Free Republic

Former Vice President Joe Biden's support in the latest Hill-HarrisX poll of Democratic voters has fallen below 30 percent, his lowest mark in the survey so far. The poll, released on Monday, found that 29 percent of likely Democratic primary voters support Biden as their first choice for president, while 16 percent back Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This marks a 4-point drop for Biden from an identical poll conducted two weeks ago and immediately following the first 2020 Democratic debates. It also represents a 17-point drop from when same poll was first conducted in May, a month after Biden formally...

Why did Nancy Pelosi reverse her earlier approach to her noisy first-term progressives and start taking them to the public woodshed? An internal poll conducted in May by Democrats might explain why Pelosi decided to start cracking down on the frosh “Squad.” Axios got its hands on the survey, which showed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had succeeded in making herself the “definitional face” of Democrats among swing voters.And that’s not a good thing for most other Democrats. When it comes to “white, non-college voters” that Democrats wooed away from Donald Trump in the midterms, AOC is box-office poison: Ocasio-Cortez was...

Poor Joe Biden. The career politician simply cannot catch a break from progressives on the 2020 Democratic primary presidential campaign trail. The latest thorn in Biden's side stems from his years serving under his "best friend" President Barack Obama. It is somewhat of an odd fact, but President Trump's immediate predecessor actually deported more individuals than he has so far at this point in office. Sadly, for Biden however, the progressives are now calling for what is tantamount to open borders. Thus they are turning even on the former Messiah of the Democratic Party due to his enforcement of immigration...

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke says he was recently given documents showing that both he and his wife are descended from people who owned slaves. In a post Sunday night for the website Medium, the former Texas congressman writes that the documents showed that one of his paternal great-great-great grandfathers owned two women in the 1850s. He says records also showed that one ancestor of his wife, Amy, owned slaves while another was part of the Confederate Army. …

President Trump’s impeachment organizer Tom Steyer has joined the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee with a pledge to spend $100 million of his own billion-dollar fortune. While it will not put him any closer to defeating Donald Trump, it does likely close the door on former Vice President Joe Biden winning the nomination. Steyer’s notoriety comes from donating the billions he has made investing in fossil fuels, private prisons and subprime lending companies into progressive activism for impeaching President Trump and reckless environmental policies. He will be pushing the same radical, job-killing climate change ideas that those defining...

The policy positions of Democrats running for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have gone from the impractical to the absurd to outright chilling, should any one of them win and actually implement those policies. The latest comes from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who essentially threatened all border enforcement and immigration agents for simply doing their jobs. In a policy proposal posted online, the Massachusetts Democrat said that as president, she would appoint a “task force to investigate accusations of serious violations — including medical neglect and physical and sexual assaults of detained immigrants.” She added the task force would be...

Unpaid interns are practically non-existent among Democratic presidential campaigns in 2019. But some top-tier candidates appear to be finding a creative way to tap unpaid talent: offering vague “fellowship” opportunities as volunteer positions. There’s no singular definition for a “fellow” among 2020 candidates and most this cycle don’t offer the option. But two leading contenders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), give applicants who are selected a chance to participate in the campaign as volunteer fellows, without requiring compensation or academic credit. “Volunteers are asked to do something, workers are told,” Renée Hagerty, an executive council...

California billionaire and liberal activist Tom Steyer will announce this week that he plans to enter the already crowded field of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a person close to him. The decision by Steyer, one of the biggest donors to Democratic politicians, was unexpected. He had traveled to Iowa earlier in the year to announce he would not run, but would instead focus on his large grass-roots campaign to impeach President Trump. But Steyer now appears to see an opening. The Democratic primary field remains unsettled. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s poor debate performance last month...

uring the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously became so frustrated by his running mate’s logorrhea that he asked an aide, “How many times is Biden going to say something stupid?” According to authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the VP’s stock had dropped so low by late 2011 that the Obama reelection team considered replacing Biden with Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket. And, as his busing blunder clearly demonstrated, Biden still has the old gift for gaffes. According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, however, if the 2020 election were held today, Biden would beat President Trump by...

Kamala Harris herself couldn't have been tougher on Joe Biden than David Gregory was on CNN's New Day this morning. Gregory raked the Dem frontrunner over the coals on numerous issues. Highlights: "No, I don't think he looks really good right now." "He looks out of touch. He looks older. He looks out of step with the times." "I don't think there's any good excuse for him not being ready for that first debate on these issues. Are you kidding? Kamala Harris previewed all this stuff. She had criticized him on this before. Now he says he was unprepared? That's...

There’s no question that the first set of debates and the fallout from some of the post-debate interviews have shaken up the race a bit. But have things really changed all that much? Polls have tightened, but many of the stubborn realities defining the Democratic nomination process remain. And yet The Hill has definitely swizzled their own analysis this week and come to a rather shocking conclusion. According to them, Joe Biden is no longer in the lead and the new frontrunner is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Emphasis in original) The first debates are done, second-quarter fundraising totals are...

I think grandpa needs a nap. Or better yet, he fell victim to a criticism he lobbed…at his own party. In 2017, while speaking about free speech at the University of Delaware, former Vice President Joe Biden said, “liberals have short memories.” That couldn’t be more accurate with his latest remarks about Russia and our elections, where he incredibly said that interference from the Kremlin wouldn’t have happened under Obama. Uh, Joey, it did. And everyone knows it. Who was president in 2016? (via Free Beacon): Biden: Russian Interference Wouldn’t Have Happened During the Obama Admin Former Vice President Joe...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) We should not be at all surprised if, at some point between now and September, we see our nation’s Unfrozen Caveman Senator, Joe Biden, withdraw from race to become the Democrat Party’s 2020 presidential nominee due to some unspecified “health” reasons. Why? Watch this clip from an interview with Chris Cuomo: This guy is simply not capable of enduring the long, grueling, race he faces. He proved in the first debate last week that he is unable to think quickly enough on his feet to adequately respond to an attack from just...

Sen. Kamala Harris demonstrated rare skill during the debate -- managing to shiv Joe Biden and look nice doing it. By adopting the language of "hurt" instead of anger, she finessed the problem that usually attends launching an unprovoked attack: that it may harm the perpetrator as much as the target -- think Chris Christie and Marco Rubio in 2016. Harris' pose of wounded disappointment shielded her -- at least until her rollout of $35 T-shirts the following morning, featuring the image of herself as a child. That revealed, shall we say, a certain calculation. Still, Harris's maneuver achieved its...

In 2019, we can’t afford to not get political, even with escapist entertainment. So even though Elizabeth Banks’ Charlie’s Angels reboot is a high-stakes, globe-trotting spy thriller comedy, she still made sure to send a message with extreme real-world ties within the story about female spies: “Believe women.” Letting female rage express itself was one of the most important aspects of the new installment of the Charlie’s Angels franchise, Banks, who directed, wrote and co-stars, tells Collider along with a small group of journalists. “One of the ingredients of this movie was supporting and believing women,” she says. “We literally...

“I mean, I get all this information about other people’s pasts, and what they’ve done and not done. And you know, I’m just not going to go there. If we keep doing that — I mean, we should be debating what we do from here," Biden told CNN in a Friday interview, referring to the crowded field of two dozen White House hopefuls."

A scenario unfolded last week that has become boringly predictable. Bad guy does bad things. Good guy with authority shows up to stop him. Bad guy attacks good guy with weapon. Good guy shoots bad guy. Bad guy’s “community” allege good guy is racist. Craven politician holds town hall meeting. Craven politician gets shouted down by angry mob. Craven politician folds like wet paper to angry mob’s demands. Craven politician appoints special prosecutor to investigate good guy, who determines good guy was justified in shooting the bad guy. Angry mob insists the “system” is rigged against them. Bad guy’s kindergarten...

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Joe Biden is still the front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, but the crown is slipping.On a two-day holiday visit to Iowa, the state that kicks off the White House nominating fight in seven months, Biden was greeted by new polls showing his lead narrowing in the state and nationally after a wobbly performance in last week’s first debate. Biden’s halting response to a bruising debate attack on racial issues from rival Kamala Harris, a black U.S. senator from California, has some Democrats in Iowa rethinking their support for the former vice president.

In the viral moment of the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Kamala Harris attacked former vice president Joe Biden over his opposition to forced busing to integrate public schools. The Harris campaign is now waffling on the issue. Over time, we may look back on that as a moment revealing Harris’s underlying weakness as a candidate.

Mark Hemingway caught Joe Biden’s “especially combative” interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN yesterday (video below). Hemingway reports that when Cuomo shifted the topic from mandatory school busing to Russian election meddling in Europe and America, “Biden bizarrely asserted that the Obama administration never let that happen.” Biden’s catchphrase in this short interview is “C’mon, man.” Count the times he resorts to it. If Biden remains a serious candidate, I’m afraid the interview is worth watching. It put me in mind of Robert Gates’s observation that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue...