One of the odd subplots of this strange election cycle is the possibility of an electoral vote being purloined by Nebraska Republicans, as I warned at New York:

If you like to play with interactive maps laying out a host of presidential-election scenarios, you may be acutely aware that two of the 50 states award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district rather than allocating them statewide. These would be Maine, which adopted the practice in 1972, and Nebraska, which started splitting electoral votes in 1992. Until 2008, when Barack Obama snared an electoral vote from deep-red Nebraska’s Omaha-based Second Congressional District, it was all kind of academic. Then in 2016, Donald Trump won the Second Congressional District of Maine even though Hillary Clinton was the statewide winner. In 2020, both Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes, essentially canceling each other out.

It was the general expectation that the same thing would happen this year in a Biden-Trump rematch. But then in April, Trump activist Charlie Kirk came to Nebraska and ignited a MAGA grassroots effort to convince the state’s Republican governor and legislative leaders to change the state back to a winner-take-all system to keep Democrats from again winning the Second District’s electoral vote. With a special legislative session focused on property-tax issues already pending, Governor Jim Pillen offered to go along only if he could be assured the votes to overcome a certain Democratic filibuster. Meanwhile, these developments were being monitored in Maine, where Democrats control the legislature and the governor’s office. Maine Democrats threatened to take countervailing action to deny Trump a shot at an electoral vote in their state if Nebraska fired first.

Things quieted down after Pillen decided against including the electoral-vote issue in the call for a special session. But then the presidential race retightened after Joe Biden handed off the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris, who proceeded (though there’s no evidence the Second District issue was at all a factor) to choose native Nebraskan Tim Walz as her running mate. For whatever reason, the Trump camp is again putting pressure on Pillen to call a second special legislative session in September to ensure the 45th president gets all the state’s electoral votes, as the Nebraska Examiner reported:

“Nebraska Republican Party Chairman Eric Underwood confirmed what state senators have told the Examiner privately, that the issue is not dead for 2024, and Pillen and legislative Republicans are waiting for the right moment to bring it forward. …

“’It’s a delicate opportunity,’ Underwood said. ‘When we’re ready to go I’ve connected with the Trump Force team. I’ve connected with Turning Point Action. … When this opportunity presents itself, what we need to do is to be the support network for those individuals because this will be a national change.’”

In deciding whether and when to pull the trigger on this effort to rig Nebraska’s electoral votes for Trump, Republicans will presumably want to make sure Maine is not in a position to carry out its earlier threat to retaliate. Maine’s legislature has been out of session since May.

Does a single electoral vote really matter? It seems far-fetched, but there is a very common scenario in which Democrats win the “blue wall” battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin while losing the Sun Belt battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. That would give them 269 electoral votes — with the Nebraska Second District vote putting them over the top. That’s a bit less likely with Kamala Harris, who seems stronger in the Sun Belt states than Biden, heading the ticket, but it’s still feasible.

It’s certainly worth noting that Tim Walz is headed to Omaha for campaign appearances this very weekend. This could present Nebraska Republicans with a red flag (or perhaps more appropriately a blue flag; the Second District is often called “the blue dot” in the red map of Nebraska) that motivates them to act, or perhaps just a vivid Harris-Walz demonstration that the heartland does not entirely belong to Trump.

Political junkies talk a lot about various constituencies based on race, class, age, sex etc., and who they do and don’t support and why. But we tend to overlook one of the largest groups of American voters who share some unique concerns — people running and employed in small businesses, which had less than 12 employees on average in 2023. Many of them are working-class contractors, while some of them have managerial or professional training. But they are all engaged in private enterprise, often competing against huge corporations and sometimes working on government contracts. For starters, consider that 61.7 million people were employed in more than 33 million small businesses in 2023, according to the small Business Administration. 

So, please check out “How Kamala Harris can win over small businesses” by Gene Marks, founder of The Marks Group, a small-business consulting firm, which is cross-posted from The Hill:

Pew Research reports that two-thirds of the nation’s 33 million small-business owners have fewer than four employees. Also, 85 percent of them are white and 76 percent are men. More than half are over age 50.

Today, these small-business owners are not a happy bunch. Despite a surge in startups, lower inflation, a softening labor market, fewer supply chain issues and a growing economy, their sentiment and confidence levels are still at historic lows.

Not surprisingly, more than half of small-business owners in one recent survey say they believe another Donald Trump administration would have the best impact on their businesses, compared with only 14 percent for Joe Biden. In another recent survey, 33 percent of small-business owners believe that Trump winning the election will positively impact their business, versus 16 percent for Biden.

Today, Kamala Harris has taken over for Biden as the Democratic nominee. So now this is her challenge. Can she win over small-business owners this election year? I believe there is a way.

When government is friendly toward business, businesses feel more comfortable investing, hiring and taking risks. Taxing “the rich,” going after “the wealthy” to “pay their fair share” and vilifying “big corporations,” on the other hand, makes businesses seem evil. This may be a great plot line for a Hollywood movie or for populist fringe groups, but it’s not a terrific strategy for a government that needs to win over a large swathe of voters.

Remember that there are many small-business owners who, with their spouses, do make more than $400,000 per year (the “wealthy”) but use a substantial amount funds to reinvest in their companies. Also remember that countless small businesses — from pizza shops to landscapers — rely on big corporations and their employees for their livelihoods. And while it’s important to help business owners of color or in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods, it’s also important to recognize that 85 percent of us would not be included in that group. We need support and a little love too.

As I’ve previously written, the Republicans will work hard to make permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which includes many provisions that benefit small-business owners. Without that, my tax bill personally will increase between 20 and 30 percent.

Harris has so far been mostly silent on this issue, so most of my clients are assuming she’ll continue with Biden’s policies, letting the tax cuts expire. My advice for her is to compromise and champion a few of the TCJA’s provisions that specifically benefit small businesses — most importantly the Qualified Business Income Tax. She should also support making permanent first-year deductions for capital equipment and research and development expenditures. That would make me, and many of my clients, much less concerned about a tax increase if she were elected.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen many new regulations emerge from various government agencies working under Biden’s direction that require all businesses to reclassify certain independent contractors, pay more overtime wages, eliminate non-compete contracts and be subject to new and more rules (and fines) for safety, harassment and discrimination violations. These are important. But they come with significant costs.

Big corporations can absorb these costs, which is why an overwhelming number of both Republican and Democratic small-business owners say business policies today favor large companies over small businesses. Small businesses struggle to keep up with and pay for these regulations. A blanket exemption on many of these rules for employers with less than 10 employees or so would win over many voters.

Isabella Guzman is perhaps one of the best Small Business Administration leaders I’ve ever seen. She’s worked hard and travelled extensively. She deserves a promotion to the Department of Commerce or Department of Defense, where she can do the same thing for the many small-business programs there that need attention. And she should be significantly involved in choosing her successor at the SBA to ensure that her work continues.

Harris also needs to set forth a plan on immigration, which needs to be a priority. Congress must compromise and pass a bill already. No one wants to see families physically deported, but everyone knows that illegal immigrants are breaking the law and creating a burden. Sort this out with Congress, secure the border and create a better legal path for citizenship. Small businesses need workers. The economy needs more entrepreneurs. Law-abiding business owners need help competing with those that flout the law and hire illegal workers. The country needs a strong president who will work with Congress to fix this major problem.

Finally, consider a new funding program for succession. As mentioned above, the majority of small-business owners are over the age of 50 (the average age is about 55). Many of my clients are thinking hard about exiting their businesses over the next few years, and many others have already gotten started. Sales of business are up more than 20 percent from a year ago. But tax, financing and other obstacles remain.

Harris would do well to support and expand the tax benefits for Employee Stock Ownership Plans, so that more workers can have equity in their workplaces and business owners can get help cashing out. Direct the SBA to create special financing programs for those looking to buy businesses. This is not only an enormous opportunity to provide for retirement but also a chance for younger generations — and even employees — to own businesses.

I’m a moderate Republican business owner. My vote is still up for grabs. Taking the above actions would go a long way toward winning my support — and the support of many other business owners — for Kamala Harris.

The more we look at the kind of voters who seem to be returning to the Democratic banner under Kamala Harris, the more it seems she could become the real “change” candidate, as I explained at New York:

When Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential contest and endorsed his vice-president as his successor, Kamala Harris enjoyed as quick and thorough a coronation to become party nominee as anyone could have imagined. All the talk of an “open convention” or a “blitz primary” that would find some ideal candidate without Harris’s perceived shortcomings vanished almost instantly as every party faction and every interest and constituency group dutifully, and soon enough joyfully, embraced the long-time heir apparent. All the comparisons of Biden’s situation to that of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 fell apart upon the realization that totally unlike LBJ’s veep, Hubert Humphrey, Harris would be in an unassailable position going into her party’s convention. And in addition to a united party, she inherited Biden’s formidable campaign organization and sizable treasury.

But it has gotten even better than that for Harris: Because Biden’s age and deteriorating vigor and communication skills had become an even bigger problem than dissatisfaction with his record or policy platform, the substitution of Harris for the 78-year-old president felt like the arrival of a fresh breeze, and not just to Democrats worried about a loss to Donald Trump. A grim rematch between two unpopular old white men, which much of the country seemed to dread, was reset overnight by this relatively young, multiracial woman who offers a very different option.

Or does she? Harris isn’t an AOC or a Pete Buttigieg, signaling a millennial wave finally sweeping away boomer pathologies. She’s 59 years old, and this is her seventh race for public office (she’s climbed from district attorney to state attorney general to U.S. senator to vice-president). Her refreshing running mate, Tim Walz, is another boomer, a year older than her and often described as everyone’s favorite grandpa. Neither Harris nor Walz has been a conspicuous dissenter from any of Biden’s policy decisions or issue positions; indeed, Harris has been universally praised for the intense loyalty she displayed toward Biden as he slowly came to recognize the need to pack it in.

So potentially the Harris-Walz ticket can enjoy the best of two worlds, leading a united incumbent party without all of the baggage of the incumbent president. More importantly, Harris can offer something Biden obviously could not: a way out of the political era symbolized by both Trump and Biden, for which there was a sizable constituency just waiting to be mobilized. It was an absolutely poisonous symptom of Biden’s basic problem that for the first time in living memory, Democrats were hoping for a low-turnout election while seeking to blow-torch non-major-party options like the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to which voters unhappy with the Biden-Trump choice might resort. And much as Kennedy’s own claim that Democrats and Republicans are an indistinguishable “uniparty” is completely absurd and dangerous, there’s not much question that voters were becoming equally tired of the octogenarian leadership of both major parties. It’s probably not a coincidence that Harris’s advent has been accompanied by a decline in support for Kennedy.

Republicans may grumble that Harris cannot avoid responsibility for the unpopular aspects of Biden’s record, particularly on issues like immigration and inflation where voters mistakenly but clearly think Trump had the more successful presidency. But Harris’s sudden appearance at the top of the Democratic ticket is presenting them with a real dilemma: Do they simply treat her as Biden 2.0 and continue the 2024 campaign as originally planned (without all the references to a senile or puppetlike opponent), or do they acknowledge Harris’s distinct persona by focusing on politically vulnerable positions she took during her brief 2020 presidential campaign, or in the Senate, or as a state official in wicked California? It’s looking more and more as though they will take the bait and depict Harris as far more of a radical leftist than Biden, if only they could get their own candidate to lay off the blatant racism and sexism and nursing of stupid grievances long enough to point at Harris and yell: “Communist!”

Perhaps this old-school McCarthyism will work once again to distract persuadable voters from Trump’s and the GOP’s own extremism. But it could also help free Harris from Biden’s shadow and allow her to stand for a political future full of possibilities that Trump would destroy instantly in a self-absorbed second term dominated by vengeance.

If we hear more and more about “the future” in Harris’s communications going forward, it will be clear she’s aiming at voters who are less interested in “making America great again” than in putting the past firmly in the rearview mirror. Her novelty as a presidential candidate has already turned around a Democratic campaign that was floundering on the very edge of viability. If she can take shrewd steps to avoid being McCarthyized (which she will be free to do given her party’s unified determination to take down Trump) and take advantage of the fresh start she has come to represent, then she can win over voters who had written off Joe Biden entirely. And what was looking to be a teeth-grinding effort to convince the country that anyone would be preferable to a vindicated 45th president could remain joyful and upbeat right up to and beyond November 5.

Caitlin Jewitt and Geoffrey Skelley address a question of interest, “Will Harris’s late start help or hurt her in the general election?” at 538/abcnews.com, and write that “there is also a school of thought that long, competitive nomination contests like the 2008 Democratic primary can energize the party base, generate excitement and enthusiasm, and help the eventual candidate create campaign infrastructure across the states….Harris’s campaign, with its unusual circumstances, may still feature aspects of both a short and long nomination fight. Not unlike past nominees who secured their spots after lengthy primary campaigns, Harris has had to quickly pivot to a general election campaign relatively late in the election calendar. Yet the 2024 cycle for Democrats actually had many trappings of a short nomination battle, exemplified by the party’s efforts to rally to Biden and a lack of serious opposition to him in the primaries and even the fact that Democrats were already looking to speed up the vote to confirm Biden as the nominee when his candidacy began to come apart after his poor showing in the June 27 debate….Democrats’ moves to unify quickly behind Harris ensured that it did not result in the type of prolonged infighting sometimes characteristic of lengthier primary races. The party even set a new precedent to confirm Harris as quickly as possible — though the Democratic convention doesn’t begin until next week, Harris has already officially become the party’s nominee, by virtue of a virtual vote of delegates to nominate a candidate….This expedited timeline — prompted in part by concerns about ballot access laws in a few states, the time needed to vet a vice presidential candidate, and guarding against Republican legal challenges — also likely insulated Harris from other challengers materializing..”

Jewett and Skelley continue, “Harris’s situation differs in other key respects, too. For one thing, because she did not wage a primary campaign, she was not battered by attacks from party rivals in the ways Ford or Mondale were, which can give the other party fodder for attacks heading into the general election….She was able to raise record amounts of money in a short timeframe as her candidacy energized Democratic voters. Plus, she has been able to more easily utilize the already-existing Biden-Harris campaign infrastructure, unlike the alternative choices Democrats may have considered….Ultimately, it’s unclear if there’s a meaningful relationship between when a candidate becomes the presumptive nominee and their success in November: Out of the eight races that were settled in June or later (excluding the 2020 and 2024 races because they didn’t have protracted nomination fights), the nominee went on to win the general election in three.” I like the late winning of the nomination for a different, but related reason: Campaigns get stale. even I, a  partisan Democrat, simply got tired of hearing all about the ‘excruciating minutiae’ of campaigns. to cop a phrase from Seinfeld. There is more political news coverage now than ever before, and it is only a matter of time before your favored candidate chucks in a distracting gaffe, or some reporter magnifies a trifling incident, which has little or nothing to do with major issues and gets an insane amount of coverage (e. g. Hunter Biden). There is such a thing as too much political news, which is why a lot of voters don’t pay much attention until October. The truncated campaign also makes candidates seem fresher, while the years-long slog has the opposite effect. Democrats ought to re-design their process to take this phenomenon into consideration. Let the Republicans have long, constipated campaigns, while Democrats do quiet organizing and fund-raising behind the scenes, do localized videos instead so much travel and have our candidates lay comparatively low as much as possible until late Spring or Summer. It might also result in less wear and tear on our candidates.

The “no tax on tips” idea favored by both Trump and Harris sounds like a pro-worker idea on the surface. But is it really? Abdallah Fayyad argues against it at Vox: “….The policy doesn’t really hold up under any scrutiny. And that’s because at best, “no tax on tips” looks a lot less like a tax cut for low- and middle-income families, and a lot more like a subsidy for big businesses….“I’m not at all saying that workers won’t get anything,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “But I think that a meaningful share of the [federal] expenditures on a tax exemption like this will go to the employers of tipped workers.”….That might be why industry lobbyists have backed the proposal. “It’s not a surprise that the National Restaurant Association loves this,” Shierholz said, referring to the lobbying group that represents many of the country’s major restaurant chains….At worst, the tax policy might even put a downward pressure on service sector wages by allowing employers to keep their workers’ baseline pay low because the tax cut could instead raise the workers’ take-home pay….“I think there is no question that it would” weigh wages down, Shierholz said. The only question, she says, is just how much….So while “no tax on tips” might make for a good sound bite or campaign slogan, it doesn’t necessarily translate to wise policymaking.” That’s the nut of the strongest argument against it – that it would encourage employers to keep the hourly wages low, currently just $2.13, although a handful os states have abolished the subminimum wage for tipped workers.” (See also this WaPo editorial).  Who could fairly blame tipped workers for not reporting all their tipped income? Many people are also unaware that some foreign restaurant owners split tips with workers, a practice which is not uncommon among restaurants that hire servers from different countries. One of the political problems associated with the “no tax on tips” idea is that it may piss off other low-wage workers, like cashiers who gain nothing from the proposal. There are 3.6 million of them the U.S., one of America’s most common jobs, compared to about 2.7 million wait staff. The Democratic presidential nominee should not get distracted by Trump’s boutique ideas, and hold firm to raising the minimum wage and union membership as the best ways to improve the living standards of all American workers.

Courtenay Brown explains why the “Latest CPI report confirms inflation is easing” at Axios: “For more than two years, the economy’s big problem was inflation — it was the key irritant for policymakers, the White House and American consumers….Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index report confirms that is no longer the case: Prices are no longer rising rapidly, which means the battle to kill inflation appears all but over….Why it matters: Inflation looked to be coming down alongside a still-flourishing economy — until recently. The string of upbeat inflation data is all but certain to allow Fed officials to more comfortably shift their attention to the weakening labor market and lower interest rates….What they’re saying: “[T]he cumulative improvement in the overall inflation data over the past year now gives the Federal Reserve cover to move into risk management mode with the intent of protecting and preserving the soft landing,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at accounting firm RSM, wrote Wednesday….By the numbers: Overall CPI rose 2.9% in the 12 months ending in July, dropping below 3% for the first time since 2021.

• Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 3.2% — the smallest increase in three years.
• By a different measure, inflation looks more benign. Over the last three months, core CPI rose 1.6% on an annualized basis, down from 2.1% in June….
• Grocery costs have been rising at a mild pace since February, including a 0.1% increase in July. Prices are up just 1% compared to the same time last year.
• Used vehicle costs fell 2.3% in July, a bigger drop than that seen the previous month. New vehicle prices fell 0.2%, the sixth-straight month of price decreases.

The intrigue: The bad news was in the housing sector, where prices have kept upward pressure on inflation….The shelter index is a huge component. It accounted for over 70% of core CPI’s 12-month increase through July, the government said….The sector is “solely responsible for core inflation remaining above the Fed’s 2% target,” Preston Caldwell, senior U.S. economist at Morningstar, wrote Wednesday….In the CPI report, the rent index rose 0.5%, up from 0.3%. Owner’s equivalent rent, which the government uses to account for inflation in homes that people own, rose 0.4% after slowing in June….”This is now a labor data-first Fed, not an inflation data-first Fed, and the incoming labor data will determine how aggressively the Fed pulls forward rate cuts,” economists at Evercore wrote in a note Wednesday morning.”….Yes,  many voters will continue to grumble about the high prices for meat, gas and housing. But Dems can at least be assured that they have done nearly all they can to contain inflation. They should now continue to inform the public about the good statistics under Biden-Harris and the price-gouging by agribiz and big oil through social media memes, articles and word of mouth. Those who hold fast to Trump’s doom and gloom preachments are not going to change – they are the die hard MAGA voters. Dems should focus their anti-inflation messaging on the persuadable voters in the swing counties and states. Meanwhile, pundits should give President Biden and the Democrats high marks for economic management and making the best of a tough situation.

Kyle Kondik shares his insights about the effect of 2024 third party/independent presidential candidates at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

A smaller number of “double-haters” naturally will have the effect of reducing the number of voters open to third party candidates. Back in 2016, the national exit poll indicated that third party voters generally had unfavorable views of both major party nominees. Trump and Clinton each won 98% of the voters who were favorable only toward them, with just 1% voting for the other candidate and another 1% voting third party and/or not answering the question. But 23% of the nearly one-fifth of voters who had negative views of each said they voted third party (or did not answer). So those kinds of voters provided the lion’s share of the total third party votes in 2016, which made up 6% of the electorate that year (Clinton and Trump won, combined, 94% of the total votes cast).

With a smaller number of double-haters likely this time, the total third party vote probably will be lower than 6% nationally. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most prominent third party candidate, has already seen his share of the vote dip into just the mid-single digits lately. In the final FiveThirtyEight polling average of the Biden vs. Trump matchup, Kennedy was getting about 9% of the vote. He’s now at about 5%.

Libertarian Gary Johnson—the former New Mexico governor and Republican presidential aspirant who was the 2016 cycle’s most prominent third party option—was polling at 8%-9% for much of the late summer. He ended up getting just 3.3% of the vote in November. With Kennedy now polling clearly worse than Johnson was at this point in the race, Kennedy may end up performing even worse than Johnson ultimately did (and ballot access remains a question for RFK Jr. and the other third party options—RFK Jr. was dealt a setback in New York on Monday, for instance).

Since Harris entered the race, it appears that she has pulled some Democrats back from the Kennedy column, and most polls now suggest Kennedy is hurting Trump more than Harris. This could actually represent a small but still hidden source of Trump growth—if one believes that RFK Jr. is still polling higher than what he’ll ultimately get in November, perhaps Trump will benefit from further Kennedy erosion just as Harris has benefited recently. The other noteworthy third party candidates—likely Green Party nominee Jill Stein, progressive academic Cornel West, and Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver—all appear likelier to see their level of national support measured in tenths of a percentage point as opposed to 1% or more come November.

It is likely that all of the these third party candidates know they aren’t going to be elected and that they are well-aware of their ‘spoiler’ potential. Some soul-searching about the point of their campaigns might serve them well.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Democrats have had a good two weeks, nosing ahead of Trump in the national polling averages and even in some key swing states. Nate Silver’s prediction model shows the race now as basically a toss-up, with Harris actually on the good end of a 53-47 probability-of-victory split. That’s a dramatic improvement from where the Democrats were in the fading days of Biden’s campaign.

But it’s still a campaign on a knife’s edge that could go either way. Recognizing this, the Harris campaign has sought to remedy Harris’s vulnerabilities on a host of issues where her status as a liberal California Democrat and her publicly-stated past positions put her far away from the median American voter. They know the more voters view her as a moderate and close to the center of American politics, the better her chances of winning the election.

So far, this move to the center has revolved around several strategies. None of them seem very likely to remedy the problem to which they are addressed. They include:

(1) The “I take it back” strategy. Harris has a long record of taking unpopular, even toxic, stances on various policies that played well, at various times, with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party but are not remotely centrist. These include, but are hardly limited to, banning fracking, banning offshore drilling, backing a Green New Deal, mandatory gun buybacks, defunding the police and casting doubt on whether police really improve public safety, abolishing ICE, decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and abolishing private health insurance.

Do you, the median voter, see something there you don’t like? The Harris campaign says: no problem. Harris now takes it back! Whatever she said in the past that seems bonkers, she now enthusiastically disavows.

Of course, these position reversals raise many questions. Why did she have these positions in the first place? Why did she change those positions—what accounts for her conversion? And what is her position now on those contentious policy issues—besides not being for dumb position X? That leads to a second strategy in the moving-to-the-center campaign.

(2) The “No questions please—we’re Democrats!” strategy. The Harris campaign’s current approach to the logical and potentially embarrassing questions raised by these policy reversals has the beauty of simplicity: don’t answer them! In fact, avoid questions entirely by confining Harris’s activities to scripted rallies. After all, you can’t get in trouble for your answers if nobody gets to ask you questions.

The downside of course is it makes the disavowals less convincing, leaving voters wondering whether Harris’s views really have changed and, critically, whether and to what extent Harris’s positions are really centrist and close to their own.

The media has been remarkably tolerant of this strategy which has contributed to the almost 100 percent positive coverage of her campaign so far. While it doesn’t seem like that can last, the Harris campaign certainly hopes it will; they much prefer a “vibes” campaign with only vague policy commitments (the campaign website does not even have an issues section), super-broad themes like “freedom” and social media memes around policy-independent things like “brat,” “coconut tree,” and “weird.”

But perhaps not all the voters they need to reach will be susceptible to a vibes campaign, especially non-online, working-class voters in key states. That brings us to a third moving-to-the-center strategy, designed especially to reach recalcitrant working-class voters.

(3) The “Hey, we’re working class too!” strategy. This appears to be part of the thinking behind the selection of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate, instead of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Shapiro, of course, was not beloved of the progressive left and their campaign against him and for Walz apparently had an effect. But Shapiro also, in terms of background and personal affect, does not code as working class in a way Walz does. The Harris campaign hopes that his persona will help them reach the working class, particularly white working-class voters, whose support they so desperately need in key Midwestern/Rustbelt states.

There are some problems with this. Walz, while he was a relatively conservative Democrat when he was representing a rural district in the House of Representatives, as governor of Minnesota he has been pretty much a down-the-line progressive. Indeed, in his current incarnation he is more a coastal liberal Democrat’s idea of what white working-class guys from the Midwest should be like rather than what they really are like.

Nor does his electoral record suggest unusual blue collar appeal. Shapiro in 2022 won his governor’s race in Pennsylvania by 15 points in a state with a +3 Republican partisan lean. He outran Biden’s 2020 performance in the state by 14 points. In contrast, Walz won his governor’s race in 2022 by 8 points in a state with a +2 Democratic partisan lean. And he ran ahead of Biden’s 2020 performance in the state but just a single percentage point. Walz also lost white working-class voters in his state by 8 points, 6 points worse than Shapiro did in his race.

An interesting analysis by Steve Kornacki underscores this point. He explains:

Forty-nine of Minnesota’s 87 counties might be considered “Trump surge” counties; that is, Republicans ran at least 20 points better there under Trump in 2016 and 2020 than they had in the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney was the GOP nominee. Those counties are all part of Greater Minnesota, many are rural, and virtually all are overwhelmingly white. The share of white adults without four-year degrees in those counties 72 percent to 85 percent.

Demographically, those counties almost perfectly fit the mold of the swaths of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania where Democrats have lost the most ground in the Trump era. They were also, before Trump, politically competitive, and some even voted for Barack Obama in 2012. In other words, these are the first counties you’d look at to assess whether Walz has unique appeal where his party has experienced its most dramatic Trump-era slide.

As it turns out, Walz had no special appeal in these counties; his performance was similar to Biden’s but vastly inferior to how Obama did in 2012. Kornacki adds:

“What’s striking…is how different the Walz and Biden numbers are from Obama’s. When Obama won his two elections, he joined strong metro-area support with respectable showings (and sometimes better) among small-town and blue-collar voters. A primary feature of American politics since Obama has been the virtual disappearance of that kind of demographic and geographic balance from the Democratic coalition.

In his ’22 campaign, Walz didn’t restore that old balance. His coalition, instead, looked just like what has become the standard post-Obama coalition for Democrats. He rolled up massive margins in metro areas and took a beating practically everywhere else.

This is consistent of course with my analysis from last week, “The Harris Coalition Is *Not* the Second Coming of the Obama Coalition.” It’s also consistent with a fascinating new piece by the New York Times’s Jess Bidgood on Walz campaigning in Wisconsin, which suggests what the Harris-Walz campaign in the Midwest may really be about:

Eau Claire is a deep blue college town, and it’s far from clear that the appeal of the governor from the other side of the St. Croix will translate beyond liberal bastions like this one and expand his ticket’s competitive terrain. But as I wound my way through the crowd today, it occurred to me that the Eau Claires of the world might be the main point.

In recent years, Wisconsin Democrats have notched major victories by running up their numbers in strongholds like Madison, La Crosse and Milwaukee. That means Walz was here not simply to sound folksy, talk about hunting and reach out to rural voters. His purpose, electorally speaking, is to fire up Wisconsin progressives who wish their state was just a little more like his….

The Harris campaign is betting that leaning into Walz’s unabashed progressivism might work—and, given Wisconsin’s famous swinginess, that comes with some risk. But Dane County, the Democratic stronghold that contains Madison, is growing rapidly….

Tim McCarthy, 60, a teacher from the college town of Ripon, said he was thrilled both to see Walz and to be at a rally with “like-minded people.”

“There’s a lot of conservatism in northern Wisconsin that you’re not going to shake loose,” McCarthy said. “They’ll support Trump no matter what.”

But he thought that Walz would catch on in his town—and suggested that the campaign might not even need to bother with more conservative parts of the state.

Hmm. Very interesting, if questionable as a political strategy. In the end, an attempt to move to the center that does not involve actively embracing centrist, moderate positions—as appears to be the current Harris campaign strategy—may fall short of its political goals. Jonathan Chait makes the case well:

Rather than move to the center on policy, they [the left] hope nominating candidates with a reassuring personal affect and personal biography can reassure moderate voters.

Walz generates so much enthusiasm on the left in part because he represents the apotheosis of this strategy….

But at the end of the day, issue positioning matters a lot. There is a reason Walz is less popular in a light-blue state than Josh Shapiro is in a purple state—indeed, when Walz shared a ballot in his own state with the moderate Amy Klobuchar [2018], her victory margin (24 points) was more than double his (11.4 points). It’s not because Walz is less likable than Shapiro or Klobuchar. It’s because he’s less moderate.

Walz had a fairly conservative voting record in Congress, where he represented a red district. He used that record to win the governorship, and then moved sharply left. The lesson he seems to have taken from this experience is that there is no cost in adopting progressive positions across the board. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said on a recent call. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

I can’t emphasize enough what a bad idea this is. On issues where progressive values are unpopular, and there are several, Democrats should definitely shy away from progressive values. For example, their stance on socialism, which is an extremely unpopular concept, should not be to liken it to neighborliness, but to say it’s bad and promise not to do it….

What the selection does…is forfeit her best opportunity to send a message that she is a moderate. She needs to take every possible opportunity between now and November to make up for that. Harris needs to adopt positions that will upset progressive activists. She needs to specifically understand that the likelihood a given action or statement will create complaints on the left is a reason to do something, rather than a reason not to.

That is an approach to moving to the center the Harris campaign has apparently ruled out. If that is the case, Donald Trump, with all his unattractive qualities and unforced political errors, is likely to remain competitive through November and, let’s face it, could easily win. As Chait puts it, somewhat wistfully, “I don’t want to bet the future of this country on a coin toss. I want to build a political coalition with a clear majority.” Unfortunately, it looks far more likely he’ll get the former than the latter.

In his syndicated column, “Harris is beating Trump by transcending him: The vice president and her running mate are achieving a radical shift in messaging,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes at The Washington Post: “The sudden and radical shift in the trajecto ry of the 2024 campaign owes to more than the replacement of President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate. To a degree that’s still not fully appreciated, Harris has embraced an entirely new strategy: She’s not just pushing back against Donald Trump’s politics of cultural division. She’s bidding to transcend it….Choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate reinforces the move away from clichés about “coastal politics” and “cultural elites.” Instead, she wants to fight on specific, practical measures government can take to improve lives, from family leave to expansions of health coverage. Both Harris and Walz are speaking a soothing and — to pick up on Democrats’ favorite virtue these days — joyful language of patriotism and national unity….You could tell the Trump campaign was thrown off by the Walz pick when the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, attacked the camo-wearing, gun-owning, small-town Midwestern schoolteacher as a “San Francisco-style liberal.”….Never mind that Vance lived in the Bay Area for about four years while Minnesota’s Walz visited the place for the first time only last month. The tired misfire speaks to how dependent the GOP is on stereotypes about who “liberals” are and what “liberalism” means.” Dionne concludes, “When Harris says, “We love our country,” pay attention to those words “we” and “our.” Harris and Walz are waging war on “inflammatory symbolic politics.” And, yes, it’s a joy to watch.”

Thom Hartmann reports that “A Tsunami of Right-Wing Dark Money Is Barreling Toward Harris and Walz” at The New Republic. No, Hartmann is not implying that the Democratic ticket is going to receive any of that ‘dark money; he is warning that they and down-ballot Democratic candidates are in danger of being crushed by it. As Hartmann writes, “Get ready: Massive pools of dark right-wing money are soon going to clobber us. Will Democracy survive this onslaught by the morbidly rich?….The official beginning of the election season is still almost a month away, and the big money pledged by right-wing and neofascist billionaires hasn’t even shown up yet….While over a hundred million pissed-off women and the widespread concern that Trump and the GOP are determined to destroy the American system of government seem like a powerful force, history tells us big dark money could overcome even those substantial tailwinds.” Hartmann notes that AIPAC political contributions have been used to primary and defeat incumbent Democratic House members, and adds, “But AIPAC is a piker compared to what’s going to be coming down the road as the tech, banking, insurance, and fossil fuel billionaires and their companies weigh in to the presidential race this fall….A previous campaign by the fossil fuel industry is instructive, particularly since that industry sees Harris and Walz as enemies; Harris signed off on the largest climate legislation in world history, and Walz has required the utilities in Minnesota to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2040, a mere 16 years from now.”

Noting another lavishly funded and successful effort to defeat a modest carbon tax in Washington state, Hartmann explains, “This is the brave new world Clarence Thomas’s tie-breaking vote brought America when the Supreme Court, in its 2010 Citizens United decision, legalized both political bribery and massive intervention in elections by corporations and billionaires….Prior to Thomas’s vote on that decision, Harlan Crow—who helped finance the original Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004—and other billionaires had lavished millions on Thomas and his family….Ever since Citizens United legalized literally unlimited contributions to the new category of political action committees it created (super PACs), just in the 15 months from January 2023 to April 2024, over $8.6 billion has been raised for this year’s federal campaigns with over 65 percent of that money—$5.6 billion—running through PACs. And, as noted, they’re just getting started….So get ready. It’s going to get ugly. There’s not a competitive House or Senate race anywhere in America that’s immune from massive dark money that’s been thrown together at the last minute to remain untraceable….As Senator Elizabeth Warren noted, echoing a position held by 72 percentof American voters, “Our democracy shouldn’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy and powerful.”….If Democrats survive the onslaught that’s coming and emerge victorious at the federal level, the first order of business next year must be to strip the cancer of dark money out of our body politic.” The bottom line for all Democratic candidates is that they are going to need more contributions to survive the GOP’s well-funded ad tsunami.

Here is the new Harris-Walz campaign ad re immigration.  I think Dems need an ad with stronger emphasis on the fact that Trump and Republicans killed a solid immigration reform bill. What do you think?

One more time on the Walz veep selection, before other campaign topics dominate the presidential debate – Check out “Walz unifies the party, will bring working class voters back into the fold” by The Hill’s Max Burns, who writes that “Harris’ choice also did the impossible, uniting progressive and conservative lawmakers in Washington. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hailed Walz as an “excellent decision” and a leader who “won’t back down under tight odds.” Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) — no friend of the left — wrote on X that he could “think of no one better than Governor Walz to help bring our country closer together.”

That’s an impressive ideological range. Burns adds that “in selecting Walz, Harris has done more than just unify her party ahead of a major election. She’s found a running mate Republicans can’t seem to hit.” Of course, they will continue to attack Walz and they will score a few hits, which will resonate mostly with their hard-core supporters. It is hard to imagine cheap shots from the GOP ticket winning over many swing voters.

Burns explains further, “In a time when many Midwestern and Rust Belt voters are abandoning their ancestral loyalty to the Democratic Party in favor of Trumpian populism, Walz represents a vision of the Democratic Party that harkens back to its core farmer-labor progressivism. He’s built a political legacy by winning over exactly the voters Trump needs in November. That’s a nightmare for a GOP that has wrapped itself in working class rhetoric while coddling the world’s richest and most powerful business tycoons.”

Also, “As governor, Walz has also been strategic in his progressive priorities. He championed broadly popular proposals that often received bipartisan legislative support, including enacting universal free school meals, expanding paid family and medical leave, and passing universal background checks for gun purchases. A hunter and gun owner himself, Walz found a path to enacting serious gun safety reforms by reminding gun-owning Minnesotans that the NRA has left them behind in its quest to value firearms over human lives….“We can’t turn on the TV and have these things happen,” Walz said in 2017. “The NRA you see now is not the NRA when they were teaching us gun safety classes when we were growing up. It’s been a clear change from their position for advocating for responsible gun ownership to a position that is extreme and unhelpful to the conversation.”

In addition, “As a former high school football coach, a teacher and later a member of Congress, Walz has actually served the kinds of rural communities Vance pretends to be from. He speaks the language and understands the values in a way that can’t be faked. No wonder Trump and Vance are working overtime to try and minimize Walz’s down-home bona fides.”

Burns concludes, “The bigger question is whether Vance will risk his delicately-assembled public persona in a head-to-head debate with Walz. Trump’s campaign has in theory committed to a vice presidential debate, but quickly cast doubt on those plans when Joe Biden exited the race last month. Since then, Trump has repeatedly ducked calls for a debate anywhere except on friendly Fox News, likely reasoning that his campaign can hardly afford a major fumble this close to Election Day. It doesn’t sound like Trump is very confident in his running mate’s debating prowess.”

As someone who was reasonably close to the John Kerry campaign twenty years ago, there is no term that riles me up more than “swiftboating.” Some of the same people are trying to same tactic on Tim Walz, and I explained at New York why it was unlikely to succeed.

In an effort to undermine the highly positive vibe among Democrats surrounding Tim Walz’s unveiling as Kamala Harris’s running mate, Team Trump is trying to depict the jovial Minnesota governor as a grim leftist whom progressives pushed into the veep nomination. But the former football coach, avid hunter and school teacher from a distinctly rural background is hard to typecast as a faithful disciple of Karl Marx. So the GOP is deploying an old playbook item that Trump campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita knows well from his deep involvement in the “Swiftboating” of John Kerry in 2004: an attack on Walz’s military record, one of his strongest credentials in rebutting the idea he is some sort of anti-American zealot.

LaCivita is front and center in the attack on Walz, unsurprisingly, as Politico Playbook reports:

“’The two biggest sins in the military are claiming credit for decorations you don’t have or claiming combat action that you did not participate in … And this much is certain: He’s guilty of at least one of them,’ LaCivita told our colleagues Jared Mitovich, Meridith McGraw and Connor O’Brien yesterday. ‘Nothing regarding his lies has been weaponized in a political sense. That’s about to change.’”

The hit man in this attack was, appropriately enough, Walz’s counterpart, J.D. Vance, who much like Walz enlisted right after high school (Vance in the Marines, Walz in the Army National Guard). As the New York Times reports, Vance came in very hot on the accusations to which LaCivita alluded:

“Speaking at the police department in Shelby Township, Mich., on Wednesday morning, Mr. Vance said Mr. Walz had effectively deserted his fellow soldiers to avoid serving in Iraq because he retired from the National Guard in May 2005, several months before his artillery unit received orders to deploy there …

“Mr. Vance also seized on a remark by Mr. Walz in a video clip that the Harris campaign had promoted on social media on Tuesday, in which the governor told a crowd about support for gun control, saying that ‘we can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.’

“Mr. Walz never served in combat, however, which prompted Mr. Vance to accuse him of ‘stolen valor.’

“’I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did,’ Mr. Vance said.”

Will this effort work as it did (to some extent) against John Kerry? Probably not.

First of all, the facts underlying the LaCivita-Vance line of attack don’t appear to justify all the angry passion. No one is disputing that Walz served honorably in the Guard for 24 years. The first charge, and perhaps the most serious, is that Walz retired at the end of those 24 years (as he was fully eligible to do) in order to avoid deployment to Iraq. Two former Guard colleagues, apparently infuriated by Walz’s opposition to the Iraq War, first raised this charge as part of an earlier political attack on Walz when he ran for governor in 2018. But other colleagues documented that Walz had been talking for quite some time about retiring in order to run for Congress (which is precisely what he did) and that he had no way of knowing about the subsequent deployment when he retired. There’s really no more evidence of Walz’s alleged cowardice than an assertion by two dudes who clearly didn’t like his politics.

The second charge, which Vance dressed up with the lurid term of “stolen valor,” really just refers to a single ambiguous reference Walz made to carrying a gun “in war,” though others have pointed to a claim in a 2006 Walz press release that he served in “Operation Enduring Freedom” (the official name of the Afghanistan deployment). Whatever viewers of that press release thought, the claim is actually true since Walz and his unit were deployed to Europe in a support capacity for that war.

Though Vance didn’t mention it, his conservative allies have also charged that Walz inflated his rank in descriptions of his service. This attack line is probably the flimsiest: Everyone concedes Walz achieved the rank of command sergeant major in the Guard, the highest rank attainable by an enlisted service member. But he didn’t complete some coursework required to retire at that rank. So are a few references on campaign websites to Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” some sort of “lie?” I don’t think so; he was retired, and he did achieve that rank.

All in all, the attacks on Walz’s military record come across as pretty weak tea. Even the most serious — the claim that he dodged serving in Iraq — requires an asterisk: J.D. Vance’s running mate, Donald Trump, has endlessly described that war as a disastrous mistake. By the time he retired from the Guard, Walz shared that view. Should he have stuck around to see if he could be deployed there?

But, facts aside, there are two big-picture reasons the attempted Swiftboating of Tim Walz won’t work. First, we’re in a different era of American experiences with war. 2.9 million young men were drafted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War; John Kerry’s service there resonated with a lot of voters. In the post-conscription era, people like Walz and Vance (a public-affairs officer deployed to Iraq) who chose to put on the uniform are the exception rather than the rule. More typical is Donald Trump, who was ahead of his time in finding a way to avoid military service (via his father’s influence, some claim).

And the second reason this won’t be a replay of 2004 is that the Kerry campaign largely ignored the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” attacks on his war record, after setting them up for success by overemphasizing that record at the Democratic National Convention (the candidate famously began his acceptance speech by saluting and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty”). Walz hasn’t made his Guard service his principal credential for election as vice-president. And the Harris-Walz campaign definitely isn’t falling silent and letting the smears stand.

Let’s hear it for joyful older white guys. That’s one of the beneficial vibes MN Gov. Tim Walz brings to the new Democratic ticket, and a lot of Americans are feeling it after his electrifying introduction to the 2024 political campaign Tuesday night.  Steven Greenhouse points out in a recent tweet that Walz is also notable as the most pro-worker governor in America. Greenhouse links to an article he wrote about Walz more than a year ago at The Guardian, which noted: “Minnesota’s Democratic governor and legislature has enacted one of the most pro-worker packages of legislation that any US state has passed in decades which includes paid family and medical leave, prohibits non-compete clauses, bars employers from holding anti-union captive audience meetings, and strengthens protections for meatpacking workers and Amazon warehouse employees….Minnesota’s new legislation mandates paid sick days, allows teachers’ unions to bargain over educator-to-student ratios and creates a statewide council to improve conditions for nursing home workers…“Paid family and medical leave is extremely popular, not only in Minnesota, but nationally as well,” [state Rep. Ruth] Richardson said. “It’s one of those issues that are incredibly bipartisan. I believe that passing paid family and medical leave is possible in blue and red trifecta states and in everything in between…Minnesota’s commissioner of labor and industry, Nicole Blissenbach, said the new laws “truly make Minnesota the best state for workers and their families”.” It is estimated that there are at present about 3.8 million teachers working in the U.S., and their incomes are roughly analogous to that of skilled and semiskilled blue collar workers. Add to that number millions of retired teachers and all the voting family members from nuclear families of teachers and former teachers, and you have a sizable occupation-related group. Walz was an extraordinary, empathetic teacher by all reports, and is also married to a teacher. Ask friends if they were influenced in some positive way by a good teacher, and watch them light up. Walz and his ticket-mate Harris are in position to become the electoral beneficiaries of those feelings.

Timothy Noah emphatically concurs with the argument that Walz is a draw for working-class voters for the Democratic Ticket. As Noah writes in “Tim Walz Is a Dream Pick for the Labor Movement: He’ll help Kamala Harris make up for lost time courting the working class” at the New Republic: “Kamala Harris entered the presidential race with a worrisome deficit of working-class support. In an average of matchups after the June 27 presidential debate, Trump led Harris among voters who did not graduate from college by 11.6 percentage points, a slightly larger margin than the 11.2 percentage points by which Trump led Biden (whose conspicuously poor debate performance was the reason for doing such polls in the first place). For a brief while it looked as though Harris might worsen her standing among working-class voters by choosing Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, whose record on labor was not good. Instead, she chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who has strong working-class appeal….In 2020 President Joe Biden, with an excellent record as a friend of labor, won 56 percent of union households. Two years later, Walz, running for reelection as governor, won nearly 60 percent of union households. In 2020, Biden won 32 percent of the white working-class vote, defined conventionally as white people who lack a college degree. In 2022, Walz won 44 percent….In a July 29 letter urging Harris to choose Walz, 26 Minnesota labor leaders noted that Walz

enacted paid family and medical leave for all families, provided unemployment insurance to hourly school workers, expanded the collective bargaining rights of Minnesotans, provided free school meals to every Minnesota student, appointed a labor lawyer to lead the state Department of Labor and Industry, signed a tough law against wage theft by corporations and developers, and made it illegal for employers to force working people to attend anti-union meetings.

….Walz left Congress with a lifetime score from the AFL-CIO of 93 percent, compared to 90 percent for the average House Democrat. Harris left the Senate with a 98 percent lifetime score, which sounds better but matches the score for the average Democrat in the Senate, where labor bills get voted on less frequently.”

But after the sugar high from Tuesday night fades, there is the stark reality that Vice Presidents are more often ribbon-cutters and funeral-attenders, who occasionally cast an important tie-breaker vote in U.S. Senate deliberations. But they are also potential presidents in training, as is the case with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. In that context, LBJ and Harry Truman did well, when history called. The selection of vice presidential candidates also reflects on the quality of judgement of the presidential nominee. In that context, Harris looks a whole lot better than her Republican opponent, whose venture capitalist ticket-mate is most famous for condescending comments about childless women. For a metric of the success of the Harris-Walz ticket roll-out, consider that their campaign raised $36 million in contributions within 24 hours of the announcement. It is expected that they will keep raking it in during their tour of swing states, including WI, MI, NV and AZ on this leg. But no one should take reports of Democratic superiority in fund-raising over Republicans too seriously. Trump’s campaign reportedly pulled in $137 million in July. Through their network of SuperPacs and billionaire sugar-daddies, the Republicans will have enough to be competitive in ad-buys by the time early voting starts. Democrats are going to need more contributions all the way to Election Day, and donations can be made up and down the Democratic ticket right here.

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, J. Miles Coleman notes some new electoral college rating changes, including: “….it appears that at least in the short term, Harris has reversed the slippage—or has at least been able to stop the bleeding—that Democrats have seen since the Biden-Trump debate in June. Looking nationally, Harris currently leads in all national polling aggregators….Before this week, one of the more recent changes we made to our Electoral College ratings was when we downgraded Democrats’ prospects in Walz’s Minnesota. Our reasoning was that the Gopher State was just not that much bluer than Michigan, a state we simultaneously moved in the Toss-up column. But some recent Fox News polling was telling: while Harris was tied with Trump in Michigan, her 52%-46% lead over Trump in Minnesota was close to what Biden carried the state by in 2020. Shortly after that Fox poll came out, a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll gave Harris an even more comfortable 50%-40% lead in Minnesota. So, from what we can tell, while Michigan (along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) remain on a knife’s edge, Minnesota is true to its usual form, as a state that typically leans a few points bluer than the nation as a whole….Though we wrote last week that vice presidential candidates, on average, deliver only marginal home state boosts, we feel that Walz’s placement on the Democratic ticket, combined with recent polling, provides more than enough justification to move the state into a firmer rating category. We are moving Minnesota from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic….Harris is somewhat unproven in the Midwest, one of the upsides of her candidacy, at least so far, is that she’s seemed to re-open Democrats’ Sun Belt path. While Biden had basically been stuck in the low-40s in Georgia for at least the last few months of his campaign, Harris’s numbers have typically been higher and she has run close to Trump in recent surveys. For his part, Trump has, at minimum, likely not helped his standing in Georgia by re-airing some of his long-running grievances against two of his favorite intraparty foils: Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), both of whom are broadly popular in the state. So, with all this, we feel that Georgia is more of a legitimately competitive state than it was prior to Biden’s departure—we are moving it back into the Toss-up column from Leans Republican. Here is the latest Crystal Ball map of the current electoral vote leanings: