When Bleeding Heartland reviewed presidential election forecasts nearly two months ago, four projections had Iowa leaning Democratic, while five labeled our state a toss-up. Since then, Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence have each visited Iowa twice. Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine have each visited Iowa once. Clinton’s campaign and allied groups including the super-PACs Priorities USA and VoteVets have spent substantial sums on television commercials here. After the Republican and Democratic national conventions, Clinton improved her standing in many nationwide and swing state polls, but Iowa polls continue to show no clear advantage for either side.

The fourth Iowa poll released this month is another snapshot of a closely contested race. CBS/YouGov surveyed 987 “likely voters” via the internet between August 17 and 19 and found Clinton and Trump tied at 40 percent, with 7 percent of respondents supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson, 2 percent backing Jill Stein of the Green Party, 4 percent “someone else,” and 7 percent not sure. The cross-tabs show Clinton leading among women by 44 percent to 38 percent and Trump leading among men by 43 percent to 36 percent. Among the CBS/YouGov respondents who identify as Democrats, Clinton leads Trump by 80 percent to 9 percent (3 percent Johnson, 1 percent Stein). Trump leads Clinton among self-identified Republicans by 76 percent to 4 percent (8 percent Johnson, 0 percent Stein) and also leads independents by 39 percent to 31 percent (10 percent Johnson, 4 percent Stein).

With relatively few Iowa voters undecided and both candidates quite well-known, the election is shaping up as a test of identifying supporters and turning them out, rather than a persuasion game. Speaking with highly engaged Iowa Democratic activists lately, I’ve heard many acknowledge Trump could carry this state, although the general feeling seems to be “I’d rather be us than them.” Early voting begins less than 40 days from now on Thursday, September 29.

Time to check in again with leading election forecasters.

The filing deadline to run in Iowa’s general election ended at 5 pm today, and the Secretary of State’s Office has updated the list of candidates who submitted nominating papers and petitions with enough signatures. The following ten presidential tickets will appear on Iowa ballots:

The last three public polls in Iowa put Johnson at 12 percent, 6 percent, and 12 percent in a four-way race against Clinton, Trump, and Stein. Although those surveys probably overstate Johnson’s support, the unusual unpopularity of this year’s major-party nominees gives the Libertarian a good chance to improve on all of his party’s previous showings in Iowa. Click here to view results for Libertarian presidential candidates going back to 1976. At a Polk County Democratic event last night, a number of activists were concerned that Johnson’s name was not yet on the Secretary of State’s candidate list, because Johnson is presumed to draw more support from traditionally Republican-leaning voters. Libertarian activists cut it close by submitting nominating papers today, but all’s well that ends well.

Others who filed on the last possible day included Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer who launched his presidential campaign only last week, and the candidates for the New Independent Party and Legal Marijuana Now, which seem like decent names for picking up protest votes.

Five candidates qualified to run for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat: Republican Charles E. Grassley, Democrat Patty Judge, Libertarian Charles Aldrich, Jim Hennager of the New Independent Party, and Michael Luick-Thrams, “Nominated By Petition.”

Only major-party candidates will appear on the ballot in three of Iowa’s four Congressional districts: Republican Rod Blum and Democrat Monica Vernon in IA-01, Republican Christopher Peters and Democrat Dave Loebsack in IA-02, Republican Steve King and Democrat Kim Weaver in IA-04.

The field will be more crowded in IA-03, with Republican David Young, Democrat Jim Mowrer, Libertarian Bryan Jack Holder, and two candidates to be listed as “Nominated By Petition”: Claudia Addy and Joe Grandanette.

Only two months after firing campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump accepted Paul Manafort’s resignation this morning. Manafort had already been “sidelined” earlier this week, keeping the title of “campaign chairman” while pollster Kellyanne Conway was promoted to “campaign manager” and Stephen Bannon given the “chief executive” position. Bannon is best known as chairman of the none-too-reputable Breitbart News website.

For a Republican presidential nominee to give Bannon such an important role in a faltering campaign is itself newsworthy. Former Breitbart staffer Kurt Bardella told ABC News that Bannon “regularly disparaged minorities, women, and immigrants during daily editorial calls at the publication.” Ben Shapiro, who spent four years as an editor-at-large for Breitbart before resigning in March, wrote this week that Bannon had “Turned Breitbart Into Trump Pravda For His Own Personal Gain” and had encouraged the website to embrace white supremacists.

But let’s get back to Manafort. He reportedly resigned so as not to become a “distraction” for Trump, as journalists have dug more deeply into his lobbying work for pro-Russian forces and business ties to shady “oligarchs” from Russia and Ukraine. Manafort may have committed a crime by not registering as a lobbyist for foreign entities during the years he “tried to sell” former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to U.S. policy-makers. Eric Trump said today, “my father just didn’t want the distraction looming over the campaign […].”

Ditching Manafort won’t resolve the many valid concerns about whether Russian entities could exert undue influence on Trump. Here are five questions journalists should keep investigating.

Longtime investigative reporter Tom Witosky reflects on “the essence of good journalism” and the “crisis of conscience” recent trends have caused in the media sector. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Two Iowa State students approached me after a campus news conference in 2003 during which Gregory Geoffrey, then the school’s president, explained why he fired Larry Eustachy, who was the school’s men’s basketball coach.

“You’re a Hawkeye aren’t you?” one of them asked as if to be let in on a big secret.

After all, the students suggested, that would be the only reason why someone would write a story and publish pictures of Eustachy drinking and partying with college students into the early morning hours while on road trips.

It wasn’t the first time that question or its corollary – “You’re a Cyclone aren’t you?”- had been asked. During my 25 years of investigative sports reporting for the Des Moines Register, many stories incurred the wrath of Iowa and Iowa State fans. This time my reporting on Eustachy’s on-the-road shenanigans had cost him his job.

The memory of that conversation 13 years ago remains a vivid one. It remains high in my recollections because it’s the same accusation that’s heard daily about media bias or lack of objectivity in covering the 2016 presidential campaign.

Yet another Iowa poll shows a close race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Quinnipiac surveyed 846 “likely voters” between August 9 and 16, producing a statistical margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Clinton led Trump by 47 percent to 44 percent in a two-way race, and by 41 percent to 39 percent in a field also including Libertarian Gary Johnson (12 percent) and Jill Stein of the Green Party (3 percent).

The Quinnipiac polling memo notes the large gender gap:

[Iowa] women back Clinton 56 – 38 percent, while men back Trump 51 – 37 percent. Trump leads 85 – 8 percent among Republicans. Independent voters are divided, with 45 percent for Trump and 41 percent for Clinton. Democrats back Clinton 97 – 1 percent.

Iowa voters give Clinton and Trump negative favorability ratings, 37 – 58 percent for her and 33 – 60 percent for him.

With both major-party nominees so well-known and so unpopular, and relatively few voters undecided with two and a half months to go, the key to winning Iowa will be executing an effective turnout operation, rather than a persuasion strategy.

Democrats have been dominating the “air war” this summer; Trump has yet to run any general-election television commercials, while Clinton’s campaign and allies including the super-PAC VoteVets have been running lots of tv ads during the summer Olympics. (I enclose below videos of two spots now in rotation.) Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine received lots of media coverage in Iowa’s largest markets today, headlining a morning rally in Cedar Rapids before making an unscheduled Iowa State Fair visit in the afternoon. Trump will return to Iowa for Senator Joni Ernst’s “Roast and Ride” fundraiser on August 27, which is sure to receive heavy media attention statewide.

