In “To win over seniors, Harris should highlight her support for Social Security” at The Hill,  top Social Security experts Nancy J. Altman and William J. Arnone write: “A formerly reliable segment of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, voters aged 65 and older have leaned Republican since 2000. The Harris-Walz ticket has an excellent opportunity to bring these voters back. Even if the Democratic presidential ticket does not carry older voters, just reducing the margin of loss might well decide the election….We call older voters “always-voters,” because it is only a small exaggeration to say that they always vote. They have disproportionately high turnout rates, including in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin….In 2020, older voters had a turnout rate of 71.9 percent, compared to an overall turnout rate of 67 percent. In Arizona and Georgia, older voter rates were 20- and 17-percentage points higher, respectively….In 2020, voters aged 65 and older were 22 percent of the total electorate. Voters age 50 and older comprised over half of all voters….the Harris-Walz ticket is underperforming with older voters. The most recent polling indicates that the ticket is losing voters 65 and over by seven percentage points. Before withdrawing from the race, President Biden was winning this segment by three percentage points….The problem is that recent polling shows that the American people do not know where the parties stand. And the Harris-Walz campaign has yet to run ads making the contrast clear.”….Moreover, Trump’s record shows he is no protector of Social Security. As president, he proposed Social Security cuts in every single one of his budgets.”

From “This election, a struggle for the soul of American Christianity is key: That’s why battleground North Carolina will be ‘ground zero for a faith war’” by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.: “Religion has created a coalition management challenge for Democrats whose ranks include large majorities of Jewish and Muslim voters and an overwhelming share of voters — particularly among the young — who left organized religion altogether…..But political scientist David Campbell, co-author of “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” argues that the party still has ample room for appeals to religious voters….“We don’t see any evidence that [secular voters] are hostile to Democrats who use religious language,” he told me. “It’s a myth that because they have a secular world view, they are hostile to religion. What they don’t like is the establishment of religion by government, government stepping over the line between church and state.”….Harris seems to take this view to heart. She speaks often about her Baptist faith, routinely dropping religious references into speeches and at times offering detailed accounts of its influence on her worldview. Faith, she said in a 2022 address to the National Baptist Convention, taught her “to believe in what is possible and what can be, unburdened by what has been.”….But there is a more basic reason that religion is unavoidable in this election. It has nothing to do with any “God Gap” or political calculation. Augustine is right: There is an ongoing struggle for the soul of American Christianity between brands of faith that embrace democratic inclusion and extreme forms — particularly white Christian nationalism — that promote exclusion. It’s an argument that North Carolina might be called upon to settle for the nation.”

Should Democrats fund and run more women candidates? Read “How the news media cover women in politics: 5 recent studies to know” by Clark Merrefield at Journalists Resource for a perceptive take. As Merrefield writes: “By 2023, 25% of U.S. senators, 29% of Congress, 33% of state legislators and 24% of governors were women….As women have occupied more positions of political power, so has news framing and language used in media coverage become more scrutinized….The “likability trap,” as it’s known, refers to women in positions of power having to be both highly qualified and broadly likable to colleagues and clients in the corporate world, and to voters in the political realm. It’s similar in concept to the “gender double bind,” in which women in leadership positions are expected to be both competent and warm, according to research out of the University of Michigan.” In 2016 we witnessed the first presidential election in which a woman presidential candidate received a healthy majority of the nation-wide popular vote. If Kamala Harris wins the presidency this year, expect a dramatic uptick of women candidates for elective offices throughout the U.S. And it seems reasonable to expect an significant improvement in the quality of news coverage about their campaigns.

Be not suckered by Speaker Mike Johnson’s low-key demeanor and bland persona. As Nicole Lafond writes in “Now Mike Johnson Is Hedging On Whether The Election Will Be Certified” at Talking Points Memo: “The speaker is leaving town after prevaricating on whether Congress should play its normal role in certifying the results of the election. When asked during a press conference on Tuesday if he’d “commit to observing regular order in the certification process of the 2024 election, even if Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump,” Johnson hedged….“Well of course — if we have a free, fair, and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely,” he said….That big “if” fits alongside the various other cryptic, intentionally vague lines that Trump and his allies have been employing for months as they dodge questions about accepting the results of the election. Trump has said repeatedly that he will only accept the results if the election is “fair.” In other words, Democrats should anticipate the certainty of Republican “leaders” doing Trumps’ bidding by challenging vote counts in swing states. Johnson is every inch a shameless Trump lapdog and a dictator-enabler, who clearly has no commitment to democracy in general, nor integrity in the  certification process in 2024 in particular.

At The Washington Monthly, Jonathan Alter, author of the forthcoming “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial―and My Own,” writes that “the nightmare scenario—a Trump win—is still very real, especially if he carries Pennsylvania. So today, I’m paying special attention to polling in the Keystone State, though I’m told no one who lives in Pennsylvania calls it that.

The Pennsylvania electorate is about 25 percent Catholic, with fewer than 50 percent of its voters college-educated. In 2020, that helped Biden, who is Catholic and—before he became unpopular in the state—had some working-class appeal. Now, Trump leads among Pennsylvania Catholics by 18 points. Biden carried Lackawanna County—which contains Scranton, his hometown—by 8 points. (In 2016, Hillary won that area by three).

Unfortunately, Scranton is not Kamala Country, nor is Erie County in northwest Pennsylvania. And “Pennsyltucky”—all of the state’s rural areas—is overwhelmingly pro-Trump, despite hundreds of infrastructure projects underway there thanks to the Biden Administration.

That leaves the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metro areas, where Harris must run up big majorities. Even if she does that, she has to cut into Trump’s huge margins in the rural counties at least a little to win.

The Post poll shows how deeply Trump’s lies have penetrated Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, the top issue there is not the economy, immigration, health care (the largest employer in the state), or abortion but “protecting democracy.” Good news, right? Not exactly. When asked which candidate is best equipped to protect democracy, 48 percent say Harris and 45 percent choose Trump, an insignificant gap. Nationally, about 40 percent believe the 2020 election was stolen. Those are Trump base voters, and there’s no changing their minds.

Like voters in other states, Pennsylvanians have a peculiar cognitive dissonance on the economy. While two-thirds think the national economy is “poor” or “not so good,” two-thirds are optimistic about their own financial condition. I figure these folks are in the 33 percent of the electorate who say they receive most of their news from social media and Fox News. (Only 7 percent say they get their news most often from “national print or online news organizations, like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal”).

