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Author: Stacey Matthews

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Stacey Matthews

Based in North Carolina, Stacey Matthews is a former liberal and a 16+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars.

2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden visited Iowa over the weekend along with several other Democratic candidates stumping for votes just days ahead of tonight's Democratic debate. As expected, a hot topic of discussion was the Democrats' impeachment inquiry and President Trump's allegations that Biden engaged in quid pro quo by way of using his position as vice president in 2016 and a billion dollars in U.S. loan guarantees to have the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma Holdings. Biden's son Hunter sat on the Burisma board member at the time.

Joe Biden has come a long way from being the uncontested frontrunner. He jumped into the presidential race in late April, already leading by double digits. He was ahead by comfortable margins through most of the summer, except the two weeks where Sen. Kamala Harris looked like she might catch up with him after the first debate. But things have changed.

There was a gun control forum in Las Vegas on Wednesday, one day after the 2 year anniversary of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured. Instead of it being a run of the mill forum full of Democrats all agreeing with each other on Orange Man Bad and the supposed need to curb 2nd Amendment rights, there were some fireworks between Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg.

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her public blessing last week for House Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump, members of the GOP House leadership read her the riot act. Not only did she announce her support of an inquiry before reading the transcript of the Trump/Zelensky call (which hadn't even been released at the time), but she also didn't name the specific alleged impeachable offense Trump committed.

For months, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has tap-danced around the issue of whether or not her Medicare for All plan would raise taxes on the middle class. She's sidestepped the question when asked about it at debates and she's refused to directly address the issue when asked about it during post-debate interviews.

Even with his well-documented penchant for gaffes, his tendency to flub or embellish stories, and his outright lying about his positions on the issues, Joe Biden's lead in national Democratic presidential polling has been consistent and stable. But we're just a few months out from the start of Democratic primaries and caucuses, and the focus is shifting from national polls to state-level polls. It is in some of the early primary state polls that we see cracks in Joe Biden's wall of support: