2020 elections

The left nukes Buttigieg over McKinsey work

The attacks signal the degree to which progressives view Mayor Pete as a threat to the most ambitious parts of their agenda.

Hours after Pete Buttigieg released his list of clients at McKinsey, the left already had a nickname teed up for him: “Pete Romney.”

For months, progressive activists and operatives have been itching to take down the mayor of South Bend, who has risen in early-state polls as he’s slammed Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders’ plans for single-payer health care and free college, and pushed a more moderate agenda. There have long been whispers about Buttigieg’s past work for the behemoth business consultant, which has recently come under fire for allegedly helping boost OxyContin sales and supporting authoritarian regimes in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and China.

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2020 Elections

Nevada ‘demoralized’ by all-white Democratic top tier

‘What kind of message is the Democratic Party sending to voters of color?’ said one labor leader.

LAS VEGAS — Nevada has for months functioned as something of a hedge in the primary calendar, the first nominating contest where the Democratic presidential field’s diversity would be measured by a state with a sizable non-white voting population.

Now it’s looking like a reminder of the monochromatic nature of the party’s leading candidates.

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2020 elections

Biden signals to aides that he would serve only a single term

Advisers weigh the merits of a one-term pledge by the 77-year-old former vice president.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.

While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.

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2020 elections

Bernie scores big progressive endorsement, besting Warren

Brian Fallon, a former national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, called the endorsement a “coup.”

Bernie Sanders has won the endorsement of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, a victory in his long-running battle with Elizabeth Warren to become the progressive standard-bearer in the Democratic presidential primary.

The group, an alliance of more than 40 left-wing organizations across the country, said it represents 600,000 members. It plans to use an independent expenditure to fundraise, direct a field operation and do other organizing in the primary, including in states such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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2020 elections

‘Trump changed everything’: Big cities break hard left in Dem primary

Mayors are under increasing pressure to embrace the leading progressive candidates.

PHILADELPHIA — In the shadow of Joe Biden’s campaign headquarters sitting across from City Hall, Elizabeth Warren has snagged endorsements from Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and two incoming City Council members here.

It’s a far cry from the 2016 primary, when the vast majority of the city’s Democratic establishment lined up behind Hillary Clinton, and gave the cold shoulder to her progressive opponent, Bernie Sanders.

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2020 elections

The most consequential moment of the 2020 primary

A Kamala Harris town hall meeting in August 2017 is reverberating in the Democratic presidential race to this day.

Kamala Harris was hosting a town hall in her hometown of Oakland, Calif., two years ago when she made an announcement that set off a mad scramble in the U.S. Senate.

“Here, I’ll break some news,” Harris told hundreds of people packed into the sanctuary at Beebe Memorial Church on Aug. 30. “I intend to co-sponsor the ‘Medicaid for All’ bill because it’s just the right thing to do,” she said, flubbing the name of the proposal.

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2020 Elections

Biden proposes $3.2T in tax increases, less than Democratic rivals

Biden would also seek to curb the ability of corporations to shift profits offshore, by sanctioning countries that facilitate tax avoidance.

Joe Biden has spelled out which taxes he would raise to pay for his policy priorities if he's elected president, a $3.2 trillion list that would have the wealthy and corporations paying more to the IRS.

On the business side, the former vice president proposes to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and to place a minimum tax on companies’ pre-tax income, as a way to ensure that large multinational corporations pay at least something.

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2020 elections

California up for grabs as Harris exits race

California holds outsize importance in the race, featuring the nation’s political ATM and a mother lode of Super Tuesday primary delegates.

SAN FRANCISCO — Kamala Harris could never personally lock down California as a presidential contender. But the senator’s supporters are warning that her former rivals would be foolish to underestimate Harris’ clout in her home state.

“Where do Californians who supported Kamala go now? First, they go into mourning. And then, they go into watching how people are reacting — because the rest of the field just got a big boost,’’ says Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chair of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus, which cheered Harris’ entry into the 2020 race. “If they’re gleeful about it, that will be a real turnoff.”

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2020 elections

Biden struts as his rivals bite the dust

The former VP is talking like the nomination is his to lose.

MASON CITY, Iowa — Joe Biden’s feeling awfully confident these days.

The former vice president thinks he doesn't need Barack Obama to win the primary. He seemed to mock the ideas that there's enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren or that Pete Buttigieg came up with his own plans. And he professed to be untroubled by the possibility of Mike Bloomberg dropping $1 billion to beat him out for the nomination.

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2020 elections

Sanders' Massachusetts state director is out

The departure marks the third Sanders state director that has been reassigned or parted ways with him in the 2020 cycle.

Bernie Sanders’ Massachusetts state director, Joe Caiazzo, is no longer with the campaign.

Caiazzo’s departure marks the third time that one of Sanders’ state directors has been reassigned or parted ways with him in the 2020 cycle.

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2020 elections

‘Incapable of being gracious’: De Blasio fumes over Bloomberg bid

After failing in his own 2020 campaign, the New York City mayor aims to sink his predecessor.

By all appearances, Bill de Blasio is having a fit.

