CNN:
The first CNN/ORC poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa finds Hillary Clinton firmly in the lead in the state that kicks off the nation's nominating contests, holding a 50% to 31% lead over upstart Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders...
All told, nearly half of Iowa's likely Democratic caucus-goers say they've either made up their minds about the race or are leaning toward a candidate (46%), and among that group, Clinton stands at 53%. Sanders jumps to 41% among those who have made up their minds and despite not having made up his own mind about running, Biden has 5%. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley rounds out the list at 1%.
Should Biden decide not to run, the poll suggests Clinton would get a bigger boost than Sanders. Reallocating Biden's supporters to their second choice candidate, 58% would back Clinton, 32% Sanders, 2% former O'Malley, 1% former Virginia senator Jim Webb and less than 1% would back former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee.
The bolded is what matters. So far, Hillary is holding up better in IA than NH. O'Malley, meanwhile, is going nowhere. I wonder who tells him.
CNN:
Donald Trump has a significant lead in the race to win over likely Iowa caucus-goers, according to the first CNN/ORC poll in the state this cycle.
Trump tops the field with 22% and is the candidate seen as best able to handle top issues including the economy, illegal immigration and terrorism. He's most cited as the one with the best chance of winning the general election, and, by a wide margin, as the candidate most likely to change the way things work in Washington.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson follows Trump in overall preference with 14%, bumping Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had held the top spot in most recent public polling in Iowa, down to third place with 9%. Walker is nearly even with a slew of other candidates.
There are three Iowa polls since the debate, and
Trump leads Walker in all of them. Walker has to win IA or he's finished.
Oh, and he's apparently losing to Trump in neighboring MI in a non-gold standard poll. As in Trump 20%, Walker 4%. Six other people are ahead of him.
At the same time, Walker has the worst general election numbers, with Ipsos showing him trailing Hillary by 20 points, worse than anyone else.
Yeah, yeah. Don't underestimate him, yadda yadda. Reminds me of when people told me to fear Rick Perry in 2012. Not buying it. Walker is a terrible candidate. Look at the polls.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Matthew Dickinson:
Nonetheless, the latest poll result ought to give Sanders’ supporters an additional reason to flood the airwaves, not to mention castigating wayward bloggers who have the temerity to focus on the data, as opposed to #FeelingtheBern. So, at the risk of inciting more ire, let me raise two more cautionary flags for Bernie supporters. The Boston Herald poll also indicates that the race in NH remains very fluid with fully 60% of respondents saying they could change their mind, and only 30% saying they are following the race very closely. As I found out in my stint on Mantle’s show, Bernie supporters are out in force this early in the race. It remains to be seen how support plays out as more people begin paying attention to the race an attitudes begin to firm. It may be that questions of viability will loom larger in the polling. Most of the respondents – 65%, to be precise – to the Herald poll still believe Clinton is going to win the Democratic nomination. Remember, Bernie’s big electoral test of viability is not going to be New Hampshire or Iowa – it’s going to be South Carolina, Nevada and the more racially diverse states that come later in the nominating process. In that vein, I was on the phone with a reporter today discussing why Bernie has yet to gain traction with the #BlackLivesMatter crowd. I’ll have more to say about that in a later post. For now, keep those critical comments coming but, please, don’t shoot the messenger!
Chris Cillizza interviewing Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's campaign manager in
2008 2004:
THE FIX: How much of what Howard Dean was experiencing in 2003 do you see in Sanders right now? Is there a key strain that runs from the Dean campaign directly through the Sanders bid?
Trippi: I see more big differences than similarities between the Dean and Sanders campaigns. It starts with the structure of the race. We faced three establishment Democrats not one. John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards were three strong candidacies that were splitting the vote and donor support of the party establishment in 2003. So when we started to move we actually took the lead in national polls and in each of the key states.
Sanders faces a completely different problem. No one is splitting the party establishment with Hillary. She has it all to herself. When we were at 30 percent we had the lead. Sanders gets to 30 percent and he is still 25 points behind. The second structural difference in the race is born out of a similarity. Yes they both come from Vermont, a state that is mostly white. But Dean did not face in Kerry, Gephardt or Edwards any candidate that had a significant advantage or following in the African American community. In fact in poll after poll, Dean attracted more than his fair share of the black vote. Had we faced a Kennedy or a Clinton that would not have been the case. Sanders is going to have a much more difficult time overcoming Hillary's advantage in the African American community and that is eventually going to be a big problem as the campaign turns to South Carolina and beyond. In fact if he can't solve it, he can't win.