Harris has an advantage on abortion, with the Post poll showing 64 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. However, among voters who think the economy and immigration are paramount, Trump has the backing of 65 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

While Trump’s 15-point margin among white Pennsylvania voters in 2020 exit polling has declined by a third, a good sign, he is doing surprisingly well in holding down Harris’s margins among Black voters—especially males. In 2020, Biden won 92 percent of the Black vote; Harris is currently winning 78 percent, according to the Post poll. This may be because Black voters in Pennsylvania have been bombarded with ads saying that Harris wrongly prosecuted young Black men as San Francisco’s district attorney. Last week, Roger Stone signaled that another is coming that will feature a Black San Francisco woman who was carted off to jail in handcuffs because her daughter, a sickle cell anemia patient, was truant due to illness.

Harris won’t likely respond specifically to the sickle cell case, but she may engage on this issue more broadly. While her anti-truancy policies led to sharp educational gains among Black third graders, it might look defensive and off-message to point that out.

In better news, Harris leads Trump by 12 percentage points among Pennsylvania voters in union households and a comparable margin among the rank-and-file themselves. In 2020, Trump and Biden were in a statistical tie for that vote. The enthusiastic endorsement of Shawn Fein of the UAW and several Teamsters locals may prove crucial for Harris.

The New York Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll held some surprises. Respondents found Trump to be the more “extreme” candidate, 74 percent versus 46 percent. That only sounds good to the uninitiated. “Extreme” is apparently no longer a slur in a good chunk of America. In 1964, Barry Goldwater said in his acceptance speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” This may have played well with the GOP base, but it helped doom Goldwater, who lost to Lyndon Johnson that fall in a landslide. Nowadays, among voters in the Times/Siena poll who say “extreme” described them at least “somewhat well,” Trump won by more than 50 percentage points. And he doesn’t seem to be paying a price for his extreme views among independents.

Harris is making strides in convincing voters that she’s not a San Francisco liberal. It helped when she told Oprah that she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot an intruder. Even so, far more voters see her as too liberal than view Trump as too conservative, though this doesn’t account for independents and Democrats (like me) who would not describe Trump as conservative—because he isn’t. What true conservative is a protectionist, a budget-buster, and an authoritarian?

Both candidates are much more popular in Pennsylvania than they were last year. Trump’s approval rating is up nine points to 46 percent, while Harris’s has reached 51 percent, an astonishing improvement since July. The cross-tabs on “leaners” are ambiguous but appear to favor Harris, which could be critical late in the game. The vice president’s most significant advantage may be her five-point edge on “caring about people like you.”

From Valerie Bauerlein’s “Mark Robinson Scandal in North Carolina Injects Chaos Into Presidential Race” at The Wall St. Journal: “North Carolina is the swing state that former President Donald Trump won the most narrowly in 2020. Now Trump sees his fate tied to Robinson, the starkest example yet of the standard-bearers the MAGA takeover has brought to the Republican Party, and how hard it is to contain them….The state has become a place where all of the forces of a polarized nation intersect, from the divide between rural and urban interests, to hardened opinions about abortion…. North Carolina’s direction, potentially decisive in the presidential race, could hinge on another deeply flawed Trump protégé burdening the party with extreme views….Several top Republicans, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, have withdrawn support for Robinson. And Robinson, previously lauded by Trump as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” was neither seen nor mentioned at Trump’s Wilmington, N.C., rally on Saturday….In an unusual situation, the reverse coattails of a statewide candidate, Robinson, threaten to drag down the top of the ticket. An Elon University poll released Tuesday, taken Sept. 4-13, before the CNN report, showed that Robinson was trailing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Josh Stein, by 14 points, with Trump neck and neck against Vice President Kamala Harris. In recent months, Trump consistently polled ahead of her….Robinson exemplifies, more so than Georgia’s failed Senate candidate Herschel Walker or Arizona’s current Senate candidate Kari Lake, the no-apologies, right-wing purists who sail through primaries but stumble in general elections….Democrats are seizing the moment. The Harris campaign ran its first TV ad linking Trump and Robinson after CNN’s report….Rep. Jeff Jackson, North Carolina’s Democratic nominee for attorney general, said he is running ads reminding voters that his opponent, Rep. Dan Bishop, previously called himself Robinson’s “sidekick.”…. “Mark Robinson has been the most popular person for his party in our state for several years, so lots of major candidates have fallen over themselves to be pictured with him,” Jackson told supporters by email. “The blast radius is going to envelop lots of other candidates.” Democrats certainly hope so. The whole mess provides as good a test of the negative power of ‘reverse coattails’ in political campaigns as anyone could hope for. It also provides a fertile field for testing ads that emphasize the moral bankruptcy of the NC GOP.

Some nuggets from “Harris’ Georgia challenge: reassembling Biden’s diverse 2020 coalition” by John King at CNN Politics: “In 2020, voters of color made up 39% of the Georgia presidential electorate, and Biden won 81% support of that vote. That lopsided margin helped Biden win the state, by fewer than 12,000 votes, even though Trump won 69% among White voters….In a CNN poll released Tuesday, Harris was well ahead of Trump among Black (79% support) and Latino (59%) likely voters, but still trailed Biden’s winning percentages with those groups in 2020 – 87% and 65%, respectively….Statewide, Asians constitute about 4.5% of Georgia’s population. In the metro Atlanta area, the number of residents of Asian descent has more than doubled in the past two decades….Trump’s often toxic tone hurts him in the suburbs, but that is just part of the shift. Cobb and the other Atlanta suburbs are growing more diverse, and many big employers in metro Atlanta require at least four years of college – now the clearest dividing line in voting preference.” Unique factors that many pundits missed about the Georgia 2020-21 political upsets include that the state not only has Black voters comprising a third of the electorate; it probably has the most well-trained and most dedicated Black voter activists anywhere in the U.S., along with Atlanta’s heavy concentration of HBCUs, predominantly-Black in-migration and expanding Black middle class. Persuasion of uncommitted voters (especially white working-class) is a paramount strategic consideration for all states. And yes, it helped in 2020-21 that the Georgia GOP was engulfed in internal infighting. But Georgia’s unique demographic profile still makes it the best state lab for testing the power of investments in Black voter turnout.

NYT opinion essayist Thomas B. Edsall addresses a question that seems to be on the minds of millions: “How is it possible that Donald Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency despite all that voters now know about him?” He adds, “The litany of Trump’s liabilities is well known to the American electorate. His mendacity, duplicity, depravity, hypocrisy and venality are irrevocably imprinted on the psyches of American voters….Trump has made it clear that on a second term he will undermine the administration of justice, empower America’s adversaries, endanger the nation’s allies and exacerbate the nation’s racial and cultural rifts….Trump, from the start, was operating in a universe separate from the traditional politics of the Republican and Democratic parties; he was operating in a world rooted in his 25 years in pro wrestling, in which people put up good money to watch fake “fights” they know in their hearts were fixed.” Edsall notes further that “Based on eight surveys in the United States with a total of 10,921 respondents from February 2018 to February 2022, Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux found that white men, a core Trump constituency, were unique in many respects: “White men react more aggressively than any other group to perceived status challenges. While white men do not feel highly status-challenged on average, they are more likely to seek chaos when they do.” Any demographic group will respond strongly and negatively to economic status reduction. it provokes more anger because the group has experienced a taste of the good life, followed by a take-away. That’s different from striving for status that has never been experienced. “The threat of marginalization,’ as Edsall terms it, is a time bomb that explodes in many elections. But it never seems to harm the beneficiaries of marginalization – the corrupt profiteers of anti-union policies and other divide-and-conquer strategies. Thus far, some, not all, Republicans have successfully redirected much of the rage of status anxiety toward low-income people of other races. Challenging this cynical strategy is a long-term project that will span several more elections.

It’s only one poll, so all the usual caveats apply. But one of our commenters has shared a report on a recent poll, which ought to encourage the Harris campaign to recalibrate its foreign policy image in the swing states. As Dave Lawler reports at Axios: ‘Voters in six key swing states think former President Trump is more likely than Vice President Harris to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, respond effectively to a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, and advance U.S. interests internationally, according to new polling from the Institute for Global Affairs….By the numbers: Voters nationwide narrowly see Harris (52% to 48%) as better able to strongly defend U.S. interests, according to the poll. But Trump leads 56% to 44% in that category among voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin….

• The gap is wider in favor of Trump (58% to 42%) in the swing states on the question of who is more likely to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. By the same 58% to 42% margin, swing state voters see Trump as more likely to respond effectively if China makes a move on Taiwan.
• Trump also leads Harris (56% to 44%) in the swing states on his signature issue: immigration policy.
• Harris narrowly leads Trump nationally on the questions of who would respond more effectively to a major global crisis (52% to 48%) or improve America’s reputation (53% to 47%). But once again those gaps are wiped out when you zoom in on the swing states.

Between the lines: Harris’ foreign policy vision is less well-defined for voters than Trump’s, particularly in the swing states Trump’s campaign has been bombarding with messaging for months, says Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs.”….

• “We’ve seen that independents in battleground states tend to prefer a less interventionist foreign policy. So the fact that voters see Trump as more likely to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza might strengthen his popularity,” Hannah notes.

Reality check: While foreign policy is arguably the area on which presidents have the most direct influence, it has not been a major issue for voters this cycle, with the exception of immigration.” Even though the notion that Trump’s foreign policy toward Gaza, Ukraine, Russia and China serves U.S. interests better is laughable to serious international affairs experts, the margins in this poll are large enough to indicate a problem as regards the opinions of swing state voters. The Harris campaign’s ad strategy should be tweaked accordingly, and soon, since people are voting already.

Would you be shocked to learn that voting in the 2024 presidential and down-ballot elections has already begun?  As Ana Faguy and Ione Wells report in “First in-person votes cast in US presidential election” at bbc.com: “The first in-person votes have been cast in the US presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, a milestone moment that comes six weeks before election day on 5 November….Virginia became the first state in the country to allow in-person voting on Friday, and early polling sites will remain open there until 2 November. Some long queues were seen as voters cast ballots on national, state and local levels….The situation in two other states, Minnesota and South Dakota, is different as voters there can only hand in absentee ballots in person instead of mailing them….Some 69% of votes cast during the 2020 election were done through early in-person voting or through mail-in ballots, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab found….Virginia has been a reliably Democratic state in the last few elections, but some Republicans have been bullish about trying to flip it in November. Voters there will also be casting votes for the state’s eleven members of congress and one of its two senators….Early and mail-in voting has been a hot-button issue since the 2020 election, with just 37% of Republicans saying people should have the option to vote early, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. That sharply contrasts with 82% support from Democrats.” Ponder the strategic implications for campaigns for a minute: Prep time is pretty much over or will soon be in the days and weeks ahead. Beginning with the “Mother of Presidents” (8 of them), Virginia, the swing states are in motion. It’s on.

From “Why these three states are the most consistent tipping point in American politics“. by Ronald Brownstein at CNN Politics: “Whether measured by campaign advertising, candidate visits, organizational effort or nervous obsessing over poll results, Michigan, Wisconsin and above all Pennsylvania have moved to the top of the priority list for both Vice President Kamala Harrisand former President Donald Trump – just as they have in seemingly every recent presidential election….,Trump won the presidency in 2016 by stunning Democrat Hillary Clinton to win all three states by a combined margin of about 80,000 votes. President Joe Biden won back the White House in 2020 by recapturing all three states by a combined margin of around 260,000 votes….Since Harris took over at the top of Democratic candidate in July, the candidates have spent more money in advertising in Pennsylvania than anywhere else, with Michigan ranking second and Wisconsin fourth, according to data provided to CNN by AdImpact, an advertising tracking service. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin rank first, second and fourth as well in the amount of advertising the campaigns have reserved through November (with only Georgia intruding as number three on both lists.)….Bob Shrum, the long-time Democratic strategist who now serves as the director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, said the three Rust Belt battlegrounds have remained pivotal in presidential elections for so long because they encapsulate so many of the entrenched divisions that now define American politics – between, for instance, urban and rural areas and white-collar and blue-collar voters. “They reflect the polarization,” Shrum said….In a clear statement of their priorities, the campaigns have spent nearly $120 million more on ads in the three big Rust Belt battlegrounds than they have in the four Sunbelt states they are contesting (Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada). After camping out in Pennsylvania for her debate preparation, Harris is appearing in all three of the big Rust Belt battlegrounds again this week. Trump is holding a town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday…..Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are not carbon copies. But they do share enough common characteristics that the long-time Democratic strategist Tad Devine argues they should be thought of effectively a single state – what he calls “Mi-Pa-Wi.” Each of them is less racially diverse than the nation overall, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Whites account for about three-fourths of the population in Michigan and Pennsylvania and roughly four-fifths in Wisconsin. Although their Latino communities are growing, Blacks remain the largest minority group in each of them. The three states are also slightly older than the nation overall, with seniors accounting for about one-fifth of the population in each. None have many immigrants, with residents born abroad accounting for only about 7% of the population in Michigan and Pennsylvania and just 5% in Wisconsin. All three have seen minimal population growth in recent years.”

