Hello Darkness My Old Friend

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

 Annie Gowen at WP:

For the third time in a week, former president Donald Trump repeated his charge that Democrats allied against him are “the enemy from within” in an interview with Fox News during which he called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “a beautiful thing.”

Trump, in an interview with “Media Buzz” that aired Sunday, referred to Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, as “bad people” who threaten democracy. Interviewer Howard Kurtz asked, “Are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?”

Trump responded, “Excuse me, that’s what they’re using on me.”

In a separate Fox News interview that aired on Oct. 13, Trump said that his foes could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard, or, “if really necessary, by the military.” He repeated the line about the “enemy from within” days later during a Fox News town hall event.

“You call Americans who don’t support you ‘the enemy within.’ That’s a pretty ominous phrase to use about other Americans,” Kurtz noted.

“I think that’s accurate,” Trump replied, before referencing Pelosi and Schiff, two outspoken Trump critics.

“These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people,” the former president said. “But when you look at shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are to me the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”

 Michael M. Grynbaum and David McCabe at NYT:

“CBS should lose its license,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” He has repeated his demands in speeches and in interviews, echoing his earlier calls for ABC’s license to be “terminated” because of his displeasure with how the network handled his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump ratcheted up his threats against CBS. “We’re going to subpoena their records,” he told Fox News in an interview, repeating his claim that the network’s edit of Ms. Harris’s recent appearance on “60 Minutes” was misleading. Asked if revoking a broadcast license was a “drastic punishment,” Mr. Trump did not answer directly, instead lobbing a string of insults at Ms. Harris, whom he called “incompetent” and “a Marxist."

PRRI:

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to support their candidate assuming office by force after an election loss.

• Nearly one in five Republicans (19%), including 23% of Republicans who hold a favorable view of Trump, say that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
• About one in ten Democrats (12%), including 12% of Democrats who hold a favorable view of Harris, say that if Harris loses the election, she should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
• Nearly half of Americans (49%) agree that there is a real danger that Trump will use the presidency to become a dictator, compared to only 28% who hold similar concerns about Harris.

Although most Americans reject political violence, Republicans remain more likely than Democrats to support potential political violence.

• Nearly half of Americans (45%) believe Republicans are determined to stay in power, even if that means resorting to political violence, compared with about one-third (35%) who think the same about Democrats.
• Nearly three in ten Republicans (29%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 16% of independents and 8% of Democrats.
• Republicans are twice as likely (27%) as independents (14%) or Democrats (12%) to agree that armed everyday citizens should be poll watchers, even if this makes some voters uncomfortable.
• While most Americans (80%) disagree that “if the 2024 presidential election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday Americans will need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions,” Republicans (22%) are more likely to agree than independents (14%) or Democrats (12%).

Views on whether Trump broke the law trying to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, whether the election was stolen from Trump, and whether those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection are being held hostage by the government are strongly shaped by partisanship and news viewership.

• A slim majority of Americans (53%) agree it is likely that Trump broke the law to try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, though just 17% of Republicans agree. Americans who most trust Fox News (12%) or far-right news outlets (4%) are the least likely to believe Trump broke the law to stay in power after losing the election.
• More than six in ten Republicans (62%), compared with 27% of independents and 4% of Democrats, believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Americans who most trust far-right TV news outlets (84%) and Fox News (64%) are the most likely to agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
• Only one in four Americans (25%) agree with Trump’s frequent claim that “the people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol are really patriots who are being held hostage by the government.” Republicans (46%) are more than twice as likely as independents (20%) and about seven times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree with this statement.

 

Trump and Disinhibition

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.

One thing is certain about the current campaign:  Trump isn't getting any younger.  He is sundowning.

Zac Anderson David Jackson Karen Weintraub USA TODAY

Donald Trump's repeated gaffes, non sequiturs, and plain odd behavior have opened the door to questions from opponents about the 78-year-old candidate's mental and physical fitness.

From bopping to the beat of his music playlist for nearly 40 minutes at a recent swing state town hall to blaming Ukraine for Russia's invasion, to riffing on locker room gossip about a pro golfer's anatomy, Trump is providing plenty of fodder for rivals who've declared him "unhinged" and worse.

As Republicans did to 81-year-old President Joe Biden earlier this year, Democrats including horror novelist Stephen King and former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are seizing every opportunity to bash Trump − and it's a target-rich environment.

Trump goes on long confused ramble: “Arnold Palmer is all man. I mean no disrespect to women, I love women, but he was all man. When he took showers with the other pros they came out saying ‘Oh my God.’ I had to say it... I had to tell you the shower part because it’s true” pic.twitter.com/Xq8BDbqXJU

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 19, 2024

Rolling Stone:

Moving on from that endowment to him addressing his competitor, who is well-endowed financially in comparison to Trump’s campaign (Harris raised $1 billion in the less than three months she’s been a candidate, more than Trump has finagled in a year of campaigning), Trump hit another low when referring to her on Saturday. While he has been plenty derogatory to Harris since she entered the candidacy, having called her “retarded” and also “mentally disabled” during recent speeches, this time he resorted to just dropping the s-bomb.

“So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore,” he told attendees on Saturday while they cheered. “We can’t stand you. You’re a shit vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president, Kamala. You’re fired. Get the hell out of here.”

For those of us who have lived with loved ones with dementia, this story is especially frightening because what is called “disinhibition” is often an early symptom.
Maybe Trump can no longer stop himself from saying these things in public.https://t.co/OEhzhh8AhV via @NYTimes

— Richard Tofel (@dicktofel) October 20, 2024

Ipsos, September 22, 2020:

According to a recent online survey of 1,217 Americans conducted by Ipsos on behalf MDVIP, a national network of primary care doctors who focus on delivering personalized, patient-centered medicine and preventive care, finds that one-third of Americans have a close relative who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia (31%). The study also finds that two-thirds of Americans are concerned about their risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (67%), and that most are interested in mitigating this risk (80%). l

Musk Schemes

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Rick Hasen:

Hugo Lowell: “Elon Musk says on stage at a town hall that America PAC will be awarding $1 million every day until the election to a registered Pennsylvania voter who has signed his petition. Musk awarded the first $1 million this evening to someone at the town hall, bringing the guy onto the stage and handing him a jumbo check, lotto-style. Musk is essentially incentivizing likely Trump voters in PA to register to vote: Petition is to support for 1A and 2A, so basically R voters. But they also have to be registered to vote, so if they weren’t already, they would do it now.”

Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)

Wow this is shady. Elon Musk is funding a PAC that’s running two ads against Kamala Harris with messages that directly contradict each other.

The opposing messages are microtargeted to specific groups of voters, so each see one ad, but neither see both. pic.twitter.com/YTahGxzQYq

— Max Flugrath🗳️ (@MaxFlugrath) October 19, 2024

Mercenary Door Knockers

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.  Trump is outsourcing his ground game.

Don the Con is getting conned.

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim they visited a home – could present a serious setback to Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days to an election that increasingly appears set to be determined by turnout.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared to volunteers or campaign staff​.

 Former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA):

Mercenary door knockers - never goes well. High cost, low return. Don’t believe in your candidate or cause. Consultants get $$$ and donors get had. https://t.co/UKCm5KLGyw

— Barbara Comstock (@BarbaraComstock) October 19, 2024

Betting Markets and a Crypto Mirage

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses election predictions.

 Alexander Osipovich at WSJ:

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning on Friday, while Harris’s chances were 40%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.
Polymarket presidential-election odds“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.

The big bets on Trump aren’t necessarily nefarious. Some observers have suggested that they were simply placed by a large bettor convinced that Trump will win and looking for a big payday. Others, however, see the bets as an influence campaign designed to fuel social-media buzz for the former president.

Dark Money Disinformation

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Anna Massoglia at Open Secrets:

An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is actually run by a dark money network supporting former President Donald Trump.

Building America’s Future, the dark money group at the helm of the network, has steered money to a constellation of groups and initiatives boosting Trump’s agenda and spreading messaging aimed at chipping away voters from Harris. The dark money group reportedly received over $100 million in funding from billionaire Elon Musk, along with other donors, the New York Times recently reported.

The newest effort to benefit from their largesse is Progress 2028. Building America’s Future registered to use Progress 2028 as a fictitious name on Sept. 23 and the website was created three days later, OpenSecrets’ analysis of corporate filings and DNS records found.

