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“Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain in a tight contest across seven battleground states with just [under] two weeks until the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, a Washington Post/Schar School opinion poll showed on Monday…
“Monday's findings from the Post and George Mason Univeristy's Schar School of Policy and Government echoed other recent polls that found a neck and neck race in the seven battleground states ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.” Reuters
The left urges Harris to focus on bread and butter issues.
“The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) recently tested a variety of political messages on voters in Pennsylvania… [and] found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested…
“Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the ‘democratic threat’ message [highlighting Trump’s threat to democracy]… Of the seven messages we tested, each relating to a major theme of the Harris campaign, the ‘democratic threat’ message polled dead last. It was the least popular message relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And it was the least popular message among the working-class constituencies Harris and the Democrats need most…
“The exact opposite is true for the ‘strong populist’ message we tested. This message, which combined progressive economic policy suggestions with a strong condemnation of ‘billionaires’, ‘big corporations’ and the ‘politicians in Washington who serve them’, tested best with blue-collar workers, service and clerical workers and professionals.”
Dustin Guastella, The Guardian
“I do think that Democrats right now may be misframing January 6 because when they cast it as a future-of-democracy issue, it resonates with Democrats but falls flat with independents, who don’t believe Trump represents this threat of backsliding into authoritarianism…
“What independents do believe is that Trump generally sows chaos and could sow instability, and I think the issue has much more potency for Harris as a law-and-order issue — specifically, Trump’s pledge to pardon rioters who attacked police officers. Yet that was absent from Walz’s line of questioning in the VP debate, and it hasn’t been prominent in Harris’s messaging. So I’ll be watching to see whether that becomes more of an element in the final weeks.”
Dave Wasserman, New York Magazine
“It’s interesting that we have breaking news about Mitch McConnell’s awareness of Trump’s low character, but I think the most important thing for Americans to know is that… McConnell and Trump worked together to overturn Roe, to raise the deficit with tax breaks for the rich, and to try to take health insurance away from millions of working families — a gambit they will try again if they win in November…
“Getting TV and newspapers to say ‘TRUMP IS A REALLY BAD GUY’ louder is unlikely to make a difference. What does make a difference is if voters’ general sense is that abortion rights and health care are at stake, and that Democrats generally prioritize the economic interests of the middle class over those of the rich.”
Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring
The right is optimistic about Trump’s chances.
The right is optimistic about Trump’s chances.
“Democrats have now fallen into a Styronesque depression, moaning disconsolately about how all of this is the media’s fault, for lack of anyone else to plausibly blame until the race is officially over… Behind all of this lies the palpable frustration among Harris’s partisans at her inability to ever capitalize on the massive amounts of friendly earned media she has been given by exuding even the slightest hint of electoral charisma…
“Her campaign has racked up all the usual endorsements, is employing every available surrogate, and is given the friendliest of venues to display her wares, but the initial amphetamine rush of July and August proved incapable of generating authentic excitement — for at its center lies a black hole of non-personality in Harris herself. Whatever Trump’s many, many character flaws, he nevertheless has a character to exude, at the very least.”
Jeffrey Blehar, National Review
“I would have preferred a different candidate, or a more modest Trump for that matter. But Trump is the right man for the job at the right time. That is why mavericks--people who care more about results than vibes--are flocking to Trump. That Elon Musk--whose sophomoric sense of humor is as ‘classless’ as Trump's boastfulness--has allied himself with Trump says quite a bit…
“The man who will get us to Mars before NASA gets us to the moon is backing Trump because he knows that a classy decline is still a decline and that progress and brashness often travel hand in hand. It was not the soft-handed, tweed-wearing college professors who settled the West. It was hard men doing hard things, with hardy wives who braved the wilds…
“It is often the crass and the hardy who push humanity forward. It is General Pattons who win wars on the battlefield. MacArthur was crass and egotistical, and you wouldn't want a world only populated by such people. But society needs them. Especially when it is in trouble. And America is in trouble.”
David Strom, Hot Air
“She put off doing major interviews as long as she could, for fear they’d lead to exactly what everyone saw in her Fox News appearance last week. The vice president didn’t want to be asked about her record because it’s atrocious: Month-on-month inflation peaked above 9% midway through the Biden-Harris years. She’s a border czar presiding over a broken border, while in foreign policy Harris and Biden have delivered only humiliation and horror from Afghanistan to Ukraine and the Middle East…
“Her only hope is to run as an outsider to her own administration. The Republicans she’s using to weave the illusion that she’s something other than a typical liberal, however, are the farthest thing from outsiders: Indeed, that’s why they’re endorsing her — they’re insiders angry about Trump’s war on the political establishment… The Harris campaign is the last redoubt for the old guard in both parties, Cheney Republicans and Biden-Harris Democrats alike.”
Daniel McCarthy, New York Post
