Our reporters are in Iowa following the top campaigns in the final days of the race. Here’s everything you need to know about where the campaigns are headed and Thursday’s strategy — whether or not the candidate is present.
We’ll be updating this story with key moments on the trail, so check back periodically.
Joe Biden
Biden is in the midst of a 20-city, 17-county Iowa swing that he billed as a bus tour. But while in Council Bluffs on Wednesday night, he noted he was catching a flight back to Des Moines, about two hours away by car.
That caused some static among the reporters who were slogging across the state tracking his “Soul of the Nation” campaign bus. Biden will start in Waukee on Thursday, about 20 minutes outside Des Moines, then head to Newton and end in the working-class town of Ottumwa. Biden has been zipping around the state since Saturday, taking advantage of the fact that Sanders and Warren are bound to Washington.
Biden is hovering at or near the top of polls in Iowa, as he has been for awhile. The question is whether there’s a shift in enthusiasm in the crowds and if they are getting any bigger. And are the voters who are still weighing Biden against his opponents finally prepared to make a decision?
–Natasha Korecki
1:10 pm
Biden slams Trump ahead of president’s Iowa rally
WAUKEE, Iowa — Biden won’t see the payoff for several hours — not until Donald Trump parachutes into the middle of Iowa caucus campaigning to stage a rally in Des Moines.
But speaking just outside the city on Thursday, Biden laid the table for a pre-caucus slap fight with the president, all but begging Trump to engage him once again in the days before the caucuses.
“The character of the nation is on the ballot,” Biden said, reprising his pledge to beat Trump “like a drum.” He portrayed Trump as angry, weak and cruel.
It’s possible Trump will resist Biden’s come-on or criticize Democrats other than Biden, reprising well-worn lines on “crazy” Bernie Sanders or “Pocahontas” Elizabeth Warren. But with Sanders and Warren in Washington, Biden’s appearance served to bracket the president’s arrival. Biden spoke for about 20 minutes to a small crowd in a gymnasium in Waukee, taking no questions. He has two more stops planned today.
–David Siders
Pete Buttigieg
Buttigieg is tearing across Iowa on Thursday, traveling nearly 200 miles to hit four cities in a northeastern swing through the state. He’ll do four town hall events, answering voters’ questions and snapping selfies along the way. He’s hitting up a cross section of small cities and towns, visiting largely rural counties. He’ll go as far as Decorah, near the Minnesota border, then end in Ankeny, a well-educated suburb just outside Des Moines.
The play is to get Buttigieg in front of as many Iowans as possible, taking advantage of an impeachment-free schedule. He’s focusing on rural areas, where other candidates won’t have time or resources to get to.
For me, what’s most interesting about his events is the Q&A time with voters: He often takes five to seven questions from the crowd or pulled from a fishbowl of pre-written queries. Earlier this week, several challenged his lack of support among black voters — a sign that his weakness in South Carolina is seeping into his ground game in Iowa.
1:42 pm
Buttigieg criticizes Biden and Sanders on the trail
Pete Buttigieg is finally calling out his opponents by name.
The former South Bend mayor often talks in broad terms about how he wants to be “galvanizing, not polarizing” to the American people, and that he’s not relying on the “same Washington playbook.“ But in Decorah, Iowa, on Thursday morning, Buttigieg broke from the norm. He accused Bernie Sanders of “calling for a kind of politics that says you got to go all the way here and nothing else counts,” and Buttigieg hit at Joe Biden for “saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new.”
The not-so-subtle shift signals Buttigieg will continue to more explicitly attack the two frontrunners in most recent polls. A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found Biden at 23 percent, followed by Sanders at 21 percent. Buttigieg trailing behind them at 16 percent.
Buttigieg previewed some of this new language in his Fox News town hall on Sunday, seeking to finish off his Iowa campaign with a general election message about bringing in independents and “future former Republicans,” as well as Democrats.
Asked by reporters about the change in his stump speech, Buttigieg said: „It’s just a different approach than what Vice President Biden or Sen. Sanders are offering, and I want to make sure that the choice is as clear as possible, especially for Iowans still making up their minds in these crucial final hours.“
–Elena Schneider
Amy Klobuchar
On Wednesday night, three state legislators who endorsed Klobuchar made calls to potential caucusgoers on her behalf. Talking points on the wall of a Des Moines field office captured the Goldilocks argument her supporters are making: “She’s not too liberal, not too conservative, not too old, not too young. She is just right to make the perfect president.”
Iowa state Rep. Monica Kurth, who previously backed Cory Booker, endorsed Klobuchar a week ago after vacillating between Klobuchar and Biden. Klobuchar’s energy, younger age and moderate leanings ultimately did it for Kurth. But the state lawmaker said it wasn’t easy deciding when the field is still so large. And given the large number of undecideds so close to the caucuses, voters feel the same way, she said. “If Klobuchar ends up high in Iowa, then other states will give her a better look. If she ends up in the top three, that would be a game-changer,” she said.
