Power Up: Biden headed to Iowa as Democrats look to expand the map

It’ll provide a closing image of Greenfield and the Democratic presidential nominee in a state Donald Trump carried by nine points four years ago that’s now in play fouir days from now. Iowa will also help decide if Republicans retain the Senate majority. 

• “Out of all the crazy things on my 2020 Bingo card, seeing Joe Biden again wasn’t one of them,” Polk County Democratic Party chairman Sean Bagniewski told Power Up.

In 2016, Trump’s coattails helped Iowa Republicans claim their first trifecta of state government in almost a decade, power they used to usher in a swath of conservative victories. But in 2020, like so many other places in the country, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is caught between trying to carve out an independent image as she seeks reelection while also remaining loyal to a president popular with the GOP base.

Where things stand: Polls show both the presidential and Ernst’s reelection contest are statistically too close to call. FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average shows Biden ahead by 0.3 percentage points, but Trump is still narrowly favored in the site’s forecast. Greenfield is narrowly favored in the same forecast. (The forecasts are based on a statistical model that simulates the race 40,000 times).  

• In a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, Ernst (48 to 46 percent) and Trump held small leads (47 to 46 percent) in Iowa, but both of those advantages are within the survey’s 2.8 percent margin of error.

Many of the people we spoke with viewed a close race as inevitable. After all, Barack Obama carried this state twice and Biden almost certainly does not need the state’s six electoral college votes to win the White House. But the sheer fact the Democrat is competitive in Iowa shows how perilous Trump’s path has become.

• More recently: Democrats fell short of ousting Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) in 2018  but managed to flip two U.S. House seats.
• Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D), whose district cuts through the heart of Cedar Rapids and Dubuque, won in a district that went from +14 Obama in 2012 to +3 Trump just four years later — a remarkable 17-point swing as Trump romped among white working class voters.

Biden’s path: The former vice president’s visit to Iowa, where he came in fourth in the Democratic caucuses, is part of a final campaign stretch where he’ll stump in states he’s expected to win — Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin — along with an offensive push in Iowa. Meanwhile his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) will be making a push into Texas, and Jill Biden will make stops in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.  

Ernst’s major problem: Like other members of the so-called “bear den,” the 2014 GOP Senate class that powered their party back into the majority, Ernst is running her sophomore campaign in a far different environment than she encountered six years ago. Her campaign argues the freshman senator has challenged Trump when necessary. 

• Reality check: Ernst has expressed displeasure at times with the president and his policies. But she’s been a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda in areas like repealing the Affordable Care Act, backing his national emergency declaration to unlock funding for a border wall and supporting his Environmental Protection Agency picks. The state’s biofuels industry has expressed repeated frustration with Trump’s EPA, though ethanol supporters were handed a huge win.
• Ernst is also a member of the Senate GOP leadership: She’s the only female lawmaker to hold such a post. Her elevation came after a whirlwind six years that saw her give a State of the Union response months after being sworn in, briefly consider becoming Trump’s running mate and deliver two national convention addresses.

If you were wondering about the White House’s message:

Greenfield and Ernst’s respective campaigns stress they can win regardless of what happens at the top of the ticket: Both candidates refused to grade Trump’s performance handling the pandemic during a debate. They also have tried to talk up a bipartisan approach. Ernst continues to point out bipartisan legislation she’s worked on, while Greenfield pledges she would work with anyone.

• When asked how she views things, Ernst told reporters recently “I’m running on my own issues. I think it’s really important to do that. But bottom line, I think [Trump] carries the state of Iowa, too.”

But increasingly nationalized elections mean Trump’s fate could matter a lot — especially for Ernst. 

“She’s not running away from the president,” Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor said. “I think she’s still banking on the fact that she will win and sort of carry her with him which could very well happen, but just the fact that Iowa is in play speaks to Trump’s major slide in those Rust Belt and Midwestern states, that it’s not just ones he narrowly won last time.”

• Consider this key data point: For the first time in modern history in 2016, the winning Senate candidate in every state matched up with the presidential results, Emory Political Science professor Alan I. Abramowitz writes.
• Still, a source close to the campaign predicted Ernst will slightly outperform the president by 2 to 4 points because “like Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tom Harkin, she has a brand in Iowa.”

Iowa airwaves are being bombarded: More than $200 million has already been spent on the race, the Des Moines Register’s Nick Coltrain reports. In the first two weeks in October alone, the Register reports that Greenfield outspent Ernst roughly $3 to every $1, part of the massive influx of cash that has boosted Democratic Senate hopefuls nationally.

Republicans are also flocking to the state to lend support to Ernst:  A large contingent of would-be 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls from former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the winner of the state’s 2016 Republican caucuses, have or will lend their support for Ernst in the closing days, our colleague David Weigel reports. Vice President Pence has made multiple stops in the state, including on Thursday in Des Moines.