“At a time when education has become an increasingly powerful predictor of political allegiance,” Brownstein adds, ” the three converge, with about one-third of their adults holding at least a four-year college degree – just slightly below the share in the nation overall, the Census found. The median income just slightly lags the national average in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and trails by a larger margin (about 10%) in Michigan. All three are big manufacturing states that have seen substantial job loss in that sector since 2000, but have also seen employment in it increase by about 20,000-30,000 jobs since Biden took office, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data….In their religious orientation, they are very similar too: White Christians, who generally lean Republican, comprise about 55% of adults in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and just over half in Michigan, according to newly released findings from the Public Religion Research Institute. Meanwhile, voters with no religious affiliation, who have become a staunchly Democratic group, represent about one-fourth of the population in all three, PRRI found….While the big three Rust Belt states look similar on all these measures, in some other respects Wisconsin, on paper, should be the most difficult state of the three for Harris this year. Not only is the minority share of the population smaller in Wisconsin than the other two, but Whites without a college degree (the core of the modern GOP coalition, especially in the Trump era) cast about three-fifths of the votes there compared to about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to calculations from Census data by William Frey, a demographer at the non-partisan Brookings Metro think tank….Heavily White and blue-collar small town and rural areas, which have moved toward the GOP almost everywhere, also constitute a much bigger share of the vote in Wisconsin than in the other two. In a six-category geographic measuring system, devised by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, small metros and non-metros cast nearly 50% of Wisconsin’s votes in both 2016 and 2020, compared to about 30% in Michigan and 20% in Pennsylvania each time, according to results provided to CNN by Tim Marema, the center’s vice president and editor of its Daily Yonder website….Conversely, Democrats don’t have as strong an asset in Wisconsin’s largest metro area as in the other two states. The county centered on Milwaukee is only about half as big as the counties that encompass Philadelphia and Detroit, and doesn’t provide Democrats nearly as large a vote advantage, particularly with turnout there lagging in recent years; simultaneously, while Democrats have steadily gained ground in the suburban so-called WOW counties outside Milwaukee, Republicans still win those three big counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington), by bigger margins than almost any other major suburbs north of the Mason-Dixon line….One last factor makes Wisconsin on paper less attractive to Democrats: unions only represent about half as much of the private sector workforce in Wisconsin as they do in the other two states, according to federal figures.”

Brownstein takes a deep dive into the demographics of Wisconsin and Michigan, then writes of Pennsylvania, “That leaves Pennsylvania as the consensus toughest of the three states for Harris. It’s also the state analysts generally consider the most likely to provide the 270th Electoral College vote for the winner in November. (Wisconsin played that role in both 2016 and 2020.) “To me, the tipping point is Pennsylvania,” said Giangreco. “If we win Pennsylvania, [Harris] is going to be president. It’s really, really hard to see where you win Pennsylvania and you lose Michigan or Wisconsin. It’s not going to happen.”….The same broad trends reshaping the political landscapes in Wisconsin and Michigan are evident in Pennsylvania. As in the other states, Democrats are gaining in white-collar suburbs, especially in the Trump era: Biden in 2020 won the four big suburban counties outside Philadelphia by nearly 300,000 votes – over 100,000 more than even Clinton did four years earlier….But, as in other states, Democrats have been concerned about the risk of depressed turnout and some gains for Trump among Black voters in Philadelphia. And Republicans have built an imposing and enduring advantage among the state’s large population of non-college educated White voters….“Pennsylvania has just become a much better state” for Republicans, said Ulm, noting how the Democrats’ lead in Pennsylvania voter registration has shrunk since 2020. “Places that used to be Democratic bastions aren’t anymore.”….Dante Chinni is founder and director of the American Communities Project, which has developed another well-respected classification system to sort the nation’s political geography. Chinni says that in Pennsylvania (as well as the other two states) many of the places where Trump runs best are what the project calls “Middle Suburbs” – middle-income places outside urban centers predominantly filled with White working-class voters, like the blue-collar counties around Pittsburgh….“These were union strongholds…and in the past that’s meant they were Democratic,” Chinni said. “But they’ve shifted. They’ve become Trump-y. Usually he runs up vote in tiny places. But these are Trump’s most reliable concentration of dense votes.”….Democrats, however, see the possibility of Harris amassing huge margins in the Philadelphia suburbs with voters who support abortion rights and reversing some of the turnout decline that Biden suffered among Black voters in the city itself.”

An excerpt from “Pride, shame and understanding why the white working class vote supports Trump,” an interview with Arlie Rothschild, author of “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right” at wbur.org: “In her new book, author and sociologist Arlie Hochschild goes to the heart of Appalachia in Eastern Kentucky to share stories of people facing poverty, the loss of jobs and the rise of the opioid epidemic….”Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right” explores what led to their allegiance to former President Donald Trump. Hochschild says she wrote the book to help Democrats understand how Republicans see things….“Not because you agree with them — you never will — but because it’s really important. It’s nearly half of the country. It’s grown ever more consequential with the upcoming elections,” she says. “We haven’t been listening to what’s been happening to the white working class. It’s been sinking both absolutely and relatively, and it’s turned away from the Democratic Party and to the Republican Party. We need to know how to talk to these people.” Godchild adds “Deep story is what the world feels like to you. It’s not a matter of what you believe in, your moral precepts. It’s not cognitive. It’s just how it feels and it’s told by a story.”….“That a man is standing in a long line leading up to the American dream, which is on the other side of a mountain.  And he feels his feet are tired. He, one guy said, ‘I haven’t had a raise in a decade.’ And he’s been patient, feels about himself he’s a good person. But he’s kind of stalled. He’s stalled. And he’s looking at the guy ahead of him, not the people behind….“Suddenly, there are line cutters. Well, who are they? What right do they have? And who are the line cutters in this right wing team story? They are women. They are Blacks. They are immigrants. They are refugees They are overpaid, as they see it, public officials. Even the lame and oil-soaked Louisiana pelican, it kind of limps ahead. ‘Oh, these environmentalists.’” Read on here.

