only candidate bringing many kinds of people together.
“I’m the only one that gets a significant portion of the young vote, as well as the old vote, in-between vote, black vote, Hispanic vote, all the vote,” Biden said. “An old guy like me is pretty good.”
Biden is rallying support in the final days before the Democrats’ first presidential nominating contest is held in Iowa next Monday. He is going to larger cities, including Cedar Rapids, and college towns like Cedar Falls, where some of his competitors have pronounced strengths.
Polls show the former vice president, who leads nationally among Democrats, in a closer fight with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg in Iowa.
Biden leads among Iowans 65 years and older, with 41%, and Warren is second at 11%, according to a recent Suffolk/USA Today poll here that also showed Biden leading overall. He has also done well with rural residents.
Reuters….
That Virgin Islands land deal article is troubling.
Cayman Island’s also…..