2024 U.S. election campaign 20 June-31 October

July 15-18, 2024
The Republican National Convention
Milwaukee, WI

The Democratic National Convention
August 19-22, 2024
Chicago

Heather Cox Richardson August 26, 2024: according to reports from the Brennan Center for Justice, voters in at least 28 states this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election. Varying by state, these laws do things like shorten the time for requesting an absentee ballot, make it a crime to deliver another voter’s mail-in ballot, require proof of citizenship from voters who share the same name as noncitizens, and so on.
7 States That Could Sway the 2024 Presidential Election
The more than 90 electoral votes across these seven swing states are expected to be pivotal in the White House race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

31 October
Will North Carolina be the big surprise on Election Day?
William A. Galston
(Brookings) Since 2020, the number of Democrats registered to vote in North Carolina has fallen by 168,000 while the number of registered Republicans has risen by 118,000, cutting the Democrats’ edge from almost 400,000 in 2020 to just 113,000 now.
Trump’s share of the white vote appears to be significantly less than it was in 2020.
According to several well-regarded polls, Harris is only breaking even with Trump among women.
With its 16 electoral votes, North Carolina is strategically important for both presidential campaigns. If Donald Trump wins there as well as in Georgia and Pennsylvania, he will have the 270 electoral votes he needs. If he doesn’t, he will need two other states outside his Electoral College base. Kamala Harris could win the presidency by carrying all of the Blue Wall states. But if she loses one of them, then North Carolina offers her the most likely route to victory, because Georgia and Arizona are leaning increasingly toward Trump in the election’s waning days.
Michelle Obama Had the Best Closing Argument of the Campaign The former First Lady distilled what this election is really about.
(New York) On the last Saturday of October, Michelle Obama appeared in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and gave one of the most remarkable political speeches in memory. It was expansive and nuanced, yet conveyed the most straightforward message imaginable, applicable not just to the presidential candidate she was supporting, but to the millions of people who will be voting in the 2024 election:
“I am asking you all, from the core of my being, to take our lives seriously,” she implored. “Please, please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown deep contempt for us. A vote for him is a vote against us. Against our health, against our worth.” This is a question, she said, “about our value as women in this world.”
Trump lagging in early vote with seniors in Pennsylvania, a red flag for GOP
Democrats account for about 58 percent of the votes cast by seniors so far in Pennsylvania.
(Politico) The senior vote is particularly important in five of the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina — that, according to U.S. Census data, have more residents over the age of 65 than the national average.
According to modeling data shared by a Democratic campaign operative tracking early voting, across the Blue Wall states, Democratic voters over the age of 65 are running 10 to 20 percent ahead of their Republican counterparts with respect to registered turnout.

28-29 October
Extremists inspired by conspiracy theories pose major threat to 2024 elections, U.S. intelligence warns
(NBC) U.S. intelligence agencies have identified domestic extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud and animosity toward perceived political opponents, as the most likely threat of violence in the coming election.
In a Joint Intelligence Bulletin that was not distributed publicly but was reviewed by NBC News, agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warn state and local law enforcement agencies that domestic violent extremists seeking to terrorize and disrupt the vote are a threat to the election and throughout Inauguration Day.
The report identified the potential targets as candidates, elected officials, election workers, members of the media and judges involved in election cases. The potential threats include physical attacks and violence at polling places, ballot drop boxes, voter registration locations and rallies and campaign events.
Ballot fire sparks fresh election concerns
Shocking images out of Vancouver, Washington, this morning show a ballot drop box with heavy smoke pluming out of it after an apparent arson attempt in Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s district.
“Around 6 a.m., KATU captured footage of first responders releasing a pile of actively burning ballots onto the ground, which continued to smolder and smoke heavily even after the flames were put out,” KATU’s Allison Berry reports. “The Clark County elections auditor told us that the last ballot pickup at that location was 11 a.m. Saturday. Hundreds of ballots were inside at the time of the burning, and KATU was told there were maybe only a few that could be saved.”
Local police said the FBI is now taking over the investigation into the incident. The Election Auditor’s Office is advising those who dropped off ballots after 11 a.m. on Saturday to contact the office for a new ballot.
It’s a significant blow in the district, where Gluesenkamp Perez won a razor-thin election in 2022 by fewer than 3,000 votes. And it’s a striking manifestation of simmering fears over challenges to voting.

23 October
Battleground Michigan: A report from the frontline
Michael Staebler
Michigan Democrats rely heavily on their “ground game”—with candidates and thousands of volunteers knocking on doors to speak with likely voters—both for President and the down ballot races.
Trump is pitching hard for auto union workers support and championing his plans for high protective tariffs as well as his misinformation about immigration and an alleged crime wave.
In addition to the activity of Michigan’s Secretary of State and the State Election Director, a significant number of non-profit organizations have met with local officials to review the proper safeguards to assure a smooth election.
(Brookings) Although Michigan Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they can repeat Biden’s victory in 2024, several factors are curbing their confidence. In Michigan as elsewhere, MAGA Republicans form a large and enthusiastic base for Trump. In 2020, running against the most pro-union candidate in history, Donald Trump received almost four in 10 votes cast in union households and is on track to do even better this year. Trump is heavily promoting the claim that Harris will outlaw gasoline-powered vehicles, causing massive layoffs.
Recent polls show that some Black men are turned off by the prospect of a female presidential candidate, which might somewhat reduce Democratic support in the Black community.
Michigan’s Arab American population of over 200,000 is by far the largest of any state in the country. This spring, outrage in the Arab community over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in the Middle East led to the formation of a group which helped encourage 100,000 people to vote “uncommitted” in the June Democratic presidential primary, which President Biden nevertheless won. Many members of this community believe that Harris has not broken sufficiently with Biden to merit their support.

Money is the biggest swing state of all
The Globe analyzes Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s political fortunes through 12 charts of the changeable U.S. economy
(Globe & Mail) With two weeks remaining until the U.S. presidential election, so much is going right in the world’s largest economy. The unemployment rate sits at roughly 4 per cent – quite low by historical standards. The stock market is riding a lengthy bull run, padding the pockets of millions of people. And in maybe the clearest sign of optimism, Americans are starting businesses like never before, a testament to the country’s entrepreneurial instincts.
Despite a rapid increase in interest rates over 2022 and 2023, the United States has not only avoided a recession – counter to many such predictions on Wall Street – but it’s growing so quickly that it’s leaving peer countries in its wake.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party candidate for president, can point to any number of indicators that show the economy is scorching under the Democrats.
And yet, Americans are feeling pretty glum about the state of affairs. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index has been considerably weaker under U.S. President Joe Biden than under his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. As part of Mr. Trump’s campaign for president, he’s repeatedly seized on something people hate: the dramatic upswing in consumer prices.

These Democratic Voters Hiding in Plain Sight Could Be Harris’ Ticket to a North Carolina Win
Mecklenburg County has plenty of Democratic voters but getting them to the polls has been a challenge. New party leadership has a plan to fix that.
(Politico) … “What the local party has pulled off is pretty remarkable,” Jeff Jackson, the Charlotte congressman and candidate for attorney general, told me. “A GOTV effort at this level,” he said, using the acronym for get out the vote, “has never been tried before here. It’s a huge experiment in how to do GOTV effectively, but it could also end up picking the president.”

Brilliant analysis by the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols leads to depressing conclusion
Trump’s Depravity Will Not Cost Him This Election
For millions of the GOP faithful, Trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want Trump to be awful—precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins.

Heather Cox Richardson October 22, 2024
The two candidates are presenting quite stark differences in the futures they propose for the American people.
Former president Trump’s closing economic argument for the American people is that putting a high tariff wall around the country will bring in so much foreign money that it will fund domestic programs and bring down the deficit, enabling massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s closing economic argument is that the government should invest in the middle class by permitting Medicare to pay for in-home health aides for the elderly, cutting taxes for small businesses and families, and passing a federal law against price gouging for groceries during emergencies.
Trump has indicated his determination to take the nation’s economy back to that of the 1890s, back to a time when capital was concentrated among a few industrialists and financiers. …

21 October
They lost their homes and possessions. They’re showing up to vote in NC.
(Politico) Hundreds of thousands of voters in the mountains of western North Carolina are still reeling after the Sept. 27 storm destroyed homes and communities, obliterated roads and water systems and left at least 95 people dead in the critical swing state. … As early voting has begun in North Carolina — drawing record-setting statewide turnout on Thursday — and the process of restoring water, electricity, road access and mail service is underway, both parties have resumed some of their campaign activities in the affected areas.

The U.S. Presidential Contest, October 16, 2024
Marist National Poll
“There are two things to keep an eye on in the closing weeks of the presidential contest. First, when you look at those who are likely to vote, Harris does better. So higher turnout favors her,” says Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “Second, don’t overlook that the gender gap, which is expected to be unusually high, cuts both ways. Trump carries men, and Harris carries women.”
In the presidential contest, Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump by five points among likely voters, including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate. The race gets closer, however, among registered voters nationally. Here, three points separate the two candidates.
Harris (52%) leads Trump (47%) among likely voters nationally, including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate. Earlier this month, two points separated Harris (50%) and Trump (48%) among likely voters.
The contest is tighter among registered voters. Among the general electorate, Harris receives 51% to 48% for Trump. In early October, the same margin separated Harris (50%) and Trump (47%) among the broader electorate.
Trump (54%) leads Harris (44%) among independents who are likely to vote, widening the 4-point edge Trump (50%) had against Harris (46%) previously.
Trump (53%) leads Harris (47%) among men who are likely to vote while Harris (57%) has the advantage over Trump (42%) among women.
While members of Gen X divide (51% for Harris to 48% for Trump), Harris has majority support among GenZ/Millennials (53%) and among Baby Boomers/the Silent-Greatest Generations (55%).
Playbook PM: A swing-state status report
“With just 19 days left until Election Day, every day will be dominated by coverage of the few opportunities that Harris and Trump have to tip the scales in their favor across the handful of true swing states left across the country. Here’s a check-in on where things stand in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and … Nebraska?”

15 October
Playbook PM: The final money sprint to November
(Politico) … THE SHOWDOWN IN MOTOWN: As Harris is in Detroit today, the AARP poll finds her tied with Trump in Michigan in a multi-candidate field, or Trump leading by 1 head to head. Her struggles in the state stem partly from weakness with Black voters in Detroit, where NYT’s Mitch Smith reports that local Democrats think the campaign is lacking — that it “had seemed to lack urgency, had failed to produce enough yard signs or had not sufficiently mobilized local officials.” WaPo’s Michael Brice-Saddler returns to Pontiac, where he found Black men wavering on President JOE BIDEN a year ago, and reports that many of them remain unconvinced by Harris: “They still cannot see themselves in the Democratic platform.”
On the flip side, Trump’s recent insult of Detroit runs the risk of turning off urban voters, as he returns to 2020-style apocalyptic rhetoric about America’s big cities, NBC’s Henry Gomez, Jonathan Allen and Matt Dixon report .
Trump’s dark rhetoric about big cities returns to the campaign trail
The former president’s recent trashing of Detroit continues a long-running theme, and where Democrats see a cruel attack, Republicans see a play for suburban and rural voters.
Another crucial demographic in Michigan and across the Blue Wall is working-class white women, who could power Trump to victory if Harris doesn’t remain somewhat competitive with them, CNN’s Ronald Brownstein writes.

