David R Lurie/”Public Notice” on Substack:
Kamala Harris is cutting off Trump’s political oxygen
She's also not taking the bait from the press.
As last Thursday’s CNN interview of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made clear, she’s resolutely unwilling to let the press — or Trump himself — set the agenda for her presidential campaign. In the process, she’s managed to blunt the tools Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents: drawing them into responding to his schoolyard slights, and turning the media’s pursuit of purportedly “legitimate” questions about his opponents — many of them formulated by GOP partisans — into political weapons.
Harris’s refusal to engage with Trump on his terms represents a break from how Democrats traditionally have dealt with him. In related news, her favorables continue to rise while an obviously flustered Trump flails at ghosts and searches in vain for a smear campaign that will allow him to regain the initiative.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
The ugly truth we’re missing on Trump, Arlington
The people closest to Trump allegedly shoved and verbally abused a woman — because that’s what they do.
And when the woman complained in a formal statement to the U.S. Army, Team Trump gaslit her by accusing her of being a psycho — seemingly part of an intimidation campaign which was meant to scare the accuser from pressing criminal charges.
This blatantly sexist bullying of the Arlington employee has worked — just as it’s worked so many times for Trump himself during his decades-long trail of sexual abuse and harassment allegations, and just as violence and gross mistreatment of women hasn’t thwarted the careers of Trump’s male-dominated inner circle.
We shouldn’t let the other unseemly aspects of Trump’s behavior at one of America’s most sacred places obscure the fact that rank misogyny is the lifeblood of this authoritarian crusade to retake the White House, and that contempt for women saturates everything they do. It runs the gamut from taking away reproductive rights and ridiculing any female who doesn’t become a “tradwife,” to the inner circle’s 100% tolerance policies toward sexual harassment, to the ultimate goal of creating doubts that any woman — first Hillary Clinton, now Kamala Harris — is fit to lead the United States.
One candidate is on her way to win.
One candidate is on his way to lose. Polls are tight but you can smell and taste it from the campaigns,
So maybe the polls are off a bit (heresy, I know). Maybe we need a few more quality polls.
But there is something in the way campaigns act.
POLITICO:
Harris and Trump brace for final sprint in ‘snap election’
The race is not only tight nationally, but in a broader range of states than before.
Trump, who has yet to find an attack on Harris that sticks, enters next week’s head-to-head debate in a far less comfortable position than when he left the stage after pummeling Biden on June 27. It may be his best remaining opportunity to blunt his opponent’s momentum and change the trajectory of the race. And a misstep by Harris on that stage — or any other — could do just that.
“She has had as good of a first five weeks or last five weeks that I have seen since Barack Obama won South Carolina[‘s 2008 primary] and went on a roll and locked up the nomination,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager who has served as an informal adviser to Harris. “But in every single battleground state, we’re still within the margin of error.”
Polls do show all the swing states within the margin of error. But the momentum, for now, appears to be with Harris. The clearest evidence of that was a Gallup poll last week that showed Democrats with a 14-point edge on which party’s voters were more enthusiastic about voting — a major shift from the organization’s March survey showing Republicans with a 4-point advantage in what was then a contest between two unpopular candidates in Biden and Trump.
“Of course people get motivated about voting against somebody. But when they’re as motivated or more motivated about voting for somebody, there’s magic there,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris’ campaign.
Trump, who has yet to find an attack on Harris that sticks, enters next week’s head-to-head debate in a far less comfortable position than when he left the stage after pummeling Biden on June 27. It may be his best remaining opportunity to blunt his opponent’s momentum and change the trajectory of the race. And a misstep by Harris on that stage — or any other — could do just that.
“I always felt Labor Day was going to be about the time … the Kamala sugar high starts burning off,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the state GOP in Michigan. “It’s gone on for too long, and there’s not a lot more left to propel it.”
Love of democracy, abortion rights and Kamala Harris/Tim Walz will propel it, my friend.
Greg Sargent/The New Republic:
Trump’s Angry New Rant Over Arlington Scandal Should Wake Up Dems
As the Arlington Cemetery plot thickens, it’s time for the Democrats to get tough and get to the bottom of this.
At a rally in Michigan on Thursday, Donald Trump unleashed an extended rant about the confrontation this week between his campaign staff and Arlington National Cemetery officials. Shockingly, he offered a highly distorted account of the scandal and painted himself as one of its victims. Trump even linked this to a bigger lie about the Deep State being out to get him, backhandedly illustrating a big reason why all this matters in the first place: It reveals a level of contempt for the law and public service that’s incompatible with democracy.
A couple of North Carolina stories caught my eye:
The News and Observer:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues to get his name removed from NC’s ballot
Kennedy, who created a new political party called “We The People” to run for president in North Carolina, suspended his campaign last week and endorsed Republican former President Donald Trump. Earlier this week, WTP formally requested that Kennedy’s name be removed from the state’s 2024 ballots. In a contentious meeting, the state board’s Democratic majority voted to deny this request, saying that it would be impractical to remove him at this point given that over half of the counties have already begun printing ballots, the first of which will be sent out on Sept. 6.
The News and Observer:
Fact check: GOP sends ‘heroin and hookers’ mailers about Democratic NC House candidates
The mailers paid for by the North Carolina Republican Party urged residents to vote for Melinda Bales, the former Huntersville mayor, over Helfrich in House District 98, and Rep. Tricia Cotham over Sidman in House District 105. One mailer says Bales will increase funding for law enforcement, while Helfrich supports legalizing heroin, prostitution and methamphetamine. Both mailers feature black-and-white images of the Democratic candidates with their smiles altered into grimaces. “When someone takes the time to photoshop your face and think up alliterative scare-tactics, it gets people talking,” Helfrich said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer. “However, the facts of this issue are not amusing. Addiction and overdose have real and devastating impacts in our communities… Serious issues call for serious, holistic approaches, not absurd scare-tactics.”
Noah Smith/”Noahpinion” on Substack:
Biden did stuff, and it looks like it's working so far
Only one President has taken actual concrete steps to address U.S. industrial weakness vis-a-vis China.
For the first time in its entire history, the U.S. is facing a rival that can out-manufacture it. This is a very big deal. George W. Bush and Barack Obama never seemed to recognize how big of a deal this was, and so we lost valuable decades in which we could have addressed this problem.
Donald Trump did recognize it — or at least, he seemed to dimly understand that manufacturing strength was important for national competitiveness, and that China was a threat. But Trump didn’t actually do much about it — his export controls on Chinese companies were modest and partially reversed under pressure, his tariffs did nothing to bring back U.S. manufacturing, and his occasional haphazard attempts to encourage FDI came to naught. Trump brought needed attitude shifts, but was utterly ineffectual in actual real policy terms.
Then Joe Biden came into office, and — with help from appointees like Jake Sullivan and Gina Raimondo — actually made a serious attempt to do something about America’s industrial weakness vis-a-vis China
POLITICO:
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.
Republicans were already worried about a glaring financial gap even before Kamala Harris’ rise. Now, with the election just two months away, they found themselves in an even more dire position: Democrats have seen a flood of enthusiasm in recent weeks, they’re far outspending Republicans on air and their donors are more energized than ever — with campaign finance data showing a surge in grassroots fundraising in late July after President Joe Biden dropped out...
Time’s running out: The next few weeks of fundraising will determine whether Senate Republicans can seriously contest Democratic-held seats in places beyond the red states of Montana and Ohio — and just how much House Republicans can go on offense while still protecting the slew of incumbents they have in blue districts. They need the funds as soon as possible to communicate during early voting and make sure Democrats aren’t totally unchallenged on the air in the final weeks.
Biden’s exit from the presidential race — and Harris’ sudden ascent has brought Democrats fresh hope about their electoral odds and spooked Republicans.
Keep giving! ActBlue is thirsty!
Tony Michaels and Cliff Schecter on the Arlington National Cemetery fiasco, where Trump now blames the whole thing as being an administration set-up:
