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Joe Biden May Be Slipping in 2020 Race, and Not Because of Ukraine

Joe Biden May Be Slipping in 2020 Race, and Not Because of Ukraine

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden’s once-clear path to the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is getting murkier. But it’s not the Donald Trump impeachment scandal involving Biden’s son that’s doing it.

The former vice president is being tested by the collective toll of age, verbal blunders and a contrast with Elizabeth Warren’s dramatic plans to overhaul government. Trump’s attempts to tarnish him with scandal have yet to make a dent with Democratic voters -- and heightens the Biden campaign’s argument that the president fears him most in a general election.

Nationally, Biden’s support has stayed between 26% and 32% since late June, and polls taken after the Ukraine-Trump scandal broke show no clear drop in support. In a Monmouth University poll out Tuesday, 65% of Democrats said Biden probably didn’t pressure Ukraine not to investigate his son’s business work there, while 19% said he probably did.

But Biden didn’t need a brush of scandal to see his numbers start to drop. His lead in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to pick a nominee evaporated before last week’s bombshell. Polls there show Warren jumping to a statistical tie, or slightly ahead.

Joe Biden May Be Slipping in 2020 Race, and Not Because of Ukraine

Democrats began an impeachment inquiry against Trump for repeatedly asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to “look into” Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump and his campaign have spent at least $10 million so far on ads suggesting that Biden intervened on his son’s behalf to fire a top Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into Burisma Holdings, an energy company that included the younger Biden on its board.

Biden, as vice president in the Obama administration, did join European countries and other entities in urging Ukraine to fire the prosecutor as a condition of foreign aid. But the probe into Burisma had been dormant for more than a year at that time.

“Honestly, the biggest challenges for Biden are the timidity of his ‘Make America 2015 Again’ vision, his record on everything from financial reform to criminal justice, and his uneven — at best — performance on the trail,” said Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy For America, a liberal activist group hasn’t endorsed a 2020 candidate.

For Biden, 76, who has been in public office for 44 years, it’s a natural hazard of running to represent a party that is becoming younger, less white and more female. Warren’s pitch to remake the political and economic system has struck a chord with voters hungry for major change. Biden’s message, by contrast, is to “restore the soul” of America.

Central to Biden’s pitch is that he’s the most likely of the 2020 field to defeat Trump and win back Midwestern swing voters who abandoned Democrats last cycle. Having Trump go after him -- risking removal from office to do so -- only strengthens that argument.

“Donald Trump is so terrified he’d lose that struggle to Joe Biden that he just sent his administration into a tailspin by trying to force a foreign country to spread a universally-debunked, right-wing conspiracy theory,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in an e-mail.

Jennifer Panozzo, a 52-year-old retiree from Las Vegas, said Biden is her top choice, but Warren is a close second.

“I like the stability and knowing what he stands for,” she said.

Joe Biden May Be Slipping in 2020 Race, and Not Because of Ukraine

A new CNN poll of Nevada, the third contest on Feb. 22, found Biden tied with Bernie Sanders for the lead with Warren close behind.

Two recent polls of South Carolina Democrats, by CNN and Winthrop University, found Biden with a commanding lead over rivals powered by a dominant showing among the state’s majority-black primary electorate. In both surveys, Warren was about 20 points behind in second place.

Holding that edge with black voters is paramount, and only possible if they continue to believe he can beat Trump, which surveys show is a top priority.

But some of Biden’s backers worry about his durability.

“My concern is that I worry about anyone older than me,” said Fred Hurst, a 70-year-old retiree from Las Vegas. “I have some concerns about his ability to hold out.”

Rival Pete Buttigieg, 37, has been subtly jabbing at Biden’s age in Iowa. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has raised $51 million in six months and is trying to siphon moderate Democrats from Biden.

Joe Biden May Be Slipping in 2020 Race, and Not Because of Ukraine

Warren, 70, is attracting a mix of left-wing voters and mainstream Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — a group that is key to Biden’s prospects.

Biden’s core strength — a belief among Democrats that he’s the best bet to defeat Trump — could fade if he performs poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“He’s still the front-runner, but barely,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic consultant. “It’s really hard to win the nomination on a premise of electability if you’re going to go 0 for 2, or 0 for 3.”

Biden’s supporters believe Trump’s attacks could help the former vice president by rallying Democrats to his side.

Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa and Obama agriculture secretary who has not yet endorsed a candidate, said he’s been pleased with Biden’s handling of the Trump attacks. Biden has refused to be drawn into any debates about him and his son and has focused squarely on Trump.

“What I have heard is that people are impressed he hasn’t take the bait,” Vilsack said.

He added: “You need to know how someone is going to react not just to the best days of the campaign but to the worst days of the campaign. Vice President Biden has showed how he would react. No other candidate has really had to respond to a situation like that.”

Sroka said the Ukraine story isn’t a Biden scandal. But he still worries it may hurt the party.

“The Ukraine scandal does give Trump the ability to muddy the waters,” he said. “We saw what Trump did to Clinton on the emails in 2016, and, even if we know there’s even less of an issue here than there was there, it runs the real risk of being deja vu all over again.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net;Tyler Pager in Washington at tpager1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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