Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are taking
the lead in the Iowa caucuses, the first vote to choose the Democratic
candidate to run against President Donald Trump in November’s election.
The vote has been chaotic, beset by technical problems and delays in
reporting results.
According to Iowa’s Democratic Party, data from 71% of precincts showed Pete
Buttigieg on 26.8%, with Bernie Sanders on 25.2%.
Elizabeth Warren was third on 18.4% and Joe Biden fourth on 15.4%.
According to the other preliminary results released on February 4 from all
of Iowa’s 99 counties, Amy Klobuchar was on 12.6%, and Andrew Yang on 1%. Tom
Steyer and Tulsi Gabbard were on less than 1%.
However, the state party has still not declared a winner from February 3
vote. Democrats have blamed the delay on a coding error with an app being used
for the first time to report the votes.
Iowa was the first contest in a string of nationwide state-by-state votes,
known as primaries and caucuses, that will culminate in the crowning of a
Democratic nominee at the party convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July.
Eleven candidates remain in a Democratic field that has already been
whittled down from more than two dozen.
The results represent the share of delegates needed to clinch the party
nomination under America’s quirky political system. Iowa awards only 41 of the
1,991 delegates required to become the Democratic White House nominee.
In the popular vote count, partial results showed Bernie Sanders leading
with 32,673 ballots, while Pete Buttigieg was second at 31,353.
However, Pete Buttigieg, 38, came top in certain rural areas with smaller
populations, and so far has more delegates.
Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price told a news conference on February
4 the fiasco had been “simply unacceptable”.
“I apologize deeply for
this,” he said of the turmoil, which has provoked calls for Iowa to
lose its coveted spot atop the presidential voting calendar.
“This was a coding error,”
Troy Price said, while insisting the data was secure and promising a thorough
review.
Elizabeth Warren was third with 25,692, followed by Joe Biden at
16,447 and Amy Klobuchar at 15,470.
State party officials earlier said
the problem was not the result of “a hack or an intrusion”.
Officials were being dispatched
across the Hawkeye state to retrieve hard-copy results.
They were matching those numbers
against results reported via a mobile app that many precinct captains said had
crashed.
The mobile app was developed by tech
firm Shadow Inc., run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential
campaign.
The app was put together in just two
months and had not been independently tested, the New York Times reported, quoting people briefed on the matter by the
Iowa Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party in Nevada, where
caucuses will be held on February 22, has reversed a decision to use the
company’s software.
Voters flocked on February 3 to more
than 1,600 caucus sites, including libraries, high schools and community centers.
President Trump said earlier that
the Iowa Democratic caucuses had been an “unmitigated disaster”.
If elected, Pete Buttigieg would be
the first openly gay US president.
The 38-year-old is the former mayor
of South Bend, Indiana, a city of just over 100,000 people.
Pete Buttigieg is a former Harvard
and Oxford University Rhodes scholar, who served as a military intelligence
officer in Afghanistan and used to work for global management consultancy
McKinsey.
Rivals say Pete Buttigieg, who is younger than Macaulay Culkin and Britney Spears, is too inexperienced to be US president.
Many have spent the past few weeks vigorously campaigning in Iowa, which is
always the first to vote. The primaries contest goes on until early June, and
moves on to New Hampshire next Tuesday.
Polls suggest that Bernie Sanders
has risen to be the favorite in Iowa.
He is one of four senators running
for president who have had to stay behind in Washington to attend President
Trump’s impeachment trial, but his supporters, including Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, a well-known congresswoman, have been energetically campaigning
on his behalf in Iowa.
Four years after losing out to
Hillary Clinton, the 78-year-old is now backed by a huge pot of donations and a
team of hundreds.
Some of the other big names
including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg will be hoping
Bernie Sanders doesn’t have it all his own way in Iowa.
There are also Republican caucuses on February 3, and two people are running
against Donald Trump, but the president’s popularity within his own party is
such that his nomination is all but a formality.
Iowa, to some extent, provides a glimpse of what went wrong for Democrats in
2016.
In the last election, more than 200 counties flipped from supporting
President Barack Obama in 2012 to backing Donald Trump – and 31 of those
counties were in Iowa.
Democrats will be hoping to lure back those swing voters in 2020.
Howard County in northern Iowa flipped by 41 percentage points in 2016, the largest change in the US.
Presidential hopefuls seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to fight President Donald Trump’s re-election bid in 2020 have gathered for the Polka County Steak Fry in Iowa.
The event comes less than five months ahead of Iowa’s caucuses – the first
to take place nationwide in each presidential election.
Event organizers said more than 12,000 people attended the fundraiser.
Of the 19 Democrats left in the running, 17 spoke on September 21.
The attendees showed up for burgers
and face time with 17 Democratic presidential candidates at the Polk County
Democratic Party’s annual steak fry in Iowa on Saturday. Although 18 candidates
were initially expected to attend, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped
out of the presidential race on September 20.
Organizers grilled 10,500 steak for
the attendees. Around 1,000 vegan burgers were made — all of it made on 10
grills by 40 grillers. Senator Cory Booker is the only vegan in the
presidential race.
Here are the candidates appearing at
the steak fry:
Former South Carolina Mark Sanford has become the latest Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in the GOP’s primary contest.
Mark Sanford, a long-time Trump critic, said in an interview announcing his
candidacy: “I’m here to tell you now
that I am going to get in.”
The former governor is the third person to challenge Donald Trump for the
nomination.
However, it is seen as near impossible that anyone will take the Republican
mantle from the president. No sitting president in the modern era has lost the
race to be nominee for their own party, and Donald Trump remains very popular
with Republicans.
The Republican National Convention, at which the nominee will be formally
chosen, will take place in late August 2020 after a series of state primary
elections and party caucuses.
However, some state Republican parties, including in South Carolina, have
decided not to hold primaries in 2020 – to clear the path for Donald Trump and
save money.
Mark Sanford, 59, is expected to
centre his campaign on cutting government debt and spending.
He told Fox News on September 8: “I think we need to have a conversation
on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as a Republican party we have
lost our way.
“We have lost our way on debts and deficits and
spending… The president has called himself the king of debt, has a
familiarity and comfort level with debt that I think is ultimately leading us
in the wrong direction.”
In April, former Massachusetts
Governor Bill Weld became the first person to challenge Donald Trump.
Bill Weld was followed by conservative radio host and former
lawmaker Joe Walsh at the end of August.
Mark Sanford first served in Congress in 1995, representing South Carolina’s
first congressional district. He later served as the state’s governor for two
terms from 2003-2011. He then returned to the House in 2013.
The former governor criticized Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential
election but ultimately supported him. However, Mark Sanford would become one
of his toughest Republican critics in Congress when President Trump took
office.
That stance cost Mark Sanford the Republican primary when his seat was up
for re-election last year. He was beaten by a pro-Trump challenger who went on
to lose the election to her Democrat opponent.
Mark Sanford is known as a fiscal conservative and has been attacked by
President Trump over an extra-marital affair that tainted his second term as
governor.
He went missing for several days, with his staff telling reporters he had
gone to hike the Appalachian Trail.
Mark Sanford later admitted he had instead gone to Argentina to see his
mistress.
Election Day is still more than a year away but the race to become the
Democratic challenger to President Trump is already well under way.
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden have thrown their hats into the ring, but most of the other candidates are relatively unknown outside the Washington DC bubble.
During his roughly 80-minute speech,
President Trump reiterated key themes of his winning 2016 campaign.
The president pledged to continue a
crackdown against illegal immigration, one day after tweeting that US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would soon begin removing
“millions of illegal aliens” from the country.
He told Florida supporters: “We believe our country should be a
sanctuary for law-abiding citizens, not for criminal aliens.”
Donald Trump also accused Democrats
of seeking to legalize illegal immigration in order to boost their voting base,
and said they “want to destroy our country as we know it”.
President Trump described his opponents as a “radical left-wing
mob” who he said would bring socialism to the US.
He told the crowd: “A vote for
any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction
of the American dream.”
President Trump also praised the economy, criticized the Mueller
investigation into alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and
Russia, and referred to media covering the event as “fake news back
there”.
Donald Trump also elicited “lock her up” chants from supporters when he brought up Hillary Clinton, despite her not being in the 2020 race.
Former Vice-President Joe Biden is
being accused of inappropriate touching for second time in just three days, as
the leading Democrat mulls a White House bid.
The second woman, Amy Lappos, said
Joe Biden had touched her face with both hands and rubbed noses with her a
decade ago.
The allegation comes after another
woman, Lucy Flores, said on March 29 that Joe Biden kissed her on the back of
her head at a campaign event.
Joe Biden has said he did not
believe he has ever acted inappropriately.
The former Delaware senator, who
served as President Barack Obama’s vice-president between 2009 and 2017, is
seen as a possible front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
Amy Lappos, a 43-year-old former
aide to a Democratic congressman, said Joe Biden touched her inappropriately at
a fundraiser in a private home in Hartford, Connecticut, in 2009.
The woman told Hartford Courant the then vice-president entered the kitchen to
thank a group of aides, before wrapping both hands around her face and pulling
her in to rub noses with her.
Amy Lappos called on Joe Biden not
to run for the White House, saying: “Uninvited
affection is not okay. Objectifying women is not okay.”
Lucy Flores was running as the Democratic candidate for Nevada’s lieutenant
governor in 2014 when Joe Biden flew in to support her bid.
As she prepared to go on stage, Joe Biden placed two hands on her shoulders
from behind, smelled her hair then planted “a big slow kiss on the back of
my head”.
Asked about the new allegation, a spokesman for Joe Biden referred reporters
to a statement he issued on March 31.
The statement read: “In my many
years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless
handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once –
never – did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
“But we have arrived at an
important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences,
and men should pay attention. And I will,” it added.
Joe Biden and Barack Obama were known for their close friendship, often seen
playing golf and attending sports events together. Joe Biden even said that
Barack Obama offered him financial help when his son was ill.
For his vice president’s birthday in 2017, Barack Obama posted a photo of
the two of them on Twitter, writing that Joe Biden was his “brother and
the best vice president anybody could have”.
On April, a spokesman for Joe Biden also accused “right wing
trolls” of presenting harmless images of the former vice president
interacting with women over the years as evidence of inappropriate touching.
A number of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have
backed Lucy Flores.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said Joe Biden “needs to give an answer”,
and Senator Amy Klobuchar said that in politics “people raise issues and
they have to address them”.
Some supporters though have defended him. Cynthia Hogan, a former aide to the vice-president, told the New York Times that Joe Biden “treated us with respect and insisted that others do the same”. An ally of Joe Biden told CNN he was not reconsidering a run for the White House following the allegations but stressed he was yet to make a decision.
Former Vice-President Joe Biden appeared to
announce his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election, before immediately
correcting himself.
Joe Biden made the slip while addressing 1,000 Democrats at a dinner in his
home state of Delaware.
The democrat said his record was the most progressive “of anyone
running for the United-” before correcting himself and saying,
“anybody who would run”.
The audience stood up and chanted “run Joe run”, while the
76-year-old crossed himself and said: “I
didn’t mean it!”
Addressing party brokers and leaders in the city of Dover, Joe Biden said
that it was time to restore the country’s “backbone”, but that they
needed political consensus to move beyond what he called today’s
“mean”, “petty” and “vicious” political
landscape.
“I’m told I get criticized by the
new left,” Joe Biden said, referring to a group of popular new
left-wing Democrats that includes congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“I have the most progressive record of
anybody running for the United- “
The former vice-president then corrected himself, saying: “Anybody who wouldrun.”
As the diners rose to their feet and
chanted “run Joe run”, Joe Biden laughed and insisted: “I didn’t mean it!”
“Of anybody who would run,” he continued.
“Because folks, we have to bring this country back
together again.”
Joe Biden, who was vice-president
from 2009 to 2017, added that the 2020 election will be the most important vote
in a century.
Speculation that Joe Biden would
announce his candidacy has reached feverish levels.
If he were to run, Joe Biden would
be entering an increasingly crowded race – with 15 other Democrats having
already declared their bids.
Among them are senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke joined the race last week.
Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders has
announced his second bid for presidency in 2020.
Bernie Sanders, 77, became a
progressive political star in 2016 although he lost his candidacy bid.
His campaign says it raised $1 million
within three and half hours of launching.
An outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, the Vermont senator has described him as a “pathological liar” and “racist”.
Bernie Sanders – an independent who
caucuses with the Democrats – is one of the best-known names to join a crowded
and diverse field of Democratic candidates, and early polls suggest he is far
ahead.
His calls for universal
government-provided healthcare, a $15 national minimum wage and free college
education electrified young voters, raised millions of dollars in small
donations and are now pillars of the party’s left wing.
Bernie Sanders, who lost the 2016
Democratic primary to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said in his
email: “Three years ago, when we
talked about these and other ideas, we were told that they were ‘radical’ and
‘extreme’.
“Together, you and I and our 2016 campaign began the
political revolution. Now, it is time to complete that revolution and implement
the vision that we fought for.”
Ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said he is
“seriously considering” running for president in 2020.
Howard Schultz, who stepped down as Starbucks’ boss in 2018, says he is
considering running as a centrist independent candidate in 2020.
In a series of tweets, he said the current two political parties in the US
were “more divided than ever”.
During an interview with CBS’ 60
Minutes, Howard Schultz said he had been a “lifelong Democrat”
but criticized the current two-party dominated system.
He said: “We’re living at a
most-fragile time not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be
the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what’s
necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day,
in revenge politics.”
Democratic presidential candidate
Julián Castro is among those who have criticized the move.
Julián Castro told CNN that Howard
Schultz’s potential run could give President Donald Trump the “best hope
of getting re-elected” by splitting the opposition vote.
He said: “I would suggest to Mr. Schultz to truly think about the negative
impact that might make.”
Howard Schultz rebuffed that
criticism during his CBS interview, insisting: “I wanna see the American people win.
“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Independent,
Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas and I will be an independent
person, who will embrace those ideas. Because I am not, in any way, in bed with
a party.”
Howard Schultz, a former espresso
machine salesman, grew up in public housing in Brooklyn, New York.
He started working for the original
Seattle Starbucks chain back in 1982 when it only had 11 outlets selling coffee
beans.
Howard Schultz, now 65, acquired the
company in 1987 and by the time he stepped down in 2018, it had grown to 28,000
cafe in 77 countries around the world.
He frequently used his position to speak out on social issues like
immigration and gun control.
He now has an estimated fortune of about $3 billion and is a regular donor
to Democrat campaigns, including that of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Howard Schultz’s departure as CEO of Starbucks last year sparked rumor of
his political ambitions.
His comments on January 27 prompted coffee-themed criticism by some on
social media.
The Washington State Democrats posted a photograph, without
comment, of a Starbucks cup with: “Don’t do it Howard” written on.
Democrats Julian Castro and Tulsi Gabbard have
announced that they will challenge for the US presidency in 2020.
Julian Castro launched his campaign on January 12, and Tulsi Gabbard has
said she will make a formal announcement within a week.
The ex-Obama Housing Chief is expected to be the only Latino in the race,
and Tulsi Gabbard is the first Hindu member of Congress.
Both enter what could be a crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge
President Donald Trump.
Until now only former congressman John Delaney has formally launched a
campaign, more than a year ago.
However, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren announced last month she was
setting up an exploratory committee to consider a run.
Julian Castro, 44, made his announcement in his home town of San Antonio,
Texas, where he was mayor from 2009 to 2014.
Long seen as a rising star in the party, Julian Castro served as housing
secretary under President Barack Obama and was on the list of Hillary Clinton’s
potential running mates for the 2016 election.
Having a Mexican grandmother, he has used his background to criticize Donald
Trump’s calls to build a wall to keep out migrants from Latin America.
Launching his bid under the slogan “One nation, one destiny”,
Julian Castro said: “We say no to
the construction of the wall and yes to the construction of communities.”
Julian Castro said his grandmother would have been amazed at his success and
that of his brother Joaquin, a member of the US Congress.
Analysts say Julian Castro does not have widespread name recognition and may struggle to make an impression in a crowded field.
Kanye West said he will run for president in 2020 as he received the lifetime achievement award at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
During his rambling speech, Kanye West said: “I have decided in 2020 to run for president.”
Cheered on by his wife Kim Kardashian, Kanye West got an extended standing ovation when he was picking up the Video Vanguard lifetime achievement award.
The rapper also appeared to confess to smoking weed before taking the stage.
“I will die for the art, for what I believe in and I ain’t always gonna be polite.
Photo Getty Images
“I rolled up a little something. I got the answer. We’re the millenials bro.”
Taylor Swift won video of the year for Bad Blood.
She also took best pop video for Blank Space.
Taylor Swift was crowned queen of the MTV Video Music Awards.
She won four of her 10 nominations, including Video of the Year for Bad Blood with Kendrick Lamar and Best Pop Video for Blank Space.
She also buried the hatchet with rapper Nicki Minaj, embracing her former rival on stage during a brief version of Bad Blood.
The show was hosted by Miley Cyrus.
Miley Cyrus released her new album for free after coming off stage.
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