What is the vice president doing? He’s running as the backup. “Biden is running for Clinton’s understudy—as the candidate who will go on at the last minute, if necessary, if she’s unable to continue for any reason,” explains political scientist and Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein. He grants that it isn’t clear that this is what Biden is thinking, but he thinks it is what’s happening.

The Democratic Party, or at least its establishment, needs a B Team—a candidate and a campaign to run if Clinton can’t. Sanders doesn’t fit the bill, and Martin O’Malley—who sits near the bottom of the polls, with 1 percent—isn’t visible enough to meet the challenge. Biden, the sitting vice president, is the natural choice. And so he does the work: He talks with lawmakers, sits with officials, meets with donors, and builds the skeleton of a campaign, with enough muscle to move if necessary. In the meantime, he’ll enjoy the attention of media and supporters. After all, it’s nice.

Indeed, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning under way, Bidenworld is now gaming out, and perhaps even leaning towards, a new timetable—with the vice president waiting until late October or early November to join the race.

This new scenario would have several distinct disadvantages. It would mean skipping the first Democratic debate on October 13 in Nevada. It would mean missing the annual Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa on October 24, an event traditionally of no small political importance. It could mean missing the Florida Democratic Party convention on October 31 and November 1.

But the new timetable might offer certain upsides. It would afford Biden and his people the chance to gauge whether Clinton is able to reverse her slide—or, on the contrary, reap the benefits from an enhanced sense of Democratic unease if her skid continues. It would, in particular, let Biden wait until after Clinton's October 22 testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which might conceivably exacerbate her current maladies. It would give Bidenworld more time to put the functional pieces of a campaign in place. And it would give Biden himself more time to come to terms with the emotional turmoil still roiling inside him—and to be certain his family is in favor of him running, as well as being genuinely prepared for what it would entail.

In an effort to court African-American support for his presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders held a meeting this week with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, but only 6 members showed up.

According to Politic365, “the meeting took place outside the Capitol Building so that the members could talk politics and election strategy in depth.” And according to the invitation, the meeting was meant to serve as “overview of CBC priorities and a conversation on pressing issues impacting the African American community.”

Sanders, whose campaign has been beleaguered by accusations of racial tone-deafness, did address “the systemic problems facing minority communities,” according to one senior aide to a CBC member....

Although Sanders has seen his poll numbers surge in the first two early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with a very small African-American electorate, he’s hardly gained traction in the third primary state, South Carolina. A new PPP poll found Clinton leading Sanders 66 to 12 percent in the state with 78 percent of African-American voters holding a positive view of the former secretary of state. 27 percent of African-American Democrats support Sanders in the Palmetto state.

Nate Silver, the polling analyst of FiveThirtyEight fame who correctly and definitively called the 2012 election at at time when most other pollsters thought it was too close to call, is speaking up on the 2106 election – and specifically the democratic party primary nomination race. Even as much of the media attempts to paint Hillary Clinton as being in trouble and Bernie Sanders as having momentum, Silver says the polls tell him just the opposite. In fact he’s assigning Clinton a 93% or better chance of defeating Sanders in the primary race.

Silver’s latest missive serves in part as a defense of Bernie Sanders against those who are attempting to paint him as merely being the “Donald Trump of the left.” He points to several key differences in what they stand for and how they’ve approached the election, but he also points out what’s obvious to anyone who studies the national polls rather than relying on misleading headline soundbites: Bernie is behind Hillary by “about 20 percentage points in national polls that include Joe Biden, and by 30 points in polls that don’t.” In other words, her massive lead is still massive, and despite the massive media hype over the summer, little has changed in terms of actual popularity. He goes on to handicap the odds in both primaries.

“What Sanders and Trump have in common is they’re both unlikely to be nominated,” he males clear before adding “If I were laying odds, I’d put either one at something like 15-1 or 20-1 against.” For those with a calculator handy, that means he’s giving Hillary Clinton a 93% (15-1) to 95% (20-1) chance of winning the democratic party primary. In case his message wasn’t clear enough, Nate Silver goes on to state that Bernie Sanders is “unlikely to be nominated” and if he did somehow win the nomination, he would be “unlikely to prevail next November.” In other words, this is still Hillary Clinton’s race to lose.

