Numbers for Joe Biden to consider
CNN:
Vice President Joe Biden has personally made a series of calls this week to Democratic strategists from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, asking a final round of detailed questions about how -- not whether -- to launch a 2016 presidential campaign.
People familiar with the conversations tell CNN that Biden has been making the calls throughout the week, including on Wednesday, just as many leading Democrats argued the window to a potential candidacy was closing in the wake of Hillary Clinton's strong performance in the party's first presidential debate. He is asking these people to work for him if he runs.
Boston Globe:
After a strong performance in this week’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton has reclaimed some of the ground she’d lost to Senator Bernie Sanders over the summer, leaving the two candidates in a statistical dead heat in New Hampshire, a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll found.
The survey, conducted Wednesday and Thursday, showed Clinton supported by 37 percent of poll respondents, and Sanders with 35 percent, essentially a tie. Another 12 percent were undecided, and 11 percent said they would back Vice President Joe Biden if he decided to enter the race.
The poll suggests that Democrats who had soured on Clinton are now giving her a second look in New Hampshire, the site of the first-in-the-nation primary that revived her campaign in 2008 and her husband’s prospects in 1992.
More politics and policy below the fold.
AP:
CBS has refused to run advertising for "Truth," the film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford that revisits a painful episode in the network's past involving a discredited 2004 news story on former President George W. Bush's military service record.
CBS has denounced the movie, which opens Friday, as a disservice to the public and journalists.
Redford plays Dan Rather in "Truth," with Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes. Together, they were behind a "60 Minutes II" story that questioned Bush's Vietnam War-era commitment to service in the Texas Air National Guard. But CBS apologized for the story after documents used were called into question and could not be verified. Mapes and three news executives were fired.
James Pindell:
While the battle between Bush and Rubio has largely played out behind closed doors among the donor class, it is on full display in New Hampshire, where both candidates are engaged in a zero-sum game to gain momentum in what Bush said Wednesday night “is the most important primary in the United States.”
In the latest NBC News/Marist poll of New Hampshire voters, Bush was in third place among Republican voters with 11 percent. Rubio came in fourth with 10 percent.
University of Miami political science professor Joseph Uscinski said Bush and Rubio are playing a longer game beyond the early nominating states.
“There is a battle going on right now — not so much for poll numbers, but for donors and endorsements. Rubio and Bush need both to stay alive right now, and the two candidates are feeding from the same trough of establishment donors,” Uscinski said.
The
WaPo has a great feature going forward on the 2016 money race. It's interactive and looks something like this:
It's worth explorin, and look at it with this NY Times story in mind:
“You can’t just parachute into a state at the last minute and hope to build a campaign overnight,” said Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, in an email. “That’s why we made smart early investments in data, analytics, tech, digital and on-the-ground organizing to build a strong, sturdy campaign designed to fight for and earn every vote in every state.”
But the filings also reveal the size of the gamble Mrs. Clinton is taking. After a record-breaking spring on the fund-raising circuit, her cash intake over the summer barely kept pace with her spending, a reflection of the sheer cost of maintaining the largest campaign infrastructure in either party.
“I think these are very smart investments for them,” said Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist who advised John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “But it is premised on one thing: that they can keep up the fund-raising pace.”
Thomas E. Ricks:
Last week, I asked a friend what the Afghan war would look like had we gone small in the fall of 2001 — that is, not tried to run the whole country, but instead stuck with a regime protection force in Kabul. It is always better to go with the local flow, instead of trying to change cultures. (Cultural change doesn’t flow easily from the barrel of a gun.) After all, the Afghan government traditionally has controlled Kabul and its outskirts. Beyond that, it was a process of negotiation with regional leaders.
And I think that is what we have now, with the president’s announcement. He is looking at a mighty small footprint.
NBC News:
Hillary Clinton's performance in Tuesday night's debate resonated strongly among members of her party, with more than half—56%—saying she won the debate. Just 3% of Democrats who watched or followed coverage of the debate said she did worst, giving her a net performance score of +53. Bernie Sanders scored a +30, showing he still appealed to a significant number of Democrats, according to the latest NBC News online poll conducted nationwide by SurveyMonkey from Tuesday evening immediately following the debate until Thursday morning.
HuffPost:
Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate on CNN did what debates usually do, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. It allowed the two leading candidates to make a positive impression on an audience of millions.
More critically, however, the debate allowed front-runner Hillary Clinton to boost her standing among a far bigger base of support, making her the clear winner in the eyes of most Democratic voters.
A 55 percent majority of registered Democratic voters who watched the debate said Clinton won. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who saw a surge in online interest and fundraising, was a distant second, with only 22 percent saying he was the best of the night.
Clinton also saw an uptick in the proportion of Democrats who say they want her to be the party's presidential nominee. Before the debate, 44 percent of registered Democrats said they wanted Clinton to be the nominee. After the debate, the figure had risen to 52 percent.
AP:
The decision to question [Huma] Abedin angered the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, and the Clinton campaign.
“She had no policy responsibilities, no operational responsibilities and was not with Secretary Clinton on the night of this phenomenal tragedy,” Cummings told reporters after breaking away momentarily from the day’s proceedings.
Abedin is vice chairwoman of Clinton’s campaign and was a top State Department aide when Clinton served as secretary of state. She also worked in Clinton’s Senate office.
In a statement, the campaign suggested that calling Abedin as a witness was a fresh sign of the panel’s partisanship.
“The committee’s focus on Huma (as opposed to numerous intelligence and defense community officials still outstanding) is additional evidence that the actual attack in Benghazi, and its lessons about how we might better protect diplomats serving in dangerous places, are the last things on the committee’s mind,” said Nick Merrill, a campaign spokesman, in a statement.
The committee spends no time looking at what happened in Benghazi. Note that for the record.