Americana

1. Omaha’s electoral vote in peril
2. JD Vance vs. the ACA
3. Teamsters non-endorsement
4. ‘Uncommitted’ non-endorsement
5. Long Island’s Democratic hope

Also: Inside the Harris bump in Pennsylvania polls.

Voters in Omaha might have the power to swing the presidential election, giving an electoral vote to Kamala Harris and complicating Donald Trump’s map. Or they might not matter at all. This week, the fight over Nebraska’s winner-take-all status picked up again, just as a wave of post-debate polling showed Democrats grabbing narrow, margin-of-error leads in swing states. The Nebraska story — which we reported on in April, and pick back up today — is about the tools available to change electoral systems, even when ballots are in the mail, an issue that’s popped up repeatedly this month.

Trump’s last-second Nebraska EV push

Nebraska Republicans made a renewed push to change how their state awards electoral votes, after the Trump campaign dispatched Sen. Lindsey Graham to lobby for a return to a winner-take-all system. Since 1992, the state has awarded one electoral vote for the winner in each of its congressional districts; polling this year has found Harris favored to carry Omaha’s 2nd Congressional District, which President Joe Biden won in 2020.

“I hope they move forward, because it could come down to a single electoral vote,” Graham said of Nebraska Republicans after a meeting in Lincoln. “The Harris campaign wouldn’t spend 15 cents in Nebraska if it weren’t for this district.”

Republicans couldn’t wrangle the votes for the change in April, when Trump and Gov. Jim Pillen endorsed it; a key swing vote, a Democrat-turned-Republican senator in Omaha, has been resistant. Local politics might also affect his decision going forward: He’s seen as a future frontrunner in the city’s mayoral race, and voting to eliminate Omaha’s relevance in the presidential campaign to boost Trump could generate a backlash there. But the party has until early November to try, and could erase a potential Biden vote from the map — one of several changes to electoral systems or ballots that may be fought over until the 11th hour.

In North Carolina, where a lawsuit from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delayed the printing of new ballots by a week, there was a brief and unsuccessful push by some conservatives to get Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson out of the race for governor. On Thursday, before CNN published a story about Robinson’s sexually explicit posts on an online forum, a GOP-friendly news outlet in the state hinted that Robinson could quit and be replaced by midnight.

Robinson denied the allegations in the story and stayed in the race, but the switch was legally possible. And in Georgia today, the state election board voted on new rules about hand-counting of ballots, ignoring requests from county officials to delay any more changes until after the election. “The election has begun,” one county elections supervisor warned, according to Amy Gardner of the Washington Post. “This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”

JD Vance fills in Trump’s ‘concepts of a plan’

JD Vance said Wednesday that a second Trump administration could make significant changes to health insurance for people with chronic conditions, worrying some Republicans who want that issue off the table. It was the second time in a week that Vance had suggested specific changes to the healthcare system that would unwind parts of the Affordable Care Act, a topic that Republicans left out of their 2024 platform, and Trump has not gotten into detail about.

“JD does not lack confidence,” North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer told Semafor. “So you’ve got somebody who’s super smart, super articulate, you know, not very experienced in the political world, who puts out details of big ideas. And some of those big ideas have been generally floated by Donald Trump and they may or may not be ready for the details. And that’s up to Donald Trump to determine.”

The Harris-Walz campaign had fixated on Trump’s answer about healthcare in their Sept. 10 debate — that he had “concepts of a plan” to change the system. That phrase had been worked into stump speeches and interviews, including a Michigan forum with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday, when Harris joked that businesses with only $5000 in startup capital were “concepts of a business.”

Teamsters put pro-labor Democrats on edge

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters made no endorsement for president, thrilling Donald Trump’s campaign, while kicking off a wave of local endorsements for the Harris-Walz ticket. In a statement, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said that neither Trump nor Harris committed “not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries.” While the official explanation of the non-endorsement was critical of Trump, the union put out the results of a partial membership survey that showed respondents favoring him — data that the GOP repeatedly cited, as proof that the working class was in their tent.