4 October
Do the Math: Trump Is Toast
If everyone does their part in the next few weeks, Trump is going down in flames. So say I.
Michael Moore
Right now, if you know how to really read the polls, or if you have access to the various private and internal polling being conducted by and shared only amongst the elites, Wall Street, and Members of Congress, then you already know that this election was over weeks ago. Trump simply refused to believe that “Sleepy Joe” was no longer his opponent and that there was instead “some woman” claiming she was “Black” who was now going to pummel him on Election Day. He soon became unhinged, ranted for hours about Hannibal Lecter, Haitians cannibalizing your pets, and a nonstop drone of oral diarrhea spewing misogyny, racism and essentially claiming that if he loses “it will be the Jews’ fault.”

2-4 October
Helene hit Trump strongholds in Georgia and North Carolina. It could swing the election.
Officials in both swing states face urgent decisions about helping people vote in shattered communities.
(Politico) Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states.
Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election,
Disaster and democracy: How Helene could sway the vote in battleground states
(GZERO media) With just over a month before Election Day, Hurricane Helene – which killed at least 154 people and left disaster zones in 66 counties across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida – could affect the vote.
The storm has halted mail service and disrupted absentee voting. Thousands of polling stations are flooded or inaccessible, with early voting already underway in North Carolina.
The portion of the Tar Heel State most affected by the storm contains almost 1 million voters. In 2020, Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in North Carolina by fewer than 80,000 votes, his smallest margin of victory in any state. Asheville, one of the strongest hit areas, is a Democratic stronghold. But outside of that, the storm disproportionately affected rural counties where Trump has the advantage – and may have the most to lose.
It also gives the current administration a reason to shower these swing states with aid and attention. President Joe Biden visited North Carolina on Wednesday and has deployed 1,000 US soldiers to assist in recovery efforts. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris was in Georgia on Wednesday to discuss recovery and meet with people impacted by the storm. That being said, if their response is seen as insufficient, Harris could be punished at the polls.

September 20, 2024, historian Heather Cox Richardson explains the 1787 context of the creation of the Electoral College system. Good to know. It made sense then, but now, not so much (at all!)

17 September
Seven Senate Races to Watch
Democrats are struggling to hold on to key seats—and their majority—in states across the country.
With Kamala Harris and Tim Walz at the top of their ticket, the Democrats are feeling much more optimistic than they were earlier this summer about holding on to the White House. But lower down on the ticket, Democrats are struggling to keep their 51–49 lead in the Senate.

14 September
Harris and Trump place their chips on different states to win White House
A compressed battleground map has given each campaign a defensive electoral college wall, and they overlap in the crucial state of Pennsylvania.
Democrats have spent the last year eyeing a familiar trio of northern states that would deliver the White House in November: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are the “clearest pathway” to victory, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign leaders wrote in July — as long as she also picks up a single electoral vote in the Omaha area. … “As long as we hold North Carolina, we just need to win Georgia and Pennsylvania,” a Trump campaign official told reporters last month in a strategy briefing. “That is all we need to win. So when everybody is running around with all the machinations, she’s still playing defense.”

12 September
Trump: No more debates with Kamala Harris
(Reuters) – Republican nominee Donald Trump said on Thursday he would not participate in another presidential debate against Kamala Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 election, after several polls showed his Democratic rival won their debate earlier this week.

An excellent summary of the evening’s events.
Heather Cox Richardson September 10, 2024
The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.
She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television.

‘Trump Brought Darkness; Harris Brought Light’: 14 NYT Writers on Who Won the Presidential Debate
(NYT) Times Opinion asked 14 of our columnists and contributors to watch the presidential debate on Tuesday night and assess who won and who lost. We also asked them to weigh in on the quality of the debate. Were the candidates inspiring, or was their face-off a depressing sign of everything that’s wrong with American politics?
Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the event.

5 September
Harris or Trump? The Prophet of Presidential Elections Is Ready to Call the Race.
Featuring Allan Lichtman (NYT video)
Presidential Election Nostradamus Reveals His 2024 Prediction
TRUE OR FALSE?
(Daily Beast) Allan Lichtman has accurately predicted almost every presidential race since 1984—and he says there will be a clear winner in November.
Forecasting pioneer predicts Harris will win election
(The Hill) A notable elections forecaster predicted Vice President Harris will win November’s election, according to his model of 13 keys.
Allan Lichtman, a historian who has successfully predicted the outcome of nine of the last 10 presidential elections, revealed in a New York Times video that he believes that Harris will clinch a victory over former President Trump. His election model is based on 13 true-or-false questions that ignore polls and pollsters.
Historian who accurately predicted 9 of last 10 presidential elections makes his 2024 pick
– Allan Lichtman, the historian who correctly predicted the outcome of nine out of the ten most recent presidential elections, has made his guess on who will reclaim the White House this year.
(USA Today) Spoiler alert: it’s Vice President Kamala Harris.
Lichtman said in a video, first reported by The New York Times, that he based his prediction on thirteen keys or “big picture true false questions that tap into the strength and performance of the White House Party.”

3 September
Don’t Trust the Election Forecasts
The data doesn’t support the obsession with presidential prognostications.

Where the race between Trump and Harris stands on Labor Day, according to our polling expert
In modern presidential elections, where the race stands on Labor Day is usually pretty close to where it ends up once the votes are counted.
Of the seven states that both campaigns have identified as the core Electoral College battlegrounds, Harris leads Trump in three of them — the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — according to multiple polling averages. But those leads are small: In only one state, Wisconsin, does an average show a greater than 3-point margin for the vice president.
In three others — Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — the polls are so close that different polling averages have different leaders as of Sunday night.
Only in the remaining swing state — North Carolina, which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 — does the former president lead in all three polling averages:
The three states where Harris has a modest lead would be sufficient to win the presidency if she also wins the traditionally blue states and earns the electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, where a Split Ticket/SurveyUSA poll released on Saturday gave her a 5-point lead over Trump.
House and Senate Republicans are starting to panic about a huge money gap with Democrats
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill are privately — and publicly — warning donors they need more money.

29 August
How swing states came to be critical in U.S. presidential elections
(NPR) Most states consistently vote red or blue — between 2000 and 2016, 38 states voted for the same political party — but swing states are less predictable.
Political campaigns and pundits have long focused on states such as Pennsylvania because they offer candidates an opportunity to sway voters off the fence and win coveted Electoral College votes. In recent years, they’ve also had the power to swing the election itself.
It all starts with the Electoral College
The only reason the concept of a swing state exists at all is because of the unique way the U.S. conducts presidential elections: with the Electoral College.
The U.S. doesn’t elect presidents based on the national popular vote. “It’s essentially 50 separate state elections plus the District of Columbia,” [David Schultz, a professor of political science and legal studies at Hamline University and editor of Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter] said. (In fact, two presidents have been elected in recent decades even though they lost the national popular vote — George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016.)
According to Schultz, four different criteria determine a swing state:
First, the state is a battleground. Presidential candidates and their campaigns visit these places often to stump for votes between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Second, it’s a competitive state. For Schultz, that means the margin of victory for the winning presidential candidate has been less than 5% of the vote.
Third, this state would be considered a bellwether. In past elections, the candidate who won the state has gone on to win the presidency. Some states have been good predictors of who would ultimately end up in the White House.
Fourth is the so-called flippability factor. Does this state see-saw between political parties? For example, Pennsylvania went for Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

26 August
Hundreds of former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers endorse Harris
The group of more than 200 Republicans said a second Trump presidency “will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.”
(WaPo) The open letter with the endorsement was first published Monday in USA Today, with 238 signatures.
The group of former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers issued a similar letter supporting Joe Biden when he ran against Trump in 2020. In their new, pro-Harris letter, alumni from those three top Republicans were joined by at least five former staffers to the late President George H.W. Bush.

22 August
Harris Thankfully Inherits Biden’s Economy in North Carolina
The vice president has essentially closed the gap with Donald Trump in this critical state, where jobs are being created by the thousands.
By Matthew A. Winkler, editor in chief emeritus of Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) … For the first time, Democrats are leading in most of the seven so-called swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Perhaps nowhere is the race for the Oval Office more transformed than in North Carolina. The ninth-most populous state of almost 11 million people no longer is seen as impregnable for Trump and could for the second time this century deliver a Democrat to the Electoral College the way it did for Barack Obama in 2008. The issue for Harris is that North Carolina’s prevailing media narrative is no different from other swing states, omitting superior growth in gross domestic product, jobs and personal income the past three-and-a-half years that Tar Heels never experienced when Trump was president, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

16-17 August
Harris reset the election, and congressional Dems are starting to shift strategies
Battleground Democrats are suddenly jumping at the chance to campaign with the top of the ticket. Outside groups are pushing resources toward offense. And swing House seats that President Joe Biden was losing by large margins are now tied.
(Politico) The reality of a changed election is being reflected down the ticket.
“In recent days, dozens of Democrats in crucial House and Senate contests have finally gotten back post-Biden polling, and it shows the Vice President Kamala Harris effect is, indeed, real,” Ally Mutnick, Sarah Ferris and Anthony Adragna report. “Senate Democratic incumbents have been ahead in almost every single publicly released poll except in the red state of Montana. One Democratic group testing presidential numbers in competitive House districts rarely saw data that showed Biden above 50 percent; Harris is clearing that threshold and sometimes well above it.
“Democrats know there’s still no guarantee that it’s enough to win back the House, or the even tougher task of saving their Senate majority. But campaigns from California to Maine have already begun to subtly change strategy amid the tectonic shift in the election over the last month. …

The 8 races and 3 long shots that could determine Senate control
Republicans are all but guaranteed to pick up at least one seat, putting even more pressure on Democrats to win seven other highly competitive races, including two in red states.
(WaPo) Senate Democrats face a grueling and narrow path to maintain their slim 51-49 majority this fall, as they prepare to defend 23 seats across the United States, many of them in purple and red states.

15 August
Elon Musk and the Political Power of Young Men
(GZERO media) Numbers in key swing states like Arizona and Pennsylvania have gone from a Trump lock to a toss-up or even a small Harris lead. But as the saying goes, you don’t win elections in August. Both campaigns still need to swing large constituencies of voters, and one group is emerging as critical: young men.
In this election, there are roughly 41 million Gen Z voters — people between the ages of 18 and 29, and while Dems have traditionally counted on their support, the war in Gaza and the slow growth economy have turned many of them away.
In particular, young men struggling with job prospects and rapidly changing notions of masculinity are seeking a new ideological home that gives them a sense of meaning, support, and respect.
Enter Elon Musk. The tech billionaire recently endorsed Trump, but it was their two-hour-long conversation on X this week that formally ended their 2022 feud, during which Trump called Musk a “bullshit artist” and Musk said it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Musk has now pulled a JD Vance-level pivot to Trump. He’s even offered to work with the former president on a “government efficiency committee” to make sure federal money is “spent in a good way.” Trump said yes, he was very open to hiring “Chainsaw” Elon to do some government clear-cutting.
So, how consequential is Elon’s endorsement of Trump? Very. Musk is a modern-day mashup of Thomas Edison and William Randolph Hearst — at once a transformational figure in business and technology but also, now that he owns X, an immensely powerful media influencer.
His publicly acknowledged journey from moderate Democrat to MAGA Republican has major appeal to certain voter segments — especially those with a Y chromosome who believe Call of Duty is not just a video game but a possible career.
13 July
Elon Musk endorses Trump in presidential race, calls him “tough”

10 August
HARRIS RIDES THE WAVE
…there is mounting evidence that the Harris boom is real, and that she might be exactly what her party needed: a broadly appealing, competent and energetic candidate who can harness the nation’s lingering distaste for Trump.
(Politico Playbook) Five days into her swing-state barnstorming tour with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, we have seen vivid proof that her replacement of President Biden has reenergized the party and reengaged disaffected voters.
We have watched in multiple states as people have waited in lines for hours and, in some cases, fainted from the hot weather. (Rest assured, plenty of water and medical personnel have been on hand.)
Last night, we saw more than 15,000 pile into the Desert Diamond Arena for what some claimed was the largest political rally in Arizona history. Later today, Harris and Walz head to Las Vegas for a similar event in an 18,000-seat venue, fresh off receiving the most important endorsement in Nevada politics.
Big rally crowds do not equal voting majorities, of course. And the week has not been all sunshine for the Democratic ticket: Walz has had to fend off, and in some cases acknowledge, serious questions about his military record. Harris is facing increasingly sharp criticism about when she will subject herself to in-depth questioning. And spending from Trump and Republican groups on potentially devastating attacks is quickly ramping up.

Heather Cox Richardson August 9, 2024 (audio)
The idea that presidential campaigns should drag on for years is a relatively new one. For well over a century, political conventions were dramatic affairs where political leaders hashed out who they thought was their party’s best standard-bearer, a process that almost always involved quiet deals and strategic conversations. Sometimes the outcome was pretty clear ahead of time, but there were often surprises. …
As recently as 1952, the outcome of the Republican National Convention was not clear beforehand. Most observers thought the nomination would go to Ohio senator Robert Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft, but after a tremendous battle—including at least one fist fight—the nomination went to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower, who challenged Taft because of the senator’s opposition to the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). …
The 1960 presidential election ushered in a new era in politics. …it was John F. Kennedy who was the first presidential candidate to turn to a public opinion pollster, Louis Harris, to help him adjust his message and his policies to polls.
Political campaigns were modernizing from the inside to win elections, but as important in the long run was Theodore H. White’s best selling account of the campaign, The Making of the President 1960. White was a successful reporter, novelist, and nonfiction writer who, finding himself flush from a movie deal and out of work when Collier’s magazine went under, decided to follow the inside story of the 1960 presidential campaign. …
Before White’s book, political journalism picked up when politicians announced their candidacy, and focused on candidates’ public statements and position papers. White’s portrait welcomed ordinary people backstage to hear politicians reading crowds, fretting over their prospects, and adjusting their campaigns according to expert advice. … White’s book emphasized the long process of building a successful presidential race and the many advisors who made such building possible. In the modern world a presidential campaign lasted far longer than the few months after a convention. In his intimate portrait of that process, White radically transformed political journalism. …
For journalists, seeing the inside story of politics as a sort of business meant leaving behind the idea that political ideology mattered in presidential elections, a position that political scientists were also abandoning in 1960. It also meant getting that inside story by preserving the candidates’ goodwill, something we now call access journalism. Other journalists leapt to follow the trail White blazed, and by 1973 the pack of presidential journalists had become a story in its own right. White told journalist Timothy Crouse that he had come to regret that his new approach to presidential contests had turned presidential campaigns into a circus.
Over time, presidential campaigns began to use that circus as part of their own story, spinning polls, rallies, and press coverage to convince voters that their candidate was winning. But now the 2024 election seems to be challenging the habit of seeing a presidential campaign as a long, heroic sifting of advice and application of tactics, as well as the perceived need for access to campaign principals.

3 August
Trump Cancels a Debate With Harris on ABC News and Pitches One With Fox News Instead
Former President Donald J. Trump declared late on Friday that he was dropping out of an ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10 and presented a counterproposal…to face off on Fox News six days earlier.
The change, which Mr. Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.

1 August
Trump’s usual sexist sneers don’t work against Harris – and to top it off, she’s laughing at him
Younger, slicker and more telegenic than her rival, the Democratic candidate really might just beat him
(The Guardian) Harris looks like his worst nightmare: a former attorney general of California in heels, slick, telegenic, with a corporate image and politics that have been largely in the centre – so that when Trump says “She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country,” he sounds ridiculous.
And while Harris has, to date, not been a particularly assured politician, she seems to know instinctively how to handle Trump. With a smirk that does more work than all of Clinton or Warren’s earnest attempts to debate him, Harris meets Trump at the demotic level and states the bleeding obvious: “These guys are weird.” It works because it’s true, but also because she’s doing the thing Trump hates above all other things: she’s laughing at him.

30 July
Project 2025 Director Steps Down Amid Trump Criticism
[Paul Dans, director] of Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint and personnel project prepared for the next Republican president that became a political cudgel used by Democrats, is departing after the effort drew criticism from former President Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Trump has tried for months to distance him from the project, which has been a collaborative effort across the conservative ecosystem led by the Heritage Foundation. Vice President Kamala Harris brings up Project 2025 during almost every campaign stop.
11 July
What Is Project 2025, and Why Is Trump Disavowing It?
The Biden campaign has attacked Donald J. Trump’s ties to the conservative policy plan that would amass power in the executive branch, though it is not his official platform.

27 July
Kamala Harris switch scrambles Republicans as Trump resorts to insults
(The Guardian) A week ago, former president was riding high, but now he faces vibrant, younger rival who hit the ground running
A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since.
Now, with the former president suddenly facing a vibrant, younger rival in Harris, who hit the ground running after Biden quit his re-election campaign last Sunday and quickly endorsed her for the top of the ticket, Trump called her “a bum” and said he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name.
The election has been totally upended. Here’s what the polls show.
It’s clear the presidential contest is reshuffled.
(Politico) Vice President Kamala Harris’ elevation has jolted the race and blunted the momentum former President Donald Trump could have seen coming out of the Republican convention and the assassination attempt that preceded it. Though polling showed Trump building a lead over President Joe Biden following their debate last month, that advantage has mostly evaporated against Harris in the fresh round of surveys conducted since she became the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.

23 July
Harris gets a dream start, but the task ahead is monumental
(CNN) Trump has seemed momentarily thrown off by the swift shift in Democratic candidates after Biden recognized the unsustainable nature of his bid for a second term that would have ended when he is 86.
But there were fresh signs on Monday that Trump’s political operation was readjusting to the new reality and sharpening its attacks against the vice president. In a memo to reporters, the Trump campaign previewed a blistering assault to come on Harris.
Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita cast her as the “copilot” of some of Biden’s most “egregious failures.” They signaled that the vice president’s lack of success in addressing the causes in Latin America of southern border crossings would morph into a narrative that she’s soft on illegal immigration. “She’s had a lower approval rating than Joe Biden. Harris is the least popular vice president in history – which is no surprise given her terrible record,” the memo said.
“She makes just as much sense as Joe Biden. By that we mean, none at all.”

22 July
Suddenly Trump Looks Older and More Deranged
Now the Republicans are the ones saddled with a candidate who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence.
By Anne Applebaum
(The Atlantic) Whatever happens next, the frame has altered. Now it is the Republicans who are saddled with the elderly candidate, the one who can’t make a clear argument or finish a sentence without veering off into anecdote. Now the Democrats are instead proposing something new. Now it is the many pundits who were already bored by the race and ready to wrap it up who look foolish.
… I don’t know what will happen next, and that’s the point. The heavy sense of inevitability that surrounded the RNC has lifted. The cadres of people organized by the Heritage Foundation and a dozen offshoots, all quietly preparing to dismantle the rights of American women, to replace civil servants with loyalists, to take apart pollution controls, and to transfer more money into the hands of Trump-friendly billionaires—they are no longer marching inexorably toward the halls of power. The people who spent a week trying to bend reality to fit their flawed, vengeful candidate became too confident too soon.

21-22 July
Harris picks up enough delegate support to win nomination on first full day of her campaign
(CNN) The Harris for President campaign touted the recent endorsements of Kamala Harris that have poured in from Democratic elected officials in a news release Sunday night, citing “Overwhelming support for VP Harris from every corner of the country.”
“Hundreds of elected officials from across the political spectrum followed President Biden’s lead and announced their full-throated support for Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee for president to defeat Donald Trump in November,” the campaign said in the release.
CNN has been able to identify more than 500 endorsements for Harris from Democratic delegates as of early Monday.

President JOE BIDEN on Sunday afternoon became the first sitting president eligible for a second term to forgo reelection since Lyndon Johnson in 1968.
Ailing from Covid, Biden explained in a letter that it was “in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Biden then endorsed VP Kamala Harris as his successor a few moments later, offering her “my full support and endorsement” ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat [DONALD] TRUMP,” he wrote. “Let’s do this.”

19 July
The powerhouse states that shaped the week
(Politico Nightly) — The eventful week that saw Republicans unite behind Donald Trump and Democrats splinter over Joe Biden just revealed a great deal about where power and influence truly resides in the two major parties.
Just as the now-concluded Republican National Convention made clear that Florida is the spiritual capital of the Republican Party, the ongoing mission to convince Biden to withdraw from the race underscores how California occupies a similar role for Democrats.

18 July
The Imperial Presidency Unleashed
How the Supreme Court Eliminated the Last Remaining Checks on Executive Power
By Sarah Binder, James Goldgeier, and Elizabeth N. Saunders
(Foreign Affairs) … [Republicans are] nominating Trump in the wake of two extraordinary legal developments. The more recent of the two is the dismissal of the classified documents case in Florida. The other, more enduring one is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States—which grants presidents sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution after leaving office.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that presidents—and former President Trump in particular—have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their exercise of “core” executive powers. The court also granted ex-presidents presumptive immunity for actions at the “outer perimeter” of their responsibilities. They are not immune for their “unofficial” acts, but the opinion’s distinction between what is official and unofficial is so blurry that it may be meaningless. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a bracing dissent, Trump v. United States makes the president “a king above the law.”
… The upshot of the court’s decision, then, is to make prosecuting a former president for any act carried out while in office practically impossible. Determined prosecutors could try. But the path to success is now so long and so winding that it is all but blocked.

14 July
As Trump heads to GOP convention, two parties adjust to a changed campaign
The extent to which the tenor and tone of the program will change will be determined by the former president, who has been intensively involved in planning the event.
(WaPo) The assassination attempt that injured former president Donald Trump reshaped the presidential race and injected uncertainty Sunday into plans for this week’s Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, as both parties recalibrated to address the concerns of a stunned and unsettled nation.
The shooting adds a new layer of darkness and unpredictability to an already extraordinary contest between President Biden and his predecessor.
The shooting has thrust Biden, who is still trying to recover from a stumbling late-June debate performance, into a delicate dual role as a president who has long warned against political violence and a candidate running against a man who has been targeted by that violence.

10 July
Biden says it’s Dem ‘elites’ who are alarmed about his debate. Voters in Wisconsin beg to differ.
There’s little consensus, however, that Biden dropping out of the presidential race would improve the party’s odds in November.
Pelosi dodges on Biden reelection bid: ‘I want him to do whatever he decides to do’
Questions on the president’s viability continue to percolate across Capitol Hill.

Heather Cox Richardson July 9, 2024
In this morning’s Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz observed that “much of political journalism is divorced from policy and the substance of politics.” It’s all about a horse race, he wrote, while complex questions, competing public interests, and the history of an issue get distilled to “whether it’s good or bad politically.”
Today, he noted, that horse-race coverage means that “[a]n election about whether the United States will continue its two and half century long experiment in representative democracy, where a convicted felon is running to return to the office he tried to seize through extralegal means, where the specter of a new form of fascism looms on the horizon is suddenly consumed by a political death watch for the only person at present standing between democracy and another Trump term in the White House.”

8-9 July
Democrats focus attacks on right-wing Project 2025 pushed by Trump allies
Biden’s campaign and allies are going to make what they characterize as the most extreme proposals from Trump allies a core element of their campaign. They have issued dozens of news releases mentioning the project — including five on Friday alone — and are asking surrogates, allies and others to talk about Project 2025 as often as they can.

Biden says he is staying in. Now he needs a winning campaign.
Biden should understand that he made himself dispensable.
By Jennifer Rubin
In a defiant letter to Democrats and a feisty appearance on “Morning Joe,” President Biden emphatically declared he is staying in the race. He pitted the “elites” who want him out against ordinary voters, whose support he still has. If he is determined to remain in the race he will need more than letters and call-in interviews. Where to begin?
Biden has a new outsider strategy. Can he pull it off?
The president’s new approach could work — if he can manage not to prove the “elites” right.
By Eugene Robinson
Those who have been demanding change in the way President Biden and his team are running this campaign got their wish Monday. For better or worse, after half a century as an insider, he’s positioning himself as an outsider. And he’s running not just against Donald Trump but also against Democratic Party “elites” and nervous commentators who say he’s too old.
… Especially on “Morning Joe,” Biden seemed energized by the idea of running as an insurgent against the Democratic Party establishment. Yes, he has been a card-carrying member of that establishment for decades, but up has been down in American politics for a while now.

1 July
Biden says public must block Trump if Supreme Court will not
Biden called the court’s immunity decision a “terrible disservice” to the nation.
(Politico) In a strikingly political speech from the White House, President Joe Biden blasted the Supreme Court ruling that granted broad presidential immunity, condemned Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 riot and urged voters to reject him.
Biden, making his first remarks from the White House since his faltering debate with Trump last week, called the Supreme Court decision a “terrible disservice” to the country that would make it extremely unlikely that the former president would go on trial for his role in the riot before the November election.
“The American people must decide whether Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy on Jan. 6 makes him unfit for public office in the highest office in the land. The American people must decide if Trump’s embrace of violence, to preserve his power, is acceptable,” he said. “Perhaps most importantly, the American people must decide if they want to trust the … presidency to Donald Trump.”

28-29 June
Trump’s Gish Gallop and Brandolini’s law
(Daily Kos) It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.
During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place, which is known online as Brandolini’s law. The technique wastes an opponent’s time and may cast doubt on the opponent’s debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.
See also How to Beat Trump in a Debate
(The Atlantic) Donald Trump is probably unaware that he’s an avid practitioner of a debating method known among philosophers and rhetoricians as the Gish Gallop. Its aim is simple: to defeat one’s opponent by burying them in a torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments. Trump owes much of his political success to this tactic—and to the fact that so few people know how to beat it.

Ian Bremmer on debate: A big loss for Biden
…we have just seen the first, maybe the last presidential debate of 2024. I was skeptical about the strategy from day one of Biden getting on stage with Trump. Biden has never been a great campaigner, doesn’t have a lot of discipline, and isn’t enormously entertaining. But they decided they needed to do it. And the rules benefited a normal politician. The microphones shut off, except for the person who was allowed to speak, and there was no live audience, and it was CNN. So the questions are going to be, at the very least, balance between the two. And, if there’s going to be a slant, it’ll be towards Biden and not towards Trump. And despite all of that, Biden got absolutely pasted.
And it’s not about his speaking points per se; there were some points that he made, if you just look at the transcript, that clearly was in his favor, I would say, on balance, on the economy, his command of the facts was stronger than that of Trump. I saw that, in terms of talk of inflation and jobs. I saw that in terms of China and the trade deficit with China, that’s actually narrowed as opposed to increased. Certainly, on abortion, I think that Biden would have landed more punches if you were only looking at the transcript. But no one is looking at the transcript. They’re looking at the performance. And the performance, Biden was abysmal.
Around the world, the debate renews questions about American stability.
In Europe and Asia, the back-and-forth between the blustering Mr. Trump and the faltering Mr. Biden set analysts fretting — and not just about who might win the election in November.
“That whole thing was an unmitigated disaster,” Simon Canning, a communications manager in Australia, wrote on social media. “A total shambles, from both the candidates and the moderators. America is in very, very deep trouble.”
Sergey Radchenko, a historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, posted, “This election is doing more to discredit American democracy than Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could ever hope to.”

22-27 June
What to Watch at the First Trump-Biden Debate
Both candidates have been eager for this rematch, with President Biden aiming to focus on their starkly different visions for America, and Donald Trump keen to attack his rival’s record.
How Trump’s criminal conviction will shape the first debate
When Joe Biden and Donald Trump meet on Thursday night in Atlanta for their first 2024 debate, they will be joined by a very large elephant in the debate hall: Trump’s newly minted status as a felon.
The issue is almost certain to come up during the 90-minute debate, which will be moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. The event will provide the candidates with their most prominent platform to date to address Trump’s criminal conviction in Manhattan last month — a legitimately new electoral issue in the annals of American presidential politics. It will be the first time that either Trump or Biden will confront the prospect of sustained questioning on the subject, as well as the first time that the two men will have the opportunity to speak directly to one another about it.
Make no mistake about it: There appear to be real political stakes here — particularly among the much-coveted independent and swing voters who may effectively decide the election — so the candidates’ approach to the subject will be worth watching closely. According to polling data recently conducted by Ipsos for POLITICO Magazine, for instance, 21 percent of independents said that Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him and that it would be an important factor in their vote.
Both candidates, however, have struggled to land on a coherent and accurate message about the conviction for voters, albeit in very different ways and for very different reasons.
Ian Bremmer: US presidential debate -More risk for Biden than Trump
I think there’s a lot more downside for Biden precisely because his age is perceived to be so much more of a problem. The State of the Union, he did very well. But this is a live-fire exercise. It’s not a set piece. And so in that regard, there’s more ways you can go badly. Having said that, if he’s able to stand his ground, and if Trump seems like he’s slobbing more, this is a lot more about how they appear than what they actually say.
Let’s see if a debate can change the trajectory of voter sentiment
Biden and Trump each look to bring down the other in the biggest event so far in a 2024 election that has remained tight from the start.
Analysis by Dan Balz, Chief correspondent
(WaPo) If there is to be a genuine turning point in the presidential campaign, it could come Thursday night in Atlanta, when President Biden and former president Donald Trump meet for the earliest and what could be one of the most consequential political debates in history.
For the better part of a year, the contest between Biden and Trump has been a flat line in the polls, with Trump holding the narrowest of advantages in national polls and a slightly larger advantage in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. This has made Democrats increasingly nervous. Why? Because Biden never trailed Trump in Washington Post-ABC News national polls in 2020.
Recently, there has been some movement in Biden’s direction. It has come since Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges in the New York trial involving hush money payments to an adult-film actress and the falsification of business records. The movement is incremental at best, leaving the two candidates still in a statistical dead heat nationally. The battleground states remain competitive, though Trump has had a narrow advantage in more of them than Biden this year.

Trump campaign seeks to head off convention revolt from its right flank
Aides scrambled to foil a plot to throw the nominating process into chaos as suspicions abound about potentially disloyal delegates.
(WaPo) Arizona delegates to the Republican National Convention gathered this month in a Phoenix suburb, showing up to get to know each other and learn about their duties.
Part of the presentation included a secret plan to throw the party’s nomination of Donald Trump for president into chaos.
The instructions did not come from “Never Trumpers” hoping to stop the party from nominating a felon when delegates gather in Milwaukee next month. They instead came from avowed “America First” believers hatching a challenge from the far right — a plot to release the delegates from their pledge to support Trump….

21 June
Biden settles on a message against Trump: He’s even worse than before
The president and his allies argue that Trump “snapped” and has become more self-obsessed, more dangerous and more extreme since his 2020 loss.

20 June
Biden and Trump will face each other at next week’s debate. They are preparing much differently
(PBS) The CNN debate will be full of firsts, with the potential to reshape the presidential race. Never before in the modern era have two presumptive nominees met on the debate stage so early in the general election season. Never before have two White House contenders faced off at such advanced ages, with widespread questions about their readiness.
President Joe Biden begins an intense period of private preparations Friday at Camp David for what may be the most consequential presidential debate in decades.
Biden heads to Camp David to prepare for 1st presidential debate with Trump
He aims to hold Trump accountable for comments on the trail, officials said.
(ABC news) Moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the debate will run for approximately 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. It is the first of two scheduled between the candidates — the second of which will be hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10.
In what will be the first real showdown between the two this election cycle, the face-off could potentially shift the narrative for both candidates and each is looking to attract undecided voters in what is expected to be a very tight race.

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Getty Images/Reuters

20 June
Three potential wild cards for a razor-close Biden-Trump election
With the 2024 race seemingly frozen and super-close, let’s consider some scenarios.
(WaPo) The Trump-Biden rematch is too close (40.8 percent to 40.3 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average on Wednesday) to handicap with confidence, and too frozen (Trump’s barely statistically significant lead has held for months) to deliver much horse-race drama. But if the candidates remain as neck-and-neck as they currently appear, some unexpected things could happen after the polls close in November. Three wild-card outcomes deserve closer consideration.
The first is the possibility that Trump ekes out the most votes — and loses the presidency.
Yes, it’s unlikely. …if Trump did end up coming up short in electoral votes despite a strong popular-vote performance, it would likely be because he overperformed in solidly Democratic states without actually winning them. …
Trump wins the presidency but Democrats hold the Senate.
States usually vote for the same party for senator and president. But as the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter has pointed out, there is a surprising divergence between presidential and Senate polling this cycle. … That would make for an extraordinary second Trump term. Trump’s Cabinet picks would be at the mercy of the Democratic Party, and few if any federal judges could be confirmed.
an electoral college tie, throwing the election to the House of Representatives.
One route to a 269-269 electoral college split would be Trump winning back Pennsylvania and Michigan from Biden’s 2020 column and the map otherwise staying the same.
The House would then break the tie as the 12th Amendment requires. But that doesn’t mean the majority party in the House would necessarily get its way. …