The New York City mayor has decried Mike Bloomberg’s hubris for pursuing the presidency, castigated Bloomberg’s apology for his race-based policing policies and excoriated his immediate predecessor’s “damning” record on homelessness.

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2020 Elections

Bernie splits from Warren with embrace of far-left foreign leaders

Sanders is trying to establish himself as the most progressive presidential candidate on not just economic issues — but foreign policy, too.

Bernie Sanders' revolution has gone global.

As the Vermont senator battles Elizabeth Warren for the left wing of the Democratic Party, he's increasingly tried to find an edge on foreign policy. Sanders has portrayed his candidacy as one part of a worldwide worker-led movement, praised controversial leftist leaders across the globe, and tried to articulate a foreign policy further afield of the establishment than Warren's.

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2020 elections

Buttigieg blows up his strategy to win black voters

The Democratic mayor held small roundtables and sit-downs in South Carolina, after recent criticism of his lack of black support.

ALLENDALE, S.C. — When Pete Buttigieg goes to Iowa or New Hampshire, he’s a Democratic presidential frontrunner who packs campaign venues. But when Buttigieg goes to South Carolina, he’s far from the top — and his campaign is shaking up its strategy to reflect his single-digit polling there. 

Having failed to gain traction with African American voters so far this campaign, Buttigieg’s campaign is taking a different approach to his three-day swing through South Carolina: Keep it small. The South Bend, Ind., mayor opted for largely invitation-only roundtables and private sit-downs with African American leaders in the state, where the Democratic electorate is majority-black.

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2020 Elections

A Hillary ‘shill’ goes all-in for Bernie

The former Clinton aide who once called Bernie Sanders’ movement ‘a hate mission against one woman’ is now one of the senator’s biggest supporters.

Hillary Clinton had few defenders more ferocious than Peter Daou in 2016. The former Clinton aide called Bernie Sanders’ movement “a hate mission against one woman.” He brawled with, and blocked, Sanders fans on social media with abandon. His devotion to Clinton was such that he co-founded “Hillary Men,” a website aimed at creating a “safe space” for her male fans.

Fast-forward to the 2020 primary: Daou has appeared on the Sanders campaign’s official podcast, praised the Vermont senator to his nearly 300,000 social media followers and passionately railed against the Democratic establishment.

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trade

2 big things that could save or sink Trump in 2020

It’s one of several nightmare scenarios for markets: A Trump administration failure to complete the China and USMCA trade deals could wreck the 2020 economic outlook. But Trump’s team remains optimistic.

President Donald Trump needs two big achievements to keep markets and the economy as glittering assets in his challenging 2020 reelection bid: passage of a new NAFTA and a trade deal with China.

But Democrats are stringing him along on the first — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — and he’s engaged in a seemingly endless rope-a-dope with China on the second with no guarantee of success. That’s left the economy as a major wild card for next year.

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2020 elections

How Buttigieg got knocked off the Obama track

‘If someone wants to tell you that Pete Buttigieg is Barack Obama, they are being blatantly ignorant of facts,’ said one Democrat.

In fundraising pitches, campaign messaging and his own speeches, Pete Buttigieg likes to point out the parallels between his own upstart campaign and that of another Democrat whose presidential bid was once seen as a longshot — Barack Obama.

But that framing is coming under serious question — and might be rendered entirely useless — as the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s efforts to win over black voters continue to fall flat.

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Transportation

Warren, Sanders criticize Amtrak's arbitration policy for passengers

The lawmakers wrote that the policy is "gravely imperiling traveling Americans' access to justice and public accountability."

Fourteen Senate Democrats, including four presidential candidates, criticized Amtrak's new arbitration policy for passengers in a letter to the CEO of the federally subsidized railroad.

The change, which was first reported by POLITICO, was implemented in January.

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elections

Poll: Biden remains atop Democratic field, while Warren slips

The former vice president came out 11 points ahead of runner-up Bernie Sanders.

Joe Biden has maintained his national lead over fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, according to a new survey, while a recently ascendant Elizabeth Warren appears to have lost some ground in the race for the party’s nomination.

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and published Wednesday reports that 28 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote prefer the former vice president to the rest of the crowded primary pack.

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2020 elections

Here's why Bloomberg insists he's not crazy

His assumptions aren't wildly implausible. It would just take all of them coming true for this to work.

Yes, say the political strategists around former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the notion of him becoming the Democratic presidential nominee requires many unprecedented and highly speculative factors falling into place just so.

No, these strategists insist, the billionaire media titan and philanthropist is not crazy, and neither are they.

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2020 Elections

Warren nosedives in new nationwide poll

The latest Quinnipiac poll also shows Buttigieg surging into second.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's support among Democratic primary voters nationwide plunged 50 percent over the past month, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, signaling that the shake-ups in the primary field are far from over.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has retaken the lead in the poll after an autumn that saw him surrender his solid frontrunner status, climbing 3 points to earn 24 percent in the poll. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., surged into second, rising 6 points to 16 percent, with Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders not far behind at 14 and 13 percent, respectively.

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