Harris campaign to spend $90m on television ads through August
Ever since jumping into the presidential race, Kamala Harris has been raking in donations. Now, her campaign is putting that money to use, with an announcement this morning of $90m in television ads targeted at media markets in the midwest where they say Donald Trump is “ceding the airwaves”.
Here’s more, from Harris’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks:
On the heels of our historic launch, we know that the more voters hear during the month of August about the differences between Vice President Harris’ long-standing history of delivering common-sense solutions for the American people – from her early days as a prosecutor to the present – and Donald Trump’s dangerous, extreme and out-of-touch Project 2025 agenda, the more they will know that Vice President Harris is the only candidate fit to lead our country over the next four years. It is precisely through efforts like this that we will break through a crowded media environment early and make clear the choice and stakes of this election for the voters who will decide it.
In addition to airing in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the ads will air in Ohio, which is expected to vote for Trump in November, but where its Democratic senator Sherrod Brown is running for another term. His victory is essential to Democrats’ hopes of maintaining the chamber.
Key events
Poll shows voters more enthusiastic about election since Harris announced candidacy
Monmouth University just released a new poll showing that Kamala Harris is the preferred candidate in the presidential race, and that voters are generally more enthusiastic about the election since the vice-president replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket:
Enthusiasm for the rematch between Biden and Donald Trump never topped 50%, Monmouth notes, but now that Harris will be on ballots, it has risen to 68%, powered by Democrats and some independents. The university also found that voters were much more enthusiastic about Harris than they were about Biden, while perceptions of Trump remained steady.
In the words of Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray: “This is clearly a different ballgame. The nominee change has raised the ceiling for potential Democratic support in the presidential contest by a small but crucial amount, at least for now.”
Donald Trump seems mighty peeved by New York judge Juan Merchan’s decision earlier today not to recuse himself from the business fraud case that resulted in the former president’s felony conviction earlier this year.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “Can you believe this? The New York Courts refuse to act. This is happening right before the voting begins on September 6th. Suppression and manipulation of the vote. Voter interference. This is the real Fascist ‘stuff,’ the old Soviet Union! So much to say, and I’m not allowed to say it. Must get U.S. Supreme Court involved. New York is trying to steal the Election!”
Quite a lot to unpack there. First of all is the date he mentioned. While the presidential election is 5 November, he appears to be referencing when the first state, in this case, North Carolina, begins its mail-in voting period on 6 September.
Trump also alleges that he is being prevented from speaking. Elsewhere in the post, he says, “I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ANSWER REPORTERS QUESTIONS.”
That’s not true – the former president took questions from reporters last week. He is, however, under a gag order in the hush money case that prevents him from commenting on prosecutors, court staff, or their families.
Trump announces yet another press conference
Donald Trump will hold a press conference tomorrow at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, one week after last taking questions from reporters, his campaign announced.
They did not give a particular reason why Trump is convening the press conference, but he did the same thing last Thursday, holding an hour-long event where he told several whoppers, including that “nobody was killed on January 6”.
Read more about that here:
Meanwhile, Donald Trump just received word of yet another setback in his efforts to disrupt his felony conviction on hush money charges in New York, Reuters reports:
A New York judge declined for a third time to step aside from the case in which Donald Trump was convicted of charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star, dismissing the former US president’s claim of conflict of interest related to political consultancy work by the judge’s daughter.
As he did last April and in August 2023, Juan Merchan in a decision released on Wednesday denied a request by Trump’s lawyers that the acting justice of the New York supreme court recuse himself from the first case involving criminal charges against a former US president. Merchan is scheduled to sentence Trump on 18 September.
“Defendant has provided nothing new for this Court to consider. Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts” and were “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims”, Merchan wrote in the ruling dated 13 August.
Donald Trump rarely stays on topic, but his campaign says his economic policies will be the subject of his speech this afternoon in Asheville, North Carolina.
“Hard-working Americans are suffering because of the Harris-Biden Administration’s dangerously liberal policies. Prices are excruciatingly high, and the cost of living has soared — leaving those on a fixed-income, unsure of how they are going to afford a basic standard of living in the future,” his campaign said in announcing the address.
“President Trump wants to ban tax on Social Security for seniors and he will Make America Great Again by reintroducing common-sense economic policies, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and reversing the effects of failed Democrat induced inflation — putting money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans across the country!”
Biden cheers settling of US inflation, but political damage may already be done
US inflation has dipped to a level not seen in more than three years, according to the Labor Department’s latest consumer price data released this morning, giving Joe Biden yet another opportunity to argue that his economic policies are working.
“Today’s report shows that we continue to make progress fighting inflation and lowering costs for American households. Inflation has fallen below 3% and core inflation has fallen to the lowest level since April 2021. We have more work to do to lower costs for hardworking Americans, but we are making real progress, with wages rising faster than prices for 17 months in a row,” the president said after the data was released.
Inflation became one of the biggest challenges Biden faced in his presidency, after prices shot up at rates not seen since the 1980s, driven by factors including Covid-19’s impact on global supply chains, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president’s approval ratings fell as inflation rose, and though Biden has declined to seek re-election, his successor as the Democratic president nominee Kamala Harris appears to have the same problem.
Polls of voters have shown her less trusted than Donald Trump when it comes to handling the economy, even though she is generally viewed as having the edge in overall popularity. We’ll see if she can turn that perception around in the months to come.
Here’s more about what the latest inflation numbers mean:
Speaking of polls, the Associated Press just released a new one finding that Donald Trump has the advantage over Kamala Harris on handling the economy and immigration, while the vice-president bests him on issues like abortion and racial inequality.
Here’s more from the survey, which was conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago:
When it comes to comparing the candidates on the issues, the public is more likely to trust Trump to do a better job handling the economy and immigration. Harris is more trusted to handle racial inequality, abortion, and heath care. The public is closely divided on which candidate would do a better job of handling crime or the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
In March, when Trump and Biden were their party’s presumptive nominees, 54% of Republicans said they would be excited if Trump is re-elected in November and 40% of Democrats said they would be excited with another Biden administration. At the time, Democrats were more likely to be fearful or angry about the prospect of a Trump re-election than Republicans were about a Biden re-election.
In the latest poll, a similar share of Republicans remain excited about a Trump victory in the 2024 general election. But Harris is seeing a roughly 20 percentage point boost in excitement among Democrats. Two-thirds of Democrats are excited about a Harris victory, compared with the 40% in March who felt that way about Biden prevailing. And Democrats remain more fearful or angry thinking about another Trump administration than Republicans are about a Harris victory.
Forty-seven percent of Black adults report they would be excited if Harris became president compared with 31% of white adults or 30% of Hispanic adults.
Harris campaign to spend $90m on television ads through August
Ever since jumping into the presidential race, Kamala Harris has been raking in donations. Now, her campaign is putting that money to use, with an announcement this morning of $90m in television ads targeted at media markets in the midwest where they say Donald Trump is “ceding the airwaves”.
Here’s more, from Harris’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks:
On the heels of our historic launch, we know that the more voters hear during the month of August about the differences between Vice President Harris’ long-standing history of delivering common-sense solutions for the American people – from her early days as a prosecutor to the present – and Donald Trump’s dangerous, extreme and out-of-touch Project 2025 agenda, the more they will know that Vice President Harris is the only candidate fit to lead our country over the next four years. It is precisely through efforts like this that we will break through a crowded media environment early and make clear the choice and stakes of this election for the voters who will decide it.
In addition to airing in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the ads will air in Ohio, which is expected to vote for Trump in November, but where its Democratic senator Sherrod Brown is running for another term. His victory is essential to Democrats’ hopes of maintaining the chamber.
New poll shows Harris besting Trump in most battleground states as signs of vice-president’s edge mount
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Ever since she took over as the Democratic presidential nominee late last month, it has been apparent that Kamala Harris has the sort of momentum with voters that Joe Biden never had during his abandoned bid for a second term. This morning, the Cook Political Report released polling showing the vice-president ahead of Donald Trump or tied with him in six of the seven battleground states. It was a reversal from when they last surveyed voters in May, and found that the former president led Biden in each one. Progressive youth voter group NextGen America also found yesterday that Harris is beating Trump among voters under 35, and by a much larger margin than when Biden was in the race.
The vice-president has no campaign events scheduled for today, though her running mate Tim Walz is making speeches in Colorado and Massachusetts. Both are undoubtedly preparing for next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago, when they’ll have a chance to reintroduce themselves to an even bigger swath of voters.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
-
Primaries last night put progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar on the path to continue representing her Minnesota district, and saw voters in Wisconsin reject yet another effort by the GOP to undermine the power of the swing state’s Democratic governor.
-
Inflation has continued to fall, reaching a level not seen since early 2021, according to just-released consumer price data from the US government.
-
Trump will speak about his economic plans at 4pm ET in Asheville, North Carolina – a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, but where the Cook poll says Harris has a small lead.