Insights from “Tim Ryan talks need for Democrats to appeal to working class, young male voters,” an interview conducted by Joe St. George at scrippsnews.com: “With debates and conventions now over in 2024, the fight for voters is intensifying….That is especially true in the Midwest….Tim Ryan, a past Democratic presidential candidate, represented Ohio in Congress for 20 years and joined “The Race: Weekend” to discuss the need of Democrats to appeal to working-class voters in the Midwest….“I think they started the process, but I think there is a lot more work to do,” Ryan told Scripps News….“The base is rallied, that’s the first step,” Ryan added….“The next step has got to be a direct appeal to working-class people, whether they are White or Black or Brown,” Ryan said….“It’s jobs, it’s jobs, it’s wages, it’s pensions, it’s all the bread-and-butter stuff,” Ryan said….“I think you have to have an energy plan, a moderate down-the-middle energy plan,” Ryan added….The next big political event is the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1….Ryan is one of only a handful of people who has debated JD Vance in the past. Vance defeated Ryan in the Ohio senate race in 2022….“I would hang Project 2025 right around his neck,” Ryan said….As far as Ohio’s Senate race, Ryan says Sen. Sherrod Brown is getting the national resources to get across the finish line that he believes he did not receive in his campaign in 2022….“Sherrod Brown has a brand and a record,” Ryan said of Brown’s campaign….“I think it’s a coin toss right now,” Ryan said….“I think the Democratic brand has been damaged in many places in this country,” Ryan said. “I think it’s right in line with what you are seeing with young boys and young men, there is a real desperation out there.”….“We have to speak to them directly and say we have their hopes and dreams in our agenda,” Ryan added….“It’s a national crisis with young boys and men,” Ryan said.”

In “The Democrats face one major hurdle: working-class voters,” Michel Sean Winters writes at The National Catholic Reporter, “Hurdles remain, actually one hurdle: working-class voters. Let’s start with Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Back in 2008, when I was still writing for America magazine, I called attention to Luzerne County in a post on the morrow of President Barack Obama’s historic victory, noting that Obama had carried the northeastern Pennsylvania county with 54% of the vote, up from John Kerry’s 51% in 2004. Hazleton, a city in Luzerne County, had passed an anti-immigrant ordinance in 2006. The town’s mayor, Lou Barletta, would become one of the faces of the Tea Party movement when he won a seat in Congress in 2010, defeating longtime Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski….Luzerne has changed and Hazleton is now a majority minority city, with Latinos constituting more than 60% of the population. The growth of the Latino vote, however, has not translated into Democratic wins….According to Politico, former President Donald Trump improved his vote totals in 2020 significantly in both Allentown and Reading, towns that are heavily Latino but which also lean more Democratic….Democrats have a problem with working-class voters. Jason Willick wrote about the “diploma divide” in The Washington Post last year and Doug Sosnik analyzed it in The New York Times. “The confluence of rising globalization, technological developments and the offshoring of many working-class jobs led to a sorting of economic fortunes, a widening gap in the average real wealth between households led by college graduates compared with the rest of the population, whose levels are near all-time lows,” Sosnik wrote. He also noted that in the seven battleground states “education levels are near the national average — not proportionately highly educated nor toward the bottom of attainment.”….Democrats, especially Harris, need to show that they care about these working-class voters and have some policy ideas that will help them. During the DNC, a friend with a long background working with organized labor and the Catholic Church, sent me a note.

Winters continues, “Working-class voters remember when they were called “deplorables” by the Democratic nominee in 2016, just as they remember her husband signing NAFTA, which shipped many jobs overseas. It confirmed what they suspected: that cultural elites really do look down on them. It is difficult to overstate the sense of betrayal and hostility lifelong Democrats felt by the end of the Clinton family’s leadership of the party….Latest CNN polls show that a surprisingly large number of people report they could yet change their mind. That is Harris’ biggest opportunity: These voters know everything there is to know about Trump. They continue to report that they think he would do a better job on the economy than Harris would. Her entry to them is the question: Who do you think cares about people like you? But then she has to show that she actually cares, that she wants to listen to working-class voters, not only talk to them or about them. Hillary Clinton thought the election was about her breaking the glass ceiling, and look how that turned out. Harris needs to convince voters she wants to help them break whatever glass ceilings they face. That is how to rebuild the famous “blue wall” of Democratic states along the Great Lakes, a wall that came crashing down in 2016….In addition to the debate, where Harris can continue to define herself for voters, she should seek an opportunity for a “Sister Souljah” moment. In 1992, appearing at a meeting of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, candidate Bill Clinton criticized a rap singer for expressing extremist views. The views were repugnant, but what Clinton was saying is that he was willing to challenge a part of his base, that he was not too beholden to any special interest, that he was capable of self-criticism. Harris needs to have such a moment. It could be about apologists for Hamas or extremist views on gender or climate activists who attack the artistic patrimony of humankind. The target doesn’t matter. What matters is Harris demonstrating she is unafraid to challenge those who are generally on her side of the partisan divide….The Democrats can win this election, keep the White House, retake the House of Representatives and possibly even hold on to the Senate. In the weeks ahead, we’ll look at those down ballot races too. But the feel-good vibes coming out of the Democratic convention are running into the strong headwinds of culturally conservative working-class voters. If Harris can make inroads with them, she’ll win handily. If she can’t, she may still win, but it will be by a whisker. And she could lose.”

“A new report commissioned by a labor-backed group is examining a problem many Democrats might rather ignore: the exodus of working-class voters from the party they used to call home,” Alex Seitz-Wald explains in “Democrats have been losing working-class voters. Here’s one playbook to win them back” at nbcnews.com. “Republicans under former President Donald Trump have been making inroads in the working class, including among Black and Hispanic voters, while Democrats have been gaining suburban moderates and highly educated professionals that used to vote Republican,” Alex Seitz-Wald explains in “Democrats have been losing working-class voters. Here’s one playbook to win them back” ate nbcnews.com. “Some voices on the left have downplayed the significance or even denied the loss of working class voters, but the data is increasinglyclear and signs of realignment are everywhere….“I’ve watched as MAGA flags have encroached into my community, which used to be a solid deep-blue working-class suburb of New York made of ethnic whites and people of color,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, a labor-backed group that aims to organize a multiracial working-class coalition. “Republicans are making inroads into the working class, and it’s not just white working class people.”….A nonprofit offshoot of Working Families embarked on an extensive research project last year to try to take an honest accounting of Democrats’ problems with working-class voters and find effective messages for the Democratic presidential campaign and others. The group shared its findings exclusively with NBC News….“We take the right wing and Republican Party seriously when they say they want to be the party of the working class,” Mitchell said. “And as much as Democrats are interested in organizing working-class people, and we don’t deny their sincerity, we wanted to start with a grounded place that provides the most accurate picture.”….The effort started with an attempt to better understand the working class of the 21st century by creating a more nuanced definition of the demographic and breaking it down into seven values-based typologies.

“Those categories,” Seitz-Wald continues, “were based on a battery of 40 questions put to more than 5,000 participants in surveys conducted with HIT Strategies, a Democratic research firm….The conclusions, laid out in a 60-page research report and accompanying 23-page political handbook, was shared for the first time this week in a virtual meeting with 160 representatives of left-leaning organizations and labor unions….The result is a novel approach to analyze the working class, which the report says represents about 63% of the electorate….“The working class represents a gigantic share of the electorate. Yet ideological differences within the working class are almost never explored in any systematic way,” the report states….The report sorted people into seven subtypes, each of roughly equal size, arranged on the ideological spectrum from “Next Gen Left” to “Core MAGA,” but the research is especially interested in the four groups in the middle that it says are “cross-pressured,” with values that are best represented in both parties….Those groups include “Tuned Out Persuadables,” “Anti Woke Traditionalists,” “Diverse Disaffected Conservatives” and “Secure Suburbans.”….The cohorts may look different demographically, but more importantly, they’re sorted by their feelings about economic, social and cultural issues. The key to reaching these cross-pressured sections of the working class, according to the report, is differentdepending on what messages resonate with each subgroup….For instance, the research found that populist economic messages about taking on corporations and “big money” in politics are generally popular across the working class, while less effective messages included focusing on the Biden-Harris administration’s work on climate and infrastructure or on Harris’ potential to make history as the first woman president….If nothing else, Mitchell hopes the research will push Democrats to take seriously the erosion with working class voters and to move beyond one-size-fits all stereotypes when thinking about how to talk to working-class voters.”

In “Harris can end the Trump-Vance culture wars. Here’s how,’ Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. writes: “Now that she has routed Donald Trump on the debate stage, Vice President Kamala Harris needs to take the next step and reinforce her campaign’s most powerful theme: That it’s time to end the cultural and ideological warfare — much of it phony, some of it rooted in prejudice — that keeps our nation from solving its most important problems….Despite her standing as the incumbent vice president, Harris has transformed herself into the candidate who represents change by speaking to a reality most Americans sense in their bones. Although Trump has been out of office for nearly four years, his angry and pessimistic spirit still dominates the country’s public life. As long as Trump lurks, every controversy will be turned into a culture war, elections will be defined around who hates whom, and actual problems will be left to fester….Fighting over gender, ideology, sexual identity or religion won’t change that. What would make a difference is uniting behind practical steps to achieve a better balance between work and family life, between the economy and community needs….The fight over abortion will not go away, but opponents of abortion ought to be sympathetic to more help for women who bring children into the world….What’s clear is that Americans across our divides agree we need to do more to help parents and kids. During the debate, Harris rightly but briefly mentioned the child tax credit and helping young families afford a home. I wish she had talked more about her agenda on leave, child care, elder care and adequate pay for those who work in the care economy….Doing so in the coming weeks will be a clear answer to critics who say she’s short on policy. She’s not (especially compared with Trump), but more detail on these and other ideas to strengthen the country’s families can only help her with the voters she needs.”

At The Washington Monthly, Robert J. Shapiro argues that “even though it’s already Labor Day, there’s still time for her campaign to pay attention to a major issue that concerns millions of voters and offer them a response that would underscore her pledge to chart a more prosperous future for middle-class Americans, what she calls “an opportunity economy…..The big issue is the fading prospect of upward mobility for Americans without college degrees. One way to help people raise their incomes is by offering free retraining for higher-paying jobs….The fading prospects for upward mobility have made millions of Americans feel aggrieved and resentful. Donald Trump has used his own sense of personal grievance and resentment to channel their disappointment—to his benefit….The Harris-Walz campaign can turn the tables on this vital issue by giving average Americans a reason to feel optimistic about their futures. The campaign has promised to mandate paid family leave and sick leave, limit price hikes by large corporations in certain circumstances, reduce medical debt and subsidize first-time home buyers….That’s fine as far as it goes. But people still have to live on what they earn. In this economy, the way most people increase their incomes is to become more productive….While few of them have time or money to go to college now, the government could easily afford to give them free access to evening and weekend retraining courses at public community colleges as a pathway to revive their prospects for upward mobility….Community colleges today charge about $450 per course, so retraining would cost about $4,050 for a would-be plumber, $3,150 for those aspiring to be entry-level computer programmers, and $3,600 for a student electricians program. Using these three examples, the average retraining program would cost about $3,600. A new nationwide retraining program could waive those costs since the point is to restore upward mobility for millions who couldn’t afford to lay out $3,600, regardless of the potential benefits….Those costs would be de minimis for taxpayers. If we assume that 500,000 low earners would sign on each year for two-year programs of evening and weekend classes, the government could cover annual tuition costs for 1 million people each year for $2 billion annually. That’s equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of all non-defense discretionary federal spending….That’s a very small price to create a new path to upward mobility for millions of aggrieved Americans and get millions of those voters to take a new look at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”

With Ed Kilgore’s cautionary flags about attaching too much importance to the election consequences of the Harris-Trump presidential debate in mind, there are a few more articles about it worth checking out. At The Hill, for example, Juliann Ventura writes, “Former GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie warned Vice President Harris against challenging former President Trump to another debate following Tuesday’s showdown….“Nothing great can happen for her in a second debate,” the former New Jersey governor said on The View Wednesday. “She’ll either do as well as she did this time… or he could do better.” However, Ventura explains that “The Harris campaign quickly challenged Trump to another debate after Tuesday night’s matchup wrapped up, as pundits largely agreed that she had the stronger performance….Trump has declined to accept the challenge, however, arguing that it’s Harris who lost, comparing her to a prize fighter demanding a rematch….“She needed to show those undecided voters that she belonged on that stage, and last night she showed that she belongs on the stage,” Christie said. “That’s why — look, I saw her campaign put out a challenge for a second debate right after the debate. Please stop. Don’t do it!” Withdrawing a challenge is a bad look. But Harris is now in position to set tough conditions.

If you want more numbers, Nathaniel Rakich has them in his caveat-rich article, “Early polls say Harris won the presidential debate“at abcnews.go.com, and writes: “As of 1 p.m. Eastern, 538 has collected three national polls and one swing-state poll that were conducted since the debate.* In all of them, more people who watched the debate said Harris won the debate than said Trump did. On average, 57 percent of debate watchers nationally said Harris turned in the better performance; only 34 percent said Trump did….CNN/SSRS also conducted a poll of the same respondents before the debate, allowing us to compare what they thought about the candidates before the event with what they thought about the candidates after it. And according to their poll, Harris’s net favorability rating among debate watchers rose from -11 percentage points (39 percent favorable, 50 percent unfavorable) before the debate to +1 point (45 percent favorable, 44 percent unfavorable) after it. Trump’s net favorability rating, however, barely changed (from -11 points to -12 points).” Rakich adds that, “even if Harris does rise in the polls after the debate, those gains could be fleeting. CNN polling also found that Americans thought former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned in the best performance in all three of her debates with Trump in 2016, and she rose in national polls after the first two of them (although other factors, such as the “Access Hollywood” tape, likely factored into that as well). But, of course, the race tightened in the final days and Clinton went on to lose that election.”

At Brookings, Elaine Kamarck and William A. Galston explain why “The presidential debate accomplished more for Harris than it did for Trump” and write: “Kamala Harris faced three key challenges. First, 37% to 42% of voters in some swing states knew virtually nothing about her except that she serves as Joe Biden’s vice president. Filling in this gap, or at least beginning to, was job one. From the very first minutes of the debate, it was clear that she knew she had to define herself and that she did—as a child of the middle class who, in contrast to Trump, was not given $400 million to start a business. In addition, she repeatedly came back to her experience as a prosecutor….Second, Harris has shifted her position on many important issues—health care (Medicare for All), climate change (fracking), and immigration (decriminalizing border crossings), among others—since she ran for the nomination in 2020. This left people wondering, what kind of Democrat is she—a classic California progressive or the next generation of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden-style center-left? She had to persuade voters that the new version of Kamala Harris is the one they will get if she is elected….Here her performance was more mixed. She explained her shift on fracking but didn’t give as clean and crisp an answer as she could have on other issues where Trump has accused her of flip-flopping. However, she defended the Biden administration and her participation in the bipartisan immigration legislation that Trump killed, she let the audience know that both she and Tim Walz are gun owners who have no intention of taking away people’s guns, and she pushed back against the charge that she was weak on crime by emphasizing her experience and record as a prosecutor who put criminals behind bars….   Third, as is the case with every candidate who hasn’t previously occupied the presidency, Harris had to convince swing voters that she has what it takes to serve effectively as the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief. Simply put, they needed to be able to see her as big enough to be president, a barrier that some previous candidates, such as Michael Dukakis in 1988, failed to cross….Harris passed this test easily. She never got flustered, she made her points concisely and quickly, and she spoke with confidence about traditionally “male” issues like war, defense, crime, and foreign policy.”

Nobody knows how long last night’s presidential debate impressions are going to last among the voting public, or even of there is going to be a second debate before election day. There is also the unanswered question about whether or not debates matter much, regardless of who ‘wins.’ So the importance of the debate as a determinant of the outcome of the election is unclear.

Harris is nonetheless getting plenty of good reviews for her ‘performance’ last night, while positive takes on Trump’s comments are scarce outside of right-wing media. Better that for Democrats that the opposite. Here are seven choice takes from commentators:

In “CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Harris outperformed Trump onstage,” Afriel Edwards-Levy writes that “Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agree that Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS. The vice president also outpaced both debate watchers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president earlier this year, the poll found….Debate watchers said, 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia. Prior to the debate, the same voters were evenly split on which candidate would perform more strongly, with 50% saying Harris would do so and 50% that Trump would. And afterward, 96% of Harris supporters who tuned in said that their chosen candidate had done a better job, while a smaller 69% majority of Trump’s supporters credited him with having a better night.”

“Her pointed digs on the size of his rally crowds, his conduct during the Capitol riot, and on the officials who served in his administration who have since become outspoken critics of his campaign repeatedly left Trump on the back foot,” Anthony Zurcher writes at BBC.com. “The pattern for much of this debate was Harris goading her Republican rival into making extended defences of his past conduct and comments. He gladly obliged, raising his voice at times and shaking his head.”

Zac Anderson observes in “Who won the debate? Harris’ forceful performance rattles a defensive Trump” at USA Today: “Nervous Democrats saw a significantly stronger advocate than Biden, who repeatedly stumbled when he squared off against Trump on June 27 in Atlanta. In addition to delivering a much more fluid and coherent message, Harris often looked more poised than Trump as she calmly prosecuted the case against him, prompting a series of angry outbursts.”

Nandita Bose, Gram Slattery and Joseph Ax write in “Harris puts Trump on defensive in combative debate” at Reuters.com that “Democratic candidate Kamala Harris put her Republican rival Donald Trump on the defensive in a combative presidential debate on Tuesday with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office, his support of abortion restrictions and his myriad legal woes….A former prosecutor, Harris, 59, controlled the debate from the start, getting under her rival’s skin repeatedly and prompting a visibly angry Trump, 78, to deliver a series of falsehood-filled retorts.”

“Kamala Harris showed up — and then some….The vice president’s performance against Donald Trump, in which she repeatedly baited him and knocked him off balance, was a far cry from President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate. And it gave Democrats the role reversal they had hoped for after their switch at the top of the ticket,” Politico’s staff writes in “Harris won the debate — and it wasn’t close.”

From “Democrats see attack ad gold mine in Trump’s debate comments” bye Andrew Solender at Axios: “Democratic lawmakers and strategists were elated at what they saw as an “unhinged” former President Trump repeatedly taking Vice President Harris‘ bait at Tuesday night’s debate….Why it matters: “Everything this dude says right now is an attack ad line,” said one Democratic strategist….Another told Axios during the debate that the ads are probably being produced “literally right now.”…What we’re hearing: Democrats in Congress cited multiple comments by Trump that they believe hurt the ex-president and his party….”

“The former president’s alternate reality conflicts with that of others, including his current and former GOP allies who said he blew it on stage Tuesday night against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Even Elon Musk agreed that Harris “exceeded most people’s expectations.”….The conservative aggregation site, the Drudge Report, declared: “The End.” Republican spinmeisters in the debate spin room in Philadelphia couldn’t sugarcoat the situation.” From “Who Won the Debate? Even Republicans Agree it Was Kamala Harris” by Mary Ann Akers at The Daily Beast.

Republican spin doctors don’t have a lot to work with regarding last night’s presidential debate. But they can take some comfort in knowing that there are seven plus weeks left in the race.

Regarding the muted-mic, no-audience in the room presidential debate tonight (rules here), my sage advice for Vice President Harris is to look more presidential. Forget all that media-hyped stuff about provoking her opponent into saying something silly. If she does that, she runs the risk of appearing manipulative. All he has to do is not take the bait and he wins the night, plus a few days of positive media coverage. Besides, there is a very good chance he will look unhinged, no matter what she does. Why re-fight a battle she has already won? Because Harris is the debate favorite with her much-noted prosecutorial skill set, Trump is the debate underdog and he gets bonus points by doing “better than expected.” If he shocks everyone and appears surprisingly dignified, he wins big. Yes, the muted mic helps Trump in that regard. But them’s the rules. Harris’s job is not to manipulate Trump; It is to show that she is the ‘adult in the room,’ the one who can be trusted to make sober presidential decisions. Don’t assume everyone already knows that. Many voters like Trump; Many can’t stand him. People know him already. Her, not so much. She has to sell herself, not squander her credibility by trying to trap her opponent. Forget the Perry Mason theatrics. Just be smart, more relaxed and warm and likable, persona qualities she already has.  A little humor wouldn’t hurt. Sure, have a couple of zingers for the opponent, and attack when appropriate. But, think JFK vs. Nixon – the way the former revealed himself to an audience who already knew the latter. Let Trump be the angry, yammering fool. Don’t be too defensive or explain too much. Roll out an eloquent vision of a more hopeful, prosperous and united America.

On the eve of the presidential debate, the polls mostly indicate that, nationally, the presidential race is pretty close, with a trend in the right direction for Harris. But another numerical consideration is the numbers of the demographic change, and for Dems, the news from North Carolina is pretty good. As “the team at Carolina Forward” writes in an e-blast: “Since the 2020 election, North Carolina has added almost 400,000 new residents. With natural growths, deaths, comings-of-age and new neighbors, hundreds of thousands of new voters will be casting ballots for the very first time in our state this fall….In 2020, Trump won North Carolina by his slimmest margin of victory in the entire country: just 73,000 votes, or 1.3%. So the dynamic “churn” in our state’s electorate matters a whole lot. This week, we’re doing a deep-dive into what those population changes might mean politically. Further, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, North Carolina has gained about 396,000 new residents since 2020. Nearly all (95%) of this growth has been from net in-migration – people moving to North Carolina. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the top state sending new residents to North Carolina is Florida, followed by New York, Virginia and South Carolina, in that order. According to the NC State Board of Elections, there are over 217,000 more registered voters in the state today than there were during the 2020 election, and many more than that are net-new– in other words, voters who were not registered here four years ago….In 2020, Donald Trump scraped out a narrow win in North Carolina by about 73,000 votes out of approximately 5.5 million cast….In 2024, Kamala Harris is quite likely to hit a 30-point margin in Wake county over Donald Trump. It’s entirely conceivable that she could hit an eye-watering 40-point margin in Mecklenburg county.”

In addition to demographic trends, the latest NC polls are also pretty decent for Dems. As TonyDem4life notes at Daily Kos, “A Survey USA poll that dropped today has Harris leading by 3 points….According to WRAL,, “Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are in a statistical tie in North Carolina, but Harris appears to have a slight edge, according to an exclusive WRAL News Poll of the 2024 presidential race….Harris leads Trump by 3 percentage points — a close result in this key battleground state, but one that represents a substantial improvement for Democratic hopes in North Carolina from the last WRAL poll, in March, that found Trump leading by 5 percentage points.”…..

• Harris is up in the suburbs 49% to 44%, a result that almost entirely matches the overall statewide result.
• Trump leads Harris among suburban men, 47% to 45%.
• Harris leads Trump among suburban women, 54% to 40%.

UPDATE:

ANOTHER POLL just dropped. New Quinnipiac poll finds Harris leading Trump in North Carolina by 49-46, same as Survey USA poll earlier today. ”

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Do Democrats need an actual landslide to win at all? The question arises from two disturbing possibilities.

1. The Trump campaign, likely in league with Putin, will surely try to steal the election. We have already seen a massive influx of GOP laws to gain control of the count put in place in various states. They have all but announced it. In addition, new evidence of Russian meddling in our election machinery has resurfaced, which is not exactly a shocker, but it does merit more attention.
2.  Even if Dems narrowly win the presidency, they could fail to win both houses of congress, rendering them all but impotent with respect to enacting anything substantial on their agenda. The best antidote for this outcome is a Democratic landslide – to win so big that Trump and the cat-lady hater are washed away in a cleansing blue tsunami. Easier said than done, but it could happen

Although most pundits are saying it’s a toss-up, Harris-Walz are scoring well in polls, so far dodging major screw-ups. They are the fresh faces in this race, while the GOP ticket marinates in their increasingly bitter take on America.  Harris’s youthful persona, Walz’s authentic middle class narrative and their ticket’s exuberant spirit have flipped the script; Growing numbers of likely voters see the GOP ticket as stale, tired and angry. Many of Trump’s own appointees have turned against him. Careerists RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard add to the GOP ticket’s “It’s all about me” vibe. The Republican campaign now has an aging preppy’s bilious ‘get-off-my-lawn’ spirit. Not a good look.

Democrats should amp up messages like”Harris-Walz for a More Joyful America,” “Let’s Move On – Harris-Walz 2024,”  or “Trump Is So Yesterday.” Just underscore the glaring reality that only one party’s leaders are pointing the way forward to a more hopeful future for all Americans, while the other party’s leaders wallow in a whining personality cult. As a result, poll numbers show a trend away from Republicans, toward Democrats.  Democratic activist James Carville put it well in a recent NYT op-ed, “The most thunderous sound in politics is the boom of a single page as it turns from one chapter to the next.”

The current Republican Party is more concerned with stroking Trump’s fragile ego than representing conservative causes. The only fix leading to a healthier Republican Party is a Democratic landslide. Only then is there a chance that they will finally get the message they missed during almost two years of electoral defeats. A few Republican leaders, including former U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kitzinger have figured out that defeating Trump decisively is the only way they can save their party, and they have endorsed Harris-Walz.

Democratic campaigns should understand that policy voters have already chosen sides. From now on, it’s all about the image that each party communicates to swing voters. For now, at least, advantage Democrats. Above all, hold that edge.