NBC News: “It’s a bit unusual for a presidential campaign’s staff to invest time in events that aren’t directly related to the candidate’s election. But for Warren’s team, it’s all part of the plan: A small army of her organizers has deployed to early-voting states and embedded into local communities.

Said one prominent Nevada Democrat: “She is generating buzz because her campaign shows up everywhere. Every time there’s a community event, there is Warren representation there.”

“By pitching in locally, Warren’s organizers hope to demonstrate at a personal level that they are investing in the concerns of the same voters — and potential volunteers — whose support they are courting for the Massachusetts Democrat at the federal level. It’s just one part of a political organizing operation designed to match Warren’s message of igniting a movement, voter by voter, that creates ‘big, structural change’ in the country.”

“Joe Biden said he was vice president when the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, took place. Except, it happened in 2018, more than a year after he left office — the latest gaffe by the Democratic presidential front-runner,” Bloomberg reports.

“Biden told reporters in Iowa on Saturday that ‘those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president.’ But when they visited Capitol Hill to talk with members of Congress, lawmakers were ‘basically cowering, not wanting to see them. They did not want to face it on camera.'”

“As Democrats descend on Iowa to kick off a six-month sprint to the first primary vote, party activists are increasingly anxious that former vice president Joe Biden, the consistent polling leader, has not disposed of persistent questions about whether he is well-equipped to take on President Trump,” the Washington Post reports.

“Adding to the Democrats’ nervousness is that a clear alternative has yet to emerge. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is rising in the polls and has a high-quality campaign organization, but doubts linger in some quarters about the appeal of her left-leaning policies in a general election. Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are struggling to maintain momentum, while pressure is growing from frustrated voters for many of the weaker candidates to drop out.”

Harry Enten: “I was once a skeptic on Texas turning blue, but I’ve changed my tune because Trump is a uniquely unpopular Republican in Texas who seems to be the driver of an important development: Like other Americans, Texans with a college degree are shifting rapidly from red to blue, and Democrats have a lot of room to grow with them in Texas.”

“This doesn’t mean the state will go Democratic in 2020 (Democrats not named Joe Biden currently are losing to Trump in the Lone Star state in high quality polling), but it is a real possibility.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “On the surface, the main development was a slump for Kamala Harris, who has now dropped back to fourth place in the polls. But I’ll stick with what I said going in: Harris, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren didn’t really have much at stake in this round of debates. None of them had much to gain or lose from a modest shift in the polls. They’ll all be around for months, and will probably compete seriously in Iowa. And if Harris had to have a bad debate, this was probably the time to do it; she can learn from the experience and do better when more voters are paying attention.”

“The candidates with the most at stake were those who were in grave danger of failing to qualify for the September debates but might have still have had a realistic chance if they did well. None of them came close to doing what they needed to do. Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee? None of them is any closer to qualifying, and that may mean the end of the road for them.”

Aaron Blake: “A new poll from Stanley Greenberg of left-leaning Democracy Corps provides some more encouraging signs for Warren. It tested both her and Biden against Trump, seeking to find out how the leading candidates from the party’s two flanks might compare in a 2020 general election. The answer is: pretty similarly.”

While Biden leads by eight points (49-41) in a race that includes Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) as the Libertarian nominee, Warren leads by six (49-43). What’s more, Greenberg finds that, while Biden does better among independents (+10 vs. Warren’s +5), Warren consolidates Democrats better (getting 90 percent of their support vs. Biden’s 86 percent). And while Biden gets 21 percent of Republican moderates, Warren gets a respectable 15 percent.”

“Perhaps most importantly for Warren, she actually does just as well as Biden among working-class white voters. Both trail by 19 points with a group Trump won by 27 points in 2016 — a margin he’ll probably need to match in 2020.”