Free Republic

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.

Voters in Mississippi on Tuesday will decide a U.S. Senate special election runoff marked by racial controversy and capped by a last-minute visit by President Donald Trump to shore up the beleaguered Republican incumbent. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white former state lawmaker who was appointed to the seat in April, is still favored over black Democrat Mike Espy in the reliably Republican state, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. But she has been engulfed in a political storm since a video surfaced showing her praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 public event by...