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Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as she attends a Labor Day campaign event, at IBEW Local Union #5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 2, 2024.
Can Harris hold onto her lead?
With just one week before the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, polling averages show Harris slightly ahead but statistically tied due to the nature of the electoral college. That means Harris needs voters where they count most — in her case, the vaunted Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Harris hammered home her pro-worker message on campaign stops in Pittsburgh and Detroit for Labor Day on Monday, arguably the cities most identified with industrialization and the organized labor movement. She cast her rivals as anti-union scabs (those who cross picket lines) and promised not to return to the “failed policies” of tax breaks for the 1% or to repeal of social services like Obamacare.
Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, didn’t clap back — the campaign scheduled no events for either candidate on the Monday holiday. However, Trump had an … eventful rally in Johnstown, PA, on Friday, where he labeled the media “the enemy of the people” and praised a supporter who allegedly tried to attack the press. He also praised his supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his rallies without their husbands — notably at a time when Harris is leading among women by 13 percentage points — and called Florida Rep. Bryon Donalds, arguably his most prominent Black supporter, one of the “smart ones” without clarifying what he meant.
Harris, Trump and the hypocrisy in US politics
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Today the Democratic National Convention kicks off. The second of the big party conventions. We are waist deep, neck deep in the US electoral cycle at this point, and, you know, the funny thing is how both of these parties have coalesced with such extraordinary enthusiasm around candidates that most of the leaders, and when I say the leaders I mean the party elites, I mean the leaders in Congress, I mean the donors, and I mean the media, had been saying privately, and some publicly, that they strongly opposed.
So the hypocrisy in the system at the high levels is very apparent. And you know I think it's worth talking about both of these because it doesn't reflect the way the people think about the candidates but it does help to explain why so many American citizens are fed up and think the political system is broken. On the GOP side, of course, the Republican Party has lost three electoral cycles with Trump on top. They have privately said that they wanted anyone else but Trump. They'd back anyone else that was big, big money behind DeSantis and behind Nikki Haley and anyone else they could find. And you had J.D. Vance, who was saying that Trump was an opioid for the masses until he got addicted himself.
You had Nikki Haley saying that they'll definitely lose if Trump is the nominee. And now, of course, she's a full-throated endorser, supporter of his. Fox News refused to put Trump on their news. Rupert Murdoch basically banned him from interviews, and now, of course, they're fully behind him again. And it is, of course, a reflection of the fact that not only is he the nominee for the party, but he is the person that the vast majority of the Republican electorate not only wants but wants strongly. They're not interested in listening to the so-called leadership of their party telling them what they want.
The Democrats have gone through a similar process. We've heard for a couple of years now from the Democratic leaders, from the elite, from the media how Joe Biden was great and he was the only person that could be the nominee. And everyone needed to get behind him no matter what. And that Kamala Harris would be a disaster and the country wouldn't vote for her. They wouldn't support her. That she couldn't beat Trump, that her popularity ratings were too low. She was unpopular. Her staff turned over too much. The whispering campaign against Kamala Harris was extraordinary not just from Biden insiders but from leadership of the Democratic Party. From Democratic donors, and of course from the media. And now that Biden, under a lot of pressure after that disastrous debate performance and lots of other missteps, showing that he was way too old to run.
Now that Kamala Harris is the nominee, you could not find more loyalty, more engagement, more promotion of how Kamala Harris is a godsend, is the savior of the party, is going to be the next president no matter what. And you know, it's kind of painful to see that we have a group of people that have delegitimized themselves by being willing to say whatever is necessary to get in line behind the leadership. But I don't think that reflects the parties as a whole. Certainly not the rank and file.
I think that Kamala Harris is young. She's smart. She's charismatic. And she's much more popular among a lot of people. Among women. Among Hispanics. Among Blacks. Among young people in the country. She's much more personally in tune with what they want in terms of the economy. In terms of the world. In terms of Israel-Palestine, for example. I think you can say the same thing for Trump.
Also, on abortion for Kamala Harris. I think you can say the same thing on Trump. Different populations, different priorities, but same sort of sick of the party leadership and sick of the media telling them what to do. And much more in line with what he says about immigration. What he says about bringing jobs home. About tariffs internationally. Anti-trade message. Much more nativist. Much more promotes the rank and file American. Now, did that reflect what Trump actually did when he was in office? Not that much. Would that reflect what Kamala Harris would do as president or what she has done as vice president? Not that much. But nonetheless we are talking about, in my view, two candidates that frankly are now much more in step with the populations in the United States.
