News Information and Media Site: On Politics This Week: Iowa, Iowa, Iowa

February 1, 2020

By maggie astor and matt stevens

DES MOINES — Two days to go, people! Two days until the day we’ve been anticipating for more than a year. We’re in the homestretch. It’s almost ov —

Wait, what? There are still five months of primaries to go?

Let’s not think about that. Just think about Iowa. One of us has been embedded here for 11 days straight, so forgive us if we’re a little punchy. Here’s a look at what’s been happening.

Iowa on the ground

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend. Ind., campaigning on Thursday in Ankeny, Iowa. Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Last weekend brought a whirlwind of campaign events from Dubuque to Sioux City as Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota tried to cram a week’s worth of campaigning into two days before all of them — to paraphrase Ms. Klobuchar — turned into impeachment pumpkins. (The fourth senator in the race, Michael Bennet of Colorado, is focusing on New Hampshire.)

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., moved from oblique to direct attacks, criticizing Mr. Sanders and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. by name and saying the two front-runners’ recent arguments — over Social Security, for instance — reflected an unwise focus on the past.

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, focused mostly on President Trump. On Tuesday, he seized on comments by Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican facing a tough election of her own, to argue that he is the Democrat the president fears most.

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With the senators stuck in Washington, surrogates held down the fort in Iowa.
Mr. Biden has stayed strong in the polls, but his ground game could cause problems.
We reported on the barriers — sometimes insurmountable — that the caucuses present for Iowans with disabilities.
And we also annotated the stump speeches candidates have been giving in Iowa. Have a look at the closing pitches that caucusgoers are hearing.

Iowa in the polls

A New York Times/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers released last weekend showed Mr. Sanders ahead with 25 percent support, up six points since the last Times/Siena survey in October. He was followed by Mr. Buttigieg (18 percent) and Mr. Biden (17 percent). Ms. Warren dropped to 15 percent from 22 in October.

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released around the same time showed Mr. Biden leading and Mr. Sanders six points behind him. A Monmouth poll released Wednesday found Mr. Sanders just two points behind Mr. Biden, well within the margin of error.

You can dig deeper into the Times/Siena poll here.
Our colleague Nate Cohn explained why caucuses present a challenge for Mr. Biden.
And speaking of polls, the entrepreneur Andrew Yang got four relatively strong ones — two national, two in New Hampshire — last weekend, qualifying him for the next debate, on Friday in Manchester, N.H.

Iowa on your screens

The 2020 Democrats have filled the airwaves with their closing arguments, our colleague Nick Corasaniti reports. Mr. Biden’s message: “Vote Biden. Beat Trump.” Mr. Buttigieg’s: A “bold vision for the next generation.”

Nick also looked at what the candidates are telling Iowans in Facebook ads. Ms. Warren, for example, is emphasizing “combating corruption in Washington.” Ms. Klobuchar has sought to appeal to voters who feel “stuck in the middle of the extremes in our politics.”

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Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York has spent millions of dollars attacking Mr. Trump and will air a 60-second, $11 million Super Bowl ad focused on gun control. Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has also bought a minute of advertising during the game on Sunday.
Mr. Sanders’s campaign raised more than $1.3 million after an ad painted him as incapable of beating Mr. Trump.

Last-minute endorsements

The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest and most influential newspaper, endorsed Ms. Warren for the Democratic nomination last weekend, while Mr. Biden got an endorsement from The Sioux City Journal.

Klobuchar faces scrutiny over handling of a murder case

On Tuesday, The Associated Press published an investigation into a murder conviction Ms. Klobuchar won as Hennepin County attorney in 2003. The report raised questions about whether a black teenager accused of firing shots that killed an 11-year-old girl had been wrongly convicted, and cited several flaws in the investigation.

The revelations prompted civil rights activists and black community leaders in Minneapolis to call on Ms. Klobuchar to suspend her presidential campaign. A spokeswoman for the campaign said Ms. Klobuchar “has always believed in pursuing justice without fear or favor” and that she supports the review of any new evidence in this case.

Delaney is out after more than two years

John Delaney, a former representative from Maryland who announced his candidacy for president in July 2017, said Friday that he would end his campaign. He ran as a moderate, especially against “Medicare for all.”

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Mr. Delaney said he had concluded that he would do just well enough in some places to keep other moderates below the 15 percent viability threshold. “When I knew that I didn’t have enough support to reach viability in a meaningful way, but I had enough support to pull off from other candidates,” he told us, “I said, well, that’s not very productive.”

His departure leaves 11 candidates in the Democratic race.

Sanders releases his disability plan

Advocates for people with disabilities said that Bernie Sanders’s newly released plan rivaled Elizabeth Warren’s proposal.Mark Makela for The New York Times

For months, candidates have been trying to outdo one another on everything from taxes to gun policy, jostling to produce the boldest proposals. That dynamic has been especially visible in disability policy. And on Friday, Mr. Sanders released a sweeping plan that advocates said rivaled the one they had recently praised from Ms. Warren.

Mr. Sanders is proposing several of the same things, including ending sub-minimum wages for workers with disabilities, fully funding the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, eliminating Social Security rules that can prevent people from marrying, and protecting home- and community-based services.

His plan also calls for a federal Office of Climate Resiliency for People With Disabilities “to ensure that nationwide, the needs of people with disabilities are consistently addressed during adaptation planning and that those efforts are coordinated throughout the federal government.”

In other policy news:

Amid the growing coronavirus outbreak in China, Ms. Warren unveiled a plan to stop the spread of infectious diseases. She said she would increase funding for agencies that prevent and manage outbreaks, and establish a corps of doctors, scientists and aid workers who can enter conflict zones.
Michael R. Bloomberg released an economic plan for Puerto Rico and endorsed statehood for the territory. He also outlined how he would support the L.G.B.T.Q. community; released a Latino agenda; and announced a housing affordability plan, promising to cut homelessness in half by 2025.