Vice President Joe Biden is launching an eight day, 18 county ‘No Malarkey’ bus tour across Iowa, as he seeks to make up for Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s recent gains in the first caucus state.
Buttigieg has already done the bus tour through Iowa – twice – and has seen a payoff. He’s now in first place in three recent polls. On average, Biden is coming in third.
By design Buttigieg had reporters with him on the bus – modeling it after Sen. John McCain’s ‘Straight Talk Express,’ used when the late Arizona senator ran for president during the 2000 and 2008 cycles.
So far the Biden campaign hasn’t promised journalists similar access.
A spokesperson for the campaign suggested to DailyMail.com to ‘plan on arranging your own transportation.’
Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign announced an eight-day ‘No Malarkey’ bus tour of Iowa, as he tries to gain ground in the state that holds the first caucus. Recently, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has leapfrogged the other frontrunners in Iowa polls
Mayor Pete Buttigieg has done two bus tours of Iowa where he’s allowed reporters to travel with him on the bus and hold on-the-record conversations with the candidate
Democratic presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg talks to reporters during his first bus tour of Iowa in September
The late Sen. John McCain (center in sunglasses) launched a campaign bus called the ‘Straight Talk Express’ when he first ran for president in 2000
Sen. John McCain (center left) and his wife Cindy (center right) relaunched the ‘Straight Talk Express’ when he ran again in 2008, eventually winning the GOP nomination. Buttigieg modeled his on-the-record bus tours after McCain
An all-access tour could be fraught with political danger for Biden, who’s coming off another uneven debate performance where he was chided by Sen. Cory Booker for not backing legal weed and mistakenly said he had been endorsed by the only black woman to ever win a Senate seat.
‘No, the other one is here,’ piped in Sen. Kamala Harris, who was the second black woman to be elected to the Senate after Biden supporter Carol Moseley Braun.
Biden’s opening statement prompted a retweet from Donald Trump Jr. musing if he was ‘senile’ for its choppy delivery. On a more positive note, The Atlantic put out a piece saying Biden’s mental fitness is fine, he’s just still fighting his childhood stutter.
At the Atlanta debate, Biden also raised eyebrows when he said in order to combat domestic violence against women the country needed to ‘keep punching at it, and punching at it, and punching at it.’
When political reporter Doug Sovern saw the Thursday morning bus tour announcement he tweeted, ‘He’ll just keep punching at Iowa until he breaks through.’
Biden has availed himself to press.
While he – like Buttigieg – skips the post-debate spin rooms, he gaggled with reporters Thursday, and he often does sit-downs with local outlets.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg stands alongside his campaign bus in New Hampshire. He’s done one bus tour in the Granite State and two in Iowa, where he’s bounced to first in the polls
Biden’s tour kicks off November 30 – the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday – and stretches through December 7.
‘Malarkey’ is one of the ex-veep’s favorite words, hence the name.
Biden’s eschewing the major hub of Des Moines for smaller spots like Elkader, which had a population of 1,273 in the last census.
He’ll end up in Cedar Rapids – Iowa’s second largest city – on the tour’s last day.
‘When Joe Biden first announced he was running, he told Iowans they’d be seeing a lot of him – and he meant it,’ Greg Schultz, Biden’s campaign manager, said in a statement. ‘Being honest, upfront and authentic is core to who Joe Biden is and why Iowans love him.’
‘With less than 75 days to the caucus, Joe is going to work harder than anyone else to earn the support of Iowans across the entire Hawkeye State,’ Schultz added.
Biden is still leading in national polls – by a cushion of 10.5 points, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average – but the winner of the Iowa caucuses, being held on February 3, will have momentum in a race where there are currently four frontrunners.
President Obama won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, which helped springboard him to the Democratic nomination. In 2016, Hillary Clinton barely squeaked out a win against Sen. Bernie Sanders, which helped label him a formidable opponent.
Sanders continues to be a leading contender for the nomination, along with Biden, Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.