It was the first non-endorsement by the union since 1996, when Bill Clinton’s support for NAFTA kept the Teamsters on the bench; the Teamsters endorsed Democratic nominees from 2000 through 2020. And it was controversial among some members and locals, given the Biden-Harris record: The administration used COVID funding legislation to bail out the Teamsters’ pension fund. Locals that represented nearly half of the union’s members endorsed Harris after O’Brien’s statement, and former union president James Hoffa, Jr. called it “a critical error” and “a failure of leadership by Sean O’Brien.”

But the non-endorsement elevated Democrats’ concerns about white working class voters, who have drifted toward Trump despite the Biden administration’s aggressive pro-labor policies — some of which Trump donors are fighting in court. Working America, an AFL-CIO affiliate that does door-to-door canvassing to reach non-union voters, released the results from 108,000 conversations this week. One conclusion: Trump-leaning voters remained far more confident that he could deliver for them, and Harris-leaning voters were lagging.

“Harris has not reassembled the full complement of the Biden coalition,” said Matt Morrison, the executive director of Working America, in an interview. “It runs the gamut, where those deficits exist, but the starkest deficit is white men.”

‘Uncommitted’ vote walks a fine line on election

The Uncommitted National Movement, a group of Gaza ceasefire protesters elected as Democratic delegates this year, announced Thursday that it could not throw its weight behind Kamala Harris. It had asked for one-on-one time between the nominee and worried Palestinian-Americans, and for a promise of an arms embargo. Getting neither, it would not be organizing voters — but it wouldn’t be endorsing a third party and warned Donald Trump would be worse on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

“Vice President Harris’ unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her,” said Abbas Alawieh, the co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, and a delegate from Michigan, on a Thursday call with reporters. Other organizers on the call said that they would leave the top of their ballots blank, but none recommended votes for protest candidates or for Trump.

Republicans, including the Trump campaign, have worked to take advantage of divisions on the anti-war left, especially in Michigan. Trump met this week with Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib to ask for his endorsement, though Trump has not called for a ceasefire or an end to military aid to Israel and warned at an event focused on antisemitism Thursday that Democrats would cause the “total annihilation” of the Jewish state. Future Coalition PAC, a group that has not disclosed its donors, has been targeting Muslim voters with ads that say Harris would be a “pro-Israel president,” while targeting Jewish voters with ads that accuse her of “pandering to Palestine.”

While Alawieh said that he, personally, will vote for Harris, he warned that the campaign was making a mistake by stiffing anti-war voters while accepting endorsements from Republicans.

“The majority of voters in our country want a stop to the unconditional flow of weapons — not just to Benjamin Netanyahu, but to endless wars,” Alawieh told Semafor. “Dick Cheney is the poster child for endless wars. Why are we pursuing him harder than we’re pursuing regular, everyday voters, Black voters, young voters, voters of color, Latino voters, all of whom have said very consistently: Hey, we need this war to stop?”

Can Democrats reclaim the NYC suburbs?

Democrats lost their national House majority in New York — especially the suburbs of New York City. They want to win that majority back with a hyper-focus on New York — and on Long Island. They were, nevertheless, surprised to see Donald Trump campaign there this week, warning that Democrats would turn the region into a “third-world country.” Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Suozzi flipped back one Long Island seat Democrats lost in 2022, and the party is contesting its three others. Former CNN commentator John Avlon is running in Lee Zeldin’s old seat; 29-year-old businessman Rob Lubin grabbed the nomination to contest the neighboring 2nd Congressional District, which Biden almost won but Zeldin carried by a 2022 landslide.

Lubin’s analysis of that election: “Good teams have bad games.” But he also told me that people in the region are “constantly looking for something new” and that “Donald Trump offered that” in his last election, while Long Island Democrats failed to match that excitement.

In an interview after the Trump rally, Lubin laid out why the region shifted so far right, why he thinks it can shift to the left, and which compromises Democrats need to make if they want that to happen.