The “ground war” will be especially important once early voting begins on September 29. More than 43 percent of the Iowans who cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election voted early, and women are more likely than men to vote before election day. Iowa Democrats registered more new voters in the final weeks of the 2012 campaign and did a better job identifying and turning out no-party voters who supported President Barack Obama.

Margins of error for subsamples are always higher than for an opinion poll as a whole, but let’s assume Trump is really ahead among Iowa no-party voters, as Quinnipiac’s poll indicates. Effective GOTV by the Democratic coordinated campaign could compensate for that problem by banking more votes from Democrats and independents already identified as Clinton supporters. (Democrats have two dozen Iowa field offices open already.) The Quinnipiac sample consisted of 28 percent self-identified Democrats, 28 percent Republicans, and 39 percent independents.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Cross-tabs for the Quinnipiac poll are available here.

So much for an “unofficial” role: Governor Terry Branstad, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, and Republican power-broker Bruce Rastetter are among more than 60 people named this morning to Donald Trump’s “Agricultural Advisory Committee.” Its “executive board members will convene on a regular basis,” according to a news release I’ve posted after the jump. Note that the campaign statement misspells Northey’s name and describes Rastetter as having hosted the “first Republican Presidential debate.” Actually, Rastetter organized an Iowa Ag Summit at which nine presidential contenders (not including Trump) appeared in March 2015. New Jersey journalist Claude Brodesser-Akner was the first to report Branstad’s and Rastetter’s involvement as Trump advisers last week.

The other Iowans on the list released today are:

• Sam Clovis, who traded in his conservative and religious principles last summer to become Trump’s “national chief policy advisor”;

• former State Representative Annette Sweeney, a friend of Rastetter’s since childhood who chaired the Iowa House Agriculture Committee until redistricting forced her into a losing primary battle against fellow House Republican Pat Grassley. She was a key player in passing Iowa’s unconstitutional “ag gag bill,” the first of its kind in the country. Soon after finishing her legislative service, Sweeney became president of a public policy group called Iowa Agri-Women.

• Ron Heck, identified as an Iowa farmer and past president of the American Soybean Association.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. Northey is widely expected to run for governor in 2018 rather than seek a fourth term as secretary of agriculture. His likely opponents in a GOP gubernatorial primary include Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds and Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. While the lieutenant governor has repeatedly urged Iowans to vote for Trump at public events, Corbett has wisely kept some distance between himself and the presidential nominee. He steered clear of Trump’s rally in Cedar Rapids on July 28.

While Republican insiders across the country despair about the presidential race, dozens urging the Republican National Committee to stop investing in Donald Trump, others wishing in vain that Trump would drop out, and some even quitting their political jobs, Iowa’s most influential Republicans continue to stand with the GOP nominee.

This week, Governor Terry Branstad confirmed plans to advise Trump on policy; his major influencer Bruce Rastetter will reportedly do the same. In addition, two other well-known GOP operatives took on formal roles in Trump’s Iowa campaign. Jamie Johnson will be coalitions director and Jake Ketzner a senior advisor. Johnson is a veteran of Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential bid. After a spell supporting Ted Cruz, he landed with Rick Perry’s short-lived campaign this cycle. An ordained minister, he will presumably focus on engaging evangelical Christians, a key constituency for Santorum in 2012 and for Cruz this year. Jake Ketzner managed Representative Steve King’s re-election campaign in 2012, the year he faced Christie Vilsack in a substantially redrawn district. Ketzner left Branstad’s staff for a lobbying job last summer and soon became a senior adviser to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s Iowa caucus campaign.

Why are more respectable Republicans joining what looks like a sinking ship? For one thing, the latest public polls show Trump running better in Iowa than in national polls or surveys in swing states with more diverse populations. So even if Trump gets blown out nationally, working on his campaign here might not be a liability, especially if he carries Iowa or loses by a relatively small margin. Also, hitching your wagon to a toxic nominee is less risky when your state’s governor, lieutenant governor, GOP U.S. senators and representatives are giving you cover. UPDATE: Forgot to mention that going all-in for Trump helped our state’s establishment secure a promise from the nominee that if he’s elected, the Iowa caucuses will remain first in the nominating calendar.

Neither Branstad nor any Republicans who represent Iowa in Congress have responded to my questions about worrying aspects of Trump’s candidacy. To my knowledge, only two GOP elected officials in Iowa have publicly ruled out voting for Trump: State Senator David Johnson and Hardin County Auditor Jessica Lara. Tips are welcome if readers know of other GOP officials willing to say #NeverTrump. I’ve sought comment from many whom I considered “likely suspects.”

Several experienced Iowa campaign operatives have said they won’t vote for the GOP nominee, including David Kochel, a former strategist for Mitt Romney and senior figure in Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign. Justin Arnold, former state political director for Marco Rubio, explained in a March op-ed column for the Des Moines Register why he would not support Trump under any circumstances. He announced earlier this month that he has joined the direct mail and political consulting firm Majority Strategies. That company’s clients include U.S. Representative Rod Blum (IA-01) and at least one Iowa GOP state committee.

Joel Kurtinitis, a onetime staffer on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and former Republican State Central Committee member, published a blistering commentary at The Blaze on Friday: Five Things You Can Never Say Again After Voting Trump. I enclose below excerpts from a piece that social conservatives might describe as “convicting.”

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues to build a strong field operation in Iowa and other battleground states, while Trump’s ground game is remarkably weak and in some areas literally missing in action.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. The Iowa State Fair opened on Thursday and runs through Sunday, August 21. A summer cold moving systematically through our household has so far kept us from the fairgrounds, but we will get there once or twice this week. Bleeding Heartland has previously published my best advice for enjoying the fair, especially in the company of young children. The schedule of candidates speaking at the Des Moines Register’s “soapbox” near the administration building is here. Like Brad Anderson, I was surprised Senator Chuck Grassley passed on the opportunity. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, though. Grassley tends to avoid putting public events on his schedule in Polk and several other large-population counties.

Suffolk University’s new poll of Iowa “likely voters” shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 41 percent to 40 percent in a two-way race and by 37 percent to 36 percent in a field including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (6 percent) and the Green Party’s Jill Stein (3 percent). Suffolk’s news release noted that 53 percent of respondents expect Clinton to win the election, while 31 percent think Trump will win, and 16 percent were unsure. A higher share of respondents thought Trump was “honest and trustworthy” (34 percent) than said the same of Clinton (29 percent). Johnson did best in Iowa’s southwest counties, while Stein had 9 percent support among respondents between the ages of 18 and 34, a group presumably including a lot of Bernie Sanders backers.

After the jump I’ve posted a few more numbers that caught my eye from Suffolk’s full results and cross-tabs, along with excerpts from Jason Noble’s reports for the Des Moines Register this week on the likely paths to victory for Trump and Clinton in Iowa.

Suffolk found U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley ahead of Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 52 percent to 42 percent–the same margin as in the Marist poll released Tuesday. However, the Marist survey indicated a slight lead for Clinton in the presidential race. Grassley’s favorability numbers in the Suffolk poll were good for an incumbent on the ballot: 54.4 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable. Judge was not nearly as well known, with 32.4 percent of respondents expressing a favorable opinion and 27.8 percent an unfavorable one.

Hillary Clinton came to Iowa yesterday for the first time since the February 1 caucuses. After visiting the Des Moines t-shirt shop Raygun, she spoke primarily about economic policies to a packed Lincoln High School gymnasium.

During the rally, a woman jumped over the barricade and ran toward the stage. Several Secret Service agents tackled her, while Clinton showed remarkable composure as she kept delivering her stump speech. The protester was apparently representing the “Direct Action Everywhere” community, trying to call attention to “Hillary’s support for Costco and other corporate animal abusers.”

As a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I support anyone’s right to protest peacefully, to hold up signs, and even to disrupt a political event by shouting taunts or slogans (though heckling’s not my personal style). But rushing the stage is not an acceptable form of protest, especially right after the Republican presidential candidate hinted that “Second Amendment people” might be the only way to stop Clinton from appointing judges to the federal bench.

So I was disturbed last night to see former State Senator Tom Fiegen advocate more barricade jumping at Clinton campaign events.

New Jersey journalist Claude Brodesser-Akner had the scoop today for NJ.com: Donald Trump’s soon-to-be-announced economic advisers include Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and “Bruce Rastetter, a multimillionaire livestock and bio-fuel tycoon who insiders say is also a leading candidate to be Trump’s agriculture secretary.” They

will advise Trump on agribusiness and energy policy, according to a source within the Trump campaign who was not authorized to speak publicly about the move.

“There’s a clear nexus between [New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie, the Branstads and Rastetter,” explained one Iowa GOP insider familiar with all three men’s dealings with one another but who was fearful of alienating the Iowa governor by speaking out publicly.

Rastetter helped talk Branstad into running for governor again in 2009 and was his campaign’s top donor in 2010. He has exerted substantial influence since Branstad returned to office in 2011, speaking to the governor “at least once a week.” Rastetter tried to recruit Christie to run for president in 2011 and endorsed him in a highly-publicized event last September. Though Branstad did not endorse any presidential candidate before the Iowa caucuses, several people close to him were involved in Christie’s campaign.

Branstad’s spokesperson Ben Hammes confirmed via e-mail that the governor “was asked to advise Mr. Trump in an unofficial role. He will be offering his advice on important issues to Iowa, none more important than renewable fuels.” Iowa Republicans have seized on a recent report by Reuters, suggesting that as president, Hillary Clinton might change federal policy on the Renewable Fuel Standard, a mandate for biofuels blends into gasoline. The governor’s son Eric Branstad is running Trump’s general election campaign in Iowa, having coordinated an ethanol industry group‘s political efforts here before the caucuses.

Hammes declined to comment on Rastetter’s possible role in the Trump campaign or a prospective Trump cabinet. At this writing, Rastetter’s office has not responded to my inquiry. The man often described as an “ethanol baron” sought to enhance his reputation as an authority on agriculture policy last year, when he organized an Iowa Ag Summit, attended by nine presidential hopefuls and a who’s who of Iowa GOP elected officials. Though Rastetter would surely want to have a strong voice in any Republican administration, I have trouble seeing him in a cabinet secretary’s role, with many public events and press availabilities. The way Trump’s poll numbers are looking lately, we will likely never find out whether Rastetter was really the top contender to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

UPDATE: According to Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Todd Dorman, Rastetter met privately with Trump not long before the nominee’s July 28 rally in Cedar Rapids. Excerpts from that story are after the jump, along with comments Hammes provided to Gazette reporter Vanessa Miller.

The first public poll of Iowa since the Republican and Democratic national conventions shows Hillary Clinton slightly ahead of Donald Trump by 41 percent to 37 percent. Marist surveyed 899 registered voters for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal between August 3 and 7, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent. In last month’s Marist poll of Iowans, Clinton led by 42 percent to 39 percent.

When the 2016 presidential race is expanded to four candidates – including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein – Clinton and Trump are tied at 35 percent each in Iowa, with Johnson at 12 percent and Stein at 6 percent. (Last month in the state, Clinton and Trump were tied in the four-way horserace at 37 percent.)

Historically, third-party presidential candidates have received far fewer votes in November than their summer poll numbers would suggest. But even assuming Marist is greatly overstating support for Johnson and Stein, those candidates could set records for their respective parties in Iowa. No Libertarian presidential candidate has ever surpassed 1 percent of the vote in our state. The Green Party’s best showing in a presidential election here was roughly 2.2 percent, which Ralph Nader received in 2000.

Both major-party presidential candidates are underwater among Iowa voters on favorability. Some 36 percent of Marist’s respondents have a favorable view of Clinton, 58 percent unfavorable. Those would be terrible numbers if Trump weren’t in even worse shape at 31 percent favorable, 64 percent unfavorable in the same poll. Without seeing more detailed results, it’s hard to tell which candidate has more room to grow support. Some recent surveys have found that remaining undecided voters “lean toward being [Bernie] Sanders holdouts,” which could mean more potential growth for Clinton than for Trump. That said, I’m 100 times more confident that Clinton will win 270 electoral votes than I am of her carrying Iowa. She is generally polling better in states that are more diverse than Iowa, where more than 86 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites.

UPDATE: Nate Cohn pointed out that Iowa is the state “where Democrats are most dependent on less [educated] white voters.” Non-college-educated whites were a big part of Barack Obama’s winning coalition here. According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 26.4 percent of Iowans who are at least 25 years old have a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education.

Marist found U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley leading Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 52 percent to 42 percent. That’s a smaller lead for Grassley than he has enjoyed in most of his re-election campaigns, but better than the single-digit leads other pollsters found for the senator earlier this summer. Iowa Republicans will be encouraged to see Grassley above the 50 percent mark. The senator confirmed to Radio Iowa today that he is still supporting Trump for president, citing scheduling conflicts to explain his absence from the GOP nominee’s rallies in Davenport and Cedar Rapids on July 28 and in Des Moines on August 5. In a statement I enclose below, Judge demanded that Grassley explain “exactly what Donald Trump meant” when he said today at a North Carolina rally, “If she [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know” (full comments here).

In related news, Senator Joni Ernst’s office has not yet responded to my request for comment on the extraordinary public letter released yesterday by 50 former high-ranking national security officials in Republican administrations, explaining why they will not vote for Trump. Ernst has repeatedly depicted Trump as the best candidate to keep America safe, but the former security officials warned Trump “would be a dangerous President,” lacking the requisite “character, values, experience,” or “temperament,” while displaying “little understanding of America’s vital national interests” and “alarming ignorance of basic facts of contemporary international politics.”

SECOND UPDATE: Added below some other findings from the Marist poll; click here for full results.

Carrie Clogg shares her disturbing experience at Donald Trump’s August 5 rally in Des Moines–quite unlike what happened to Pete McRoberts when he quietly held up a copy of the U.S. Constitution at the same event. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Friday, August 5, I attended the Iowa Arts Summit in Des Moines. When I arrived at Wells Fargo arena that morning I noticed the parking lot was full of tv vans and I quickly learned that we would be sharing the building with a rally for Donald Trump. I am a Democrat and I strongly believe in the power of hearing both sides. I have attended events for both Democrats and Republicans throughout my life, but have never experienced anything like this. Here is an exact account of my experience.

Three weeks ago today, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst took the stage at the Republican National Convention to make the case for Donald Trump and bash Hillary Clinton, particularly on issues related to foreign policy and the military. For those who missed the speech, I’ve embedded the video at the end of this post. The full text is available here.

