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      Why are Democrats tarred as elites when the world’s richest man funds Trump? | Robert Reich

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      On 5 October, at Donald Trump’s second rally of the 2024 election in Butler, Pennsylvania, he enthusiastically introduced Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who is plunking down millions of dollars to help the former president.Musk urged the crowd to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – echoing words Trump uttered after the attack on his life there. Musk then shouted: “President Trump must win to preserve the constitution!” and he “must win to preserve democracy in America!” Musk ended his rant with the dark prediction: “If they don’t [vote], this will be the last election.”Musk has established himself as the quintessential robber baron of the United States’s second Gilded Age.In mid-August, during a conversation between Musk and Trump on Twitter/X, Trump praised Musk for firing workers who went on strike. “You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump said. “You walk in and say: ‘You want to quit?’ … They go on strike and you say: ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone.’” Musk responded, “Yeah,” and laughed.More than a century ago, in the US’s first Gilded Age, the idea that someone running for president would feature at a rally the richest person in the country, let alone the world, would have been absurd. At that time, even Republican candidates sought to distance themselves from the robber barons.Kamala Harris is waging a strong campaign but it could be even stronger if she wielded more anti-corporate and more anti-robber-baron economic populism.As in the first Gilded Age, the most powerful force in US politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system.But because Democrats – with the notable exceptions of Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Bob Casey, and Sherrod Brown – have not embraced economic populism, the only version of populism available to angry voters has been the Republican’s cultural one, which is utterly fake.During the first Gilded Age, economic populism predominated because millions of Americans saw that wealth and power concentrated at the top was undermining US democracy and stacking the economic deck.In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt thundered his warning that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy US democracy. Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was eventually enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922.In the 1912 presidential campaign, Woodrow Wilson promised “a crusade against powers that have governed us … that have limited our development … that have determined our lives … that have set us in a straitjacket to do as they please”. The struggle to break up the giant trusts would be, in Wilson’s words, a “second struggle for emancipation”.Wilson signed into law the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened antitrust laws and protected unions. He also established the Federal Trade Commission to root out “unfair acts and practices in commerce”, and created the first permanent national income tax.Years later, Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth-cousin, Franklin D Roosevelt, attacked corporate and financial power by giving workers the right to unionize, the 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, and social security. FDR instituted a high marginal income tax on the wealthy – those making more than $5m a year were taxed up to 75% – and he regulated finance.Accepting renomination for president in 1936, FDR spoke of the need to redeem US democracy from the despotism of concentrated economic power. He warned the nation against the “economic royalists” who had pressed the whole of society into service.On the eve of his 1936 re-election, he told the American people that big business and finance were determined to unseat him: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”But by the 1950s, the Democratic party had given up on economic populism. Gone from their presidential campaigns were tales of greedy businessmen, unscrupulous financiers and monopolistic corporations.There no longer seemed any need. Postwar prosperity had created the largest middle class in the history of the world and reduced the gap between rich and poor. By the mid-1950s, a third of all private-sector employees were unionized, and blue-collar workers were receiving generous wage and benefit increases regularly.Keynesianism had become a widely accepted antidote to economic downturns – substituting the management of aggregate demand for class antagonism. Even Richard Nixon purportedly claimed: “We’re all Keynesians now.”There was a second reason for the Democrats’ increasing unease with populism. The civil rights struggle and the Vietnam war had spawned an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian New Left that distrusted government as much if not more than it distrusted Wall Street and big business.The New Left viewed the war as a symbol of all that was rotten in the US, including the Democratic establishment that waged it. The Democratic establishment viewed the anti-war New Left as entitled children, who focused on personal expression and idealism rather than labor activism and the alleviation of poverty.That split was dramatically revealed during the violent protests at the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago. It lived on: a half-century later, it could be seen in Bernie Sanders’ candidacy in the 2016 primaries and the struggle within the Democratic party between his populists and Hillary Clinton’s mainstream Democrats.The Republican party, meanwhile, embraced cultural populism. In Ronald Reagan’s view, Washington insiders and arrogant bureaucrats stifled the economy and hobbled individual achievement. Cultural elites coddled the poor, including “welfare queens”, Reagan’s racist dog-whistle.Reagan’s cultural critique took hold of the Republican party. In the 2004 presidential election, Republicans framed Democrats as an effete group of “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing [and] Hollywood-loving” people out of touch with the real America.By the 2020s, Republicans saw the culture wars as the central struggle of American public life. Trump has blamed the country’s problems on immigrants, Democrats, socialists, the mainstream media, the “deep state” (including the FBI, justice department, prosecutors, and unfriendly judges), “coastal elites”, and, wherever possible (and usually indirectly), women and people of color.Republican cultural populism is bogus. The biggest change over the last four decades – the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class, the change that animates America’s second Gilded Age – has had nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”-ism, critical race theory, transgender kids, immigration, or any other Republican cultural bogeymen.It’s the giant upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth; in the power and status that accompany it; and the injuries to pride, status, and self-esteem suffered by those who have lost it.The Democrats’ failure to critique this shift and adapt economic populism has made the Republicans’ fake cultural populism dominant by default.Why haven’t Democrats embraced economic populism? Because for too long they’ve drunk from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans – big corporations, Wall Street and the very wealthy.“Business has to deal with us whether they like it or not, because we’re the majority,” crowed the Democratic representative Tony Coelho, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 1980s when Democrats assumed they’d continue to run the House for years.Coelho’s Democrats soon achieved a rough parity with Republicans in contributions from corporate and Wall Street campaign coffers, but it proved a Faustian bargain.Now, Trump boasts the support of the richest man in the world, who’s viciously anti-union, even as Trump pretends to be the “voice” of working America – and the Democrats don’t even challenge the hypocrisy.As I said, Harris is waging a good campaign. But she and many of her fellow Democrats could be more vocal about how ultra-wealthy individuals and giant corporations are undermining and corrupting America.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      This is the future for Kamala Harris: unless she solves this economic mystery, Trump wins | Aditya Chakrabortty

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      The defining question in US politics was asked 44 years ago this month. One week before the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter squared up to each other for a televised debate. A former Hollywood actor, Reagan was also proving a lethal Washington aphorist. At the close, he spoke into the camera: “Next Tuesday, all of you will go to the polls. You’ll stand there in the polling place and make a decision.” Watching at home were more than 80 million Americans. “When you make that decision … ask yourself: are you better off than you were four years ago?” Is it easier to buy things, he asked, is unemployment lower?A few days later, voters gave their answer, handing Reagan a 44-state landslide. Every presidential contest since has been framed in large part by his simple, deadly question. Ask it in the final stretch of this election and you get to the great mystery of why the race remains so close.Are Americans better off than they were four years ago? Pretty much every mainstream economist would say: you bet. Many go further. “I’ve hesitated to say this at the risk of sounding hyperbolic,” wrote Mark Zandi, the respected chief economist at Moodys, just a few days ago. “But … there is no denying it: this is among the best performing economies in my 35+ years as an economist.” Growth: up. Jobs: up. Wages: rising. The value of your home: up. Share prices: booming. Inflation: falling. Borrowing rates: dropping.In 2020, Donald Trump warned that his defeat would produce “a depression”. Today, even while Germany and Japan face recession, magazines toast the US economy’s “superstar status”. Yet ask Americans if they feel better off, and many answer: no.Under Reagan’s law, this election ought to be in the bag for Kamala Harris. As Joe Biden’s number two, she can claim co-authorship for this boom. Instead, she is neck and neck with a convicted criminal (never forget: three weeks after polling day, a judge will decide if Donald Trump should be jailed over the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels). On the economy, Trump regularly polls ahead of Harris. The issue that ought to be winning for her is instead losing.How come? It ranks among the most consequential questions of our time, yet, however hard they scratch their heads Washington’s finest can’t give a good answer. Many on the centre left paint it as a PR problem: that Biden has failed to claim the credit or that voters are too dumb to realise how good things are. But another suggestion emerges in a new report from a progressive thinktank, the Democracy Collaborative. And its argument should be heeded by Keir Starmer and the European left.The authors examine much the same economic dashboard as everyone else – growth, jobs, wages – but over a far longer timeframe. Behind each graph lies the implicit question: are you, your family, your community better off than you were not four years ago, but two, three, four decades ago? And for many people the numbers say: no.Take the biggest one: pay. For teachers, clerical workers, sales reps and the great bulk of US employees, whether white or blue collar, wages have flatlined – not for four or even 20 years – but for most of the past half century. Strip out inflation and average hourly earnings for seven out of 10 US employees have barely risen since Richard Nixon was in the White House.For the average US employee, and their families and their towns, the economy has kept on tanking whoever wins the White House, whichever judges make it to the supreme court, whether the analysts decree it to be boom or bust.Biden has spent trillions on boosting the economy and adapting to the climate crisis. He has bolstered unions and intervened in strikes. The graphs show it has had an impact – but it is a tiny uptick at the end of a line that otherwise points remorselessly down. Americans are better off than they were four years ago, it’s just that many were in distress in 2020.Reagan destroyed their unions, Bill Clinton threw open their trade barriers, George Bush Jr dispatched their kids to fight and die abroad, Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street and Trump ran a glorified protection racket. Only in 2020 did real wages for “production and non-supervisory employees” rise above where they were in 1973. This was not because they were unproductive: the US economy continues to do more with less almost every year. It’s just that most of the gains from that have gone to the top.“Even if Trump loses, America remains very vulnerable to a far nastier imitation winning next time,” says Joe Guinan, president of the Democracy Collaborative. The only way to see off Trump, JD Vance and the pluto-populists is to make the economy more equal, to give workers more of a stake in the riches they produce.To see how that plays out, I checked in on Mike Stout. We first talked in a diner in Pittsburgh in 2012, the year Obama won re-election. Mike and his wife, Steffi, had worked in Pennsylvania’s steel industry, with good union pay and pensions. They’d gone to Washington for the first inauguration of Obama, and stood in the freezing January cold. They had hopes.The Stouts did everything right. Worked hard and saved, and spent $50,000 to get their kids through university. In 2012, their daughter Maura was working in a downtown hotel for $14 an hour, the same as her father had earned in 1978. Even then she doubted whether she and her husband would ever enjoy the same standard of living as her parents.She’d lost that hotel job during the pandemic, said Mike, and was working from her one-bedroom flat. Her job was chasing people for their debts, even though at $18 an hour she was only just keeping her head above water. Now in her 30s, she’d split from her husband, and Mike thought much of the blame lay in money problems. As for his son, Mike, he was looking after his wife, who has stage 4 cancer, and their kids. Mike has health insurance, which counts as good fortune in the US, but the top-up fees are eye-watering, and now he works two jobs.“They are teetering on a ledge 60 floors up,” said Stout. “The slightest nuance – a recession or prices going up again – and they’re pushed out of the window.”Life for the Stouts has been frozen for years. At the root of democratic capitalism is an old promise: tomorrow will be better than today. But that promise was broken long ago for Mike’s family and many of his friends’ households, too. He knew plenty of former steelworkers in this swing state who next month would vote Trump. Sure he was a liar, “but at least he lies to their faces, rather than ignoring them”.And what about Mike? “Trump or Harris: it’s just one big uni-party,” he said. “It’s Wall Street that runs this country.”

      Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist More

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      Kamala Harris and allies top Trump and Republicans with $1bn in donations – as it happened

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      Kamala Harris and groups supporting her have brought in $1bn in donations since she launched her presidential campaign in July, Reuters reports.The mammoth haul, confirmed to Reuters by a source familiar with the vice-president’s fundraising, went to her campaign, the Democratic national committee and Pacs supporting her run. The money will be spent on staff and operations in battleground states, as well as advertising.Harris and the Democrats lead Trump and the GOP in cash on hand as of the end of September, with $404m in the bank compared to the ex-president’s $295m.With Hurricane Milton presenting a mortal threat to Florida’s west coast, Kamala Harris warned businesses against defrauding or price gouging people fleeing the storm, while, at the White House, Joe Biden slammed the recent flood of hurricane-related disinformation as “off the wall”. The Trump campaign was busy assailing Harris and Biden over their response to Hurricane Helene, which devastated south-eastern states like North Carolina days ago. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, JD Vance accused the Biden administration of “incompetence” in responding to the storm, prompting a rebuke from homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.Here’s what else happened today:

      Harris and groups supporting her campaign have brought in $1bn since she declared her candidacy in July, a huge fundraising total.

      Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, decried the electoral college at a fundraiser yesterday, saying it would be better if the popular vote decided the presidency. The Harris campaign later said his remarks do not represent their position.

      The vice-president was on the line when Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu today, in the leaders’ first call since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon.

      The economy remains the issue most important to voters, and Donald Trump has the edge, a Gallup survey found. A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found Harris remained the favorite nationally, although her lead has declined a bit.

      Jim McCain, the son of late Republican senator and presidential candidate John McCain, endorsed Harris during a campaign alongside Walz in Arizona.
      Speaking to supporters in Scranton, Donald Trump leveled baseless accusations of election fraud against Democrats, warning that they would “cheat like hell” next month.Trump has, of course, continued to insist that the results of the 2020 presidential election were tainted by widespread fraud, even though he has failed to produce evidence substantiating those claims.Complaining about a recent New York Times poll showing Kamala Harris pulling ahead in Pennsylvania, Trump attacked journalists as “the enemy of the people”.Donald Trump has taken the stage at his campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a battleground state he is looking to recapture after narrowly losing it to Joe Biden in 2020.Trump arrived to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” as his supporters waved signs reading “47” and “Make America Great Again”. He claimed he was far ahead of Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, despite polls suggesting the two candidates are running neck and neck in the state.“It’s great to be back in the beautiful commonwealth,” Trump told the crowd. “Just 27 days from now, we are going to win Pennsylvania. We are going to defeat Lyin’ Kamala.”The son of late Republican senator and president candidate John McCain announced his endorsement of Kamala Harris at a campaign event in swing state Arizona.Standing onstage with Tim Walz and Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego in the city of Chandler, Jim McCain said he had recently left the GOP to become a Democrat, and would be voting for Harris in November.“This is the time for our courage and for standing up for what is right, even when it’s hard. But the courage we have shown already, the sacrifices that we made, now, that courage needs to be shown in the polls coming up,” McCain said.“This is the time. I stand for you before you today, not as a Republican or Democrat, but as an Arizonan. I love this state more than I love anything, and as someone who has served with all of you and continues to believe in the greatness of this country and this state, we must elect vice-president Harris and governor Tim Walz.”McCain, who died in 2018, was the GOP’s nominee for president in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama. He continued to represent Arizona in the Senate until his death, and one of his final notable acts was casting a vote that prevented an effort by Donald Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act without any replacement being ready.Kamala Harris was in New York City yesterday to make high-profile media appearances, including on much-watched talk show the View, where she proposed a plan to allow Medicare to pay for long-term at-home care.Today, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator who is influential in the progressive movement, particularly when it comes to expanding government-funded health care, announced his support for the plan:
      Congratulations to Vice President Harris for announcing a bold vision to expand Medicare to cover not only home health care, but also vision and hearing.
      It is no secret that we have a major crisis in home health care. Millions of seniors would prefer, when possible, to receive care in their homes rather than be forced into nursing homes. Kamala’s plan is a major step forward not only in improving the quality of life for seniors and their families, but also in saving the health care system large sums of money.
      Further, her plan to expand Medicare to cover the cost of vision and hearing is enormously important. In the wealthiest country on earth, millions of lower-income seniors today are unable to afford the hearing aids and eyeglasses they desperately need. That is not acceptable. Every senior in America should be able to access these basic health care needs.
      Here’s more on what Harris has proposed:Kamala Harris and groups supporting her have brought in $1bn in donations since she launched her presidential campaign in July, Reuters reports.The mammoth haul, confirmed to Reuters by a source familiar with the vice-president’s fundraising, went to her campaign, the Democratic national committee and Pacs supporting her run. The money will be spent on staff and operations in battleground states, as well as advertising.Harris and the Democrats lead Trump and the GOP in cash on hand as of the end of September, with $404m in the bank compared to the ex-president’s $295m.Democratic congressional candidate Eugene Vindman first made a name for himself when he and his brother, former National Security Council official Alexander Vindman, became whistleblowers over Donald Trump’s alleged pressure campaign against Ukraine, which resulted in the former president’s first impeachment.Although Vindman is well known among Democrats, his status as a first-time candidate in one of Virginia’s battleground districts has complicated his path to victory. Joe Biden won the district by seven points in 2020, but Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin carried it by the same margin when he won the office in 2021.This year, Vindman’s success may depend on whether the seventh district backs Kamala Harris or Trump in the presidential race.“If [Harris] wins this district by several points, that should be enough to pull him across the finish line,” the Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey writes. “But strategists from both parties agree that this is shaping up to be a tight race.”Democrat Eugene Vindman is facing a tougher-than-expected fight against Republican Derrick Anderson in Virginia’s seventh congressional district, as the Cook Political Report has moved the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up”.Democrats are looking to hold the seat, which was left open after congresswoman Abigail Spanberger chose to launch a gubernatorial campaign rather than seek reelection.“Polls from both parties show Republican Army Special Forces combat veteran Derrick Anderson and Democratic retired Army lieutenant colonel Eugene Vindman neck and neck, despite Vindman outspending Anderson significantly,” Cook’s Erin Covey writes.“[T]hough Vindman has spent nearly $6 million on TV ads to Anderson’s half million, including softer spots featuring his family and pledging to ease I-95 traffic, he hasn’t been able to establish a clear lead.”Last week the nation’s top emergency official, Deanne Criswell of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), warned that a slew of falsehoods spread by Donald Trump, his supporters and others after Hurricane Helene, including claims of funds diverted from storm survivors to help migrants in the US and that Democrats somehow directed the hurricane itself, was hampering the response to one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the US.Criswell warned about similar damaging nonsense today when she briefed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for president, asked her if disinformation was getting in officials’ way as they prepare for Milton to hit Florida.Harris had already criticized on Monday “the disinformation being pushed by Donald Trump” about Helene. She just asked Criswell if she was concerned about misinformation and disinformation relating to evacuations from the path of Milton.“There has been a lot of misinformation out there, Madame Vice-President, that’s for sure, but I have not heard anything specific to the evacuations,” Criswell began.She added that people were listening to their local officials and evacuating. “That’s good, thank you,” Harris said.The US president and US vice-president, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have just wrapped up the public portion of a lengthy briefing session with Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary and emergency chief dealing with incoming Hurricane Milton.We are following all the storm developments in our hurricane live blog, including warnings from the president that this looks like it could be “the storm of the century”, but there has been a political side to all this, too.Biden and Harris both sounded off about disinformation coming from Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president in this election, and his acolytes.Biden said: “All this misinformation going out about how we’re devoting all this money to migrants, even one congresswoman suggesting I control the weather and implying I’m sending it to red states. This stuff is off the wall. It’s like out of a comic book.”Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene last week posted on social media that “Yes they can control the weather” and although she didn’t specify who “they” are it was widely taken to mean Democrats and Biden has clearly taken it personally.With Hurricane Milton presenting a mortal threat to Florida’s west coast, Kamala Harris has issued a warning to businesses that defraud or price gouge people fleeing the storm, saying she will hold them accountable. The Trump campaign is meanwhile continuing to pressure Harris and Joe Biden over the response to Hurricane Helene, which devastated south-eastern states like North Carolina days ago. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, JD Vance accused the Biden administration of “incompetence” in responding to the storm, prompting a rebuke from homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, decried the electoral college at a fundraiser yesterday, saying it would be better if the popular vote decided the presidency. The Harris campaign later said his remarks do not represent their position.

      Harris was on the line when Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu today, in the leaders’ first call since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon.

      The economy remains the issue most important to voters, and Donald Trump has the edge, a Gallup survey found. A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found Harris remained the favorite nationally, although her lead has declined a bit.
      Joe Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu this morning, the White House said, marking the first time the leaders have spoken since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon. Kamala Harris was also on the call.Biden spoke to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of the 7 October attack, but has not spoken to Netanyahu since 21 August. That was before the pager explosions that killed dozens and wounded thousands, and before Israel targeted and killed Hezbollah’s leader in Lebanon then launched a ground incursion.The White House has not released a readout of their call. We have a live blog covering the crisis in the Middle East, including the call between the leaders: More

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      Tim Walz calls for scrapping of electoral college to decide US presidential race

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      Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win.”He had earlier made similar remarks at a separate event in Seattle, where he called himself “a national popular vote guy”, while qualifying it by saying, “that’s not the world we live in.”The statements refer to the apparent democratic anomaly whereby US presidential polls are decided not by who wins the most votes nationwide but instead by which candidate captures a majority of 538 electoral votes across the 50 states, plus Washington DC.The votes are distributed broadly reflective of each state’s population size, so populous California, for example, has 54 electoral college votes, while tiny Rhode Island has just four. However, rare cases of US presidents winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote tally do happen, notably in recent times George W Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.The concerns over the electoral college system crystallise the reality that next month’s contest between Harris and Trump, the Republican nominee, will come down to the outcomes in a small number of battleground states, where polls show them running neck-and-neck.Most surveys indicate Harris having a small but consistent nationwide lead. Yet even if these are borne out on polling day, Trump could still return to the White House by winning enough swing states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed.That scenario is feared by Democrats since it would repeat the outcome of the 2016 election, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton thanks to the electoral college despite winning nearly 3m fewer votes across the nation.Walz’s comments are eye-catching because he was chosen as Harris’s running mate because his homely, plain-speaking style was judged as appealing to working-class voters in three of the most important battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.It is not the first time that Walz, the Minnesota governor, has advocated ditching the electoral college.Last year, he signed legislation that added Minnesota to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would force states to award their electors to the national popular vote winner if enough of them agreed to do so.In the absence of that, only a constitutional amendment could alter the current electoral system.Harris-Walz campaign officials stressed that abolishing the electoral college was not part of its agenda.“Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the electoral college and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” Teddy Tschann, a spokesman for Walz, told the New York Times.The comments were seized on gleefully by Trump’s campaign, which is generally believed to have an advantage in the present system.“Why does Tampon Tim [Trump’s derisive nickname for Walz] hate the Constitution so much?,” the Trump campaign posted on its official X account.The comment overlooked the fact that Trump himself has been accused of calling for “terminating the constitution” in support of his lie that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.Research published last month by Pew showed 63% of American voters favouring electing the president by the popular vote, although support was greatest among Democrats, while a small majority of Republicans favoured keeping the electoral college.Harris said in a 2019 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she was “open to the discussion” of changing the current system, saying the popular vote had been “diminished”. But she has avoided more categorical statements on the subject.In a 60 Minutes interview on CBS that aired on Monday, the vice-president said she had recently told Walz that “you need to be a little more careful on how you say things.” More

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      in Elections

      New Trump January 6 court filing highlights perils of possible JD Vance vice-presidency

