Editors’ Blog
The Battle to Bring Harris Down 
I wanted to flag two articles to your attention, one from the Post and the other from CNN. They both cover similar ground but in different ways. The gist is that the Trump campaign has essentially given up on trying to improve voters’ impression of Donald Trump and decided the only path to victory is driving down Harris’ favorability numbers. When I first read the Post piece, it had the feel of what journalists call a “source greaser” — a favorable piece aimed at generating good will on the part of the subject and sources of the piece. The quote from GOP consultant Josh Holmes captures the tone of the piece: “I think it’s a serious paper tiger we’re dealing with here. I don’t think for 60 days they can keep the train on the tracks.”
Read MoreWe’re all destined for a couple months watching horse-race polls because many of us simply can’t help ourselves. (What is it? A desire for information? Managing anxiety? A questing play for agency over the contingent and unknown?) But I want to go back to something I mentioned a week or two ago: Kamala Harris’s favorability numbers, apart from the horse race. Those have now gone from a deficit of negative 17.4 percentage points on July 4th to .9 net negative percentage points today. (I’m using 538’s composite average just because I find that one easy to find and navigable.) As I mentioned in that earlier post, that kind of movement is, as far as I know, more or less unprecedented. You simply don’t get more popular these days. Not like that. Undulations, sure. But generally you get less popular over time, not more.
Read MoreTo follow up on the post below, I’m not sure I agree with what seems like the relative pessimism, if I’m reading it right. But look what TPM Reader JL says about the saturation bombing of mailers. I at least read this a bit differently. It sounds like they’re sending these things out indiscriminately to people who are solid Democratic partisans.
Read MoreI have to remind people sometimes I’m almost never sending a message with the reader emails I post or signaling agreement. The the ones I post are not necessarily representative either. That applies to AB’s email from yesterday. I do think Pennsylvania is going to be an epic battle. But I’m more optimistic. Here’s another note from TPM Reader TH …
Read MoreFrom TPM Reader AB …
Read MoreAbout Pennsylvania.
Like you, I think Pennsylvania will be key to the election, and I am not sure how it will go. I live in Western PA coal country, and a number of people have noted fewer Trump signs. That is true, but I think a lot of the non-sign people will still vote for Trump. A grudging vote counts just as much as an enthusiastic one. I also don’t think there is anything Harris can do to win them over. What they really like about Trump is his sense of grievance, and his whining. They don’t want policies to bring back the golden days when coal miners all had a gold plated Rolls Royce.
The State of the Race
Just before Labor Day, often treated as the quasi-official kick-off of the presidential election season proper, I wanted to share some notes on the state of the race — what the polls say, what they mean and whatever other scraps of information I’ve been able to pick up and glean.
Overall, I see a race that remains close, uncertain, but in which Kamala Harris holds a small but general advantage.
Let’s start with the shift from mid-summer and Harris’ entry into the campaign. When Biden left the race he was three or four points behind Trump in the national polls and was behind in all the swing states. This represented a small but critical drop from where he was in June before the debate. (Much of that drop was in the week prior to leaving the race.) Over the course of August, Harris moved from that starting point into a three- or four-point lead in national polls. So a shift of seven or eight points in Democrats’ direction, where she more or less remains. At the state level, Harris is now ahead or roughly tied in all the swing states. North Carolina, meanwhile, is now firmly in the swing state group, where it really hadn’t been under Biden.
Read MoreWes Moore, Governor of Maryland, is one of the Democrats’ big, rising stars. And yesterday the Times delivered an ominous headline about a Bronze Star “he claimed but never received.” The subhed of the article reads: “For years, the Maryland governor has faced questions about whether he had wrongfully said he had a Bronze Star. He insisted no. But an old document proves otherwise.”
Sounds bad, as they say. The feature photo shows Moore looking toward the sky with a mix of contrition and shame. So the article tells us that Moore has long “faced questions” and now the Times has finally found the document that proves Moore’s wrongdoing. That document turns out to be his application for a White House fellowship in 2006 where he said he had received the Bronze Star and combat action badge. But there’s no record of him ever receiving the Bronze Star. Moore spoke to the Times and said it was an honest mistake which he regretted. According to Moore his superior officer told him to include it because he was already submitting the paperwork for the award. “He thought that I earned it and he was already going through the paperwork to process it.”
You have to get all the way down to paragraph fourteen, as TPM reader AG helpfully pointed out to me, until you get this.
Read MoreA new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh talk about North Carolina’s rating change, Trump’s campaign brawling with an Arlington Cemetery employee and the upcoming Harris-Walz interview.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Very good points from TPM Reader RS …
Read MoreI respect the cemetery employee’s unfortunately-at-this-point-entirely-reasonable decision not to “press charges” in light of the potential for retaliation. But let’s not sugarcoat it: assaulting a federal employee in the performance of her duties is a felony (18 USC 111), full stop.
Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Campaign Event
This story of the “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery has blown up pretty dramatically. In case you haven’t heard about it yet or aren’t up to date on the details, let me try to explain what we know.
Three days ago, the Trump campaign held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery. The idea was to lay a wreath honoring the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed during the evacuation of Kabul in 2021 and film a political ad. They would distribute the video and attack Vice President Harris and President Biden for not “showing up” for their campaign event, which they sought to portray was an established memorial. As soon as the video circulated, military policy experts I know said right off the bat they were shocked that the campaign had been allowed to hold a campaign event on the grounds of the cemetery and circulate video of it. It isn’t just unseemly. It’s against the law. How were they allowed to do that?
That turned out to be a good and prescient question.
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