Other controversies of the day overshadowed the substance of Ernst’s remarks, delivered late in the evening to an “almost empty” hall. Most of the senator’s statements about Clinton and Trump were matters of opinion. However, Erin Jordan of the Cedar Rapids Gazette zeroed in on one verifiable claim: “According to the FBI, ISIS is present in all 50 states. Think about it for a moment — terrorists from ISIS are in every one of our 50 states.”

After researching federal data on terrorism and the material Ernst’s office provided in support of her assertions, Jordan gave Ernst an “F.” But Ernst refuses to acknowledge that she distorted and exaggerated what FBI investigators have found.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome. Here are some links that caught my eye during the past few days; excerpts from several of the articles and columns are after the jump.

Donald Trump’s advocacy for policies that serve Russian interests continue to set off alarm bells for those who are familiar with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style. In an op-ed for today’s New York Times, former CIA Director Michael Morrell explained why he is publicly endorsing a presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton) for the first time: “Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”

At this writing, none of Trump’s most prominent Iowa Republican endorsers (Governor Terry Branstad, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Representatives Rod Blum, David Young, and Steve King) have responded to my e-mails seeking comment on Trump’s Russia connections and other worrying aspects of his candidacy. UPDATE: Clinton’s campaign is now highlighting “Trump’s bizarre relationship with Russia.” Scroll to the end of this post for more.

If weakening the NATO alliance, running down parents of a veteran who died in wartime service, and refusing to release tax returns don’t raise enough red flags, Iowa Republicans could read up on the GOP nominee’s connections with organized crime figures. Timothy L. O’Brien reviewed some evidence for Bloomberg. Two journalists who covered Trump and the casino industry for decades have discussed Trump’s mob ties in greater detail: David Cay Johnston in this article for Politico and Wayne Barrett in an interview with CNN.

Fact-checkers have found that Clinton is much more truthful than Trump, or as Nicholas Kristof put it, “Clinton is about average for a politician in dissembling, while Trump is a world champion who is pathological in his dishonesty.” Former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky had more to say here about Trump’s lies and poor results in business.

Meanwhile, large segments of the Republican base remain convinced Clinton is a liar or worse. Chants of “Lock her up” are now a staple of Trump rallies in Iowa and elsewhere. Matthew Rezab reported for the Carroll Daily Times Herald on August 2 that at last weekend’s parade to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the fire department in the small town of Arcadia (Carroll County), children were encouraged to throw water balloons at one float, featuring “a man dressed in an orange jumpsuit and Hillary Clinton mask while standing on a platform inside bars, fencing and barbed wire above a ‘Hillary For Prison’ sign tacked onto the side.”

Several national polls, including today’s release by the Washington Post and ABC News, reinforce what Dan Guild noted here a few days ago: Clinton got a larger bounce out of her party’s national convention and is well-positioned going into the final months of the presidential campaign. No public polls from Iowa have come out since the conventions; I’m curious to see whether the state of the race has changed here. Iowa is expected to be among the most closely-contested states this fall. The Washington Post/ABC poll findings on support for Clinton and Trump by education level are stunning. I enclose excerpts from the write-up below.

Final note: Iowa’s annual two-day sales tax holiday is happening this weekend. In theory, the temporary break is supposed to stimulate the economy. The Iowa Policy Project’s experts have been saying for years that the policy is a sham. In her latest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Lynda Waddington compiled more evidence for scrapping this 16-year Iowa tradition.

First-person accounts of campaign events are always welcome here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I attended today’s Trump campaign rally as a result of my concerns over the way the candidate treated the Gold Star family whose son was killed while on duty overseas as an Army officer. I wanted to draw some quiet attention to Iowans’ and Iowa’s history in affirmatively protecting the Constitution and how we have all benefited from that.

Dan Guild follows up on his deep dive into the history of convention bounces. You can read his past writing for this site here and here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On July 20th I suggested we would probably know who the next President is after the conventions are over. That post noted that since 1996 the average bounce out of a convention was 6.1 percent. Let’s look at how that compares with the bounces out of the two conventions just completed.

Essentially, the conventions were very close to the historical average. Importantly, though, Clinton appears to have picked about 2 points from where the race stood before the two conventions.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump continued to disgrace himself over the past five days, feuding with the parents of fallen Captain Humayun Khan and revealing shocking ignorance about a foreign policy challenge the next president will face.

The response from prominent Iowa Republicans has been inadequate (in the case of Trump’s insulting comments about Khizr and Ghazala Khan) or nonexistent (in the case of his latest statements about Russia and Ukraine).

Every Republican candidate or office-holder in this state, aside from #NeverTrump State Senator David Johnson, should answer the following questions.

Last weekend, when internal Democratic National Committee correspondence published by Wikileaks was all over the media, and Hillary Clinton inexplicably reacted to the scandal by giving outgoing DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz an honorary role in her campaign, I feared the worst. Would Democrats fail to clear the very low bar Republicans set at their “disastrous” convention in Cleveland?

The DNC turned out to be the best I’ve ever seen, and I’m not alone in that assessment. I’ll be surprised if Clinton doesn’t get a substantial boost in the next few days’ polling. Who knows whether this year’s race will conform to trends Dan Guild described in his deep dive into the history of convention bounces. But I’m with Steven Mazie: if Clinton loses to Trump in November, it won’t be because of anything that happened in Philadelphia.

In a week with many good speeches, First Lady Michelle Obama’s was the highlight for me. So well-crafted, so well-delivered. The full video is after the jump, along with some other notable prime-time DNC appearances.

This is an open thread, so all topics are welcome. But please share your own favorite moments from the DNC.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa Thursday for the first time since the February 1 precinct caucuses. Follow me after the jump for clips and highlights from his events in Davenport and Cedar Rapids.

Among Iowa’s 99 counties, Linn County (containing the Cedar Rapids area) and Scott County (containing the Iowa side of the Quad Cities) are second and third in the number of registered voters. Trump finished third in Linn County on caucus night, behind Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. He was a close second to Rubio in Scott County and repeatedly praised the Florida senator during his Davenport speech.

This post’s title came from the unintentionally humorous Bloomberg News analysis by Jennifer Jacobs and Kevin Cirilli: “America Meets Trump’s Secret Weapon: Ivanka.” The nut graph declared, “Ivanka […] might be her father’s single strongest asset for changing his perception among women, one of Trump’s weakest demographic groups, strategists and campaign insiders said.” Support came primarily from Ivanka’s brothers Donald Jr. (“She’s an impressive woman”) and Eric (“I think she brings in independents. I think she brings in Democrats quite frankly”). Unnamed strategists described Ivanka as “a character witness” who can be a “bridge between her father and women,” thanks to her “refined and feminine, but unmistakably Trump” brand. Lacking data to bolster that assertion, Jacobs and Cirilli wrote, “Even Trump’s opponents agreed that Ivanka, a balm to her dad’s shock-jock tactics, is a strong weapon for Trump.” The only detractor quoted was the former leader of a stop Trump super-PAC, who called Ivanka “smart, poised, graceful and dignified.” No question, she is. So was Ann Romney. The 2012 presidential election still had the largest gender gap ever recorded.

Jacobs and Cirilli rightly noted that unlike Democrats, Donald Trump “hasn’t called for” making quality child care more affordable, a goal Ivanka flagged in her convention speech. They could have added, nor has the GOP nominee endorsed “equal pay for equal work,” for which Ivanka promised her father would fight. Hillary Clinton has been emphasizing those and related issues like paid family leave in almost every campaign appearance for more than a year. I doubt she or her strategists are losing sleep over Trump’s “secret weapon.”

If any campaign analysis could make you lie awake in terror, it would be Josh Marshall’s July 23 post at Talking Points Memo about Trump’s entanglements with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I’ve enclosed excerpts below, but you should click through to read the whole piece.

I knew Trump had occasionally praised Putin, and vice versa. I’d seen a small army of Russian trolls stir things up for Trump on Twitter last year. I knew Trump was getting favorable spin from the Kremlin-backed English-language television network and from Russian-language websites with ties to the authorities. I had read that Trump campaign operatives “gutted” GOP platform language related to Russian interference in eastern Ukraine. On Thursday, I saw Trump’s startling interview with the New York Times, in which he signaled he might not honor our country’s obligations to NATO allies attacked by Russia, if those countries had not “fulfilled their obligations to us.”

Though I was vaguely aware Trump had some business dealings in Russia, I didn’t appreciate until reading Marshall’s post that “Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin.” Marshall observed, “if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump’s direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin’s policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore.”

Having seen how Putin uses financial leverage to bring people in line, I’m ready to skip the alarm bell ringing and raise the threat level to orange.

I spent a decade covering Russian politics, including the election cycle when Putin rose to power and the early years of his presidency. My main research focus was Putin’s wide-ranging campaign to reassert state power over the Russian media.

Putin had a lot of weapons in the toolkit, such as physically restricting journalists’ access to some stories; enacting new laws on media coverage of terrorist conflicts; using government authority to issue or deny broadcast licenses; refusing to air political advertising created for an opposition figure; and launching criminal investigations or civil lawsuits against journalists, editors, and owners.

One of the most potent methods for taming the Russian media was getting entities in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence to turn the financial screws on Putin’s critics.

Putin has been using state-controlled corporations to go after disobedient news organizations or their key investors since his earliest months on the national scene, indeed before his election as president in March 2000. The first blood drawn in Putin’s effort to neuter Russia’s leading private television network NTV came in February 2000, when the gas monopoly Gazprom abruptly demanded repayment of a $211 million loan to the network’s parent company.

After various forms of legal and monetary pressure wrested NTV away from a troublesome oligarch, several prominent journalists and managers landed jobs at a different tv network with a smaller broadcast area. But before long, a pension fund linked to a state-controlled oil company used its position as a minority shareholder to force that network into liquidation. The move made no economic sense. The pension fund refused buyout offers and eliminated any prospect of recouping its investment by pursuing a legal strategy to take the network off the air. The band of NTV refugees found jobs at a third television company, this time partnering with someone “who [had] direct access to the president.” Financial problems finished off that network in a little more than a year. Its major investors included an oligarch with close ties to Putin, but he didn’t lift a finger to cover the company’s debts as the broadcast license hung in the balance.

Putin has altered many aspects of his country’s political life. Those still working in the Russian field could speak about how he expanded his power over other sectors. My window onto Putin’s leadership style leaves no doubt in my mind: it’s not just plausible but probable that if Trump companies were deeply indebted to Russian business interests, the Kremlin would try to use those relationships to its advantage.

As if Trump’s comically narcissistic temperament, dishonesty, short attention span, use of divisive language and race-baiting, and lack of constructive ideas weren’t enough to disqualify him from serving as president.

Three 40-something politicians who had hoped to be this year’s GOP presidential nominee addressed the Republican National Convention last night. Only one of them upstaged what was supposed to be the evening’s highlight: a speech by vice presidential nominee and Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Although Senator Ted Cruz drew boos from many in the crowd and was panned by some journalists, he ended the night better-positioned for a possible 2020 race than either Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Senator Marco Rubio.

Many thanks to Dan Guild for this historical perspective. You can read his past contributions to this blog here and here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In any election there are a few predictable and important events. Few are as important as the Conventions. How important? Here are some basic facts:
1. In the 12 elections since 1968, the candidate leading in polling after the second convention has won the popular vote 11 times, and the only exception led by less than a point (McCain in 2008).

2. The candidate leading 3 weeks after the second convention has NEVER lost the popular vote.

3. No candidate has EVER won if they trailed after their convention. EVER.

4. 10 of 11 candidates who led by more than 5 after their convention won (Dukakis in ’88 is the only exception.

A table summarizing the data is set forth below. In addition, my database of presidential polling (which is the most complete online) is here.

The Republican Party of Iowa changed its bylaws earlier this year to prevent a repeat of what state party chair Jeff Kaufmann has called “the 2012 fiasco.” During the last Republican National Convention, 22 of Iowa’s delegates cast their ballots for Ron Paul, who had finished third in the Iowa caucuses. Only six of our state’s delegates cast ballots for GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

Kaufmann has described the Iowa GOP’s new rules as designed to force RNC delegates to “vote with the intentions of the caucusgoers — the wishes of the grassroots.”

So why did all 30 of Iowa’s votes go to Donald Trump during today’s roll call vote in Cleveland?

The good news for U.S. Senator Joni Ernst was she didn’t make any gaffes during her speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

The bad news: her speech made little impression on the relatively few people who watched it.

Representative Steve King’s concerns about people of non-European origin damaging American civilization are not news to anyone who has followed the Iowa Republican’s career. In the last month alone, King has asserted that it is “racist” to add the image of Harriet Tubman to the $20 bill and that the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union may help save western civilization. At the same time, King has no problem displaying a Confederate flag, under which people fought and died to preserve slavery and divide this country, on his office desk.

King takes the alleged superiority of white culture for granted, which might not raise eyebrows on the conservative radio and television programs where he is a frequent guest. But when King floated those views to MSNBC’s national viewing audience this afternoon, the reaction was as explosive as the wave of outrage and mockery regarding House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “so white” selfie with interns.

In more support for forecasters who view Iowa as a toss-up state, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by a statistically insignificant 40 percent to 39 percent in a new CBS News Battleground Tracker Iowa poll conducted by YouGov. About 3 percent of the 998 “likely voters” surveyed between July 13 and 15 back Libertarian Gary Johnson, 2 percent Green Party candidate Jill Stein, 7 percent “someone else” and 8 percent are “not sure.”

Among respondents supporting Clinton, 50 percent said it is mainly because they like her, 37 percent said mainly to oppose Trump, and 13 percent said mainly because she will be their party’s nominee. The opposite was true for respondents planning to vote for Trump: 53 percent said they will do so mainly to oppose Clinton, 36 percent said mainly to support Trump, and 11 percent said because Trump will be their party’s nominee.

In Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, the CBS/YouGov poll found Senator Chuck Grassley ahead of Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 45 percent to 37 percent, with 16 percent not sure and 2 percent favoring “someone else.” In his previous re-election bids, Grassley has never been below 50 percent and less than 10 points ahead of his challenger in any public survey by a reputable pollster. YouGov now becomes the third firm (after Public Policy Polling and Loras College) to find a single-digit lead for the incumbent.

The full questionnaire for the CBS/YouGov poll is available here, along with cross-tabs. Assuming random sampling techniques produced a representative respondent pool, the margin of error for this survey would be plus or minus 4.8 percent. One possible problem with the sample: 41 percent of respondents said they are currently registered Republicans, 42 percent registered Democrats, and just 14 percent “not affiliated with either party.” More than 31 percent of Iowans who cast ballots in the 2012 general election were no-party voters. It’s possible that many of the registered Republicans or Democrats sampled by YouGov think of themselves as “independents” but changed their registration in order to participate in the February 1 Iowa caucuses or June 7 primaries.

YouGov polls are conducted over the internet; the firm received a “B” grade in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings.

I was hoping for Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump’s “gut” wanted to go with Chris Christie, but family members and campaign chairman Paul Manafort managed to persuade the impulsive billionaire that Mike Pence was the smart pick. The Indiana governor is a strong conservative and could do the most unify the party, having endorsed Ted Cruz in April.

Trump should have been able to get a boost from his running mate choice going into the Republican National Convention. Instead, he fumbled the rollout in several ways, summarized well by Philip Bump. It must have humiliated Pence to have CNN, the New York Times, NBC News, and other media outlets focus on Trump’s last-minute doubts about the pick, instead of on what Pence brings to the ticket. Christie suffered an even greater blow at the hands of the man he endorsed in February.

I’m no graphic design expert, but the Trump-Pence logo is a disaster. I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it yesterday, when a Facebook friend shared this not-safe-for-work commentary. Gregory Krieg reported more delicately for CNN that the logo “is raising eyebrows” and “drawing titters from cheeky tweeters.” Iowa Twitter user @jbelcap pointed out that there is a “hidden negative space H” in the graphic as well.

Any comments about the Trump-Pence ticket are welcome in this thread. UPDATE: It took only one day for the Trump campaign to dump the logo and scrub all images of it from the website. The new logo is after the jump.

Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Tuesday morning during a joint campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as in an e-mail blast and a Facebook note.

Some enthusiastic Sanders fans, including his captain in the precinct next door to mine, have made their own pitches to their fellow Berners today. I enclose below an e-mail that former State Senator Daryl Beall sent to friends and acquaintances. Johnson County Supervisor Mike Carberry shared the Sanders Facebook post calling on progressives to continue the political revolution. More power to them, and to those who are expressing their newfound support for Clinton in a humorous way.

I still see too many arguments on social media between Clinton backers and #BernieOrBust holdouts. Please stop. Give people time to grieve. Most Democrats who backed Sanders in the primaries will eventually support Clinton this fall. Some small percentage won’t. It’s not productive for those who were “with her” from the beginning to engage with them, especially not now. No amount of arguing on Facebook or Twitter will convince diehard Hillary-haters to support the Democratic nominee. It can only antagonize people.

Some in the #HillYes crowd get upset seeing fellow Democrats bash a woman they admire. My best advice: you don’t have to make it your mission to get them to see what you see. Either try to find common ground with them by talking about down-ballot races, or back off and focus your energy on mobilizing other voters.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 44 percent to 42 percent, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley leads Democratic challenger Patty Judge by 52 percent to 42 percent, according to a Monmouth University poll released today.

Only 6 percent of Iowa respondents surveyed between July 8 and 11 were undecided on the presidential race. Monmouth also found 6 percent support for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, 1 percent for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, and 2 percent saying they will vote for some other candidate. No Libertarian presidential candidate has ever received more than 1 percent of the vote in Iowa. Historically, minor-party presidential candidates have performed far less well in November elections than their summer poll numbers would suggest.

Iowa is a toss-up state in many election forecasts, and I’ve always expected a close race here, so I am not surprised to see Trump slightly ahead in a poll. That said, these Monmouth data are difficult to believe:

One unusual finding in the poll is that Trump leads among voters under 50 years old in Iowa. In Monmouth polls conducted nationally and in other states, Clinton has held an advantage with younger voters. Specifically, 51% of Iowa voters under age 50 currently support Trump, compared to 32% for Clinton, 7% for Johnson, and 3% for Stein or another candidate. Among voters age 50 and older, Clinton has the edge with 50% support, compared to 38% for Trump, 4% for Johnson and 1% for Stein or another candidate.

Monmouth’s numbers indicate that Grassley is in for his most competitive re-election bid. The last two public polls of Iowa’s U.S. Senate race were by Public Policy Polling, which does a lot of work for Democratic clients, including Judge’s campaign during the primary. So it was easy for Republicans to dismiss PPP’s findings showing Grassley below 50 percent and only 7 points ahead. In Monmouth’s survey, Grassley leads by just 10 points, which for him is a very small margin. He enjoyed larger leads in 2010 polls, other than those by Research 2000, a firm later discredited for apparently fabricating data.

You can’t say Monmouth’s sample is skewed to Democrats, because Trump is leading Clinton. The best news for Grassley is his job approval rating: 56 percent, with only 33 percent disapproving of his work in the Senate. However, only 25 percent of Monmouth’s respondents approve of the Judiciary Committee chair’s decision not to hold hearings on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Grassley’s favorables are in net positive territory, according to Monmouth: 46 have a favorable opinion of him, 31 percent unfavorable. Judge has more room to grow: 30 percent favorable, 14 percent unfavorable, and 56 percent of respondents not knowing enough about her to have an opinion. Grassley’s campaign has been trying to define the Democratic challenger in a negative way, most recently claiming in a press release today that she is harder to find around Iowa than a Pokemon.

Any comments about the presidential or Senate race are welcome in this thread. Monmouth surveyed 401 “Iowa residents likely to vote in the November election” between July 8 and 11, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent. Monmouth’s polling memo did not mention the likely voter screen used.

Who’s up for a thread about Hillary Clinton’s potential running mates? Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica reported for CNN yesterday that Clinton has a short list of “fewer than five” candidates for vice president. Possible names include: U.S. Senator and former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.

Citing unnamed “Democrats close to the process,” Zeleny and Merica say Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and U.S. Representative Xavier Beccera of California “are no longer thought to be in serious contention.”

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst moved today to cut off speculation about becoming Donald Trump’s running mate. Politico’s Burgess Everett quoted Ernst as saying she “would love to assist [Trump] out on the trail” but had made “very clear” to him during their July 4 meeting that “I have a lot more to do in the United States Senate. And Iowa is where my heart is.”

Ernst will deliver one of the prime-time speeches during the Republican National Convention, Jeremy Peters and Maggie Haberman reported today for the New York Times, citing “three people with direct knowledge of the convention planning.” Her willingness to take such a prominent role stands in stark contrast to the Republican heavyweights who are skipping the show in Cleveland.

Pat Rynard observed at Iowa Starting Line that no other swing state’s Republican establishment is as firmly behind Trump as ours. He speculates that the cooperation could improve Trump’s chances to win Iowa (a competitive state by all accounts) as well as prospects for GOP candidates down-ticket.

I’m happy to roll the dice on that outcome in exchange for Ernst repeatedly, enthusiastically associating herself with this train wreck of a nominee. Just within the past few days, Trump spread an anti-Semitic Hillary Clinton meme white supremacists had created and praised Saddam Hussein for allegedly taking out terrorists efficiently. Multiple staffers have bailed out after short stints with his dysfunctional campaign. Going along to get along is the easy political call for Ernst now, but she may regret that choice when she’s running for re-election to the Senate in 2020.

Trump’s options for vice president are shrinking: Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee has told Trump he’s not interested in the job, according to the Washington Post’s Robert Costa. I’m still pinning my hopes on Newt Gingrich.

UPDATE: Added below some of Ernst’s latest comments to Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson.

Craig Robinson has stopped publishing regularly at The Iowa Republican and plans to transform the site into a personal blog, he told Bleeding Heartland yesterday. Robinson has been the publisher and primary author at Iowa’s most widely-read conservative political website since its launch in 2009. Other writers have been regular contributors over the years, but since early 2015, The Iowa Republican has published press releases or pieces by Robinson himself. Updates became noticeably less frequent over the past year, compared to the blog’s output during the 2011-2012 Iowa caucus campaign and GOP primary season.

The last new post at the site was a May 9 commentary by Robinson, who took shots at Republicans unhappy about Donald Trump becoming the likely presidential nominee. In keeping with past practice, the author did not mention that the Trump campaign did more than $116,000 in business with the Global Intermediate direct mail firm, for which Robinson serves as president.

Via e-mail, Robinson explained that he will likely continue to publish occasional opinion pieces at The Iowa Republican but has “no time table” for when that may begin. He may also use the site “to promote Global Intermediate’s capabilities to readers and potential clients.” As for disclosing his side work for political campaigns to the many national reporters who quote him about Republican happenings (most recently Matt Viser in the Boston Globe), Robinson sees connecting those dots as the journalist’s responsibility: “I don’t think its necessary for me to provide a list of current and former clients, anytime I have been asked I have been forthcoming. I have hosted CNN, FOX News, NBC, ABC and a handful of local news outlets at my Global office for the past couple of years, I’m not exactly hiding from anyone.”

I enclose below more excerpts from our e-mail correspondence, some passages from the May 9 post at The Iowa Republican, and details on Global Intermediate’s work for the Trump campaign to date.

Iowa is universally acknowledged to be in play this fall. All signs point to Trump investing significant resources here; he needs the six electoral votes and has hired our governor’s son as his state director. Whether or not Global Intermediate produces any more direct mail for the GOP nominee, national journalists seeking local Republican commentary should identify Robinson as someone who has done work for the Trump campaign–not only as a former Iowa GOP political director and publisher of The Iowa Republican blog, as has been standard media practice up to now.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Jim Comey made an “unusual statement” today explaining why the FBI is recommending “no charges” in connection with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

Legal experts have been saying for a long time that criminal charges were unlikely, in the absence of intent to break the law, especially since former CIA Director David Petraeus was allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor for deliberately leaking classified information.

However, Clinton’s ill-advised e-mail practices will remain a political problem for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Comey underscored the “extremely careless” handling of classified information by the secretary and some of her colleagues. U.S. House Republicans plan to hold hearings on why the FBI didn’t recommend criminal charges. Today U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley called on the FBI to release more evidence from its investigation “so the public can make an educated decision on its own about the judgment and decision-making of all the senior officials involved.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Braun and Jack Gillum of the Associated Press examined six public statements by Clinton about her e-mails that were either questionable or untrue, based on the FBI’s findings. Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann repeatedly alleged today that the investigation had been “rigged,” saying Clinton had “lied” on many occasions and that “anyone else in the country” would be indicted for similar conduct.

I enclose below the full statements from Grassley and Kaufmann, along with some expert opinions on the case and some of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments about the FBI recommendation. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. Former Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called Comey’s press conference “absolutely outrageous” and a violation of standard department practice not to comment on ongoing investigations.

UPDATE: Grassley told reporters on July 6 that he has written to Comey asking for answers to many questions about the e-mail investigation. He also said some senators are drafting a bill to revoke Clinton’s security clearance, adding that such a bill might be “an unconstitutional bill of attainder.”

SECOND UPDATE: Representative Steve King posted on Twitter on July 6, “FBI Dir. Comey/DOJ gave us truth but not justice. Confirmed, the Rule of Law took a heavy blow again from the Clintons. Obama is culpable.”

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst met with Donald Trump today in New Jersey. The statement she released later said nothing about being his running mate. However, citing unnamed sources close to Trump’s campaign, CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Jim Acosta, and Sara Murray reported yesterday that Ernst “is being considered” for the vice presidential nomination.

In mid-June, Ernst told Iowa reporters she doubted she was on Trump’s short list, since no one from the campaign had reached out to her. Indiana Governor Mike Pence is now the leading candidate to be the GOP running mate, according to CNN’s sources, followed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. David M. Jackson reported for USA Today that Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is also under consideration. Others have mentioned Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, or perhaps Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin.

In May, both Governor Terry Branstad and Senator Chuck Grassley endorsed the idea of Ernst as Trump’s running mate. Though some see Iowa’s junior senator as a good fit for the GOP ticket, I think Trump would do better to choose someone with more governing and policy experience.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Gingrich, for maximum Hillary Clinton blowout potential. On the other hand, being closely associated with Trump would hurt Ernst politically in the long run, despite the initial boost to her stature. So I would welcome a Trump-Ernst ticket as well.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I enclose below today’s full statement from Ernst. My favorite part referred to ensuring the U.S. remains “a strong, stabilizing force around the globe.” Trump in the Oval Office would be the opposite of a stabilizing presence. Almost every week he makes some impulsive comment that could cause an international incident if he were president.

UPDATE: Pence met with Trump on July 2, Brian Slodysko reported for the Associated Press. A spokesperson for the Indiana governor, who endorsed Ted Cruz for president a few days before his state’s primary in April, said “nothing was offered” during Pence’s meeting with the presumptive GOP nominee. Pence would be a stronger running mate than Ernst, though why someone who may have his own presidential ambitions would want to hitch his wagon to Trump, I can’t imagine.

SECOND UPDATE: Sarah Boden reported for Iowa Public Radio on July 5 that Grassley again said Ernst would be a good running mate for Trump, citing her “military and legislative experience, and her expertise as someone from a rural, agricultural state.”

THIRD UPDATE: Added below excerpts from stories by Daniel Halper and Robert Costa about Trump considering one of his advisers, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

A new Loras College poll shows Hillary Clinton enjoying a double-digit lead over Donald Trump: 48.2 percent to 33.8 percent with no other candidates named, and 44.0 percent to 30.7 percent in a field including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (6.0 percent) and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (2.2 percent).

The same poll of 600 Iowa registered voters finds Senator Chuck Grassley barely ahead of Democratic challenger Patty Judge, 45.8 percent to 44.5 percent.

Unfortunately for optimistic Democrats, this poll appears to be an outlier.

Nate Silver released FiveThirtyEight.com’s 2016 presidential election forecast today. His model currently gives Hillary Clinton an 80 percent chance of beating Donald Trump in November. FiveThirtyEight sees Clinton as the favorite in Iowa, one of twelve “states to watch,” but her odds of carrying our state are somewhat lower than her odds of winning at least 270 electoral votes.

Clinton’s campaign bought more than a million dollars of air time in Iowa to run a mix of positive and comparative television commercials during the second half of June and July. That’s part of a $25.8 million ad buy in the eight states the presumptive Democratic nominee considers most competitive.

Public Policy Polling has published two Iowa surveys this month, both commissioned by progressive advocacy organizations. The first had Clinton leading Trump by 44 percent to 41 percent. The second, released yesterday, showed Clinton ahead of Trump by 41 percent to 39 percent.