And I say populations. I wish I could say one population, but it's not. It's two very different groups of people that are being divided and made more and more separate every day by the media landscape. By the algorithms in particular and by the politics. But I don't think that there is much of an enthusiasm gap now. I do think you have an awful lot of people that are very excited about Trump being their president. You have an awful lot of people that are very excited about Kamala Harris being their president, and it's going to be a close race. And it's going to turn out on the basis of a small number of states. A small number of districts that could go either way. But it's going to be really interesting as a consequence.
The thing that worries me the most, and I've said this for a long time but I will restate it, is that I think there's one candidate here of the two that is not prepared to accept a peaceful transition or a loss, and that is Donald Trump. We saw that in 2020. And I fear that if he loses in November, that we're going to see it again in 2024. And I think that's dangerous. I think it's dangerous to have someone say that it's rigged if he loses and calls for his supporters to do everything they can to overturn it. That is not where we want to be as a democracy. It is a sign of a democracy in crisis. I worry specifically that the most powerful individual in the United States, Elon Musk, is fully on board with that message. Is talking a lot about illegal immigrants that are voting in large numbers, even though that's not true. Is talking a lot about the election in the US being rigged. Is promoting and enhancing that message. And on the basis of what we just saw in the UK, was promoting disinformation that led to a lot of violence and riots and saying that civil war in the UK is inevitable.
And if we see that in the United States, we're going to see the most dangerous political environment in generations. So I am very concerned about the state of US politics, about the state of American political elites, the media landscape, the social media landscape. I am less concerned about the state of the average American citizen and how they engage with politics in the country. But of course, the potential for this outcome to be manipulated and the potential for it to lead to more division, I think, is something we all should be paying a great deal of attention to. So that's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Republican U.S. vice presidential nominee JD Vance speaks at VFW Post 92 in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, U.S. August 15, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Veep debate date set, Taliban marks Afghan anniversary, North Korea reopens to tourism, Russia sentences American ballerina
3: It’s been exactly three years since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal from the country. The Islamic fundamentalist group’s leader hailed progress in establishing strict Islamic law. Systematic human rights abuses of women and girls have led to huge cuts in foreign aid, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis worsened by a series of natural disasters.
5: Good news for GZERO Daily readers who were forced to put their North Korean vacation plans on hold during the pandemic! The isolated autocracy is reopening to tourism for the first time in five years. The regime is starting by allowing visits to the mountainous northern city of Samjiyon — located near Mount Paektu, a volcano that is sacred in both the Korean and Chinese cultures. As ever, there is a Puppet Regime for this — see you soon on those North Korean beaches!
51.80: A Russian court has sentenced Russian-American amateur ballerina Ksenia Karelina to 12 years in prison for high treason. Her crime? Donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity — from her phone in Los Angeles — on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Karelina, who became a US citizen in 2021, was arrested while visiting family in Russia last year.
Boeing workers listen to union leaders speak as Boeing's Washington state factory workers vote on whether to give their union a strike mandate as they seek big salary gains from their first contract in 16 years, at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, U.S. July 17, 2024.
Bloc by bloc: Can Dems win back the working class?
One of President Joe Biden’s biggest selling points was his “Scranton Joe” appeal to working-class voters — who have been increasingly voting Republican in recent years. Kamala Harris, on the other hand,was said to embody the college-educated, coastal elite the Democratic Party is accused of increasingly gearing itself toward. Switching candidates, many argued, could come at the expense of key “Rust Belt” states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
These states will be battlegrounds this year, and working-class voters will play an outsized role in deciding which way they’ll sway. In fact, in all six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the working-class voter population is higher than the national average.
Who are working-class voters? People who do not have a college education – around 62% of the US – or those who receive an hourly wage rather than a salary. Forty-six percent of Republicans consider themselves working class, compared to 35% of Democrats.
How are the candidates competing for their votes? According to Eurasia Group analyst Noah Daponte-Smith, Trump is making the same promises he made in 2016 and 2020: “that he will bring back working-class manufacturing jobs, make the economy better than ever, and fight for the interests of the common man.”
Meanwhile, he says, Harris is trying to attract working-class voters “by emphasizing Democrats’ economic record, pointing to the risks of a Trump presidency, and nominating a VP candidate with working-class roots.”
According to the Split Ticket crosstab aggregator – a comparison of polls and candidate preferences by demographic subgroups – Donald Trump leads Harris by 11 points among non-college graduates. That number jumps to a 28-point lead among white non-college graduates. But there are discrepancies: A new UMass Amherst poll shows her eight points ahead among low-income voters.
Still, Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow, who has spent much of his career researching rural and working-class voters, expects the majority of the working class – and an even larger portion of white working-class men – to side with Trump. “I tend to think that white working-class men are going to have difficulty – for some because of gender, for some because of race,” says Wuthnow.
“There is a growing division between the working class and the elite, or people they perceive as having professional jobs and better educations than they do,” says Wuthnow. “Kamala will have a difficult time bridging that gap.”
Daponte-Smith agrees. He believes that while Dems can “somewhat abate” the trend, they can’t fully reverse it.
One way Harris is trying to bring back the working class is with her vice presidential pick. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a former teacher and US Army National Guard veteran who has been a champion of unions. He graduated from a regional branch of the University of Minnesota and is the first Democrat on a presidential ticket in half a century not to have attended law school.
“My sense is that Tim Walz as Harris’s VP is geared precisely toward attracting the kinds of moderate, working-class, salt-of-the-earth people that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 but who defected to Republicans in the last two cycles,” says Deponte-Smith. “He is an extremely effective communicator who has extensive experience in winning over working-class, right-leaning white voters. So I think he’s an asset to Harris in this respect.”
Meanwhile, Trump – even after spending four years in the Oval Office – is still painting himself as the outsider, or at least a change agent in a system that many working-class Americans do not believe represents their interests. That belief is backed up by the numbers: Fewer than 5% of Congressmen come from working-class backgrounds. Trump was a millionaire by age 8, but he is trying to boost his blue-collar credentials by choosing JD Vance – who grew up in extreme poverty in rural Ohio – as his running mate.
Early on, third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. attracted a considerable number of working-class voters, but he has since sunk in the polls to a mere 5%.
What about non-white working-class voters? Much of the working class in the US is Black and Hispanic, which is even more important to recognize since Dems have just nominated the first Black female presidential candidate in US history.
“Trump appears to know that he has a strong base of support among the white working class, and has been aiming to attract Black and Hispanic working-class men,” says Daponte-Smith. “If that’s successful, it will boost him in the swing states.”
“The working class in the upper Midwest is much whiter than in the Sun Belt,” says Daponte-Smith. “This means the working class will likely be much more Republican-leaning in the Upper Midwest,” meaning Harris has a better chance at winning in swing states like Arizona or Nevada.
How are unions leaning? Although the power of unions has been declining for decades, Wuthnow says their endorsements still play a significant role in shaping how members vote.
On Wednesday, the United Auto Workers endorsed Kamala Harris – a disappointing blow to Trump, who made a show of courting unions during the Republican National Convention by giving the Teamsters President Sean O’Brien a keynote speech despite him not having endorsed either candidate.
It’s still the economy, stupid. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act was a $500 billion bet that investing in US manufacturing and infrastructure would help Democrats repave inroads in working-class communities. Despite progress, the bet is not paying off politically because stubbornly high inflation is exacerbating frustration at over 40 years of stagnated wages.
Today’s real average hourly wage of $29.03 has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, the prices of some critical big-ticket purchases like housing, higher education, and healthcare have been getting steadily pricier. “Their real living wage has been stagnant for a very long time, and it’s also declining relative to the salaries of college-educated workers,” says Wuthnow.
Harris’s early campaign ads have made promises that should appeal to workers, including bringing down insulin prices, taking on the power of the big banks, corporate price gouging, and other concerns that most working Americans can relate to.
Trump, meanwhile, wants to slash illegal immigration, raise tariffs, and increase the minimum wage – policies that may appeal to voters hurt by the exodus of manufacturing and stagnating wages. But the proposed tariffs – including a 100% tariff on foreign vehicles – are expected to further raise consumer prices and are unlikely to generate a significant number of manufacturing jobs.
The Democrats’ biggest challenge is helping voters make the connection between the party’s policies and lower prescription costs or the new manufacturing jobs popping up across the country. “If Kamala can make that case that the Biden administration has been good for working-class people, then I think she’s got a chance of appealing to some of those voters,” says Wuthnow.
“The difficulty is that the messaging on the Trump side is so disconnected from anything in the real world that he can make lots of arguments about inflation or the threat of immigrants coming in and taking away jobs, and probably have quite a bit of mileage.”
What Tim Walz adds to Kamala Harris' campaign
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
What we're watching in US Politics: Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has chosen her running mate: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Walz is a moderate to center-left Democrat who has presided over a trifecta in Minnesota, meaning the Democrats have controlled the state legislature for several years now. They have passed several “wins” for progressive policy, liberalizing the state's marijuana laws, expanding gun control, and expanding access to abortion. This has made Walz a popular choice with many progressives. He’s also been endorsed by several labor unions as a good pick for Kamala Harris. In reality, though, he probably doesn’t make that much of a difference in the presidential campaign.
Harris herself is running as, sort of, a generic Democrat. She’s been avoiding media interviews, running a lot of campaign ads, and giving a lot of set speeches where she can basically read off a teleprompter and carefully curate the image that she’s putting forward to the American people as the candidate in what’s actually going to be a truncated campaign of only about 100 days.
Walz probably helps her with that. He looks like a pretty nice guy. He delivers a lot of great attack lines on President Donald Trump that have Democrats excited, but the evidence suggests that vice presidential picks really don't make all that much of difference in presidential campaigns. Usually, it’s the person at the top of the ticket, and that person is Harris. She continues to benefit from a couple of great weeks after Biden stepped aside from the nomination, and this race is starting to look significantly more competitive than it did right after the disastrous debate for Biden.
A couple of interesting watch points coming up: One will be a potential debate between Walz and the significantly younger Republican VP candidate, Sen. JD Vance, and then whether or not Harris and Trump themselves will debate. Probably, Trump wants the debate to happen so that he can disrupt Harris’ momentum.
VP pick United States Senator JD Vance Republican of Ohio and Usha Vance after Former US President Donald J Trumps speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Fiserv Forum on Thursday, July 18, 2024. Monday night was Trumps first appearance since a rally in Pennsylvania, where he sustained injuries from an alleged bullet grazing his ear. Trump recounted the story in his speech, and also talked about Biden, immigration, and other topics.
Vance offers AI contradictions
On July 15, Donald Trump announced that he has selected JD Vance as his running mate. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, rose to prominence after publishing his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” but his humble roots took him first to Yale Law School and then to the world of venture capital. He’s hailed as a politician with strong ties to Silicon Valley, and also as a politician fiercely critical of Big Tech. “What do you get when you cross a tech bro with a luddite?” Eurasia Group's Jon Lieber responded when we asked him to summarize Vance’s views.
This apparent contradiction is further highlighted by Vance’s recent statements on artificial intelligence. He has advocated for reduced regulation of the AI sector, and has claimed that tech companies’ focus on existential risks of AI are a lobbying tactic to elicit friendlier regulations.
He also shows a surprising regard for FTC chair Lina Khan’s leadership on antitrust enforcement under Joe Biden, saying that Khan has been “doing a pretty good job” especially in bringing suits against bloated tech companies. Khan notably supports AI regulation.
“I would assume someone who puts the concerns of working people and families first and foremost in his policy orientation would be relatively hostile to specific policies that accelerated the adoption of disruptive technologies,” Lieber notes. “But on the other hand, I would also think this will result in only a limited number of policies that actually attempted to curtail them.”
Lieber suggests that Vance's policy focus might include “restrictions on minors’ access to social media, data privacy rules, and investigations into tech companies for monopolistic practices.” He sees Vance as fundamentally opposed to centralized power, which could have mixed implications for AI innovation.
“This could be either good for AI innovation if you think it will happen in a decentralized way, or bad for AI innovation if you think it can only come from large incumbents with massive resources to spend on energy, compute, etc.,” Lieber said.
Some of Vance’s contradictions may become clearer over time, but they could easily be dwarfed by the whims and policy goals of Trump.
JD Vance
Strongman politics and working-class appeal: GOP’s foreign policy
On the third day of the Republican National Convention, themed “Make America Strong Once Again,” the GOP laid out their vision for the world, outlining what US foreign policy could look like under Donald Trump and JD Vance.
In his keynote address, Vance officially accepted the nomination to be Trump’s VP running mate and used his working-class upbringing to make his key foreign policy points: that globalization has ruined neighborhoods like his, foreign intervention has led to his friends dying overseas, and that the working class is declining because Washington is in the pocket of multinational corporations.
He said the US needs “a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike … a leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations.” This runs in contrast to an interview Trump gave this week callingfor a more than $700 billion cut to the corporate tax rate.
Vance couldn’t have been received with more enthusiasm. He called out his grandmother, who he referred to as “Mamaw,” and his mother Beverly, who struggled with drug addiction in his early life, as the crowd broke into chants of “JD’s mom” and “Mamaw.”
“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and every corner of our nation,” Vance said, shouting out key swing states in this year’s election, “I promise you this: I will never forget where I came from.”
Before he took to the stage, the evening’s speakers painted Trump as a strongman necessary during tumultuous times. They also called for increasing US energy production, hammered Joe Biden on his trade policy and handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and called for a crackdown on immigration through the Southern border.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was met with a resounding chant of “Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!” during his speech in praising Trump’s immigration agenda, which he said includes plans to deport migrants who enter the US illegally. He was followed by Trump’s former ICE director, Tom Homan, who told undocumented immigrants “You’d better start packing now. You're damn right. Because you’re going home.”
Doug Burgum gave a hint at what energy policy would look like under Trump 2.o. The North Dakota governor is a likely pick for Trump’s Energy Secretary and linked US energy independence with national security, saying that Biden “is using mandates to shut down reliable baseload electricity. That is why your electric bills have shot upwards.” He ended by taking a knock at Biden’s efforts to incentivize Americans to purchase electric vehicles, saying that Trump will let the crowd keep driving gas-powered cars.
He was followed by the parents of the 13 US soldiers killed in the bombing in Kabul amid the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 who, alongside military officials, criticized Biden’s handling of the withdrawal and response in the aftermath.
But could Republican criticisms of the withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden come back to bite them when it comes to defending Trump’s plans for Ukraine? Vance said at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year that it is unrealistic for the US to continue providing the same level of assistance to Ukraine moving forward, and Trump has signaled that he would reduce aid to Ukraine. But would the former president – who prides himself on being a winner – be willing to lose Ukraine?
Tomorrow, on the RNC’s final day, Trump will address the country for the first time since becoming the official Republican nominee – and less than a week after he was nearly assassinated.
Why Trump really wanted JD Vance as running mate
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How did JD Vance, who once called Trump “America's Hitler,” become his VP pick?
Well, of course, that isn't exactly what he said. He said that he goes back and forth between thinking that Trump is either a cynical asshole like Richard Nixon, who could actually be good for the country, or he could be America's Hitler. How come no one's actually reporting the actual quote? And it's because the media's freaking horrible is why. And because the algorithms promote stupidity and fake news, and disinformation. But the answer to the question is because Vance is really smart, very aligned with Trump. He's very, let's say, situationally ideological and wants to win, doesn't bring a lot of votes for Trump, but Trump doesn’t think he needs them. Last time around, when Trump was running and picked Mike Pence, he was looking for an establishment figure that would get him more votes and that would make Trump seem more approachable and attractive to a larger group of voters. Trump now thinks he can win the election either way, so he's picking the person he really wants. That's what's going on.
Will the EU reelect Ursula von der Leyen as president?
Almost certainly, yes. There are still questions about where exactly she's getting the votes for. She can't afford to lose a lot of people from the parties that, in principle, support her in a secret ballot. But there aren't good options for her, and everyone I talk to in positions of leadership in the EU thinks that she is a layup there.
Why did Orbán choose to visit Russia and China despite knowing it would upset EU leaders?
Well, mostly because he wants to portray himself and not just in the six-month rotating chair of the European Union, but more broadly as the person who can represent the Chinese and the Russian view, that gives him more leverage, especially if Trump becomes president. That’s why he went to Mar-a-Lago right after NATO, saying, I'm the one in the EU that knows what these people are saying. I'm the person that can connect with you. It's not like he's trying to leave the European Union. He needs their money, but he wants to position himself more strongly and as the outlier, that's the easiest way for him to do it.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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