The Progress 2028 site appears to be created by IMGE LLC, a firm run by Republican political operatives that the New York Times described as the “hidden hand” behind Building America’s Future, and a page on the Progress 2028 site includes the firm’s sizzle reel.

IMGE LLC has also done work for Elon Musk’s America PAC and several other Republican political committees, including a super PAC funded by America’s Future Fund named Future Coalition PAC, as first pointed out by Brendan Fischer, Deputy Executive Director of Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.

The Progress 2028 manifesto draws clear parallels to Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for restructuring the executive branch under the next Republican administration. The Project 2025 blueprint was developed by the Heritage Foundation and written by many conservatives who worked in or with Trump’s administration. Project 2025 has drawn intense criticism, and the former president has said it does not reflect his own priorities should he return to the White House.

Some of the policies listed in Progress 2028 highlight disproven and misleading claims about Harris’ positions. Policies listed include “Empowering Undocumented Immigrants, Building Our Future” and “Expanding Medicaid to Undocumented Immigrants.”

Abortion on the Ballot

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech at The Hill:

Voters in 10 states will decide this November whether to adopt constitutional amendments that could shape the future of abortion access in their states.

Most of the measures seek to protect abortion access until fetal viability, or the point at which a fetus could survive outside of the uterus, which typically comes around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Adam Edelman and Bridget Bowman at NBC:

Constitutional amendments to expand or protect abortion access will be put in the hands of voters this fall in 10 states, including the presidential battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada and the Senate battlegrounds of Montana and Florida.

Polls show that the ballot measures are broadly popular in many of the states, findings that are in line with the success similar initiatives have had in other areas of the county following the backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

But the surveys also reveal a noticeable gap in support between the pro-abortion-rights amendments and the Democratic presidential and Senate candidates who are campaigning on a pro-abortion-rights platform.

With the future of abortion access appearing directly on the ballot, some voters — particularly Republicans and independents — have effectively divorced the issue from the candidates in the other races they will decide on.

Money in 2024 Congressional Elections

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Paul Kane, Theodoric Meyer, and Clara Ence Morse at WP:

Powered by small-dollar donors, Democrats have seized control of the fundraising game in the battle for the House and the Senate, leaving Republicans at a disadvantage — and increasingly reliant on a small clutch of mega-rich donors.

In 25 of the 26 most competitive House races, the Democratic candidate raised more than the Republican in the third quarter, including 16 races in which the Democrat raised at least double their GOP candidate, according to a Washington Post analysis of reports filed Tuesday to the Federal Election Commission.

In the Senate, Republican candidates trailed their opponent in all 11 of the most competitive races. In eight of those, the Democratic campaign more that doubled the financial haul of the GOP campaign, including three that tripled their margin.

...

Democrats have learned that massive fundraising does not guarantee victory. In 2020, three of their Senate candidates set fundraising records in Kentucky, Maine and South Carolina, about $300 million combined, and all three lost by big margins.

But GOP leaders have been concerned about their cash problems for several years. Rep. Richard Hudson (N.C.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has issued public and private warnings about the cash disadvantage for GOP candidates.

... 

To make up for this disparity, Republicans have relied on mega-rich donors who write seven- and eight-figure checks to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP super PAC, and the Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP super PAC.

Violence and Threats

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

Meryl Kornfield at WP:

Former president Donald Trump did not directly respond to a question about whether he would respect and encourage a peaceful transfer of power after the election, and he falsely claimed that “you had a peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 when a violent mob assaulted the U.S. Capitol.

Speaking to an audience of mostly business people at the Economic Club in Chicago, Trump was interviewed by Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait about economic policies, but toward the end of the hour-long question-and-answer session, he took issue with Micklethwait’s questioning on politics and democracy.

“It was love and peace,” Trump said of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in which Trump supporters trying to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden’s win assaulted 140 police officers, damaged the Capitol and destroyed government property

Lisa Lerer and Michael Gold at NYT:

With three weeks left before Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump is pushing to the forefront of his campaign a menacing political threat: that he would use the power of the presidency to crush those who disagree with him.

In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Mr. Trump framed Democrats as a pernicious “enemy from within” that would cause chaos on Election Day that he speculated the National Guard might need to handle.

A day later, he closed his remarks to a crowd at what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a stark message about his political opponents.