Trump may also be coming back:

NEW COVID-19 HIGH: “There have been 83,757 Covid-19 cases reported in the United States as of Thursday evening, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, the most new cases in a single day since the pandemic began,” report CNN’s Steve Almasy, Holly Yan and Madeline Holcombe. 

• “The previous high was just six days ago, when there were 83,731 new cases reported. The staggering total comes as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States nears 9 million in the first nine months of the health crisis.”
• Where we’re headed: Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said he believes 100,000 new cases per day in the US is imminent. “We’ll cross 100,000 infections at some point in the next couple of weeks, probably. We might do it this week, if all the states report on time,” Gottlieb told CNN.

Politics meet pandemic: In every competitive state before Election Day, coronavirus cases are also surging, our colleague Harry Stevens reports.The rising numbers offer “irrefutable evidence against President Trump’s closing argument that the pandemic is nearly over and restrictions are no longer necessary,” Stevens writes. 

• “In the 13 states deemed competitive by the Cook Political Report, the weekly average of new cases reported daily has jumped 45 percent over the past two weeks, from fewer than 21,000 on Oct. 14 to more than 30,000 on Oct. 28.”

Swing state upswing: “Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have all hit new weekly average highs in recent days, and in Florida and Georgia, case counts are growing again after having fallen from summer highs,” Harry reports. 

“The rising coronavirus caseloads have been especially alarming in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, all places that had managed to avoid the worst of the deadly surges this summer. Even in New Hampshire, a state where the pandemic has remained relatively subdued, case counts are on the rise in recent weeks.” 

• Some experts believe that it could depress in-person Election Day voting: “It’s going to come down to a calculation of risk and risk aversion,” said Kevin Arceneaux, a professor of political science who directs the Behavioral Foundations Lab at Temple University. He plans to vote in person in Pennsylvania. “If people are really risk-averse about this and cases are spiking, it could deter some people from going to the polls.”
• The burgeoning economic and health crises present an opportunity for real opinion change: “Most of the time you’re motivated to live in your own head and have attitudes consistent with your worldview,” Lonna Rae Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico who co-authored “Catastrophic Politics: How Extraordinary Events Redefine Perceptions of Government” told Harry. During crises, however, people are often motivated to seek information more rationally, what Atkeson calls a “stop-and-think condition.”

What about those who will test positive for coronavirus between now and Election Day — as early voting options dwindle? Sudden illness might be an impediment that could affect a huge swath of voters, our colleague Neena Satija reports. 

• “ … with around 70,000 new cases of the coronavirus being recorded each day, a swath of Americans larger than the population of Wyoming or Vermont will probably contract the disease in the 10 days leading up to Nov. 3, which is now just days away.” 
• “Those voters will need to navigate an unfamiliar and varied landscape to cast their ballots. Some will be required to get doctor’s notes or enlist family members to help. Others, in isolation, will need to have a witness present while they vote. Planned accommodations — such as officials hand-delivering ballots — may prove inadequate or could be strained beyond limits,” per Neena.

It’s not just the U.S.: The situation is deteriorating in Europe, too. “Worldwide, more than 500,000 cases were tallied on Wednesday, a record since the start of the pandemic. All 20 countries with the highest rates of new cases over the last week are in Europe. Britain, France, Italy and Spain were among the countries that recorded their highest death tolls in months,” per the New York Times’s Elian Peltier, Christopher Schuetze and Raphael Minder. 

• “Exhausted health care workers and other epidemics, like the flu, that arrive in winter have led authorities to warn that the worst is yet to come. While in Western Europe, the fear of overwhelmed hospitals brought a feeling of déjà-vu from the first wave in the spring, countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which escaped the first wave relatively unscathed, have faced a frighteningly new situation. ”

In recent days, notable public health experts – Anthony S. Fauci, Trump’s top infectious-disease specialist and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb – have recommended that the federal government consider a national mandate to stop the spread of the virus, as resistance to mask wearing runs deep in Republican states where cases are surging. 

• “Overseas, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week became the latest foreign leader to impose a national mandate for citizens to wear masks. Mr. Trump is opposed to a mandate, and Mr. Biden has conceded that a presidential order for all Americans to wear masks would almost certainly face — and likely fall to — a legal challenge,” per Stolberg. 
• It’s still a delicate dance: “…Any hint of a sweeping federal requirement would ‘go over like a lead balloon,’ and ‘divide and harden areas of the country in opposition,’ said Joel White, a Republican strategist with expertise in health policy. Mr. White said the Trump administration’s policy, of letting state and local leaders decide about masks, is ‘a far better way to go.’”

MORE TRAIL MIX: Both candidates presented dueling messages in Florida yesterday, where Biden slammed Trump for holding a “super spreader event” in Tampa. “He’s spreading more than just the virus, he’s spreading division and discord,” Biden added. Downpour, however, caused Biden to cut his remarks short.

The Trump campaign postponed its Thursday night rally in Fayetteville, N.C. due to high winds. But hours earlier in Tampa, the president’s message should have been straightforward after the release of news the “U.S. economy grew a record 7.4 percent in the quarter ending in September and has recovered two-thirds of the ground it lost during the first half of the year,” our colleagues Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam report. 

