With nine weeks left until Election Day, the sprint to Nov. 5 is officially underway as the first swing-state ballots hit mailboxes this week.
Vice President Kamala Harris begins the week on Monday, Labor Day, in Detroit, where she’ll gather with labor leaders to tout “the most pro-union administration in history.” After that, she heads to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with President Joe Biden, where the two are slated to make their first joint campaign appearance since her nomination.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will meet with local labor leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Monday morning before traveling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to deliver remarks at LaborFest 2024. Meanwhile, high-profile surrogates are fanning out across the battleground states of Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
Last week, the Harris-Walz campaign maintained its momentum coming off the Democratic National Convention with, among other things, a two-day bus tour across the hotly contested state of Georgia and the duo’s first sit-down interview. According to the campaign, they’ve experienced a groundswell of support across the state over the last five weeks, with more than 35,000 new volunteers signing up to join them.
The two will attempt to replicate that energy again this week, this time by kicking off a 50-stop reproductive rights bus tour across other battleground states beginning Tuesday in Florida – specifically Trump’s Palm Beach backyard – where a six-week abortion ban is currently in place. During the tour, campaign surrogates and abortion rights advocates will tell personal stories and paint a picture of a Trump-Vance administration that plans to ban the procedure nationwide, restrict access to birth control, create a national anti-abortion coordinator, force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions and jeopardize access to in vitro fertilization.
Trump, for his part, has said that he does not support a nationwide ban and that states should make their own decisions. He proposed last week that health insurance companies cover the full cost of IVF, which averages $20,000 per cycle, or that the government cover the cost for those who want to start a family – though he provided no formal policy plan or indication of how he would pay for it. He also said that he considers Florida’s six-week abortion ban too restrictive – though he stopped short of pledging to support a ballot measure in November that would overturn it.
“His latest campaign promise is just smoke and mirrors,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said during a campaign press call on Friday. “Trump’s flailing about insurance coverage does not change the fact that his extremist judges can now ban IVF anytime and anywhere.”
“This is not a close call. Trump’s own platform effectively bans IVF, the speaker of the House and the majority of House Republicans signed on to a federal bill to ban IVF nationwide,” Warren said of a fetal personhood bill backed by 125 House Republicans that would bestow legal rights and protections on the fetus. The principle of fetal personhood was behind an Alabama Supreme Court decision this year that resulted in a suspension of IVF treatments in the state. “Despite what Trump seems to think, American women are smart and we are not falling for his gaslighting.”
Somewhere along the way, Harris and Walz will pitch a tax credit for start-ups and small businesses, which Harris teased during a pit-stop at a minority-owned small business in Savannah last week.
“Half of America’s working population either owns, runs or works in a small business. When we think about strengthening the economy as a whole, not to mention really investing in the ambition and the dreams – all of that is part of it,” she said. “It’s about business and about community.”
Labor Day also marks the beginning of a major digital and TV ad blitz for the Harris-Walz campaign – $370 million investment in battleground states between now and Election Day. Because while the momentum is theirs, they also have, perhaps, a tougher task: Introducing themselves to voters who know nothing about them.
Trump, meanwhile, is coming off a week chock-a-block with negative press, seemingly unable to overtake – or even blunt – the momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign in the wake of the Democratic National Convention.
– His election interference case was revived by a special prosecutor, who filed a superseding indictment in federal court.
– He flouted federal laws that prohibit political activity at Arlington National Cemetery after one of his campaign staffers is said to have pushed aside an employee of the cemetery who tried to intervene.
– His former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, published a book that suggests Trump harmed U.S. foreign policy.
– To cap it off, he posted a torrent of messages to TruthSocial – 30 posts in 30 minutes – laced with conspiracy theories and racist and sexist language.
As if that weren’t enough, a flurry of new national and state polls – some of the first taken in the wake of the Democratic convention – show Harris eclipsing the former president or significantly closing gaps, including across Sun Belt swing states. And support for Harris is climbing among important voter blocs, including young, Black and Latino voters.
While Trump attempted to turn things around with rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and a Friday event with the conservative Moms or Liberty group, his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, did little to help flip the script, getting booed and heckled Thursday during a speech to the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Call it a campaign struggling to find it’s footing after Democrats transformed a sleepy anti-Trump messaging machine into a raucous pro-Harris agenda. Yet finding its footing is a must for the Trump-Vance team this week as it readies for the Sept. 10 presidential debate.
Already, whispers abound that the only tangible strategy Trump’s team has at the moment is to pray that he has a good debate in order to regain momentum. Even Fox News has taken to wondering whether the former president might be bringing down the GOP after polling showed the former president either losing or losing ground in key battlegrounds.
Over the weekend, Trump attempted to pin the tragedy of the six Hamas-held hostages found dead, including an Israeli-American, on Harris.
“Make no mistake – this happened because Comrade Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe Biden are poor Leaders,” he said. “They have blood on their hands! Sadly, this is the total lack of ‘Leadership’ that Kamala and Biden represent – one that allows terrorists to take American lives, because they only care about Weaponizing the Department of Justice against their Political Opponent.”
For now, it appears that his fallback strategy of attack, attack, attack is the name of the game. According to the most recent campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission, Trump’s major super PAC, MAGA Inc., spent a whopping $23 million on TV and direct mail to do just that, catapulting its total expenditures over the last week to $45 million.
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