WINTERSET, Iowa -- Nancy Courtney displays a Joe Biden sign in her yard, makes phone calls for his campaign and supports the former vice president "100%," she said. But the sluggish state of Biden's organization in her city of Burlington, Iowa, had her fuming one recent evening."In
WINTERSET, Iowa — Nancy Courtney displays a Joe Biden sign in her yard, makes phone calls for his campaign and supports the former vice president “100%,” she said. But the sluggish state of Biden’s organization in her city of Burlington, Iowa, had her fuming one recent evening.
The heightened anxiety comes as the candidate and campaign are raising expectations, through new investments of time and resources, about his ability to compete here, an implicit acknowledgment that a substantial loss here could be a significant early setback. Story continuesThere is also the sense among many Iowa Democrats that Biden, who entered the race later than many of his rivals, has been less engaged in the state than his top rivals. He has made roughly 50 stops in Iowa since joining the race in April, according to the Des Moines Register’s candidate tracker, far fewer than many of his opponents.
Biden’s bus tour is expected to include both town hall-style events and activities with volunteers and precinct captains, like visits to phone banks and perhaps some door knocking. The counties he will visit, many of them largely rural, are home to working-class voters who often connect with Biden, and Biden will need to overperform in those areas on Feb. 3. The campaign is also closely focused on ensuring Biden hits the threshold for accruing delegates across the state.
The Biden campaign says it has now reserved around $4 million in airtime through the caucuses and will likely add more. “With Biden, he does a really great job speaking with crowds like this,” she said of the small venue. “I’m not impressed with him in the debates. He stumbles.” And party officials often hark back to 2004 — a year in which there was also a Republican incumbent — when Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a staid moderate, prevailed in the caucuses despite signs in the months before that Howard Dean, the feisty former governor of Vermont, was surging.
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