Despite a barrage of bad headlines, lagging poll numbers and mounting evidence that she's in a dogfight with Bernie Sanders, Democratic insiders overwhelmingly think Hillary Clinton would win Iowa and New Hampshire if the contests were held this week.

That's the assessment of this week's POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, activists and operatives in the two early-voting states

Driving the high degree of confidence in Clinton's chances is a belief that her field organization is too formidable for Sanders to overcome. "Best campaign infrastructure ever built," said an uncommitted New Hampshire Democrat. "They can overcome any deficit."

Both in Iowa and New Hampshire, eight out of 10 Democrats surveyed said Clinton would win if the contests were held this week. Those responses come even as the Vermont senator pushed past Clinton in an Iowa poll released Thursday, something he has already done in New Hampshire.

"Although the polls say otherwise right now, I think Hillary will win the primary," a New Hampshire Democrat said. "It is still early, she retooled her campaign to better reflect her authenticity, trustworthiness and exceptional qualifications. Polls have been proven wrong, especially in NH!"....

A New Hampshire Democrat who said it's a toss-up between Clinton and Sanders, described the Democratic race this way: "Bernie is legitimately ahead in two recent and credible polls in NH, but...his margin is not large. This is where campaigns can make the difference. Clinton's team is super-organized, and has veterans who know where every last vote is. Sanders' field and GOTV aren't nearly as well established. In a close race this counts, so if it were today: tossup."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/clinton-survives-213529#ixzz3lUl9GKTv

Despite a barrage of bad headlines, lagging poll numbers and mounting evidence that she's in a dogfight with Bernie Sanders, Democratic insiders overwhelmingly think Hillary Clinton would win Iowa and New Hampshire if the contests were held this week.

That's the assessment of this week's POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, activists and operatives in the two early-voting states

Driving the high degree of confidence in Clinton's chances is a belief that her field organization is too formidable for Sanders to overcome. "Best campaign infrastructure ever built," said an uncommitted New Hampshire Democrat. "They can overcome any deficit."

Both in Iowa and New Hampshire, eight out of 10 Democrats surveyed said Clinton would win if the contests were held this week. Those responses come even as the Vermont senator pushed past Clinton in an Iowa poll released Thursday, something he has already done in New Hampshire.

"Although the polls say otherwise right now, I think Hillary will win the primary," a New Hampshire Democrat said. "It is still early, she retooled her campaign to better reflect her authenticity, trustworthiness and exceptional qualifications. Polls have been proven wrong, especially in NH!"....

A New Hampshire Democrat who said it's a toss-up between Clinton and Sanders, described the Democratic race this way: "Bernie is legitimately ahead in two recent and credible polls in NH, but...his margin is not large. This is where campaigns can make the difference. Clinton's team is super-organized, and has veterans who know where every last vote is. Sanders' field and GOTV aren't nearly as well established. In a close race this counts, so if it were today: tossup."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/clinton-survives-213529#ixzz3lUl9GKTv

But now Texas has upped the ante, arguing that if Section 2 indeed makes its voter ID law illegal, then Section 2 violates the Constitution. That means the other great statutory protection of minority voting rights would suffer the same fate as the preclearance provision and leave minority voters with few protections from unwarranted new voting hurdles.

Section 2 provides relief when minority voters have less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. It has long been accepted by the courts in so-called vote dilution cases, in which black, Latino, or other minority voters get gerrymandered out of political power by the creative drawing of district lines. In 1986, the Supreme Court adopted a framework for deciding when Section 2 requires jurisdictions to draw legislative or congressional districts to help minority voters elect candidates of their choice....

Let’s not mistake what Texas is doing here. To seem more moderate, it couches its constitutional arguments in the language of “constitutional avoidance,” not exactly saying that Section 2 is unconstitutional but saying that the courts should read it narrowly because otherwise the law would be unconstitutional. In practical terms, that’s a distinction without a difference. In either case, according to Texas, the result is that Section 2 cannot offer protection for racial minorities in vote denial cases.