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: 

• 56 days to the election 
• 0 days to the debate set for Sept. 10
• Decision Desk HQ average: Kamala Harris +3.4, as of around noon ET today. Click here to see the latest numbers.
  • PredictIt betting odds: 53 to 52 in favor of Harris

For fun, go back and reread War Notes from June 27 and 28.

• I won’t say “I told you so” but we got pretty close. 

The opening line from June 27 still holds true: “Let’s fast forward to 10:30 p.m. ET when the debate ends. If you ask yourself, “Who won?” the answer is nobody. Unless it’s obvious, nothing will have changed materially in the debate.” 

• With one exception: Both Trump and Harris enter the debate with considerable risk – her more than him – a simple draw could be a win for Harris.
  • CNN polling shows Harris has far more at stake because opinions about Trump are well-baked. 

To that end — a highly placed source in the Trump world tells us the former president will leave nothing in the green room as they believe this is the only debate Harris will agree to. 

State of Play

Like in June, walking on the stage tonight you would probably still want to be Trump — although we would have said Harris a few weeks ago. As we outlined yesterday, the Harris rocket ship ascent ended over the Labor Day holiday…Trump now owns the momentum. 

• Like in June, Trump has the least to lose because opinions of him among most of the voting population are the hardness of diamonds. As the New York Times poll showed, opinion of Harris is far more malleable. 
• In case you missed it: Watch me talk with Bill O’Reilly last night about how this is Trump’s election to lose because he keeps screwing up. 

Subtle changes: Our friends at Axios rightly point out the very small but important changes in what issues voters say are “very important.” 

• Immigration (more voters say it’s “very important”)
• Abortion (less voters say it’s very important than in 2022) 

Campaign truth: Harris stakes her campaign on abortion and reproductive freedom and Trump stakes his on immigration. As for Team Harris, just look at her debate day ad.  

• No seriously – watch it! 
• For people who label crudeness and misogyny unpresidential…learning into a not-so-subtle joke doesn’t scream “presidential.”  

The stage: Our buddy Mark Halperin goes behind the scenes in a great watch about the negotiations leading up to tonight, including looking at how the massive height difference between Harris and Trump will play in the viewer’s experience. 

• Harris will present herself as the change agent against the “incumbent” Trump.
  • Harris will blame Trump for inflation, Afghanistan, the border and more
  • If Trump brings his A-game, that will prove disastrous for Harris
  • If Trump goes personal, Harris will emerge as something of a martyr 
  • Our source suggests Trump will hammer Harris on why she isn’t doing “anything right now” to fix all the problems she will promise to fix in January — and what she would have done differently than Biden. 
  • Also expect Trump to tie everything to  the “Biden-Harris administration.” 
• Trump will point to the CNN interview where Harris said, “My values have not changed.” He will attack her as the “same San Francisco liberal” from her days as district attorney and California’s attorney general.
  • The source said it was akin to calling her a “player’s coach”— a coach who the players like. In the source’s words, “Harris was a criminal’s DA.” 
  • Also, expect an attack on fracking and then-Attorney General Harris’ lawsuit against the Obama administration to stop fracking off the coast of California.
  • When she acknowledges the problems the country is facing then pivots to solution, Trump will keep firing back … why haven’t you done something in the past three and a half years? 
  • My source said they expected her to “run plays” similar to her attack on Biden in a primary debate over busing to combat segregation — “That little girl was me.” 

Flabbergasted: We reported last night on Harris’ 2019 ACLU questionnaire, which was farther to the left of even Bernie Sanders. The CNN clip (hat tip to KFILE for uncovering it) shows Erin Burnett almost speechless at some of the things Harris said she supports.  

• Thought bubble: This isn’t good for Harris, especially considering New York Times polling shows more people think she is too liberal than Trump is too conservative.  

Team Trump pointed me to two articles in The New Republic, hardly a right-wing publication, to show Harris’ best days “are behind her.” 

• As the New Republic writes, “After seven weeks of euphoria over Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, panic finally returned to the party on Sunday. The New York Times published a poll showing Donald Trump with a slim lead over Harris nationally and a dead heat in the seven swing states that will decide the November election. With Tuesday’s debate fast approaching, the momentum that had sustained Harris since President Biden withdrew from the race has clearly dissipated.”
• Much of Harris’ policy proposals are cut and pasted from Biden’s website — how, the source asked, can she argue they are trying to turn the page and plot a “new way forward”? The source did not specifically say but one can imagine this coming up as an attack line tonight. 

We’ll see if fentanyl comes up inside the debate hall — fentanyl zombies are everywhere outside in Philadelphia’s downtown. 

• Watch for the contrast of what kind of country we want.
  • Harris’s policies largely mirror New York, California, Illinois and Pennsylvania. 
• Trump’s are far more similar to Texas and Florida

Steve Joachim and Just the Facts 

Our intrepid data guru Steve Joachim (our version of Sgt. Joe Friday from “Dragnet”)  put together some awesome data to show just how close things are! 

Polling Averages	DDHQ	538	RCP	Cook
HARRIS	49.4%	47.2%	48.4%	47.9%
TRUMP	46.0%	44.4%	47.3%	46.5%

• An Electoral College review of the battlegrounds’ polling averages — remember 270 to win.
  • Electoral votes counting only states where a candidate leads by three or more:
    • Harris: 226
    • Trump: 219
• Electoral votes if current polling translates perfectly to results:
  • Harris 292
  • Trump 246
• Electoral votes if state polls miss in the same way they did in 2020:
  • Harris: 226
  • Trump: 312
• Electoral votes if state polls miss in the same way they did in 2022:
  • Harris 303
  • Trump 235
• Cash on Hand (as of the end of August)
  • Harris: $404 million
  • Trump: $295 million
  • [source: FEC]
• Battlegrounds: Future Presidential ad reservations in those states through 11/5
  • NV, NC, AZ, MI, GA, PA, WI

• Harris: $299 million
• Trump: $200 million

The Day AFTER!

Tomorrow — we’ll wake up having not predicted anything that happened the night before — having worried about the entirely wrong thing. 

That said, Harris will have to decide if she stays in the basement. 

• The media has been understanding and supportive of her strategy to this point, but even California Governor Gavin Newsom says enough is enough with Harris hiding from interviews.
  • When asked about her doing more interviews, Newsom said, “That’s up to the campaign…I’m not here to advise in that respect. I think absolutely she should do that, but that’s up to her.”

And win or lose, ALL media will want her to speak about the debate with the exception of Natasha Alford  — you really need to watch this clip — evidently the media has pushed Harris far harder than Trump

But seriously there are real issues — like the Haitian immigrant story in Ohio.

• At least according to The Washington Post, immigrants aren’t stealing people’s pets to cook as food. 
• But there are real concerns for a community of 58,000 with 20,000 newcomers from Haiti.
  • A Haitian immigrant raped a 15-year-old in Boston 

America is deeply divided because we have real problems that people care about — the next 56 days will be about them.  

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.