“They are so bad and frankly, they’re evil,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

And on Tuesday, he once again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power when pressed by an interviewer at an economic forum in Chicago.

With early voting underway in key battlegrounds, the race for the White House is moving toward Election Day in an extraordinary and sobering fashion. Mr. Trump has long flirted with, if not openly endorsed, anti-democratic tendencies with his continued refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, embrace of conspiracy theories of large-scale voter fraud and accusations that the justice system is being weaponized against him. He has praised leaders including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary for being authoritarian strongmen.

But never before has a presidential nominee — let alone a former president — openly suggested turning the military on American citizens simply because they oppose his candidacy. As he escalates his threats of political retribution, Mr. Trump is offering voters the choice of a very different, and far less democratic, form of American government.

Kim Wehle at The Bulwark:

REGARDLESS OF WHETHER DONALD J. TRUMP is ever held accountable for January 6th—a prospect, always uncertain, made even more tenuous by the Supreme Court’s ruling creating immunity for presidential crimes—that dark day’s legacy endures within the worsening culture of political violence in America. With less than a month to go before the 2024 election, fear among election workers is palpable. Statistics show that threats to local election officials are surging, up 73 percent since the same time in 2022. Election officials are preparing with things like panic buttons, bulletproof glass, and sheriff’s deputies at every polling place, while election-worker turnover has reached historic highs.

 

Harris: Woman, Asian, Black, Christian

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020. Our next book will discuss the extraordinary fight between an elderly white ex-president and a younger Black/Asian woman. 

Karthick Ramakrishnan and Sara Sadhwani

Recent data released by AAPI Data and Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) indicate that gender representation plays a stronger role than racial representation in shaping voter support for her candidacy. The survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in September asked respondents, “Thinking specifically about Kamala Harris, how important to you are the following aspects of her identity?” providing choices that included “her identity as an African American,” “her identity as an Asian Indian or South Asian,” “her identity as a woman,” and “her age.”

Given the amount of news coverage and social media engagement around Harris’s racial identity as both Indian and Black, Asian American voters would be expected to give the highest importance to her Indian and South Asian heritage and her African American identities, with gender and age identities far behind. The survey results showed the opposite (see figure below).

The figure above, from the 2024 AAPI Voter Survey, reveals a significant gender gap among AAPI voters in regard to the importance of Harris’ gender identity

Well over a third of Asian American voters (38%) say that Harris’ identity as a woman is “extremely important” or “very important” to them, with significantly smaller proportions indicating the same about her racial identities as Indian/South Asian (25%) and as an African American (24%) or about her age (25%). The findings were not statistically different among Indian American voters, who arguably share even closer ethnic affinity to Harris.

Notably, the “gender boost” in identity representation was driven entirely by the opinions of Asian American women. About a half (49%) of Asian American women said that Harris’s gender was important to them, nearly double the proportion among Asian American men (25%). This gender gap was also noticeable in questions about the importance of having more elected representatives who are women (56% of Asian American women said that this was extremely important or very important to them, when compared to 36% of Asian American men), and about their intention to vote for Harris (72% among Asian American women and 59% among Asian American men).

Kamala Harris: “I grew up in the Black church. I grew up attending 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California.”

Rev. Solomon Kinloch, Jr: “That’s church.”

Harris: “My pastor is Amos C. Brown of Third Baptist Church.”

Charlamagne: “God is good.”

Harris: “All the time.” pic.twitter.com/t1X71KId9f

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 15, 2024

Whether they're religious or not, I believe people want a leader who is driven by compassion not cruelty, one whose values are rooted in hope and not fear, whose moral convictions yield inclusion and not separation.https://t.co/sj872MkZKo pic.twitter.com/IixEWa3EDv

— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) October 16, 2024

Trump Fascism

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

Over the past week, Donald Trump has been on a fascist romp. At rallies in Colorado and California, he amped up his usual rants, and added a rancid grace note by suggesting that a woman heckler should “get the hell knocked out of her” by her mother after she gets back home. But on Sunday morning, he outdid himself in an interview on Fox News, by saying that “the enemy within”—Americans he described as “radical left lunatics,” including Representative Adam Schiff of California, whom he mentioned by name—are more dangerous than Russia or China, and could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard or the U.S. military.