Polls

On Wednesday night, post-debate polls of Pennsylvania shot up like sunflowers — eight, of varying quality, all of them showing competitive races and a shrinking number of undecided voters. One pattern: Harris is viewed far more positively than the president, and slightly more positively than Trump. Another pattern: Views of “the economy” are still grim, but Harris has cut into Trump’s advantage on the question, which Biden was never able to do. The Pennsylvania-based F&M also finds the economy dwarfing interest in any other issue, with 8% of voters naming “immigration” and 1% naming “crime” instead. That could explain some of Harris’ resilience to Trump and Republican attack ads, which have focused heavily on the border and her record as San Francisco DA — top of mind for many Republicans, but not for swing voters.

Fox’s post-debate poll found an insignificant shift in the two-candidate ballot test — clear favorability advantages for the Harris-Walz ticket, but a statistical tie with Trump-Vance. But this question, which few pollsters ask, gets at how Harris has been able to improve her numbers since June. In 2016, when Fox’s polling showed Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump, just 41% of voters said they turned up the volume when they saw her on TV. A majority changed the channel.

Four years ago, according to exit polling, Donald Trump won 12% of the Black vote. That represented a 50% increase from his support in 2016, enough to tighten some margins in rust belt cities and the south. Trump was improving on that in his rematch with Joe Biden, but the Democrats’ switch-up changed things: He has held onto his new Black support, but made no gains. Trump scores best with this electorate on the economy and immigration, with around one in five Black voters saying his stances make it “more likely” that they’d support him. Harris’ weakest issue — more than immigration — is her stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, which only around 60% of Black voters cite as a reason they support her, a lower percentage than for other aspects of her campaign.

Ads

• Harris for President, “Monster.” Hadley Duvall may be the most influential non-politician in the Democratic Party. Last year, she told her story — years of sexual abuse by her stepfather, culminating in a pregnancy — in ads for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Duvall told it again at the Democratic National Convention, and tells it again here, remembering the “monster” who wrecked her life, and worrying that the Dobbs decision will put more women in her place: “Donald Trump did this, he took away our freedom.”
• Jeff Jackson for Attorney General, “Opening Statement.” Democrats are trying to make every North Carolina race about extremism, welding their opponents to Mark Robinson. Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson has run that play against Rep. Dan Bishop, whose conservative record (he wrote the state’s gender-specific “bathroom bill”) predates Robinson’s career. Bishop’s tried to make the race about courtroom experience — he has more of it — and Jackson’s response ad puts him inside a courtroom, promising to fight criminals, then asking his family (in the jury box) if he pulled it off.
• NRCC, “Criminals’ Favorite Politician.” Whatever they end up doing to its electoral vote, Nebraska Republicans are on defense in Omaha, where Rep. Don Bacon faces a rematch with Tony Vargas. Four years ago, Vargas joined a bipartisan group of state senators to reform the state’s incarceration system, passing a bill that then-Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed. Republicans resurrect that bill here, warning that Vargas voted to let “criminals be released into our communities.”

Scooped!

A few weeks ago, I stood a few feet from Mark Robinson at campaign stops where he bemoaned how Democrats were running against him. “They want to ask me questions about what I said on Facebook 10 years ago,” he said, accusing his opponents of obsessing over dashed-off, offensive comments instead of the needs of North Carolina. At the same time, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski was digging through posts Robinson had allegedly made years earlier, on much more obscure websites, under an online pseudonym. Even if you know the gist now, it’s worth reading that story, how the reporting was done, and how the comments were verified even as Robinson went on the record to deny them.

Next

• 11 days until the CBS News vice presidential debate
• 46 days until the 2024 presidential election
• 88 days until the Electoral College votes

David recommends

Democrats have been slamming a panic button all year, elevating and highlighting the most far-right figures they can find, warning that they’ll be in the corner offices of a new Trump administration. One of their most-cited figures: Mike Davis, a hard-charging conservative lawyer who’s joked about becoming Trump’s attorney general, putting critics in “gulags,” and slamming cage doors on migrant children. I’ve talked with Davis for stories, but Politico’s Adam Wren spent a ton of time with him this summer, figuring out when he was trolling the left and when he was being serious. The challenge, as Wren found when some Davis fans tried to trap him and delete his notes: Some people think the trolling is for real.

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