President Obama's LTE to NYT re voting rights:
For the cover story of our Aug. 2 issue, Jim Rutenberg wrote about efforts over the last 50 years to dismantle the protections in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark piece of legislation that cleared barriers between black voters and the ballot. The story surveyed a broad sweep of history and characters, from United States Chief Justice John Roberts to ordinary citizens like 94-year-old Rosanell Eaton, a plaintiff in the current North Carolina case arguing to repeal voting restrictions enacted in 2013. The magazine received an unusual volume of responses to this article, most notably from President Barack Obama.
Dan Diamond:
For the first time in more than 50 years of surveys, the CDC on Wednesday reported that more than 90% of Americans — 90.8% of us, to be specific — have health insurance.
Until now, no major survey had ever found that the uninsured rate in America has hit single digits.
The data comes from the National Health Interview Survey, which the CDC has been conducting for more than 50 years. The questions have sometimes changed, but until this year, the answers haven’t: More than 10% of respondents, and sometimes as many as 18% of Americans, have reported that they’ve been uninsured.
Sean Trende:
For now, I think it is probably best to avoid firm conclusions about what will become of the Trump boomlet. I do, however, think there are four things that analysts should avoid until we get closer to the actual voting:
1) Don’t Write Him Off
2) Don’t Treat Him as the Frontrunner
3) Don’t Draw Conclusions About His Impact on the General Elections
4) Don’t Forget: You Need a Majority of Delegates to Be the Nominee
CNN:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says if he were advising former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on his presidential campaign, he'd say stop with the Iraq War comments.
Bush gave a foreign policy address Tuesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, during which he went after President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton for pulling out of Iraq.
"So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers," Bush said. "Rushing away from danger can be every bit as unwise as rushing into danger, and the costs have been grievous."
Asked about the speech on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday, Bush's Republican primary opponent Christie said the strategy of bringing up the Iraq War is "absolutely not" the right way to grow the party.
"It's bad decision-making by Governor Bush, but I'm not running his campaign," Christie said. "This should've been handled by Governor Bush the same way it's been handled by any of the other candidates who understand how to do this, which is to say, 'Listen, if we knew then what we knew now, we wouldn't have gone into Iraq.'"
A reminder that Bush's Iraq issues go deeper than just with Democrats. Members of his own party are shaking their heads.
Lisa Rosenbaum:
Clearly, patients should have access to all available information, from their medical records to anticipated costs of care. But that it's wrong to deny anyone information doesn't make it right to always provide as much as possible. Might there, in fact, be such a thing in medicine as Too Much Information?
The possibility struck me a few years ago when I broke my clavicle. It was Friday night, and after some x-rays, the emergency department sent me home with a sling. But the bone's angle looked nauseatingly wrong, and when I texted pictures of the x-rays to an orthopedist family friend, he said I needed surgery. He scheduled me as Monday's last case — but asked me to arrive at 7 a.m. for discussion and consent. I couldn't see the point. I knew I needed surgery, so understanding the risks and alternatives was hardly empowering. Moreover, my response to information about my own risks varies little with the magnitude: any possibility feels bad, but either it will happen or it won't. Finally, despite my awareness that various surgical approaches exist, being asked by an expert how I wanted my clavicle realigned seemed like being asked by an auto mechanic how I'd like my clutch repaired.
Van Jones:
Over the years, many black leaders have asked the populists to include specific remedies for our specific ills. We have done this politely and behind closed doors. Often we would hear that their "progressive economic policies" would disproportionately help black folks, so we should be fine with our community's needs never being addressed by name.
It was infuriating. Sometimes, it seemed some Democratic politicians were happy to publicly name and embrace every part of the Democratic coalition -- immigrants rights defenders, womens' rights advocates, environmentalists and champions of LBGT equality. But not black people.
At least, not explicitly -- and certainly not comfortably. We were just supposed to sit there and hope that race-neutral rhetoric and race-neutral proposals might somehow fix our race-specific problems.
I starting calling this dubious strategy "trickle-down justice."
Today's young activists simply are not having any of it.
In case anyone missed the memo after Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston, here it is: the Obama era of black silence on issues that matter to us is over.
And the entire Democratic Party needs to sit up and take notice.