This wasn’t the first time Trump suggested using America’s armed forces against its own people: As president, he thought of the military as his personal guard and regularly fantasized about commanding “his generals” to crush dissent, which is one reason former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley reportedly told Bob Woodward that he sees Trump as “fascist to his core.”

Trump Mental Acuity

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.

One thing is certain about the current campaign:  Trump isn't getting any younger.  He is sundowning.

Marianne LeVine at WP:

The town hall, moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), began with questions from preselected attendees for the former president. Donald Trump offered meandering answers on how he would address housing affordability and help small businesses. But it took a sudden turn after two attendees required medical attention.

And so Trump, after jokingly asking the crowd whether “anybody else would like to faint,” took a different approach.

“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said.

For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist.

Harris is now going directly at Trump's mental acuity.

 

Hope he's okay. https://t.co/WGhGteFpjm

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 15, 2024

Tester and the Democrats' Rural Retreat

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Carl Hulse at NYT:

Just 20 years ago, two Democratic senators represented both North Dakota and South Dakota — including the party’s Senate leader. Each state also boasted a Democratic House member. Nebraska had a Democratic senator and only a few years earlier had two. Today, those states are represented in Congress entirely by Republicans.

...

“Democrats are increasingly perceived as elite and focused almost exclusively on urban matters,” said Tom Daschle, a former South Dakota senator who served as both minority and majority leader before being narrowly defeated in 2004. “Rarely do national Democratic candidates spend time in rural America, and that ‘flyover’ perception continues to increase the perception of this divide.”

The disconnect is as much cultural as political.

“These are interior states, and a lot of people in the interior don’t trust the elites on the coasts,” said Mr. Baucus, who served as the U.S. ambassador to China after leaving the Senate. “They feel kind of put upon and that nobody cares.”

...

Then there’s the fact that Mr. Tester is trying to win a fourth term in a state that has moved sharply to the right. Unlike other rural states, Montana’s evolution has been fueled not by an exodus of voters, but by a steady influx of new conservative residents who are much more aligned with the MAGA movement. Democrats worry that these voters are unflinching Republicans who are strongly supportive of Mr. Trump and are not familiar with or interested in Mr. Tester’s long history in the state or Montana’s tradition of political independence.

“They don’t know Jon, and they are Republicans,” Mr. Baucus said.

Harris and Trump GOTV

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.  Trump is outsourcing his ground game.

Lisa Lerer, Julie Bosman, Kellen Browning, Maya King and Jonathan Weisman at NYT:

In the final weeks of the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump are staking their chances on two radically different theories of how to win: one tried-and-true, the other untested in modern presidential campaigns.

Ms. Harris’s team is running an expansive version of the type of field operation that has dominated politics for decades, deploying flotillas of paid staff members to organize and turn out every vote they can find. Mr. Trump’s campaign is going after a smaller universe of less frequent voters while relying on well-funded but inexperienced outside groups to reach a broader swath.

Interviews with more than four dozen voters, activists, campaign aides and officials in four pivotal counties — Erie County, Pa., Kenosha County, Wis., Maricopa County, Ariz., and Cobb County, Ga. — reveal a diffuse, at times unwieldy Republican effort that has raised questions from party operatives about effectiveness in the face of the more tightly structured Harris campaign operation. Democrats, in many places, are outpacing Republicans in terms of paid staff and doors knocked, and are counting on that local presence to break through a fractured media environment and to reach voters who want to tune out politics altogether.

“The national discourse kind of falls on deaf ears if it doesn’t feel real and localized,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director. “Ultimately you’re trying to have a cohesive conversation with a voter across many modes to connect the dots.”

All told, the number of voters deciding the 2024 election could most likely fit in, and perhaps not even fill, a college football stadium. Across the seven battleground states, where the contests are in a dead heat, every ballot counts.

With 2,500 staff members located in 353 offices, the Harris campaign is working to convert the strongest backers into volunteers and to ensure that sporadic but supportive voters cast a ballot, all while winning over independents and moderate Republicans. Last week, the campaign said, it knocked on over 600,000 doors and made over three million calls through 63,000 volunteer shifts.

Mr. Trump’s team is largely operating under the assumption that Republicans who voted for Trump in previous elections will once again back him in large numbers. His campaign is focusing on a smaller number of infrequent voters who his team believes will back Mr. Trump if energized to vote. The campaign says it has “hundreds of paid staff” and over 300 offices across the battleground states. A top Republican strategist who spoke to campaign leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the operations, said the campaign was training 40,000 volunteers, called “Trump Force 47 captains,” who were each charged with mobilizing 25 of these less likely voters — for a total reach of 1 million voters.

Trump's Language Gets Slimier

Our latest book is Divided We Stand The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 race.  Trump has a history of stoking racism, threatening his opponents, and despising people with disabilities.

Myah Ward at Politico:

Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.

Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”

...

His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

Blanca Begert at LAT:

Donald Trump cast California as a “Paradise Lost,” at a rally in the Coachella Valley Saturday, blaming Kamala Harris for turning the state into what he described as a hellscape flooded with murderous gangs.

“She’s imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World,” Trump said, donning a red Make America Great Again hat as the 100 degree desert sun beat down on the crowd.

The messaging tracked with the increasingly xenophobic and racist rhetoric he has directed against immigrants who he depicts as criminals.

...

He vowed to force Newsom to give California farmers more water and repeated a threat to withhold federal funding for wildfires if the governor didn’t open the spigots.

“We’ll force it down his throat and we’ll say, “Gavin if you don’t do it, we won’t give you any of that fire money for all the forest fires.”

Newsom responded with an X post, saying Trump showed “us exactly who he is—threatening life saving disaster aid to achieve his political goals.”

“This man is sick,” Newsom wrote.

 Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

Donald J. Trump took his seat at the dining table in his triplex penthouse apartment atop Trump Tower on the last Sunday in September, alongside some of the most sought-after and wealthiest figures in the Republican Party.

...

He disparaged Vice President Kamala Harris as “retarded.” He complained about the number of Jews still backing Ms. Harris, saying they needed their heads examined for not supporting him despite everything he had done for the state of Israel.

House Battlegrounds

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Michael Blood at AP:

California has 52 House seats — more than any other state — and 10 are considered in play. About half of those are viewed as toss-ups. Democrats dominate California, holding every statewide office and outnumbering registered Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin statewide. But Republicans retain pockets of strength and picked up four House seats in 2020.

The most competitive contests are concentrated in Republican-held districts that were carried by Joe Biden in 2020. Overall, Republicans hold just 12 of the state’s House seats.

Tony Aiello at CBS:

A high-stakes battle over the November ballot is playing out in New York City's northern suburbs, and a judge's decision could help decide which party controls Congress next year. It involves the Working Families Party line in the 17th Congressional District. Candidates in New York often run on multiple party lines. Democrat Mondaire Jones competed in the Working Families Party primary in June, and shockingly, he lost. Now, his supporters are asking a judge to kick the winner – an unknown named Anthony Frascone – off the ballot.

Frascone is not campaigning and isn't attending the court hearings. "They're running a shill campaign ... to influence the outcome by diluting the vote," said attorney Keith Corbett. "They're engaged in a subversion of taking away the rights of voters." Corbett says Frascone, a former Republican, is running to siphon votes away from Jones, who is locked in a tight race with Republican Mike Lawler to represent the 17th Congressional District, which includes all of Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess.

...

This week, Emerson College released a poll showing Mike Lawler with 45%, Mondaire Jones with 44%, and Anthony Frascone with 3% – obviously enough to influence the outcome. Lawyers for several counties say Frascone's primary victory was duly certified and it's too late to change the ballot since thousands have already been mailed.

Mychael Schnell at The Hill:

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the House Democrats’ campaign chief, is defending vulnerable lawmakers who have kept their distance from Vice President Harris while campaigning.

Speaking to The Hill during an interview in New York City on Wednesday, DelBene — the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — said members in battleground districts should run their races in ways that cater to their voters, even if it breaks from the “national landscape.”

“In swing districts, and when we talk about, kind of our world, the battleground races, are these districts that were drawn to be divided. They’re purple. And so I think all of them are focused on what their communities want to see, which is who’s going to be an authentic leader for our district; who’s gonna be our voice in Congress,” DelBene said.

“And the reason that they are all elected right now is because they have been independent, authentic voices for their districts, and they’re gonna continue to do that,” she continued. “But it’s about making sure people understand where they stand, what their issues are. There’s the national landscape but they’re representing their districts, their voices for their districts.”