Meanwhile, Klobuchar is set to meet with Congressional Hispanic Caucus members Thursday through BOLD PAC, the caucus’ campaign arm. She’s the fifth presidential candidate to meet with BOLD PAC. Like Buttigieg, Klobuchar polls poorly with voters of color — she didn’t register in a nationwide Washington Post-Ipsos poll of black voters in January. In a Fox News poll of Nevada, she drew 1 percent support among Latinos.
12:57 pm
Klobuchar team ‘laughed off’ Biden caucus deal
DES MOINES, Iowa — Joe Biden aides pitched Klobuchar’s campaign on teaming up on caucus night to pick up support from low-polling candidates and potentially blunt the rise of their more progressive rivals. But Klobuchar’s team wasn’t interested, her campaign manager Justin Buoen told reporters at a Bloomberg News breakfast in Des Moines on Thursday.
“The conversation the other day was immediately laughed off by our team. It was an informal, in passing conversation between some old friends, we have no plans to cut any deals with anybody,” Buoen said. “We have no plans to not be viable in places and we’ve got no plans to tell our supporters what to do.”
With five days to go, Buoen admitted that Klobuchar’s obligation to be in Washington for the impeachment trail is a “challenge” as the campaign tries to build on momentum from the Minnesota Democrats rising poll numbers in Iowa. “We feel some wind at our back,” Buoen said. “I think we’re going to walk away with delegates.”
Buoen also took questions on Klobuchar’s lack of support from Latinos and black voters, which she’ll need to have a shot at the Democratic nomination if her campaign is able to cash in on the Iowa momentum it feels. “It’s going to take a little while for people to get to know us,” Buoen said. “Amy has enthusiastic support of the African American community in Minnesota.”
–Laura Barrón-López
Bernie Sanders
Sanders doesn’t look too happy sitting through the impeachment trial, according to reporters there. But his surrogates are doing their best to perk him up, campaigning across Iowa in what his team says is a natural extension of his “Not Me, Us” campaign. Author and climate change activist Naomi Klein; Linn County Board of Supervisors member Stacey Walker; band Las Cafeteras; and his wife, Jane, are stumping for him in Des Moines and nearby counties.
There’s always a chance Sanders could fly charter to Iowa for a quick in and out: After impeachment proceedings ended early on Saturday, he came to the state for a surprise appearance at a rally with Michael Moore and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
His campaign has also been stressing its fundraising strength and ability to fight back in the wake of attacks: A super PAC began airing a negative ad in Iowa Wednesday, saying Sanders is unable to beat Trump. The campaign’s response? It announced it raised $1.3 million from 70,000 donations after sending an email highlighting the attack ad as well as spending by a pro-Joe Biden super PAC.
4:50 pm
Jane Sanders takes center stage with Bernie stuck in D.C.
NEWTON, Iowa — Jane Sanders campaigns a little differently than her husband.
Within a minute of campaigning for him at a coffee shop Thursday afternoon, she was talking about the day she met Bernie. “The first time I listened to him, I fell in love with his ideas,” she said. She also noted that two of their grandchildren, 8-year-old Dylan and 11-year-old Ella, were in tow.
That’s a more warm-and-fuzzy approach than the famously curmudgeonly Vermont senator typically employs on the trail — though he has been flashing his sense of humor on the stump more frequently since he had a heart attack last year.
Jane Sanders took questions from the audience on nuclear power, student loan debt and Medicare for All. During her remarks, she briefly mentioned (though not by name) the anti-Sanders attack ad on Iowa’s airwaves, which is funded by the super PAC Democratic Majority for Israel.
“The establishment Democrats are running a negative ad right now, putting a lot of money into it to stop Bernie,” Jane Sanders said. “So we need you to put a lot of shoe leather into it.”
–Holly Otterbein
Elizabeth Warren
Warren has said repeatedly that her duty to be in the Capitol for impeachment is more important than politics, but she does seem antsy to return to Iowa ASAP. „I wish we were doing an in-person town hall, but this is the best we can do,“ she said during a tele-town hall this week that the campaign said more than 20,000 Iowans dialed into.
Her campaign had originally advised several events with Warren herself for Thursday that they were forced to change because of impeachment. Instead, Warren’s husband, Bruce Mann, along with their dog, Bailey, will appear in Council Bluffs and Le Mars in her place. Former presidential candidate Julián Castro will also be campaigning for her in Marshalltown. Even without the candidate, the campaign is sending its surrogates to mostly delegate-heavy counties.
I’m curious whether Warren will try to find some other ways to break through or make news while she’s in Washington. She had a newsy back-and-forth with Trump impeachment attorney Alan Dershowitz this week, but it’s unclear how much that will matter in Iowa. Will she do something else to try and shake things up?
In most recent polls, Warren seems to have plateaued in the mid- to high teens. The top four candidates remain clustered fairly closely together, but Warren has placed fourth in several of those polls, including one from Monmouth Wednesday that pegged her at 15 percent — at the edge of viability.
–Alex Thompson
Source: politico.com
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