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Biden’s online fundraising has tailed off, suggesting problems generating grassroots enthusiasm, a POLITICO review of millions of donations shows. Joe Biden raised $4.6 million online on his first day in the 2020 presidential race, surprising doubters who thought the former vice president couldn’t run a modern campaign. But since then Biden’s online fundraising has tumbled — looking more like flash-in-the-pan opponent Beto O’Rourke than top-tier rivals like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. More than 60 percent of the $13.2 million Biden has raised online came in the first week of his campaign, which launched in late April, according to a...

DES MOINES — Democratic presidential candidates descended on Iowa in a flurry of activity this weekend, attending the annual Wing Ding dinner and speaking at the Iowa State Fair, meeting as many voters as they could and kicking off the primary season in earnest. Top-tier candidates like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders attracted huge crowds who followed their every move as they ate corn dogs and looked at the cow made of butter. And then, more quietly, there was Bill Weld. Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, arrived at the fair Sunday morning as a drizzly rain started to...

DES MOINES — A Democratic presidential field that has struggled to precisely define its general election indictment of Donald Trump appears finally to have found it. In the wake of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas — the latter of which was tied to a suspect whose anti-immigrant sentiments led to the killing of 22 people — candidates are road-testing a withering argument that draws a direct line between gun violence and the president’s racist rhetoric. “We are living with a toxic brew of two different things, each of which is claiming lives and each of which represents a national...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is challenging Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential race, now says he believes Sanders would have beaten Donald Trump. "In my heart, yeah," the mayor said, when asked during a wide-ranging interview at POLITICO’s headquarters Monday if Sanders would have won the general election three years ago. "You know, hindsight’s 20/20, but I think when we look at it now, that was a moment where there was such desire for change," he added. De Blasio's embrace of Sanders comes as the Vermont senator is one of...

President Trump on Sunday forcefully denounced two mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, saying "hate has no place in our country." As the president spoke, top Democratic presidential candidates -- including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker -- demanded Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recall Congress from its recess, currently slated to last until the second week of September, to vote on initiatives to curb gun violence. Addressing reporters in Morristown, New Jersey, Trump promised "we're going to take care" of the problem. He said he's been speaking to the attorney general, FBI director and members of Congress and...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) strong performance in this week’s Democratic presidential debates invigorated supporters who see her as slowly but surely making the case that she’s the best Democrat to take on President Trump. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were widely seen as the biggest winners of the two debates, along with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who tangled with former Vice President Joe Biden in the week’s second debate. Sanders and Warren were the stars on the first night, and they avoided battling one another while presenting a united front against centrists arguing against the progressive proposals.

Joe Biden survived the second round of Democratic presidential debates, but it became more apparent that over half the 22-person field is irrelevant and should get out, the sooner the better. The former vice president was repeatedly under attack on health care, criminal justice, immigration and abortion. He stumbled sometimes, but overall was sharper than his mediocre performance in the first debate a month ago. This won't assuage fears of mainstream Democrats that the 76-year-old Biden may not be up to the challenge of a protracted primary fight and bitter battle against Donald Trump. Still he was sufficiently engaged to...

Not all that long ago, the cult of Bernie Sanders seemed immovable and impermeable. Most people understood that he had no chance of winning anything, yet there was a passionate contingent of the base that would cling to him no matter what. That passionate contingent is still there, but Bernie is bleeding badly at the polls. What's going on? 1. Bernie's campaign lacks excitement. The Bernie cult was the creation of former Obama people who had been shut out by Hillary Clinton. They had originally banked on Elizabeth Warren, but she had refused to run in 2016. It was easier...

First things first: The theme song of the week is the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Poll of the week: A new national Fox News poll finds former vice president Joe Biden leading the Democratic primary 35% to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 17% and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's 9%. The poll is the latest to show Biden rising from the high 20s into the mid-to-upper 30s and Warren climbing from the mid-single digits to high-single digits. Meanwhile, Sanders has fallen from the 20s into the mid-teens. What's the point: It shouldn't be too surprising that Sanders' decline is...

The late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) listed off the names of dictators while watching President Trump's inauguration, according to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). HuffPost reported that during a campaign event in Iowa, the 2020 Democratic presidential contender told the crowd of more than 200 about sitting next to McCain and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during Trump's inaugural address. “I sat on that stage between Bernie and John McCain, and John McCain kept reciting to me names of dictators during that speech because he knew more than any of us what we were facing as a nation,” she said. “He understood...

America doesn’t lack for superhero movies in the summer of 2019: an X-Men sequel will premiere a few days from now, followed in July by another Spiderman instalment. But what of the Democrats’ search for a superhero of their own? May I suggest: Aquaman? Here’s why the submariner seems appropriate (other than the film’s preachy environmentalism): remove former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg from this Quinnipiac Poll of 2020 Democratic candidates and what one discovers is a field that’s “underwater” (higher negatives than positives). Biden’s numbers: 49% favorable; 39% negative. His rivals for the nomination:...

Donald Trump singled out four of his challengers for ridicule on Tuesday, mocking Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders and predicting one of them will win the 2020 Democratic nomination. ‘Boy, you got some beauties there!’ he said during a speech in Louisiana about energy infrastructure. ‘Three hundred and fifty million people and that’s the best we can do?’ ‘It’s going to be one of these people,’ he said. So far 23 different Democratic White House hopefuls have declared their candidacies. He poked fun at O’Rourke for quickly losing what a month ago looked like juggernaut momentum....

On Monday, during a rally held by the controversial Sunrise Movement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, 14) expressed that she refuses to allow the Democratic Party to nominate a “middle of the road” candidate in 2020. “I’ll be d*mned if the same politicians who refused to act (in past decades) are going to try to come back today and say we need a ‘middle of the road’ approach to save our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez declared. Ocasio-Cortez remarks come just after former Vice President Joe Biden expressed that democrats need to find “middle ground” on climate change policy, as reported by Reuters. The...

Republican pollster Frank Luntz has suggested that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be the Democratic party’s best candidate to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 if she were legally able to run. “The key is authenticity,” Luntz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham Tuesday evening. “You want to say what you mean, mean what you say,” he continued. “You want to be able to look straight at the camera and be yourself. And at least half of them [the 2020 Democratic candidates] are trying to be something that they’re not,” he argued. Ingraham then pointed out that Ocasio-Cortez, despite her disagreements...

In an appearance on FNC's "MediaBuzz," pollster Frank Luntz shares his finding that the term "capitalism" no longer polls well with the American people and predicts that Senator Bernie Sanders is the most likely to win the Democratic nomination for president with a message of democratic socialism. "It is not that principles are dead, in fact, the principles of economic freedom are alive and well," Luntz explained. "But capitalism itself has been so demonized by media that... if you want to oppose socialism you oppose it by talking about freedom, not capitalism." HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS: An exclusive first look...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not believe President Trump can be removed through impeachment — the only way to do it, she said this week, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so “big” he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a Democratic victory. That is something she worries about. “We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview at the Capitol on Wednesday as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year. Sitting in...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the early front-runners in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, said Saturday that President Donald Trump’s handling of North Korea is one area where he doesn’t “fault” the current commander-in-chief. Speaking to ABC News’ Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview for “This Week,” the Vermont senator said that Trump meeting face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “is the right thing to do.” Karl asked Sanders how he would respond as president to the apparent launch of unidentified short-range projectiles by North Korea into the Sea of Japan Friday night. “You...

Is a woman a shoo-in to win the Democratic nomination and take on President Trump in 2020? Some women in three states that could make or break White House hopes aren't so sure. “I want to be for a woman, but it’s just hard when you see a lot of other people not supporting women yet. I feel that America’s just not there yet,” Wendy McVey, a 20-year-old junior at Iowa State University, told The Associated Press. At the moment, the candidate McVey is most interested in is former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke. Women are among the Democratic Party’s most...

In his magnum opus work, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” published in 1936, John Maynard Keynes made famous the reference to “animal spirits” – those things that relate to the instincts and emotions that can drive human behavior. Keynes wrote of them in the context of economics. The passage which has become the stuff of economic legend reads: “Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action...

Donald Trump will win a second term as US president by a landslide, a host of respected pollsters have claimed. Multiple economic surveys with a strong record of predicting presidential winners and losers say Trump will win next year’s midterm elections by a mile – as long as the economy stays strong. Donald Luskin, whose firm TrendMacrolytics correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 win, told Politico: ‘The economy is just so damn strong right now and by all historic precedent the incumbent should run away with it. ‘I just don’t see how the blue wall (18 US states and District of Columbia...