The comments were in response to a question about a handful of House Democrats who have not formally endorsed Harris in her bid for the White House, including Reps. Jared Golden (Maine), Mary Peltola (Alaska) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) — all of whom represent districts former President Trump won in 2020.

Loophole!

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Ally Mutnick at al. at Politico:

Senate Republicans are preparing to significantly escalate their plans to exploit a campaign-finance loophole that will allow them to save millions of dollars on TV advertising, irking Democrats who hoped federal regulators would block the GOP plan.

Republicans in late July began quietly piloting their new strategy: running campaign ads for a candidate, framed as a fundraising plea, to get cheaper ad rates and avoid awkward content restrictions. Democrats, furious at what they saw as the crossing of ethical and legal lines, asked the Federal Election Commission to weigh in.

At a contentious meeting Thursday, the agency deadlocked 3-3 on whether these joint fundraising ads should be permitted — effectively allowing the practice to continue.

With no restrictions imposed, Republicans, who have been facing a deep cash disparity with Democrats, are now preparing to turn what was a smaller-scale effort into a key component of their closing TV ad strategy.

Game of Slivers: Trump's Band Bros, Harris's Republicans, and Losing By Less

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020.ections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Political scientists tend to downplay the role of campaign organization in presidential races, saying that it only matters at the margins.

But in a tight race, the margins are everything.

 Alex Isenstadt at Politico:

Donald Trump is betting that support from young men will help propel him to the White House. And he’s getting an assist from a crew of pro-Trump millennial pranksters who are capitalizing on college football tailgates, Tinder and even the “Hawk Tuah Girl” podcast.

The Nelk Boys, digital content creators and hosts of the popular “Full Send” podcast, are mounting a multi-million-dollar voter registration push aimed at turning out young men. They plan to sign up voters at a “Send the Vote” music festival later this month that will feature a performance by pro-Trump rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and at a pair of Penn State football games.

James Rickerton at Newsweek:

The proportion of self-identified Republicans who say they plan to vote for Kamala Harris in November has nearly doubled over the past month according to a major new survey from The New York Times/Siena College.

It found nine percent of likely voters who describe themselves as Republican plan to back the Democratic candidate in November, up from five percent in the last New York Times/Siena College poll a month earlier. By contrast just three percent of Democratic identifying voters said they will vote for Donald Trump, while 96 percent said they support Harris.

A number of prominent Republicans have said they will vote for Harris over Trump, including former vice president Dick Cheney, who in September said: "As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for vice president Kamala Harris."

Ari Shapiro et al. at NPR:

In many ways, “lose by less” has become the key term in the presidential campaign, according to Anthony Chergosky, who teaches political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

“Because Wisconsin elections are so competitive and so closely decided, the parties understand that any little gain anywhere could make the difference,” he said.

In Walworth County, Holly said the Wisconsin Democrats have a specific goal.

“I think the state figured out if we can pull 42%, then the state is good … everything we do here helps,” she said.

In 2020, President Biden won Wisconsin by just over 20,000 votes. Holly said that’s because of the work of places like the Elkhorn Democrats’ office.

  Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell at WP:

Vice President Kamala Harris is not going to win Somerset County, Pa.

She’s not even going to come close.

Former president Donald Trump carried this rural county about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh by 55 points in 2016, when he won Pennsylvania. He did even better there in 2020, despite losing the state to Joe Biden.

But Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) traveled to Somerset County anyway late last month to rally local Democrats. It’s one of more than a half-dozen events Fetterman has headlined across Pennsylvania in recent weeks in counties that Trump won by at least 20 points in 2020, including a stop last week in York County with Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The stops align with the Harris campaign’s strategy to win Pennsylvania in part by running a little stronger in rural Republican strongholds than Biden in 2020 — a message that Fetterman echoed at a Somerset County Democratic Party fundraising dinner.

“It’s not about the color on the map,” Fetterman told more than 120 Democrats gathered in a century-old red barn on a Saturday evening a few miles from the field where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. “It’s about the margins in these counties.”

Harris’s strategy for cutting into Trump’s margins is built around out-organizing his campaign

The Harris campaign says it has 50 offices across Pennsylvania, including 16 in counties that Trump won by double-digits in 2020.