NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

State of play: 

• 83 days to the election 
• 5 days to the DNC
• 27 days to the debate set for Sept. 10
• 24 days since Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the candidacy, and she still hasn’t had a meaningful interaction with the press 
• Decision Desk HQ average: Harris +1.6, as of around 12 p.m. ET today. Click here to see the latest numbers

2016 and 2024

Much like former President Donald Trump captured an undercurrent of voter emotion in 2016, Harris appears to be capturing the same kind of energy in 2024. 

• Frank Luntz explained it this way: “She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden, so the entire electoral pool has changed…She’s got an intensity advantage, and I haven’t seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime.”
  • Be a nerd: In politics, amateurs talk about the horse race: national head-to-head polling.

• Nerds talk about the crosstabs of polls and questions gauging enthusiasm 
• The latest Monmouth poll shows Republican enthusiasm steady at 71%
  • Democrats are up from 46% to 85% 
  • Independents are up from 34% to 53% 

• Yes, the media is giving her a pass
  • It’s becoming increasingly difficult to figure out the difference between the media’s coverage of Harris and her campaign’s press releases 
• Yes, she IS the current vice president yet is now promising to fix many of the (economic) problems her administration created
  • Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report in Axios, “Harris won’t say it this bluntly in public, but her advisers do so privately: She wants to break with Biden on issues on which he’s unpopular. First up: rising prices. This is part of a highly choreographed effort to define herself — in some cases, redefine herself — as a different kind of Democrat.”
• Yes, she’s using spokespeople to disavow radically liberal ideas from her own 2019 presidential campaign
  • The Green New Deal
  • Gun confiscation, aka “mandatory buyback” programs
  • Eliminating private insurance (instituting “Medicare for All”)
  • Banning fracking 
  • The list goes on…
• Apparently, none of that matters 

• Nikki Haley explains it all: “Independent voters like Kamala Harris because she’s bringing them hope. She’s talking about freedom and a way forward. They don’t want a former president talking about the past.”
  • The Harris campaign retweeted it. 
• And Trump (like Hillary Clinton in 2016) is playing from the OLD playbook
  • Trump figured out people wanted anger and a fighter to avenge their grievances 
  • After eight years of such fighting, Harris — or more likely her Obama veteran team — figured out American voters want “joy.”
• But the economy!
  • Republicans currently hitch their hopes to “the economy”
    • Yes, people are unhappy
    • Yes, the overall cost of living is up 20% under Biden and Harris
    • But for some reason, they don’t blame Harris 
    • Watch Friday for a well-scripted speech that hits a lot of the same themes of overdraft fees, bag fees, etc. 

The Danger in Not Doing Interviews

After 24 days with no meaningful press interactions, Team Harris can rest easy knowing the media won’t go after them for avoiding interviews.

• For example:
  • This CBS clip 
  • This NBC clip
• They’re focusing on inflation and high prices without once mentioning Biden or Harris’ leadership the past few years.

The REAL danger: Harris will soon face the same problem Biden did … enormous focus on single interactions and impossibly high stakes at the debate. 

• It gets worse: Most presidential candidates by this time have spent 20 months in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina doing hundreds of interviews and countless events … they are sharp, focused and know the potholes.
  • Harris failed that test miserably 
  • Harris spent the past 3 years in the vice presidential bubble 

Watch tonight: Our buddy Chris Cillizza will discuss the moral arguments for her to do interviews

• Click here for his X thread on the topic, where he says, among other things, “Democrats have insisted since Trump emerged on the scene that the way he behaves – including how he treats the media – is a threat to democracy. And that their party is better and more committed to democratic ideals than Trump and…If Democrats are more committed to democratic principles — chief among them the centrality of a free and independent media — then how is ‘oh yeah well Trump does the same thing!!!’ a convincing argument?”

Hey Cillizza … politicians do what they can get away with. Just ask Trump. 

Bonus coverage: The White House Correspondents’ Association and the correspondents themselves seem to have learned precisely nothing from getting played by Team Biden into reporting he was doing cartwheels and calculus in private over the past 3 years. 

About Last Night

The Harris honeymoon might not be over, but Walz’s is. 

• The New York Times is reporting about his wet kiss to the Black Lives Matter rioters who burned Minneapolis.
• Apparently, he’s reassured by having an antisemite in Congress, having said, “When I’m having a tough day, I think, ‘Ilhan Omar is in Congress,’ and I smile.”

Danger ahead: Any government official telling a parent how to raise their kid is dangerous, and that’s Tim Walz’s new portfolio. 

• Juan Perez Jr. writes in Politico, “The Democratic vice presidential candidate aims to sell a liberal care economy message — free school meals, boosted education funding, paid family leave and affordable child care — as an antidote to the negative politics of gender identity and race.”

Look back: Wearing masks, virtual school and vaccine mandates did not help Democrats. 

For those who watched last night, Reuters White House Correspondent Jeff Mason took me to task for pointing out Walz’s cozy relationship with an imam who reportedly lavished praise on Hamas and thinks Hitler got it right. 

• Fact check: If JD Vance once lavished praise to a reported Hitler enthusiast for being a “great teacher,” it would get the same kind of coverage as Trump’s dinner with antisemite Nick Fuentes — and rightfully so.
• You can read the timeline from a very sanitized CNN article that is somehow not getting a lot of play on the website or their cable network.
  • In fact, one of their guests appeared to have never seen the video in question 
• Walz praised Imam Asad Zaman long after his Hitler Facebook post and met with him five different times. 

Tim Walz’s problems are just beginning. 

D.C. Sucks

The closest you will get to a Democratic utopia is Washington, D.C. — as our friend George Will has said, the district is 68 square miles surrounded by reality …

• Democrats have been in charge since time began.
• Equity of outcome rather than equality of opportunity drives the mayor’s policies. 
• Thanks to the federal government, they spend as much money as they want and have one of the highest tax rates in the country.
• Many of the progressive policies we hear from Harris and Democrats already exist here in the district. 

And it is now labeled America’s least desirable place to live, according to a study from Clever, as reported in the Daily Mail.

The statistician types can argue if it’s correlation or causation — have all the progressive policies, carried out with a nearly unlimited budget, really created the least desirable place to live, or is that just a byproduct?

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.