The Kickoff Unkicks
“THE MORNING MEETING” DAYBOOK
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2024
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DAYBOOK, all Eastern Time unless otherwise noted
* Kamala Harris
* Donald Trump
No known public events at this time, in advance of a Wednesday Pennsylvania town hall on Fox.
* Tim Walz
No known public events at this time.
* JD Vance
No known public events at this time.
* Joe Biden
* Doug Emhoff
No known public events at this time.
“The Morning Meeting” topics:
* Why is Kamala Harris going to New Hampshire to campaign?
* Is Trump really prepping for his town hall and the debate?
* If this is the right order, from most likely to least likely, of Harris battleground state wins:
Michigan
Wisconsin
Georgia
Nevada
Arizona
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
ESSENTIAL READING
* Politico’s overview of the presidential campaign:
[I]f Harris doesn’t falter next week, there’s reason to believe that she may be uniquely positioned to expand her numbers with swing voters in key states. Unlike Biden or Trump — one president and one former president, and both fixtures in politics for years — Harris’ candidacy is so new that a quick introduction, followed by comparatively minimal vetting by the electorate, may benefit her.
“She’s the one with room to grow,” Plouffe said. “The Trump of ‘16, voters wanted to know more about him. Now, when Trump goes out there and campaigns and does interviews, it’s questionable how helpful it is. With Harris, it’s very helpful. We have a market of voters out there who want to know more about her...”
Despite the clear shift in the race over the last several weeks, Trump advisers say they have more paths to victory than Harris does. They have argued that if Trump can win North Carolina, which he won in 2016 and 2020, and pick off Pennsylvania and one other state that Biden won four years ago, he will cross the 270 electoral vote threshold. Another possible route, they say, is sweeping the four competitive Sun Belt states — North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. That would force Harris to sweep the Rust Belt states, including Pennsylvania, where surveys have shown a virtual tie…
But one Republican strategist in North Carolina, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, admitted things have tightened in the state. “I still think Trump is the slight favorite here, but things have changed,” the GOP strategist said. “The anxiety is that Kamala appears to perform better with the ‘double haters,’” the strategist added, in a reference to voters who viewed both Trump and Biden unfavorably before the Democratic candidate swap.
Years before he became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance endorsed a little-noticed 2017 report by the Heritage Foundation that proposed a sweeping conservative agenda to restrict sexual and reproductive freedoms and remake American families.
In a series of 29 separate essays, conservative commentators, policy experts, community leaders and Christian clergy members opposed the spread of in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, describing those treatments as harmful to women. They praised the rapidly expanding number of state laws restricting abortion rights and access, saying that the procedure should become “unthinkable” in America. And they cited hunger as a “great motivation” for Americans to find work.
Mr. Vance, then known as the author of a best-selling memoir, became a champion of the project. He wrote the introduction and praised the volume as “admirable,” and was the keynote speaker at the public release of the report at Heritage’s offices in Washington.
The report was released just months after Donald J. Trump became president, as social conservatives were laying the foundation for an aggressive agenda restricting sexual freedom and reproductive rights. Those policies became a hallmark of the Trump administration and Mr. Vance’s political career.
Taken together, the pieces in the report amount to an effort to instruct Americans on what their families should be, when to grow them and the best way to raise their children. Authors argued in the 2017 report that women should become pregnant at younger ages and that a two-parent, heterosexual household was the “ideal” environment for children.
Although Mr. Vance did not address in detail the specific issues of fertility treatments, abortion rights or marriage, the broad vision expressed in the report comports with some of the views he has expressed about American families.
He has been an ardent opponent of abortion rights, saying he wanted to protect life “from the date of conception.” During his Senate race in 2022, he promised to oppose legislation codifying the right to marriage for same-sex couples. He has stressed the importance of having children, saying not doing so “makes people more sociopathic.”
And in a comment that prompted a wave of outrage among liberal and independent women, he criticized prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies” — a claim he later dismissed as a “sarcastic remark.”
“The ideal situation for any child is growing up with the mother and father who brought that child into the world,” wrote Katrina Trinko, a conservative journalist, in an essay detailing the “tragedy” of babies born to single mothers.
Mr. Vance’s campaign neither defended nor disavowed the opinions expressed in the report, saying he had no role in editing the essays and “did not have any input on the commentary.”
“Senator Vance has long made clear that he supports I.V.F. and does not agree with every opinion in this seven-year-old report, which features a range of unique views from dozens of conservative thinkers,” said Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for Mr. Vance. “It’s bizarre that The New York Times is writing an entire piece attacking Senator Vance for the views of other individuals.”
The Heritage Foundation also said Mr. Vance had no involvement with the policy ideas included in the report, but declined to offer an opinion on the content.
* Politico on House and Senate Republican campaigns panicking about the cash gap.
* Ray Marcano in the Dayton Daily News on the power and possibilities of 2WAY:
Halperin has, recently, started reminding people at the start of discussions: “This is a platform for everybody. You may see people on here you don’t agree with. That’s the point. There aren’t a lot of platforms in America that have civil discussions, sophisticated, we hope …and intended to let everybody learn from each other. It’s not about shouting or criticizing or insulting. It’s about learning and we’re really proud of what we’ve accomplished already in creating this kind of forum.”
It’s a place for analysis without animus.
* Nate Silver “explains” why his “model” has Trump ahead.