The new 2024 campaign takes shape
Trump and Harris race to define each other as Biden steps off the stage.
Quick flag: I didn’t mention that yesterday’s Book Club episode with Steven Simon, the author of “Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East,” is also available on Apple Podcasts. Click here to listen.
On Wednesday night, Joe Biden passed the torch to a new generation.
“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term,” he told the country in a primetime Oval Office address. “But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”
And, with that, after 12 campaigns across 54 years, Biden exited the stage.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris quickly rushed to fill the vacuum.
Only days into their quickly emerging 2024 matchup, Trump and Harris have already begun battering each other, attempting to define themselves — and their rival — before the other can do so first. Both candidates’ arguments can boil down to a simple message: the other is too extreme to run the country.
At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump labeled Harris “the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history,” while also calling her a “radical left lunatic” and singling out her positions on abortion and immigration as “crazy.”
In a signal of the tone of the coming campaign, Trump also announced that his brief spell of unifying rhetoric after his assassination attempt was coming to an end. “They say something happened to me when I got shot,” he told the crowd. “I became nice. And when you are dealing with these people, they are very dangerous people. When you are dealing with them, you can’t be too nice. You really can’t be. If you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that OK?”
The audience responded by chanting “fight, fight, fight,” offering their approval.
Meanwhile, during her own Wednesday speech at the national convention of Zeta Phi Beta, a historically Black sorority, in Indianapolis, Harris told her fellow Divine Nine members that Trump’s agenda was “an outright attack on our children, our families and our future.”
“These extremists want to take us back, but we are not going back. We are not going back,” she said, repeating what has already become a catchphrase of her nascent campaign. “Ours is a fight for the future, and ours is a fight for freedom.”
As the two candidates take to the stump, the ad wars are also heating up. For now, according to The Associated Press, Trump and his allies are currently dominating the airwaves, spending $68 million on television and radio advertising, compared to $2.6 million by Harris and her allies.
In the shortest general election campaign in modern presidential history — just 106 days separate Harris’ ascension as the presumptive Democratic nominee and the election — the race is on to define the contest’s new entrant before perceptions harden.
A new 30-second spot by MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, for example, essentially paints Harris as the power behind the throne of the unpopular Biden presidency — charging that she “covered up Joe’s obvious mental decline” and did the job herself, blaming migrant crossings and rising prices on Harris, not Biden.
“They created this mess,” the ad intones. “They — no, Kamala — owns this failed record.”
Conversely, the Harris team is out this morning with its first web ad, which accuses Trump of wanting the U.S. to be a “country of chaos, of fear, of hate.” As Beyoncé’s “Freedom” plays in the background, and Trump’s mugshot flashes on the screen, Harris emphasizes her positions on abortion, gun control, and health care. “We believe in the promise of America and we are ready to fight for it,” Harris narrates. “Because when we fight, we win.”
It is still too early to make sweeping declarations about how the Trump-Harris matchup polls, although initial signs indicate that the VP’s entrance into the race has essentially reset the campaign back to where it stood before Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Trump currently boasts a 1.7-point advantage over Harris in the polls; before the debate, he led Biden by 1.5 points. (At the time of Biden’s withdrawal, Trump’s lead had widened to 3 points.)
Some polls show that Harris outperforms Biden among key Democratic constituencies; for example, an Axios/Generation Lab poll out this morning found Harris leading Trump among young voters, 60% to 40%, a notable improvement from Biden’s 53%-47% advantage.
More news to know
From the AP:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress on Wednesday to achieve “total victory” against Hamas and denounced American opponents of the war in Gaza as “idiots,” taking a combative stance in a visit the Biden administration has hoped will yield progress in negotiations to end the fighting.
Netanyahu used the high-profile address to a joint meeting of Congress to emphasize longstanding and close ties between the United States and Israel. But the speech put in sharp relief the divisions in American society stirred by the war, with dozens of Democratic lawmakers boycotting the address and thousands of protesters outside the Capitol condemning the war and the humanitarian crisis created by it.
Some of the protests near the Capitol turned chaotic. That included one within a few hundred yards of the tightly guarded Capitol grounds, at Union Station, where protesters spray-painted marble statuary and replaced American flags with Palestinian ones. Officers on streets surrounding the Capitol brawled with demonstrators, swinging batons and spraying tear gas.
Speaking for nearly an hour to frequent applause from U.S. lawmakers, as well as stony silence from many leading Democrats, Netanyahu said the U.S. has a shared interest in his country’s fight against Hamas and other Iran-backed armed groups.
“America and Israel must stand together. When we stand together something really simple happens: We win, they lose,” said Netanyahu, who wore a yellow pin expressing solidarity with the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Politico: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. struggles to gain traction amid unification on both sides
NYT: Nephew Says Trump Suggested Some Disabled People ‘Should Just Die’
ABC: Melania Trump to tell her story in memoir, 'Melania,' scheduled for this fall
WaPo: Maggots, crickets released at Watergate Hotel in protest of Netanyahu visit
The day ahead
Biden: The president will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at 1 p.m. ET. Then, at 2:30 p.m. ET, the two will meet together with the families of Americans held hostage by Hamas.
Harris: The VP will deliver the keynote speech at the American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) national convention in Houston, Texas at 11 a.m. ET. Then, she will return to Washington to have her own meeting with Netanyahu at 4:30 p.m. ET.
Senate: The upper chamber will hold a procedural vote to advance a pair of bipartisan child online safety bills, the Kids Online Safety Act and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act. More on these measures in tomorrow’s newsletter!
House: The lower chamber will vote on a resolution “strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.” The general election has begun.
There was an individual who wanted to be either governor or senator from California. He also wanted to be true to the people, so he placed himself as he was before the voters. He lost overwhelmingly.
While being one's self may work exceptionally well, with friends, family, and colleagues, in politics, people want one to put on a show. If Harris sticks with who she is and what she believes, Trump and the Republicans are likely to do better than anything anyone today believes possible.
I wonder if Kamalla Harris shouldn't adopt the Burt Bacharach song "Don't Make Me Over" as one of her themes -- when all the professional pols start to weigh in they could destroy the spontaneity and enthusiasm that makes her so appealing. Let Kamalla be Kamalla!!