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      When the next electoral vote is certified on 6 January next year, Vice-President Kamala Harris will play a critical role – whether or not she’s the winner of the presidential contest. It’s a role that vice-presidents have routinely played throughout history: certifying the results of the election for a seamless transfer of power.The same might not be true for the election after that. In the most consequential line of the vice-presidential debate last week, the Republican nominee, JD Vance, refused to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and then pressed by moderators, declined to answer whether he would refuse to certify the vote this year if he had that power. (His opponent, Tim Walz, said in a clip that’s now been spliced for campaign ads: “That is a damning non-answer.”)The troubling nature of the answer was compounded less than 24 hours after the debate when the US district judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a redacted version of the special counsel Jack Smith’s brief against Trump in the federal election interference case laying out new evidence of how the former president attempted to steal the election.In striking detail, the brief laid out how Trump made Vice-President Mike Pence a target of his angry supporters on January 6, how the Secret Service was forced to whisk him away to a secure location, and how Pence went on to certify the election after the violence had subsided.Under the US constitution, the vice-president has few specific powers. Walz and Vance debated last week about foreign policy, reproductive rights, immigration and other policies that the next administration will influence, though their role in any of it will be limited. But the constitution does spell out that the vice-president is the president of the Senate and is in charge of certifying the election results, and Vance, unlike Pence, has said multiple times that he would not have certified the vote in 2020.“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we had,” Vance said on a venture capitalist’s podcast in September. He made similar comments before he was tapped by Trump to be on the ticket, saying during an ABC News interview that he would have liked to see the certification of the 2020 election handled differently.The contrast between Vance leaving the door open to question election results, and the depiction of Pence’s role on January 6 laid out in the Smith indictment, is stark.According to Smith, Pence stood strong despite Trump’s pressure and threats. He told Trump he had seen no evidence of election-determining fraud and repeatedly tried to convince Trump to accept the valid results. Trump’s pressure campaign did not let up – he and his co-conspirators used “deceit”, lying to Pence that there was evidence of significant fraud and lying to the public that Pence had the ability to reject electoral votes and send them back to the state legislatures.Even after Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” supporters started chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and the Secret Service had to evacuate the vice-president to a secure location, Pence maintained that the Electoral Count Act didn’t allow him to legally reject the valid electoral votes.Although the riots on January 6 delayed certification for approximately six hours, the House and Senate resumed their joint session at 11.35pm, according to the brief, and at 3.41am, Pence announced the certified results of the election in favor of Joe Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s not exaggeration to say that US democracy survived past January 2021 because of Pence. Had he refused to certify the vote, the peaceful transfer of power would not have occurred, and the chaos and violence probably would have continued.But Vance has already proved himself more eager to capitulate to Trump’s demands – despite previously condemning the former president, he’s transformed into a Maga acolyte who is in some ways “more Trump than Trump”, according to one retired Republican party operative. And he has explicitly said that he would have acted differently from Pence on the day Congress meets to certify the election.Trump is not currently president, so Vance won’t be able to refuse to certify and wreak havoc in January. But if Trump wins a second term, Vance will be in charge of certifying the vote after the 2028 election. Trump has now said multiple times that Americans “won’t have to vote any more” if he wins this year. It’s not far-fetched to think about what might happen if Trump and Vance refused to cede control of the White House in 2028. More

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      Wisconsin Senate race tightens as rival attacks Baldwin over LGBTQ+ support

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      As the race between the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin and her Republican challenger, Eric Hovde, tightens, the Hovde campaign and outside groups supporting the candidate have ramped up efforts to tie Baldwin to funding for LGBTQ+ care for youth – echoing the anxieties and biases of the rightwing “parental rights” movement.According to the non-partisan campaign analysis group Cook Political Report, the race between Hovde and Baldwin – in which Baldwin previously enjoyed an ample lead – is now a toss-up. Internal polling reportedly reflects that trend. The race in Wisconsin is one of a handful that could determine control of the Senate next year.A recent ad by the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super Pac that seeks to elect Republicans to the Senate, claims that “Baldwin supported providing puberty blockers and sex change surgeries to minor children”. Another ad, by the Hovde campaign, alleges Baldwin “ensured hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars went to a Madison nonprofit that pushes an aggressive LGBTQ agenda on kids”.The first advertisement, which claims Baldwin vowed support for “sex change surgeries” for minors on 4 October, 2023, appears to be referring to a post that Baldwin made on that date in support of Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ decision to veto a GOP-backed bill that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors in Wisconsin.Baldwin’s full post reads: “Trans kids deserve to feel safe and welcome in Wisconsin, not discriminated against. They deserve the freedom to just be kids, play sports, and get the health care they need, all without politicians butting in. Thanks for standing up for LGBTQ+ kids, @GovEvers.”Research consistently indicates that gender-affirming healthcare, including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, can be lifesaving for youth experiencing gender dysphoria – a condition that many trans people experience and that is associated with depression and even suicide. In Wisconsin, healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to minors do so only with parental consent and do not perform genital surgeries on minors.The second advertisement, alleging she helped fund a non-profit promoting an “aggressive LGBTQ agenda”, refers to federal dollars Baldwin earmarked for Briarpatch Youth Services, an organization that supports at-risk and homeless youth – and provides some programming for LGBTQ+ youth.In a September episode of the Vicki McKenna Show, a rightwing talk radio program in Wisconsin, Hovde falsely claimed that Baldwin had given taxpayer money “to a transgender clinic”, apparently in reference to her Briarpatch donation.“Briarpatch Youth Services deals with some of the most difficult situations facing youth, including youth homelessness,” wrote Jill Pfeiffer, executive director of Briarpatch, in an email. “Regardless of political talking points, we continue to focus on strengthening our community by making sure youth facing hardships have access to voluntary resources and services they need to flourish and succeed.”Although the number of transgender people in the United States has not changed significantly over time, with roughly 1% of youth aged 13-17 identifying as trans, the minority group has nonetheless faced increasing scrutiny and attacks in recent years. Anti-trans sentiment has dovetailed with the rise of the so-called “parental rights” movement, which seeks to limit discussions of issues like race, gender and sexuality in the classroom.In a statement, a Hovde campaign spokesperson, Zach Bannon, wrote that Hovde “believes any effort to push conversations about sexuality and gender identity on kids without parental knowledge is just plain wrong and taxpayer dollars should not be supporting those programs”, in reference to Briarpatch’s confidential support group for LGBTQ+ youth.This year Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate, face an unfavorable map – with sitting senators in places including West Virginia, Ohio and Montana defending seats in deep red jurisdictions. The Wisconsin race, which has narrowed in recent weeks, forms a critical piece of the puzzle.Arik Wolk, the Democratic party of Wisconsin’s Rapid Response Director, called the ads “a pretty desperate and disgusting attack that is mainly designed to detract from Eric Hovde’s record and unpopularity with the people of Wisconsin”. Wolk also pointed to a Hovde ad that draws attention to Baldwin’s partner Maria Brisbane’s work as a financial adviser and alleges Baldwin is “in bed with Wall Street” as an example of the Hovde campaign highlighting Baldwin’s identity as a gay woman. “Wisconsinites have made it clear that they support Tammy Baldwin, regardless of her sexual identity,” said Wolk.Bannon, the Hovde campaign spokesman, disputed this characterization in a statement – calling it an “effort to distract from the facts of this conflict of interest” and “a disservice to the people of Wisconsin who deserve transparency”. More

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      Endorsements from Republicans and CEOs won’t help Kamala Harris win | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney’s campaign event last week in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican party, was a dramatic component of Harris’s ongoing outreach to Republicans. That outreach, begun under President Joe Biden and continuing even more aggressively under Harris, was made clear in an open letter on Thursday in which two dozen Republican former officials and lawmakers in Wisconsin endorsed Harris and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.“We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris,” the Republicans wrote. “But what we do agree upon is more important. We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”This statement comes after the Harris campaign touted the endorsements of more than 100 former staffers and national security leaders from past Republican administrations, 10 retired military generals and admirals, and more than 90 business leaders including former chairs or CEOs of companies such as UBS, Aetna, Visa, Merck and American Airlines, as well as former high officials like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.The Harris campaign seems intent on convincing voters that she is the favored candidate of the bipartisan establishment. One problem with this strategy: voters probably already assume that about Harris. And if they didn’t, Trump reminds them regularly, painting her both as the “other” and as part of the establishment that has failed them. The danger: Harris is helping to make his case for him.Trump’s mendacity, duplicity, fraudulence and corruption are well known. So why is the race so close, and why does Trump enjoy such support from working-class voters, not simply white men, but growing numbers of Black people, Hispanics and single women? His poisonous racism and xenophobia surely play a part. But the central theme of his political campaigns since he came down the golden elevator in 2016 has been how working people have been fleeced by an establishment that enriched itself and failed them.In 2016, Trump’s focus was on trade, Nafta, China in the WTO. This year, his focus is on inflation and the cost of living. Even his slanders of immigrants focus on how they are taking jobs from working people, raising the cost of housing, the source of increasing crime, drugs and violence.And repeatedly, Trump indicts the establishment that has failed them. As he said in the 2016 campaign:“The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs … Just look at what this corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit and Flint, Michigan – and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and across our country. They have stripped these towns bare and raided the wealth for themselves and taken away their jobs.”As Jared Abbott, of the Center for Working Class Politics, concluded after a study of Trump’s rhetoric in 2016, “Unlike virtually any politician they had ever heard before, Trump not only spoke over and over again to the economic pain felt by so many working-class Americans but also called out the elite culprits by name, something that traditional politicians typically shy away from.”On foreign policy, Trump is similarly openly scornful of the generals and foreign policy “blob” who led us into losing wars, squandering the lives not of their own children, but those of working people. When the generals and national security managers announced their endorsements of Harris, Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, responded: “These are the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited off of them while the American people suffered,” followed by the lie that “President Trump is the only president in the modern era not to get our country into any new wars.”Trump’s lies, libels and shambling vaudeville rallies simply reinforce his message that he not only isn’t part of the establishment, but he’s hated by them.In this election, voters are looking for dramatic change. Polls show that, as Stan Greenberg has reported, only a quarter of battleground voters think the country is headed in the right direction. The overwhelming concern is inflation and the cost of living. The average household grocery bill is 20% higher than in 2020. The costs of necessities – housing, healthcare, childcare, college – seem increasingly out of reach.More and more voters are clear that a big cause of this is entrenched and corrupt interests – big oil, the drug companies, monopolies, multinationals. Greenberg reports that the percentage of voters with little or no confidence in “big business” is the lowest since the financial crisis of 2008.Harris has an agenda and a message that can speak to these concerns: cracking down on monopolies, starting with price gouging on groceries. Taking on pharma. A child tax credit, help for new families, help for new homeowners and small businesses paid for by taxes on millionaires and billionaires. Moving forward on rebuilding America and generating good jobs by investing in the growth industries of the coming years.The contrast with Trump’s agenda – of tax cuts for the corporations and the rich, of trade wars and higher costs of goods from across-the-board tariffs, of promising big oil a blank check if they support his campaign – is telling.But Harris has to prove that she is prepared to take on the powerful interests, dislodge the failed establishment, and force the changes she’s begun to talk about. When she arrays her support from the establishment, she doesn’t build her credibility, she weakens it. If 90 CEOS stand with her, why believe she’s prepared to take them on or tax them? If the generals who led us into one failed war after another are with her, why believe she’ll focus on rebuilding America and not on global misadventures?Rather than gaining media acclaim for joining Liz Cheney in Ripon, she might have been better off walking the (blessedly, short-lived) picket line with striking dockworkers, reinforcing Biden’s statement that the companies and executives have enjoyed staggering and record returns, and it’s time for the workers to get their fair share.The mainstream media will broadcast the bipartisan support behind Harris. Those who worked with Trump and now oppose him will find a ready platform. In the little time left before the election, Harris and Walz need to focus on providing a compelling answer to the famous union question: which side are you on? Liz Cheney, Robert Rubin and Mike Pence don’t help with that answer.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More

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      The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert

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      When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise.Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.The vice-president also used the interview in New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater to lambast Trump over a report that he sent Covid testing kits to Russia’s Vladimir Putin even as US citizens went without. “He thinks, well, that’s his friend,” she said. “What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”The appearance before a live audience capped a media blitz for Harris who, having previously been criticised for dodging interviews, spoke in recent days to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the podcast Call Her Daddy, the daytime show The View and radio host Howard Stern.The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has featured Harris, Biden and numerous other politicians over the years, blending serious political issues with light relief. During Tuesday’s interview in New York, he noted that people are calling this “the vibe election” and that voters typically want a candidate they can have a beer with.He duly invited Harris to share a drink and said she had requested Miller High Life in advance. The vice-president remarked: “OK, the last time I had beer was at a baseball game with Doug. Cheers.”Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”The host proceeded to reel off a list of Seger songs but Harris did not appear enthusiastic. Finally, she said: “I’ll go Aretha or Eminem. You got any?”The 40-minute interview, due to be broadcast on CBS on Tuesday night, also tackled serious topics. Colbert asked about the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. Harris said: “We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end.”Progress on a deal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages is “meaningless”, she acknowledged, until it is reached. Harris said she has met with the families of hostages and the families of Palestinians killed in Gaza. “We’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.”The interview took place after it emerged that journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, War, that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president Covid test machines in 2020. Trump has denied the claims.Harris commented: “He openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favour.”Referring to the Covid test kits, she went on: “I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?”Harris became visibly irate as she recalled that hundreds of people were dying every day, some comforted only by nurses because their families could not reach them.
      “And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin? Think about what this means on top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong-un. He thinks, well, that’s his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”Earlier Colbert asked Harris about a now celebrated image of her in the presidential debate against Trump in which she frowned and rested her chin on a hand. Asked what she was thinking at that moment, she replied: “It’s family TV, right? It starts with a W, there’s a letter between it, then the last letter’s F.” She burst into laughter.The comedian asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, something he has always denied. Harris said: “You know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser. This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”She laughed and Colbert remarked: “It’s accurate. It’s accurate.”Then Harris pointed out: “This is what happens when I drink beer!” More