Iowa’s electoral votes have gone to the Democratic nominee in six of the last seven presidential elections. (The exception was President George W. Bush’s narrow victory over John Kerry here in 2004.) However, no electoral vote projection I’ve seen considers Iowa a safe bet for Clinton. While none to my knowledge currently forecast our state leaning to Trump, the pundits and number-crunchers do not agree on whether Iowa leans Democratic or has no clear favorite going into the general election campaign. Follow me after the jump for the breakdown.

Today Public Policy Polling released results from six news polls of battleground states, conducted on behalf of Americans United for Change and the Constitutional Responsibility Project. The full results from the Iowa survey are here (pdf). Key findings: only 43 percent of respondents approve of Senator Chuck Grassley’s job performance, while 40 percent disapprove and the rest are unsure. If Iowa’s U.S. Senate election were held today, 46 percent of respondents would vote for Grassley, 39 percent for Democrat Patty Judge, and 14 percent would be undecided. In the presidential race, 41 percent of respondents support Hillary Clinton, 39 percent Donald Trump. After the jump I’ve enclosed highlights from Tom Jensen’s polling memo.

Another PPP poll taken earlier this month also found Grassley below 50 percent and only seven points ahead of Judge. No public poll released in 2010 ever found the senator so narrowly leading his Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin. Republicans are likely to discount today’s survey, because it was commissioned by progressive advocacy groups. I am reserving judgment until I see other pollsters test these Iowa races. That said, the PPP questionnaire showed no sign of “priming” voters to evaluate Grassley or Trump on any particular issue. Respondents were asked about job approval and candidate preferences before answering questions related to the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. By the way, 64 percent of respondents support Senate hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, and only 35 percent trust Donald Trump to pick a Supreme Court justice.

PPP surveyed 897 registered Iowa voters on June 22 and 23, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.

UPDATE: Added below Judge’s letter to Grassley, asking for four televised debates and one radio debate.

The two most recent national polls of the presidential race showed unusually high levels of support for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. In the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey conducted between June 19 and 23, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was backed by 39 percent of respondents, to 38 percent for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, 10 percent for Johnson and 6 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. An ABC/Washington Post poll in the field between June 20 and 23 found 47 percent of respondents for Clinton, 37 percent for Trump, 7 percent for Johnson, and 3 percent for Stein.

Even taking into account the reality that support for third-party candidates “usually diminishes over the course of the [U.S. presidential] campaign,” and third-party candidates have often received less than half as much support on election day as they did in nationwide surveys from June, Johnson has potential to shatter previous records for Libertarians. A former Republican governor of New Mexico, Johnson received 1,275,821 popular votes as the Libertarian presidential nominee in 2012, just under 1 percent of the nationwide vote. The best showing for a Libertarian ticket in terms of vote share was 1.06 percent (921,128 votes) in 1980 for Ed Clark and his running mate David Koch, better known as one half of the Koch brothers.

I haven’t seen any Iowa polls yet that gave respondents the option of choosing Stein or Johnson as alternatives to Clinton and Trump, but now seems like a good time to examine Libertarian presidential performance in Iowa over the last four decades and Johnson’s chances to improve on his 2012 results.

Like many political junkies, I’ve been fascinated the past few days by news about the June 23 “Brexit” referendum, in which roughly 52 percent of UK voters opted to Leave the European Union, while just 48 percent voted to Remain. The regional breakdown of the vote is fascinating, and the Financial Times published an excellent series of charts on “the demographics that drove Brexit” in this post by John Burn-Murdoch.

Leaving the European Union would hurt the UK economy in several ways, but that outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion. David Allen Green is the leading voice speculating that the UK government could disregard a vote for Brexit, because unlike a 2011 vote on electoral reform, the June 23 referendum “is advisory rather than mandatory.” On June 24, Green argued noted that Prime Minister David Cameron did not file the formal Article 50 notification that sets in motion a process for leaving the European Union. British Law Professor Mark Elliott speculated along similar lines here. Cameron had vowed to respect the results of Thursday’s referendum, but he will resign soon, and his successor will not be bound by his promises.

In this country, most of the commentary about Brexit has focused on whether a result that shocked UK elites means Donald Trump is more likely to win the November election. Panicky Democrats, please know that an unexpected result across the pond does not change the underlying dynamic of the U.S. presidential race.

The UK result was within the margin of error of pre-referendum polls that showed a close race. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has led Trump in every head to head national poll for more than a month now. Several polls, most recently ABC/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal, have shown her lead growing over the last few weeks. The U.S. electorate has a lower proportion of non-Hispanic white voters than the UK does.

The electoral college also favors Clinton. I don’t believe she will win as many electoral votes as in some recent projections, but remember: Trump needs to flip some states President Barack Obama carried twice. At this writing, he is not well-positioned to win any states Obama carried twice. But even if you give the Republican North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, which Larry Sabato sees leaning Democratic now, Clinton would still have more than 270 electoral votes. By the way, the president’s approval rating in the national polling average has moved above 50 percent for the first time in more than three years, Paul Brandus observed today. Obama will not be a drag on Clinton’s campaign the way President George W. Bush was for John McCain in 2008.

I’ve seen no evidence that Trump can draw a Democratic crossover vote large enough to compensate for the lifelong Republicans who are rejecting him. The Des Moines Register recently carried an op-ed by Des Moines native Doug Elmets, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan who will cast his first-ever vote for a Democratic president this year. Trump’s poor fundraising so far suggests that he won’t be able to fund as much GOTV in the swing states as Clinton will.

I enclose below excerpts from this piece by Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray on why “Brexit Is Not The Same Thing As Trump.”

This post is an open thread: all topics welcome. UPDATE: Added below a new television commercial Clinton’s campaign will run on national cable networks to contrast “the reality of the Brexit vote with Trump’s response on his Scotland trip,” which focused on his own golf course.

I wish I could say the above tweet was satire, but that is a genuine post by Representative Steve King a day after the “Brexit” referendum, in which roughly 52 percent of United Kingdom voters marked their ballots to Leave the European Union.

In some ways, King and Nigel Farage of the U.K. Independence Party are birds of a feather. King has claimed immigration threatens to drag the U.S. down to “Third World status,” and like Farage has implied that immigrants commit violent crimes at higher rates than native-born citizens, though research doesn’t bear out the scare-mongering. Farage employs race-baiting to stir up opposition to his country’s immigration policy. Others including UKIP founder Alan Sked have claimed Farage’s racism is deep-seated.

King may not be aware that Farage has long called for spending more of the UK’s budget on the National Health Service–that is, socialized medicine. In fact, before the Brexit vote one of the biggest talking points for the Leave campaign was reallocating an exaggerated total of money allegedly “spent” on the EU to the NHS–a promise Farage now admits cannot be kept.

Iowa’s most persistent warrior against “Obamacare” has inaccurately characterized the 2010 Affordable Care Act as the “nationalization” of health care. He also has falsely described the State Children’s Health Insurance Program as “socialized” medicine. He could hang out with Farage at some NHS hospitals and clinics to learn what government-run health care really looks like.

At least King didn’t reveal Donald Trump’s level of ignorance yesterday. While visiting Scotland to open a golf course owned by one of his companies, Trump claimed the “Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back.” Remarking on what he called a brave & brilliant choice, Trump seemed unaware that every county in Scotland voted to Remain in the EU. Many Scots took to Twitter to correct the record, often using colorful language in reference to the billionaire.

P.S.- Like Trump, UKIP leader Farage is said to be an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style.