• It was a morsel of good news for the president to seize on: “Put simply, the economy turned around in the third quarter,” despite the ongoing pandemic that threatens to send the economy plunging again.

But the president had other plans. Trump, who campaigned in Tampa “ just hours before Joseph R. Biden Jr. was set to appear at a rally across town, spent only about 10 minutes on the economy, calling the increase the ‘biggest event in business’ of the last 50 years,” the New York Times’s Glenn Thrush reports. 

• “He quickly moved on, mocking Republicans who have repeatedly advised him to focus on his economic record instead of lashing out at enemies and harping on the issue of Hunter Biden’s business dealings.” 
• “They say, ‘Talk about your economic success. Talk about 33.1 percent, the greatest in history.’ Now, look, if I do, I mean, how many times can I say it?” he added.
• “It is not just random former presidential candidates who are counseling him to focus: Mr. Trump’s own campaign advisers want him to hit on broader political themes, and steer away from personal attacks that will further alienate women and suburban voters,” Thrush reports.
• While Trump predict a massive “red wave” and questioned the polls showing him trailing Biden, he also wondered aloud about defeat: “Could you imagine losing to this guy?” he asked about Biden. 

Trump also railed against the Supreme Court decision “allowing Pennsylvania officials to accept ballots cast by Election Day and received within three days, accusing Democrats, without evidence, of ‘trying to steal this Election,’” our colleague Felicia Sonmez reports. 

(THE OTHER) DECISION TIME: 

IN MINNESOTA: “A federal appeals court ruled Thursday evening that Minnesota must reject ballots received after polls close on Election Day, upending the state’s plan to count absentee ballots received up to seven days after the election, so long as they were postmarked on Election Day,” our colleague Aaron Davis reports.

• “The decision marks the second time this week that federal courts have clamped down on states that sought to extend counting to give voters extra time to cast ballots during the covid-19 pandemic. On Monday, the Supreme Court prevented Wisconsin from continuing to count mailed ballots received after Election Day. But it has also declined so far to roll back extended deadlines in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.” 

IN MICHIGAN: “The Michigan Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected an appeal from state officials seeking to enforce a ban on the open carry of firearms at polling places on Election Day,” according to our colleague Tom Hamburger. 

• “The ruling by a three-judge panel was the latest setback for Michigan’s secretary of state, who earlier this month issued an order banning guns at or around polling places.” 

PAGING RUDY GIULIANI: NBC News’s Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny reveal the genesis of a fake “intelligence” document about Hunter Biden that went viral on the right-wing web, “asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China.” 

• “The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake ‘intelligence firm’ called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents,” per Collins and Zadrozny. 
• “The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.” 
• “One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.” 
• Yet: “The document and its spread have become part of a wider effort to smear Hunter Biden and weaken Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which moved from the fringes of the internet to more mainstream conservative news outlets.” 

FOIA FTW: BuzzFeed News’s Kendall Taggart, Hamed Aleaziz, and Jason Leopold have obtained thousands of pages of internal documents regarding the deaths of immigrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. 

“Since January 2017, at least four dozen people have died while being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” they report. 

• “In June 2019, BuzzFeed News filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the release of emails, investigative reports, medical records, and other documents related to 25 deaths in custody that ICE had publicly disclosed since President Donald Trump took office. When the agency did not promptly provide records, BuzzFeed News filed a successful lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency.” 

“To date, DHS has produced more than 5,000 pages of documents related to deaths in ICE custody. Collectively, they tell the story of how ICE has in some instances failed to provide adequate care to detainees, some of whom are locked up for months or years before their immigration cases are resolved.” Some of their findings: 

1. “In multiple instances, guards who were supposed to observe detainees placed in solitary confinement for extra monitoring falsified records to hide apparent dereliction of duty.”
2. “Medical staff at some detention facilities — including a psychiatrist at Krome North Processing Center in Miami and nurses at Glades County Detention Center, also in Florida — at times did not use an interpreter when treating a detainee with limited English proficiency.”
3. “Investigators found other failures that point to serious lack of care even if they did not lead directly to death,” per Taggart, Aleaziz, and Leopold. 

FIRST DAY PLANS: “Joe Biden is pledging that if he’s elected president, he will sign an executive order to form a task force that will focus on reuniting the 545 immigrant children who’ve been separated from their families,” CNN’s Arlette Saenz reports. 

• “The pledge was mentioned in a digital ad the campaign has started airing in the key states of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada, a Biden campaign official said. The move comes as the campaign is courting Latino voters in the final stretch before the election. Biden campaigns in Florida on Thursday while his running mate Kamala Harris hit the trail in Arizona and Nevada this week. Harris on Friday will also go to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which is home to a large Latino population.” 
• “On his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents,” the narrator says.

It’s almost Mariah Carey season, FYI: