We've got a little more than 2 months to go to the presidential election, and it's a dramatically different race than it was earlier this summer.
The vice president has made up ground lost by Joe Biden in the months leading up to his departure from the race, and Donald Trump and JD Van still haven't devised a strategy to counter her.
This week, Donald Trump's campaign had a fight with the United States Army about Trump's bizarre decision to politicize Arlington National Cemetery.
Joining me to discuss all this and more, Francesca Chambers, the White House.
Correspondent for USA Today, McKay Coppins, my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, Jeff Mason, a White House correspondent for Reuters, and Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and a correspondent at NPR.
Thank you all for joining me.
Domenico, let's go right to you.
You know all the polls, um, just give us a brief, concise erudite, but Olympian overview, if you will, of the polls and where we are today.
All right, I'll try to be shorter than that.
Basically, it's closed, right?
And what we've seen now is that toss up.
It is a it is a toss-up race in all the seven main states that we're watching.
We did an analysis earlier this week.
We can show you that map and the 3 blue wall states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Everyone's watching very closely.
You can see there and as well as out west, Nevada and Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina in the Sun Belt.
All 7 of those we now have as toss-ups, um, this is based on not just polling but conversations with The campaigns, historical trends.
This is where we essentially started the race.
This had slipped to where Donald Trump had a lead in the Sun Belt states by 5 or 6 points before or just after Joe Biden dropped out and Harris has really made up about 4 to 6 points overall, not just nationally, but importantly in places like the the the blue wall as well as the Sun Belt states, and when you look just strictly at polling Harris has now consistent but lead in all three of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
If that were to hold, she'd be right at 270 electoral votes.
This has completely scrambled the map for Trump because he really has needed Georgia to be Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania to be the three states that he has as a block to get to 270 and now with Harris leading in Pennsylvania and making all four of those Sun Belt states within the margin of error and they're all within about 1 point right now, as close as it possibly can be.
It is really.
Scrambled a map for the Trump folks.
Francesca, talk about Georgia.
You've been writing a lot about it and it's in play in a way that we couldn't have imagined when Joe Biden was the, was the nominee and even just a few weeks ago, Kama Harris was down in Georgia and while it still is in the margin of error to your point.
She is now a couple of points ahead in Georgia now North Carolina, not looking as great for her and experts have said that they actually expect that she'll do better in Georgia, but her campaign is trying to put both of those states back in play now do they I think that you absolutely positively have to win in Georgia or North Carolina or any of the Sun Belt states.
No, but they also don't think that you absolutely have to win the blue wall.
They're trying to create a scenario where if they lose in any one of those states that Joe Biden wanted that they can make up the difference.
She's now doing these bus tours.
She did one in Pennsylvania which Jeff and I were on, and then she also did the one in Georgia.
Pay attention to where she's going.
It is areas where Democrats had warned Joe Biden.
That if he did not start hitting up those places, he was not going to win in Savannah, for instance, if Harris wants to repeat Biden's win, she would basically have to juice up the vote in that Savannah area as well as areas like Columbus and then you see her going there is it effective and obviously she's coming closer, but do you think it's possible for her to win Georgia Georgia?
Well, if she's able to keep those margins that Joe Biden had in places like Savannah where, by the way, a Democrat hadn't campaigned since Bill In 1992, her campaign is making the point then yes, when you, you have 11,000 votes roughly, and in that one county alone, if she were to go back down to the 2016 levels that would be the difference maker, right, Jeff, what, what, what states are you thinking about of the seven?
What, what is, uh, Nevada, uh, talk about Arizona, give us a sense of, of, of where your mind is at.
Well, we did, I did a bus to the bus tour that Francesca mentioned with in Pennsylvania but also before I'm a little sad that we weren't invited down the bus tours quite a bus tour.
It was a bus tour.
It was a bus tour, right?
She's, you know, she's going to all the states that we're talking about.
I was on a on a swing with her where she went to Arizona uh where she, she went to Wisconsin, where she went to Michigan on Labor Day, she and Joe Biden are going to be campaigning together officially for the first time back in Pennsylvania.
All of these states are in play.
I mean, to your question is, is it possible for her to win Georgia?
Is it possible for her to when these other ones they wouldn't be putting money in those If they didn't think she could win.
Surely part of the strategy is let's freak out the Trump campaign and let's try to narrow those margins, but for sure they wouldn't be putting her time and their efforts there if they didn't think they had a chance.
McKay, give us a sense of what the Trump campaign is doing beyond being freaked out by all of the change that they've had to confront.
Well, I do think it's important to note the strategic shift in the way they're talking about the race like I, I was in Milwaukee, uh, you know, earlier this summer Chris Laavida, Trump campaign's manager talking about expanding the map, and this is when Joe Biden was still the nominee.
They're saying we're going to play in New Mexico.
We're going to contest Virginia like we actually have so many opportunities that it's a resource allocation problem.
You're not really hearing them talk about that anymore.
The fact is that they're on on defense in places like Georgia means that they're not probably going to be devoting a whole lot of resources to trying to win, you know, bluish purple states like Virginia, um, I do think though that You have an issue which is that you know the campaign I'm sure has a strategy they're developing for how to respond.
Donald Trump is not always interested in following the whatever strategy they're laying out.
That's what's known as an understatement, correct?
I mean, there's two separate campaigns, right?
There's the, the campaign machinery and then there's whatever he's putting on Truth Social.
Well, and you've seen it this week, right?
Donald Trump has been lashing out in pretty outlandish and provocative ways.
Campaign wants him to bear down on the states that are still plausible, but it's not happening and not just that but also to emphasize these policy proposals that they think are going to be popular, you know, eliminating the tax on tips which Kamala Harris is now also embraced just recently the his proposal on subsidizing IVF treatments like these are clearly plays for the middle.
These are plays for um undecided voters and if they had a more dis they could engineer the entire campaign communications apparatus around pushing those policies but instead you have Donald Trump on social melting down.
Domenico, talk, talk for a minute about Trump's pathway to victory if you were.
Analyzing it from the inside, what would you be telling Donald Trump?
This is what you have to do.
This is where you have to win.
Well, when we look at the ad spending, I mean that can tell you everything, you know, when you look at polls, that's fine, and these things are within the margin of error, but where are they putting their resources and Pennsylvania is the place where they are spending the most money both campaigns are just in the past month, $100 million on ads in Pennsylvania.
Now their key is really this trio of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina.
They need all three of those to be able to win.
There really must win.
For the Trump campaign.
If they get all three, do they win?
If they get all three, they probably do get to write to 270, so that's, that's where we're looking at and that's why Pennsylvania has been such a key place because Democrats have done well there obviously for lots of past elections aside from 2016, but I'm also interested in a place like North Carolina.
The Trump people were not spending any money in North Carolina until Kamala Harris got in the race.
They were making an assumption.
Well, they were essentially feeling like and they were right and that the polling was showing them.
With a lead that was outside the margin of error that they were maybe going to have this locked down and they can concentrate all of their resources in places like Pennsylvania and Georgia, maybe you know being slightly ahead in Georgia and then really insulating that and knowing that Pennsylvania was the key, but now they really have to spend their resources in a lot of different places.
They're spending a lot of money in North Carolina now.
The gubernatorial candidate there certainly is controversial on the Republican side.
The Democratic candidate is far outpacing that candidate.
So Place that's 50/50 right now with North Carolina means the Trump people are having to spend a ton of resources to try to shore up that state, and it's not even assured that they're going to win that at all and just to pick up on that in North Carolina, Harris's campaign, formerly the Biden campaign, always made a bet that because it was so close roughly 1.3% points in the previous election that it was somewhere that they could win.
They have roughly 2 dozen offices in both states, almost similar level of offices and staffing nearly 200 staffers that What they believe is going to bring this home for them in the end is that earlier this year while Republicans were in their primary even if Donald Trump wasn't truly under threat in that primary, they were busy building offices, hiring staffers, and already getting started in those states so that once Kama Harris did take over the ticket, now she already had an apparatus.
One more question about North Carolina.
Domenico used the, was the word controversial, um, which is descriptive, but, but it's more than controversial this North Carolina Republican candidate.
For governor.
He's quite, he's said some.
Pretty outlandish things.
Is that gonna drag the Republican Party in a in a serious way?
Is that why North Carolina is in play?
Well, North Carolina is partially just because it's, it was nearly in play last time too.
It was a very small percentage point, but when you do have Josh Stein who's on the ticket there.
Democrats think he has a real chance to be able to win the state before when Biden was the one on the ticket, uh, Democrats thought maybe Biden was going to bring him down and he was going to be the one that was pulling.
Biden up in that state but now they're feeling a lot better about North Carolina.
I mean, North Carolina is in play because of black voters and young voters.
Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008.
A lot of people attribute that to the fact that he was able to turn out black voters, but the biggest margin difference was with young voters, and those were two groups that Joe Biden was really struggling with, who Kamala Harris has now fired up, right, right, right, um, if Josh Stein wins, it's a pretty good political moment for Josh's, I think, generally just noting that for the record, the, um, I want to um go to.
The interview that Dana Bash did with um Kall Harris and uh Tim Walls.
Um, the fact that we're talking about a single interview suggests to people in the media that they're not doing enough interviews.
I've talked to people in the campaign.
They say we're gearing up to do so many interviews you're not gonna, as Donald Trump would say, you're going to get sick of all the interviews we're going to do.
I look forward to that.
Yeah, yeah, we'll see that that only time will tell, as we say, um, but I, I want to get your assessments of, of how they, they did.
Let's let's watch, uh, 11 small uh moment from uh from that interview last night and then talk about how she did.
Do you still want to ban fracking?
No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020.
That I would not ban fracking as vice president, I did not ban fracking as president, I will not ban fracking.
In 2019, I believe in a town hall you said you were asked, would you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on your first day in office, and you said there's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking, so yes, so it changed in the in that campaign.
In 2020 I made very clear where I stand.
We are in 2024 and I've not changed that position, nor will I going forward.
I kept my word and I will keep my word.
Give us your sense, McKay, uh, how she did.
I, I, you know, that clip I think was actually pretty well captured the general tone of the interview, she did fine.
She answered the questions, um, she didn't kind of resort to sort of the word salad that she's become known for sometimes retreating to, which was uh which was I think an improvement.
I think the issue that you noted at the top here is, is the real problem for them, which is that they're just not doing enough interviews and because they're not doing interviews.
Each one is going to receive an enormous amount of scrutiny and you know, even nitpicking, I think that if she was doing wall to wall interviews talking to everybody who wants to talk to the new Democratic nominee, understandably so.
I mean we're in a pretty unique situation.
She should be answering questions, I think that people wouldn't, you know, be picking apart every little answer she gives so I think actually it would be wise if she ends up doing what the campaign is saying and does, you know, a dozen more interviews in the next month or so.
She needed to get through that interview without having a major stumble, and she did.
Is that a low or high bar?
Is that the appropriate bar?
I don't know, but that was the bar that was set.
She had to answer some of the questions about policies that have changed.
Is that going to help her with the Republican voters?
No.
The Trump campaign came out right away and said she still supports fracking even though she said right there that she hadn't there, there are weaknesses in those policy positions just as there are weaknesses in Trump's policy positions that both candidates.
It's in both campaigns will try to continue to pursue, but as far as the just the straight interview strategy, she got through it and that's what they wanted her to do.
Domenico, since we're talking about the electoral map, fracking has to do with one thing Western Pennsylvania.
It's a huge political issue.
It's very potent.
I will say that she got to a good answer on this where she said, what I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase the clean energy economy without banning fracking, so it took her a while though to get to that and I think her campaign is probably going to want to clean up her answer.
Make it more economical because a lot of this is about how she does in the debate.
That's the next big pillar.
That's the next big test, and if she can sort of condense that and not look like she is squishy and like her 2019 campaign, I would say that what I heard from Democratic strategists about this interview about this interview is that she was competent, she was calm, it was fine, which they want to set up as a split screen team didn't do that much, right?
He didn't do that much and that was one of the criticisms from Republicans in advance is that he was there as a And he answered a couple of questions that that Dan had directed to him specifically on some of the things that he had said that have become controversial, but other than that it was a Kamala Harris.
Democrats really want to set up the split screen between quote boring and calm and competent versus the tumult of Trumpsa also, but the contrast of divisive versus unity, she repeatedly talked about common sense solutions.
She's chasing that center line um when you talk about places like Western Pennsylvania.
By the way, that is actually where the bus tour was that that she was at the campaign says that they're going after a couple types of voters, black voters, as well as disaffected Republicans, suburban women, and they're also looking at independent men.
They feel that if they can cut into Trump's margins, particularly with independent men and those suburban women, then they can make up the difference in other parts of places like Pennsylvania and these battleground states that's going to be the ball game.
I haven't been on one of those bus tours in a long time and I'm feeling a little sentiment.
until you actually go on one of the bus tours be clear, the press isn't on a bus.
Yeah, I know we're in a press van.
Yeah, no, it's a terrible stuffy van.
Bricho stay on this subject of uh uh of, of, of the interview.
The, the thing that she didn't do is that she did not, um, she was.
She was unwilling to address Trump's race baiting, um, talk about the strategy there.
I mean, she was.
Next question.
Dana, we're not, we're not going there.
What is her response?
I wasn't telling you.
Maybe that'll work too you were telling me not to talk about it either, but, but, but what's going on there?
She doesn't want to talk about that.
She wanted to stay focused on.
I know, but I think part of the reason that we're talking about here is she wants to talk about the issues that she thinks.
Draw in more of those independent men in the suburban women, so she wants to talk about things like abortion rights.
I think that they were clearly very prepared for the fracking question and the ability to to have to answer that.
They clearly didn't want to go deeper into policy on economic policy when Jeff and I were on that bus tour, he asked a great question of her of how she would pay for her economic plans.
She Basically said they'd pay for themselves.
The campaign had to issue a statement clearing that up and then issuing a second statement clearing it up a second time.
She does not want to talk about things like price, other than price gouging that could potentially drive away those Republican voters.
He also doesn't want the headline to be race and gender and and if she had engaged on that more yesterday, that would have been that we're talking about today and that's where Trump is comfortable playing.
I want to talk about um.
I'll call it plainly a double standard that we have in this campaign.
We're sitting here parsing as we should.
What the Democratic nominee for president says in an interview, how she answers questions about a whole range of subjects.
Um, meanwhile, This is what Donald Trump had to say this week.
Groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody's ever seen before.
We've never seen anything like it, 50, 60, 70%.
You take a look at bacon and some of these products and some people don't eat bacon anymore and uh we are going to get the energy prices down when we get energy down, you know, this was caused by their horrible energy.
Win, they won't wind all over the place, but when it doesn't blow, we have a little problem.
Here's the thing, I'll make this observation.
I'll own it.
If Kamala Harris went from bacon to wind.
In her interview with Dana Bash.
She would this morning not be the the next morning she would not be the, the nominee of the Democratic Party.
That would have been a very, very strange.
People would have been like, what is going on?
Do we just have an absurdly low standard now for the things that Donald Trump says and does.
I think that there is definitely a double standard and I think part of it is how each side's voters interpret their candidate and someone like Donald Trump, Republicans have had the opportunity for years to say this is not the guy we want.
Instead they've continued to get behind him in every primary that Donald Trump weighs in on, he wins and then the general election, a lot of those candidates tend to lose.
I think that from reporters' standpoint we do have to be careful about how we, what level we hold both of them to when I fact Donald Trump's our press conference.
He's told 162 lies and distortions within that time period, 2.5 a minute compared to Kamala Harris's DNC acceptance speech where she had 12 statements that I found were contextually misleading or needed more.
OK, well, it's not just his own voters.
I think that broadly speaking, most Americans have it baked into their perception of Donald Trump that he's rambling, that he's incoherent, that he lies that he goes off on these bizarre outlandish tangents.
It's it's fundamental to the understanding of who Donald Trump is.
It's why, by the way, when we were all talking earlier this year about Joe Biden's cognitive decline and a lot of Democrats, I think understandably were like, well why aren't we talking about Donald Trump's cognitive decline.
It's because from the very moment he entered the political scene, he sounded a little crazy to a lot of people.
