Americana

1. The great right turn
2. Expanding Senate map
3. Dancing Donald
4. Early voting update
5. Courting the niche vote

Also: Florida’s left-leaning ballot initiatives

Last week, when “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin asked Kamala Harris what she would have done differently than Biden since they both took office, the vice president said there was “not a thing that comes to mind.” The Trump campaign cut the clip and added an ad disclaimer (“I’m Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message”) and began playing it at rallies. An Axios story soon cited “a top Trump ally” to claim that “Republicans are planning to spend heavily” to put the clip into paid commercials. Only today, a week later, did the Trump campaign start running ads with that quote. It let six of the campaign’s final 28 days pass without it.

Why did that matter? One: Ever since Harris began doing traditional and new media interviews again, the Trump campaign has highlighted her worst moments (or those that sounded odd to conservatives) and announced that her basic incompetence was revealed. It got free media for suggesting that the quote was bad enough to play in swing states, long before it did.

Two: Unlike 2016 and 2020, when the campaign often needed to shift the conversation to favorable ground, this election is still mostly playing out across its chosen topics. There has been no hack of Harris’ campaign email, no last-minute probe of a Harris aide’s personal computer, no Harris offspring’s laptop left at a Delaware repair shop. But there are ads lacerating Harris on immigration and LGBT rights, issues that weren’t always positive for Trump in 2016. (I don’t think we’ll see him wave a pride flag again.) The entire conversation has shifted in his direction, and Democrats, with plenty of money and resources, are adjusting to it.

No matter who wins, the country is moving right

In Michigan, Kamala Harris told anyone fretting about an electric vehicle mandate that she’d “never tell you what kind of car you have to drive.” In Nevada, she told a Univision town hall attendee, who tearily recounted how her mother died without legal status, that she would hire “1,500 more border agents” while forging ahead on immigration reform.

And in Arizona, standing in front of a “country over party” banner, Harris appealed to conservative Mormons — her pastor spoke at the LDS church president’s 100th birthday, she noted—– while promising that a “bipartisan council of advisors” would shape her thinking in the White House.

Facing Donald Trump for the third consecutive election, Democrats are making rhetorical and policy concessions that they didn’t want to, or think they needed to, in 2016 and 2020. They’ve adjusted to an electorate that’s shifted to the right, toward the Trump-led GOP, on issues that progressives once hoped were non-negotiable — immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, and criminal justice reform.

The result is a center-left campaign with a smaller agenda than what Joe Biden won with, and more careful messaging than Hillary Clinton lost with. It’s a similar story down the ballot, as Democrats highlight their support for border security, law enforcement, and targeted tax cuts — against an onslaught of TV and digital ads accusing them of pro-crime neo-socialism. Out of power, and portraying the country he handed over to Biden as hopelessly lost, Donald Trump has watched voters move closer to his old positions.

Dems making new moves in Senate battle

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is launching ads in Florida to help former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell this week, joining their effort to defeat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The election is only three weeks away … why now? With Montana looking tough, Democrats need more pathways to the majority and Cruz and Sen. Rick Scott are the best targets. “In both states, the momentum is moving in a way that we like,” DSCC chair Gary Peters told Semafor. “So I would expect that we’re going to continue to invest through the end.” Democrats feel a little better about Texas than Florida because of Rep. Colin Allred’s fundraising and Florida moving away from Democrats. There’s a third offensive opportunity in Nebraska — but national Democrats are staying away from independent candidate Dan Osborn’s surprisingly competitive race against Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. Their involvement wouldn’t help him.

Trump’s offbeat campaign week

Donald Trump held some of his campaign’s most perplexing events over the past week, including a logistically tangled rally in southern California and a Philadelphia town hall that ended with a dance-less DJ set. Trump spoke in Coachella, Ca. on Saturday, a rare appearance in a state where he has never won more than 34% of the vote, and where no GOP presidential candidate had campaigned for general election voters in a generation.

“You’re going to have so much water, you’re not going to know what the hell to do with it,” Trump told the crowd, promising to solve the state’s long-term environmental problems after cutting its energy prices “in half.” Some rally attendees navigated chaos on the way home, with parking a two-hour walk from the outdoor venue and some buses leaving without shuttling anyone to them. Riverside County police also arrested a Trump supporter named Vem Miller, who had a long online record of support for the GOP nominee, and was carrying firearms in his truck; what was initially reported as a potential assassination attempt turned out to be a misunderstanding.

On Monday, Trump held a town hall-style event in the Philadelphia suburbs, which went off the rails after two attendees fainted. A DJ began playing “YMCA,” the Village People song that often ends Trump rallies. “There’s nobody leaving,” Trump commented when it ended. For another half hour, Trump stood on the stage, listening to his rally playlist: “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he asked. “Hope he’s okay,” tweeted Harris, who has tried to put Trump’s age and mental fitness into the political conversation lately.

Voters are voting

Early voting began in more competitive states this week, as the Biden administration sued Virginia over a purge of voters flagged as potential non-citizens. At issue: The National Voter Registration Act’s prohibition on any mass removal of voters within 90 days of an election. That period started on Aug. 7, and early voting began there on Sep. 20, as some voters who had been registered, and eligible, discovered they were removed from rolls.

Both Trump and Gov. Glenn Youngkin called the move election interference by the Biden DOJ, with Youngkin denouncing “a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy.” The Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the League of Women Voters of Virginia and brought a separate lawsuit before the DOJ intervened.As of Tuesday morning, more than 730,000 ballots had already been cast in Virginia, part of more than 5 million votes already sent in around the country. By the end of the day, more than 250,000 more ballots had been cast in person across Georgia, breaking the state’s first-day voting record.

Forget the median voter. It’s the marginal voter who matters now.

Here’s the most important thing to know about the closing message from the two campaigns: It’s not for you. By that I mean you, the news junkie currently reading this who likely made their mind up on this election before it ever started and is near-certain to cast a vote. No, at this point the campaigns are targeting a much narrower group of voters — even by recent standards — who they see as more persuadable. And this explains a lot of their behavior in the final stretch.

Political strategists sometimes stop to remind their fellow partisans that the median voter is a middle-class suburbanite in her 50s. But in a highly polarized country where turnout has rocketed to century-high levels in recent elections and the number of true undecideds may be in the low single digits, it’s the increasingly rare marginal voter that can matter the most to the campaigns.

The Trump campaign, in particular, has been obsessed with so-called “low-propensity voters” along with voters who are distrustful of traditional politics and more likely to go third party. They devoted considerable time and energy to courting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ahead of his endorsement, and then on pitching his wellness-minded voters on a “Make America Healthy Again” message. On the other side, Harris has been focused on winning that last slice of moderate, Nikki Haley-loving Republicans who their research suggests are still open to voting for a Democrat who offers a safe off-ramp from Trump. And both candidates are hitting the podcast circuit hard to reach those last remaining voters who don’t listen to, or trust, traditional news sources.

— Benjy Sarlin

Polls

The story of September was the Harris campaign and the Future Forward super PAC bombarding swing states with positive ads, and driving up her favorable ratings. This is one of several polls in the last 72 hours that find the vice president’s lead slipping, from a small one to a tie. Here, it’s in sync with changing views of the candidates, and a warmer view of Trump’s presidency, with 48% of voters saying they like “how he handled his job” as president. By an 18-point margin, they say they trust Trump more to handle “Israel’s military conflict against Hamas and Hezbollah,” a position he’s come into without specifying how he’d end the war. The Democratic ticket is still more personally popular and more seen as bringing “change,” but it’s viewed less competently than it was a month ago.

Republican voters are ready to believe the worst. Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that the Biden administration frittered away FEMA money to resettle migrants didn’t convince most voters that this was true. The Shelter and Services Program has a different revenue stream than FEMA’s disaster relief; the money appropriated to deal with hurricane damage hasn’t been expended. But 62% of Republicans say that relief funds have “mostly” gone to non-victims, and 81% say that the money has likely gone to “people in the country illegally” — and more than half of Trump voters say that the numbers of migrants crossing the border is increasing. Both beliefs are untrue.

Democrats have endorsed both of Florida’s high-profile ballot amendments, which will pass if they get 60% of the vote or more. Both measures are running ahead of their candidates, with no coattail effect. One reason: Their coalitions don’t quite match up. Just 7% of Democrats say they’re voting for Trump, and about as many oppose the abortion measure, but 21% oppose the marijuana legalization initiative. Latino voters break for Trump and Scott in the federal races, but narrow majorities of them support the abortion (54%) and marijuana (52%) measures. Both get support from a libertarian/liberal coalition that can’t be recreated in partisan races.

Ads

• Harris for President, “Enemy Within.” The Harris campaign and its PACs have been running ad after ad about the Republicans who support her and the Trump administration veterans who won’t support him. Deploying footage from Trump’s Coachella rally, when he talked about targeting “the enemy within,” the ad uses two former Trump homeland security advisors to warn that he might deploy military power against critics if he wins again. “Unchecked power, no guardrails,” says Kevin Carroll, as a camera zooms in on a smiling JD Vance.
• McCormick for Governor, “Common Sense.” Democrats lost to Jennifer McCormick in 2016, when she won the state’s independent education office as a Republican. The party then got rid of the office, and McCormick became a Democrat, arguing that her old party had gone too far to the right. She name-checks the whole Republican gubernatorial ticket here, including conservative lieutenant governor nominee Micah Beckwith, calling it too obsessed with the wrong issues. She’d “repeal the abortion ban” and “end book bans” to undo their work.
• NRCC and Iowans for Zach Nunn, “Chasity.” Two trends make it into this spot: A woman making the case for a male nominee, and footage of a facemask-wearing Democrat that’s meant to make him look radical. Chasity Meinders, a black suburbanite who sounds like the sort of voter Iowa Republicans are losing, says that inflation has hurt her family and Democratic congressional nominee Lanon Baccam is a “paid political activist” who can’t fix that. To show how out-of-touch he is: An undated photo of the candidate in an N-95.

Scooped

This newsletter was very early to the story of Nebraska Republicans trying to change how their state awarded electoral votes. It was pretty early to the U.S. Senate campaign of Dan Osborn, a union organizer running as an independent and running competitively with Sen. Deb Fischer. But Kathy Gilsinan wrote the on-the-ground story I needed, about the local party dynamics that have put Omaha and its district in play for Democrats, both at the presidential and House level.

Next

• 21 days until the 2024 presidential election
• 63 days until the Electoral College votes

David Recommends

How would mass deportation actually work? When pressed, Donald Trump and JD Vance have answers, and usually challenge the skepticism of their media interviewers. “I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million,” Vance told ABC News this summer. Radley Balko, who has worked the crime and justice beat for his whole career, reports on the logistics of a potential mass deportation, from which agencies would be tasked to who would actually be working on the ground. He’s not a fan: “We’d have a deportation army working for a DHS or DOJ staffed with Trump loyalists who don’t believe in birthright citizenship, don’t believe that even naturalized citizens are ‘real’ citizens, and who, like Trump, believe immigration enforcement officers should be ‘unleashed’ from the constraints that come with respecting the rights of the people they detain.”

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