From “Harris goes her own way on capital gains tax hike” by  Brian Faler at Politico: “In a break with President Joe Biden, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called Wednesday for a smaller capital gains tax increase on the rich than he’s proposed….Harris would hike the top total rate on people making more than $1 million to 33 percent, including a special 5 percent surcharge, well below the nearly 45 percent levy Biden has pitched….“We will tax capital gains at a rate that rewards investments in America’s innovators, founders and small businesses,” she said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire….Her shift toward what her campaign considers a more “moderate” capital gains increase comes ahead of her first debate with former President Donald Trump, and as Republicans try to paint her as a creature of the extreme left….It’s also part of an effort to woo business owners, with Harris separately calling for start-up firms to be allowed to deduct more of their costs. She also proposed creating a type of standard deduction for businesses.” Faler notes that “Biden has proposed requiring people making more than $1 million to pay taxes on capital gains — which include things like appreciation in the value of stocks — at ordinary income tax rates, instead of a special preferential rate. He has also proposed raising the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent and increasing an investment surcharge on high earners to 5 percent from 3.8 percent.” Harris’s new position on taxes may help get  more contributions from business leaders and win more support from conservatives. It may also encourage media reporters to think a bit longer before stereotyping Harris as a left-winger and undercut the Trump campaign’s efforts to ‘brand’ her as a crazed left winger who hates business.

So the new presidential debate rules are set, as M.J. Lee reports at CNN Politics: “Kamala Harris’ campaign has accepted the terms of next week’s presidential debate with former President Donald Trump, including the fact that the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to a person familiar with the debate negotiations….However, in a letter to ABC News Wednesday afternoon agreeing to the rules, the Harris campaign again laid out their objections to the muted mics condition, insisting that they believe the vice president will be “disadvantaged” by the format….“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President. We suspect this is the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones,” the letter from the Harris campaign to the network, shared in part with CNN, said.” However, “The network, according to the source familiar, has offered assurances to the Harris campaign that if there is significant cross talk between Harris and Trump, it may choose to turn on the mics so that the public can understand what is happening, the moderator would discourage either candidate from interrupting constantly and the moderator would also work to explain to viewers what is being said….“Notwithstanding our concerns, we understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format,” the campaign said. “We do not want to jeopardize the debate. For this reason, we accept the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones.”….The network’s rules also state that there will be no audience, the candidates will not be permitted to have written notes, no staff can visit them during the two commercial breaks and the candidates cannot ask questions of one another.”

NYT opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall shares a boatload of new polling results, including: “Adam Carlson — a Democratic polling analyst whose work I previously cited — has recently compiled demographic voting trend data comparing the levels of support for Biden in multiple surveys taken from July 1 to July 20 with levels of Harris’s support in surveys taken from July 22 to Aug. 9. Nationwide, Carlson found a net gain of 3.4 points for Harris….Harris’s improvement over Biden’s margins among specific constituencies has been much larger: voters 18 to 34, up 12.5 points; independents, up 9.2 points; women, up 8.2; Hispanics, up 6.3. While Harris’s gains are larger than her losses, she lost ground compared with Biden among white college graduates, down 0.5 points; men, down 2.2; Republicans, down 3.9 and voters over 64 years old, down 3.9….The RealClearPolitics averaging of multiple polls in battleground states found Trump up by tiny margins in three states (by 0.5 percent in Arizona, 0.7 points in North Carolina and 0.2 points in Georgia) a tie in Nevada and Harris ahead in three states (by 1.4 points in Wisconsin, 1.1 in Michigan and 0.5 points in Pennsylvania). All these percentages are within the margins of error….For comparison, on July 21, the day Biden dropped out, Trump led nationally by 4.3 points and was ahead in all seven battleground states….VoteHub, an election tracking website, followed presidential polling from Aug. 5 through Sept. 3 and found Harris going from slight underdog status to steadily building a lead over Trump….On Aug. 5, Trump held a statistically insignificant lead of 46.4 to Harris’s 46.2. By Aug. 24 Harris had pulled ahead by 2.6 points, 48.4 to 45.8, and by Sept. 3, she led by 3.3 points, 48.8 to 45.5.”

Edsall notes further, “Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, responded by email to my inquiry, noting that Harris has benefited from a closely divided electorate because it “was not difficult for a Democratic nominee without the concerns voters had about Biden’s age to consolidate the Democratic vote.”….McInturff provided The Times with an analysis of the state of the election based on his firm’s polling for NBC. Among McInturff’s findings:

• Harris has closed the gap on who is better on handling the issues. When voters were asked in July who would “make our economy work better, they chose Trump over Biden by 11 points; in August, they chose Trump over Harris by one percentage point. Similar, when asked which candidate was “competent and effective” in July, Trump led Biden by 10 points, but in August, Harris led Trump by four points. The biggest shift was on the question of which candidate “has the energy and stamina needed to serve.” In July, Trump led Biden by 27 points; in August, Harris led Trump by 11 points.

• Crucially, Harris has substantially reduced Trump’s polling advantage on key issues that are pillars of the former president’s campaign. Asked which candidate was better on immigration and border security, Trump’s 35-point edge over Biden in July fell to nine points over Harris in August; on inflation and cost of living, Trump’s advantage dropped from 22 to three points; on crime and safety, from 21 to two points.

• Harris’s net favorable rating has appreciably improved and now is better (46 favorable, 49 unfavorable) than Trump’s (40 favorable, 55 unfavorable).

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia and the director of its Center for Politics, emailed me the center’s analysis of the 2024 presidential election:

We have the Electoral College at 226 safe/likely/leaning to Harris, 219 safe/likely/leaning to Trump, and 93 electoral votes’ worth of tossups (seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin).

Every other electoral vote beyond these seven states is rated as likely or safe for one party or the other — the only electoral vote in the leans category (as leans Democratic) is the single electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District.

A number of poll-based forecasting models suggest that the race is basically 50-50 or maybe there’s a small edge to Harris.”