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:
- 61 days to the election
- 5 days to the debate set for Sept. 10
- Decision Desk HQ average: Kamala Harris +3.6, as of around 12 p.m. ET today. Click here to see the latest numbers.
- PredictIt betting odds: 54 to 49 in favor of Harris
Trump and Harris’ Biden Problem
President Joe Biden’s absence from the debate stage Tuesday presents a huge problem for both Donald Trump and Harris.
- Harris because she must still answer for their failures and unpopular policies
- Trump because he’s not running against Biden anymore
As evidenced by Trump’s town hall with Sean Hannity last night:
- He keeps talking about President Biden …
- The nuance and discipline of then connecting Biden’s record to Harris and her future proposals creates a problem.
- Newsflash: Biden’s popularity keeps rising
- Trump beating up on somebody he already beat isn’t a good look
- Elections are about the future
Harris, of course, faces the ghost of Biden on the debate stage.
- How many of the questions will be about:
- What she knew of his health
- Major, if unpopular, policies she agreed or disagreed with
- Bidenomics
- Afghanistan
- Support of Israel
Carlos Lozada opines in The New York Times: “Harris will have to face off against President Biden — his record, his shifting public approval rating and their intertwined legacies — from now until Election Day. Her supporters are eager to watch her ‘prosecute the case’ against Trump in their debate. But when it comes to the Biden years, Harris is both prosecutor and defendant, reformer and institutionalist, contrast and continuity. And that’s a harder sell.”
Watch tonight: We’ll ask George Will:
- How much can Donald Trump run against Joe Biden?
- How far can Kamala Harris run from Joe Biden?
Just in time: Hunter Biden pled guilty in his tax evasion trial.
- Thought bubble: Does a lame duck Biden pardon his son?
EVs are so much more than EVs
At the RNC, Trump got the loudest (unexpected) applause from his promise to end the EV mandate.
- Zoom out: The EV mandate shows how out of touch Washington is with rural and even semi-rural Americans — if you don’t understand why, you are part of the problem.
- Evidently, Team Harris heard the applause in Milwaukee and now says she’s against the mandate.
- Click here to read Alex Thompson and Ben Geman’s excellent story in Axios about Harris and EVs, including this juicy line: “On Aug. 28 Axios asked the Harris campaign to clarify her position, and whether she would sign or veto a bill she co-sponsored in 2019 that included such a mandate for manufacturers..”
- She refused to answer…
Paging ABC: Wouldn’t this make a great debate question?
Cops Work
Video from the Georgia school shooting shows an understandably chaotic and desperate situation as kids run by the gunman’s AR-15 on the floor.
- Newsflash: It’s on the floor and not in the gunman’s hands killing more kids because a school resource officer ran toward the sound of gunfire and confronted the shooter.
It’s noteworthy that if Harris had her way, that student resource officer wouldn’t have been there.
- Click here to watch her pandering when the BLM crowd said having cops in schools was a triggering microaggression against minority kids.
- Thought bubble: Harris told CNN her values have not changed — doesn’t that mean she still believes school resource officers are “militarizing” our schools?
- The Los Angeles Times goes deep on Harris’ view of defunding the police.
The New York Times seems to think school resource officers work — as does the liberal utopia of Denver.
Zoom out: Policing and prosecuting will become a bigger issue for Harris over the next 60 days … especially for a country still concerned with crime.
Paging Jack Smith
We won’t predict how fair the ABC moderators will be …
- Trump last night went full attack mode to prebut any “unfairness,” including the charge they will give her the questions.
No, they won’t.
BUT, the Dana Walden connection — Harris’ best friend is the Disney executive over ABC — is real.
Political reality: Most interviews of Trump are far, far tougher than those of Harris (when she gives one).
But a fair question for Trump:
- Mr. Trump — after years of claiming you won the 2020 election but dark forces stole it from you, you have radically changed your tune in the past few days and now say you lost in 2020. As a man who prides himself on never bowing to pressure or apologizing, why have you changed your view, and since you now admit losing, how can you claim innocence in trying to overturn the election?
As Colby Hall notes, Trump is now admitting he lost in 2020.
Watch tonight: The great Tom Dupree will discuss whether Trump’s new admissions help him politically but will only help special prosecutor Jack Smith prove his Jan. 6 case against Trump.
Working-Class Pitch
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns agree “working class” voters will decide this year’s election.
- Are those non-college-educated whites?
- Are those young African American men?
- Are those first- or second-generation Latinos?
- Are they people in the traditional trades?
- Are they who Frank Luntz described as “paycheck to paycheck” voters?
- Are they traditional value voters who also work?
Teacher union president Randi Weingarten opines in Newsweek: “Who Would Be the Better President for the Working Class?”
- She writes, “Trump says he is a champion of working people, but he is a world-class scam artist. He has stiffed hundreds of workers—painters, plumbers, dishwashers, lawyers and others—going back decades. He was fined millions for ripping off charities and duping students through his sham Trump University. Trump isn’t looking out for America’s workers.”
Thought bubble: The Weingarten op-ed is pretty rich…
- This is the woman who demanded shutting schools during COVID-19, which hurt working-class kids the most.
- This is the same woman who fights against school choice, which would give working-class kids a shot at a better (private, charter or parochial) education.
Summer school: In Weingarten’s world, white paycheck-to-paycheck voters clearly need remedial education.
- The Liberal Patriot breaks down CNN polling in Pennsylvania showing Harris trailing Biden’s numbers among “working-class voters.”
- “The CNN poll has Harris carrying Pennsylvania college-educated voters by 23 points; Biden carried them by 18 points in 2020.
- “In the poll, Harris loses Pennsylvania working-class voters by 16 points; Biden lost them by just 9 points last election.
- “Looking at Pennsylvania’s white college voters, Harris has a thumping 22-point advantage among them compared to Biden’s lead of only 10 points in 2020.
- “Finally, the white working class in Pennsylvania prefers Trump over Harris by 32 points, more than his already-large 28-point advantage over Biden in 2020.”
Worth a click: Paycheck-to-paycheck voters are “struggling.” Look at Axios’ state-by-state map of those “adults experiencing difficulty paying for household expenses in (the) previous week.”
Notice anything about the swing states?
Watch tonight: Princeton Professor Lauren Wright will respond with who exactly working-class voters are and why they aren’t listening to Weingarten.
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.