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Alex Burns Profile picture
Alex Burns
@alexanderburns
Head of news @POLITICO. Columnist. @HarvardIOP board. Co-author of This Will Not Pass.
Feb 7, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
My story today on Chuck and the left ...

How a glad-handing, graduation-speaking, fund-raising, suburb-adoring establishment tactician is embracing the wealth-transferring, rent-canceling, Green New Deal-endorsing, incumbent-toppling wing of his party
nytimes.com/2021/02/07/us/… Schumer is using his work in DC with top progressive leaders as political armor back home, making the case to activists and young electeds that their friends are his friends nytimes.com/2021/02/07/us/…
Oct 11, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
many people have played down most or all of the factors below, for different reasons, in favor of a narrative that cast Trump as a grossly underestimated tribune of a powerful new coalition. much electoral evidence from 2017-2019 has cut against that but the myth has persisted. now, I think a lot of us did underestimate Trump’s ability to exploit a highly specific set of conditions in 2016. but as @jbouie wrote, he needed all of them in order to win by the narrowest of margins. and he has made no concerted effort since 2016 to expand his coalition.
Sep 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
NYT poll: Trump and Biden are TIED in Georgia

Biden is up 3 in Iowa

Trump is up 3 in Texas

Close Senate races everywhere

The common thread: a colossal gender gap favoring Biden

from @jmartNYT @igrullonpaz & me 👇
nytimes.com/2020/09/24/us/… This is the third poll this week to show Trump and Biden effectively tied in Georgia

AJC had 47-47, Monmouth had 47-46, we have 45-45

Georgia has as many EVs as Mich & more than Wisc, which much of the political world has spent 4 years treating as center of the universe
Sep 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
NYT poll: As Trump flails on covid, GOP Senate struggles w/him

COLLINS is down 5 as Biden rolls in Maine
McSALLY and Trump way down in AZ
TILLIS lags Trump in NC, where Biden is up 1

Voters in all 3 states prefer Biden to Trump on covid by double digits
nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/… NC is the strongest battleground for Trump out of the 7 we have polled so far this month. But his vote share there is stuck at 44 percent.

And: he is slightly behind Biden in Maine's 2nd District, w/Electoral College implications.

@ByMattStevens & me 👇
nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/…
Sep 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
this is both a big move in the 2020 spending picture & another data point in Bloomberg's pullback from commitments during the primary. $100 million is massive for a 1-state program. it's also not close to the mother-of-all-Dem super PACs his aides promised
the context for FL move: @jmartNYT @maggieNYT & I reported last weekend that multiple pro-Biden groups had repeatedly pitched Bloomberg on spending heavily there as a knockout blow against Trump – only to get weeks of shrugging responses
nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/… Image
Sep 12, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In our Nevada polling, voters said by a 9-point margin that the government's priority should be to limit covid spread over reopening the economy, and only 36& of NV voters said the state was reopening too slowly
There is no evidence in our poll to suggest most Nevadans are pining to reopen faster. Asked how they felt about the pace of reopening, 3 in 5 said the current pace was about right (46%) or too fast (14%).

Yes, 62% of Rs said it was too slow, but those are already Trump voters.
Sep 12, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
NYT poll: Biden leading in NH (+3), NV (+4), WI (+5) and MN (+9)

Trump stuck in low 40s everywhere – never even hits 45 pct

There's a theoretical path for him but law-and-order message has not yielded a major breakthrough

@jmartNYT @ByMattStevens & me
nytimes.com/2020/09/12/us/… Trump's message on crime and riots has sunk in. Just as many voters call that the main issue of the election as say it's the coronavirus. "Defund" attacks on Biden have registered widely.

But it's not (yet?) moving votes from Biden to Trump.
nytimes.com/2020/09/12/us/…
Aug 20, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Bloomberg folks have been trying very hard to project the idea that he's living up to his commitments to the party, but his activity so far has been a faint shadow of what some of his advisers spent Nov thru March promising he would do
Bloomberg has purchased basically unlimited tolerance – if not necessarily love – from the current Dem leadership. In February, @nkulish and I looked at just how much influence Bloomberg has bought in the major institutions of American public life.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Jul 27, 2020 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
New: Susan Rice is on Biden's VP list. She has never run for office before – but in 2018, she took a closer-than-reported look at challenging Susan Collins.

On how Rice envisioned a campaign, the warnings she got in Maine & the opening for her in 2020 👇
nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/… When Rice floated a challenge to Susan Collins, most Democrats were surprised ... and confused. They didn't know Rice was even interested in running for office. She didn't live in Maine.

And for most of them, that was the end of it. Rice never discussed the race with the DSCC.
Jul 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I think it's totally plausible that many or most Americans have concerns about the public opprobrium being dealt to people w/certain social views. It is not plausible that this many people have any real view of the Harper's Letter or Bari Weiss. politico.com/news/2020/07/2… Image Questions like these give poll respondents a bunch of information they didn't already have, and feed the happy delusion among elites that most people are following their own niche obsessions to the same extent they are ImageImage
Jul 19, 2020 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
New: GOP leaders abandon hope that Trump will ever take covid seriously, and are increasingly contradicting him w/words & deeds

R govs work around Trump & rely on Pence for help

Senators want Fauci-Birx briefings back

@jmartNYT @maggieNYT & me👇
nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/… Most Rs remain terrified of direct confrontation with Trump, so few are criticizing him directly

But as Trump demands full-speed-ahead reopening of commerce & schools, R govs are issuing mask orders and biz restrictions

And then there's McConnell ...

nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/…
Jul 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
New: Trump's political health is even worse than it looks

Kushner & Parscale are clashing. Donors are pleading for change. But Trump is consumed w/pleasing base.

R polls show him losing GA, barely up in MT & down in *Kansas*

@maggieNYT @jmartNYT & me >
nytimes.com/2020/07/02/us/… A snapshot of dysfunction at the Trump re-election campaign:

Kimberly Guilfoyle controls a fundraising division that is paying at least one donor-socialite to raise money.

Meanwhile, the campaign office devoted to @VP has been disbanded.

nytimes.com/2020/07/02/us/…
Jun 28, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
New: As Trump boosts video of an older fan screaming a racist slogan, our poll shows voters 65+ shifting to Biden

“I’m a Christian, and I do not believe in the hateful, racist, bigoted speech that the president uses,” says Clifford Wagner, 80, USAF vet

nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/… No Democrat has carried or broken even w/seniors in two decades.

But right now Biden doing just that, as older voters — including many whites — recoil from a president they see as endangering them & sullying his office.

Story from @katieglueck and me 👇
nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/… Image
Jun 26, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Voters don't have a clear favorite for VP & those @katieglueck and I spoke to are mostly anxious to see Biden pick one who can take over as POTUS if the worst happens

There are many pressures on Biden, but voters seem to be giving him a pretty free hand
nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/… An interesting dynamic in our poll: Voters say they reject Trump's argument that Biden's too old to be an effective president. But in conversations they acknowledge they are uneasy about Biden's age.

That worry doesn't make Trump a tempting option. But it affects thinking on VP.
Jun 24, 2020 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
NYT poll: Biden takes a dominant lead over Trump, 50 to 36

Trump bleeding support even from once-loyal groups of whites and men

On the biggest challenges of his term, much of the country sees Trump as a failed president

@ByMattStevens @jmartNYT & me 👇
nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/… Biden is improving on Clinton’s performance vs. Trump almost across the board. But his lead with college-educated white women is just staggering.

In 2016, Clinton carried that group by 7 points. Biden is now leading by 39 points.
nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/…
Jun 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
New: Biden VP team has done multiple rounds of interviews, now seeking docs from a group incl. Demings, Duckworth, Rice & Luján Grisham

Harris & Warren have advanced far. But others, like Bottoms & Baldwin, are moving too.

@jmartNYT & me on the search👇
nytimes.com/2020/06/13/us/… Stages of VP process:

Last month, Biden team asked a dozen-plus candidates if they were willing to be vetted – nearly all said yes

Next: interviews. Prelims ("How do you see role of VP?") & then probing Qs on public records

Now: gathering private docs
nytimes.com/2020/06/13/us/…
May 17, 2020 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
My story today: Dems had just settled on a 2020 message, about center-left policies & a return to normalcy, when covid made it obsolete.

Now, Biden is promising FDR-scale change, and Dems from Warner to Warren say the moment demands deep economic reform.
nytimes.com/2020/05/17/us/… Dems are a long way from defining a hundred-days agenda for 2021. But there is already a clear consensus in the party that incrementalism is out and Big Structural Change(tm) is in.

There may a difference, however, between going big and going left ...
nytimes.com/2020/05/17/us/…
May 15, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
this is an utterly staggering story
this is smoking gun stuff about NYC's lethal cluelessness in the early days of the pandemic – and a longer-running pattern of dysfunctional health policy decisions under de Blasio
nytimes.com/2020/05/14/nyr… Image
May 1, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
well, one important difference is that Biden is not being investigated by the FBI because of how he has handled his University of Delaware papers
I get why a lot of retrospective 2016 analysis has been focused on how Trump weaponized the email issue and how media covered it, but the reality of the FBI investigation shaped all of that & that tends to get elided or overlooked for a combination of innocent & tactical reasons
Apr 25, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
The call is coming from inside the house: Our close look at Joe Biden's life in lockdown

He is cut off from voters & his top advisers, consumed with what he fears is a looming Great Depression – and leading the polls

@ShaneGoldmacher @katieglueck & me 👇
nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/… That lockdown lifestyle: Biden has told people he works out every day. He and Jill Biden have dinner together every evening, which has not been typical over the last year. Both have mentioned bike rides over the last week.
nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/…
Apr 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It's also only narrowly true of the head-to-head ballot test, not of candidate fundamentals. At this point in 2016 Clinton's fav/unfav rating was negative by double digits and growing, which is not the case for Biden.

Clinton's polling is a good cautionary tale and the fleeting nature of her wide spring lead is part of that, as @GioRussonello outlines here nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/…

The burden is on Biden to sustain the advantage that he currently has & show it's not just driven by circumstance.