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Michael C. Donilon, the chief strategist behind Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign, said Democratic leadership “lost its mind” when they ousted Biden from the party’s ticket, arguing he was their best chance at keeping the White House. “The Democratic primary voters chose Joe Biden to be the nominee of the Democratic Party,” said Donilon, a spring fellow at the Institute of Politics. “The Democratic party leadership, and the biggest funders in America, didn’t.” In a wide-ranging post mortem at the IOP Thursday evening, Donilon remained adamant that the former president would “still be the best” for the job – despite his...

Another day of vote counting in Arizona has added tens of thousands of votes to the tally, but there remain hundreds of thousands of ballots left to count — including nearly half a million in Maricopa County. Officials there are still working their way through advance votes that arrived in October. The races for president and U.S. Senate will remain too early to call for at least another day. 2024 ARIZ. GENERAL PRESIDENT 76% of votes counted CANDIDATE VOTES PCT. Donald Trump GOP 1,385,868 52.5% Kamala Harris DEM 1,230,651 46.6% Chase Oliver LIB 12,316 0.5% Jill Stein GRN 12,198 0.5%...

The chair of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign sent out a letter to staff on Tuesday night, assuring them that the current closeness of the race is “exactly what we prepared for.” In the email, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said staff have known all along that this is a “razor-thin race.” “While we continue to see data trickle in from the Sun Belt states, we have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states,” O’Malley Dillon wrote. “And we feel good about what we’re seeing.” Trump vs. Harris: Where...

Donald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance discussed the internet-famous squirrel Peanut, killed by the New York State department of environmental conservation this week, during a rally Sunday in Sanford, North Carolina. The candidate Donald Trump has yet to comment on the martyrdom of the squirrel. "Justice for Peanut!" declared the younger Trump. "Our government will let in 16,000 rapists, 13,000 murderers, 600,000 criminals across our border, but if someone has a pet squirrel without a permit, they'll go in there and kill the squirrel." "They'll allow all that to happen, but if someone adopts a baby pet squirrel... That's the...

Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald Trump a “fascist” at a CNN town hall Wednesday in Pennsylvania — echoing his onetime chief of staff's criticism as she makes a more vocal pitch to voters that he is unfit for office. John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who was Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, came forward this week to warn that his former boss meets “the general definition of a fascist." And he said that in private conversations, Trump admired dictators and said he wished he had military generals as loyal as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's....

Kamala Harris entered the final full month of the US presidential election campaign vastly outspending Donald Trump, as both candidates put tens of millions of dollars into television ads ahead of the Nov. 5 contest, according to financial disclosures filed on Sunday. The campaigns are racing the final stretch of an extremely tight presidential contest, with many polls showing the two candidates neck-and-neck, including in battleground states that could determine the winner. She disclosed to the Federal Election Commission spending of $270 million last month, largely on ads. Former Republican President Trump's similarly ad-dominated spending totaled $78 million during the...

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris will next week highlight her economic policies that benefit Black men, hoping to energize a voting bloc that some advisers fear has embraced Republican rival Donald Trump in large numbers, three sources familiar with the plans said. The policy focus will coincide with an event in Detroit on Tuesday where Harris will be interviewed by popular Black radio personality Charlamagne tha God, who has been critical of the Biden administration, the sources said. … Over a quarter of young Black men say they would support Trump in the election race, a September poll by the...

CNN did not report that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris requires Democrats to take an updated COVID-19 vaccine to vote in the 2024 presidential election, as suggested by a fake screenshot shared on social media. The image is made to resemble a report on the CNN website with the headline: “BREAKING: Kamala to require all democrats to take the updated covid shot in order to vote in November.” It was posted on Facebook, opens new tab captioned, “End this madness, vote Republican!” and garnered comments such as, “I wonder why they don't force the 24 million illegals to take it?”...

Political organizations supporting Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are touting both campaigns' messages of “freedom” as they woo Latinas, a key voting bloc. Hispanic women is the female racial or ethnic group that grew the most in the 12 years from 2010 to 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, growing by 5.6 million and numbering about 22.2 million as of last May. They make up about 17% of the nation's adult female population. They also turn out to vote in larger numbers than Latino men. While Latinas have seen gains in education and employment, they...

… historically, Latinos have tended to favour the Democrats. ..But polls suggest Republicans have gained ground this election cycle, with many factors cited including the economy, immigration, and abortion rights. … Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, posted a faked image of Kamala Harris in a red uniform emblazoned with the communist hammer and sickle, captioned “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” … Posts linking Harris to communism really took off online after the presidential debate, according a report by the DDIA prepared for the BBC. During the debate,...

Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talks about the nomination of Kamala Harris during an interview with Semafor's Kadia Goba. … KADIA GOBA, SEMAFOR: You had reportedly said you wanted a sort of an open primary when Joe Biden stepped down. Did you change your mind because you saw all the excitement around Kamala Harris? REP. NANCY PELOSI: No, I didn't change my mind. We had an open primary and she won it. Nobody else got in the race because she was politically astute and that was the thought. [APPLAUSE] Let's show our talent. We have a great bench, all...

Vice President Kamala Harris needled former President Donald Trump for refusing to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election. “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So let’s be clear about that, and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that,” the Democrat said during her debate with the former president on Tuesday. “It leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact. That’s deeply troubling and the American people deserve better.” Harris and Trump met for their first and...

…With things trending so positively…the campaign probably calculates that it’s unlikely many undecided voters will be persuaded by anything she says in such formats (as opposed to messaging Harris can more fully control, like rallies and ads), while a botched answer could generate a great deal of new negative coverage and attacks. Harris has suffered such fates in the past. In January 2019, at the start of her presidential campaign, anchor Jake Tapper asked at a CNN town hall whether her support of Medicare-for-all meant she wanted to eliminate private health insurance. Harris responded by saying that, yes, you won’t...

CHICAGO (AP) — Jill Biden once said that she knew marrying Joe Biden — then a senator from Delaware — would mean "a life in the spotlight that I had never wanted.” On Monday night, now very accustomed to that spotlight, the first lady stood before the Democratic National Convention to do her part to highlight her husband's 50 years of public service as his presidency begins to draw to a close. Her words marked the beginning of an end for her, too. Before the president walked across the stage at the United Center to deliver the keynote speech on...

One of my prized possessions is an electric guitar painted and signed by Green Day. My father won it at a charity auction and gave it to me. Growing up, at least one of the albums Dookie, Nimrod, or American Idiot were loaded up in the CD player in Dad’s truck at all times. I went to college in Berkeley, California, where the band came up in the ’90s. Three decades on, the punk-rock trio still has their mark on Berkeley. One local doctor known for liberally writing certain prescriptions has a signed Green Day record on the wall. Legend...

Former President Trump said there should be a one-year jail sentence for anyone who desecrates the American flag in the wake of anti-Israel protests over the war in Gaza outside Union Station in Washington, D.C., that included a group burning an American flag.Trump, who has previously called for criminalizing burning the flag, scoffed at those who point out it’s not illegal to do so.“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag,” Trump said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” when asked about the protests. “Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are...

…This fresh start for Democrats, however, doesn’t alleviate a problem Harris inherits from Biden: Voters associate the Biden administration and Democrats in general with the high inflation of the last two years. And there’s no easy way for Harris to wash her hands of it. Forecasting firm Oxford Economics updated its election forecast after Biden dropped out of the race and found that economic factors still favor Republican nominee Donald Trump. “We still think that swing voters will vote on pocketbook issues, namely their perception of inflation,” economist Bernard Yaros wrote in the July 22 analysis. “The vice president will...

…According to the Democratic National Committee rules, the party's delegates would still meet as scheduled for a virtual roll call to vote for who they think should be the nominee. What If Democrats Don't Choose Harris? Because Harris wouldn't just immediately become the nominee, there's a chance that another candidate is picked. The Democratic Party's delegates could choose another candidate that they see as giving the party a better chance against Trump in November. Other high-profile Democrats floated as possibly stronger alternatives to Harris include California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But they have said that they...

Hit by a rolling series of punches — the turmoil after President Biden's disastrous debate, the drip-drip-drip of damaging leaks from congressional allies, and now a campaign-stalling case of COVID — people who work inside the Biden campaign are discouraged and uncertain about what lies ahead. Harris hits the campaign trail in North Carolina as Biden isolates for COVID "We can't catch a break,” a Biden adviser said, speaking on condition of anonymity to frankly describe private conversations. Ever since Biden faltered in his debate three weeks ago against former President Donald Trump, the bad news just keeps coming —...