Americana

1. Veepstakes suspense
2. Harris outraises Trump
3. Trump reverts to 2016 mode
4. Masters loses to Hamadeh

Also: New Senate polling out of Ohio, and what voters think about JD Vance.

Greetings from Dave’s editor, Benjy Sarlin, who is filling in while your usual host is on vacation at (checks social media) HR Giger’s grave in Switzerland. Donald Trump managed to briefly tear the news cycle away from Kamala Harris on Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists with some false and confusing claims about her ethnic background, but the political press is on veepwatch now and the convention is right around the corner after that. One big thing to watch moving forward is how Trump handles an extended period where the only reliable way to force his way into the spotlight is to do, well, something like that.

And the VP nominee is…

Harris will interview her potential running mates over the weekend ahead of an imminent decision before a scheduled Tuesday rally in Philadelphia. Don’t read too much into that location, historically vice presidential nominees aren’t rolled out in their home state. Meanwhile, several of the contenders — Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Andy Beshear — announced they were canceling weekend events, which seems to be the new status symbol for finalists. Shapiro is the favorite on betting markets by a wide margin: He’s a popular governor, his state is potentially decisive, and he codes as moderate to offset Harris’ more left-leaning past. New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, known for his similarly center-left pragmatism, is on Team Shapiro but also warns the potential downsides are real. In particular, Shapiro is known for his strong criticism of campus Israel protests. This young slice of the left may not matter much electorally, Chait writes, but they’re disproportionately responsible for producing the online “vibes” that have helped Harris rally under-35 voters and raise cash: “Since Joe Biden stepped down, TikTok, to take the most obvious example, has shifted from pro-Trump to pro-Harris. The risk of a Shapiro nomination is that left-wing propaganda turns sour on Harris.”

Kamala cashes in

It’s not just memes, Democratic enthusiasm for Harris is showing up as cold hard campaign cash. Major Democratic donors closed their pocketbooks after Biden’s June debate debacle, but the tides have turned since Harris was effectively elevated to the top of the ticket on July 21. The Biden-turned-Harris campaign had a banner month for fundraising, netting $310 million in July — including $200 million in the first week following Biden’s decision to step aside. (Two-thirds of the donations came from first-time donors.) That’s more than double the $137 million the Trump campaign brought in last month, when the former president survived an assassination attempt, announced his VP pick, JD Vance, and formally accepted the party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention, all of which presumably generated fundraising bumps. The Harris campaign and other affiliated funds have a combined $377 million in cash on hand — $50 million more than Trump’s $327 million, according to figures released by both campaigns this week. Team Harris is hoping for another big week as she announced her much-anticipated vice-presidential pick.

Is this the Trump campaign now?

Trump’s explosive appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on Wednesday may signal a new phase to the campaign. Semafor’s own Kadia Goba grilled him on issues like his call for police immunity (he hedged a bit), whether he’d step down if he felt he was in decline (“absolutely”), and if the party had gotten a little “judgy” about people’s lives since the Vance selection. But the big headline, of course, was an extended rant early on in which he falsely suggested Harris “happened to turn Black” recently for political gain (Harris, whose late mother was Indian and father is Jamaican, is a Howard University alum and four-decade member of AKA, one of the “Divine Nine” Black sororities).

His remarks signaled a radical departure from his campaign’s carefully crafted message tying Harris to Biden’s economic and immigration record and highlighting her prior left-leaning positions. As Shelby Talcott writes, his staff and allies are still figuring out whether this is a one-off tantrum or a new message going forward. Trump has lashed out previously when he felt an opponent was getting more coverage, or when he was stewing over bad headlines and polling, but he hasn’t had to deal with it much this election as he led both his Republican opponents and Biden throughout the cycle. With Harris dominating the news and the contest looking far more competitive, it’s possible we see more of that 2016 and 2020 version of the candidate. That’s especially true as he faces a Black and Indian woman: On social media, He shared a picture of Harris’ birth certificate listing her father as “Jamaican” as part of a bizarre claim she wasn’t Black, an echo of his prior “birther” attacks against non-white political rivals in both parties, including Harris. He was asked about this history at the NABJ conference by ABC’s Rachel Scott, one of the questions he derided onstage as “nasty.”

Masters loses House race

A Trump-backed candidate lost an Arizona House primary this week. A Trump-backed candidate also won the crowded race. Trump’s last-minute endorsement of Blake Masters wasn’t enough to secure him the state’s 8th Congressional District seat, but the former president nonetheless picked the winning candidate; He had previously endorsed Abe Hamadeh, Masters’ rival. “Both Blake Masters and Abe Hamadeh have my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Congressman of Arizona’s 8th Congressional District,” he posted on Truth Social last weekend.

Hamadeh netted 29.8% of the vote, with Masters garnering 25.5% after the two polled neck-and-neck throughout the particularly ugly primary. Masters was one of two Senate candidates championed by tech investor Peter Thiel in 2022 — the other being JD Vance — and his campaign showcased some of their overlapping rhetoric. Masters attacked Hamadeh in May for being unmarried and childless, saying he has “no skin in the game,” an argument Republicans Vance made against Democrats earlier in his career in an effort to paint them as anti-family.

Ads

• Harris for President “Blocked.” Early Trump ads have been relentlessly focused on tying Harris to the White House’s border record, which polling suggests is a particularly weak spot given her early role working to discourage migration from Central America. This is the first response, focused on the bipartisan border bill that failed after Trump opposed it, with a pivot to the campaign’s favored “prosecutor vs. felon” frame at the end. The border-security emphasis is typical of other Democrats in competitive elections, but more notable for Harris, who was repeatedly pulled to the left on this issue by progressive activists in her 2020 campaign. Harris’ more centrist supporters were encouraged that the ad didn’t include any nods to their other priorities, like a path to citizenship, instead sticking strictly to the topic at hand.
• Won’t PAC Down “Weird.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz put himself on the national radar with his one-word take on the opposition: “Weird.” The hook for many of these attacks has been Trump’s selection of Vance, whose past comments on “childless cat ladies,” divorce, and abortion have fueled a case from Democrats that the opposition is interested in voters’ personal lives to a creepy degree. This viral digital video, from a Gen Z-oriented PAC run by former Biden pollster John Della Volpe, dials it up to 11 and tries to put a sweaty face to a certain type of reactionary politics that’s become more visible on social media in recent years. Trump has tried to get ahead of these topics — the GOP platform was updated to include support for IVF and contraception access, two issues mentioned in the ad — but there are signs Democrats are making headway by painting the other side as finger-wagging scolds, an archetype generally more associated with the pre-Trump era.
• Bernie Moreno for Senate, “JD Vance & Bernie Moreno: Let’s Get to Work.” Here’s a positive spot featuring Vance in his home state. In a clip of his RNC speech, Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno celebrates a “fully united” GOP that includes both of them on the ballot. The task for Moreno this cycle is to convince that last bastion of ticket-splitting Sherrod Brown voters that they should follow their instincts from the presidential race and put a Trump ally in the Senate.

Polls

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown has been trying to stay one step ahead of his state’s MAGA-trending electorate since 2016. He’s still succeeding here, running ahead of Harris, who’s down by 9 to Trump in a ballot question that includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This being an AARP-sponsored poll, they’re most interested in the age split in the race: Moreno leads Brown by two among voters over 50, while Trump leads Harris by a whopping 18 points among the same group.

A number of polls have found Vance is unpopular with voters so far. This one from Breaking Points, conducted by JL Partners, digs a bit into why by asking respondents to give a one-word description and then categorizing them as positive or negative. Short answer: He’s quickly enraged the opposition, but not yet made a clear impression with the rest of the electorate. “Weird” is the top response from Democrats, the latest indicator of how far the epithet has traveled among the rank-and-file, and “conservative” is the top answer among Republicans. But independents are still sizing him up, with “unknown” and “unsure” among the top three answers (alongside “idiot”) while a substantial number of Republicans are also still forming an impression. By contrast, Harris seems to be settling into a more traditional partisan split — a major improvement from where she was before Biden dropped out — with fewer voters who can’t decide.

Scooped!

The Washington Post published an eye-popping story today about a previously unreported probe into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign illegally received money from Egypt. The question will likely never be answered, investigators alleged to The Post, because top Justice Department officials blocked the FBI’s access to key records. “The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told the Post. “None of the allegations or insinuations being reported on have any basis in fact.” The report came (partly) from research that reporters Aaron Davis and Carol Leonnig conducted for their forthcoming book about the Justice Department.

Next

• four days until primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Washington
• nine days until the Democrats’ virtual nominating vote
• 11 days until primaries in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin
• 17 days until the Democratic National Convention
• 95 days until the 2024 presidential election

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