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      Veep cast reunites, with special guests, to raise money for Harris

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      As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and threw his support behind Kamala Harris, people immediately started comparing the shocking turn of events to something that would unfold on HBO’s critically acclaimed political satire Veep. At the time, the US vice-president was seen as a Selina Meyers-esque figure, what with her penchant for public awkwardness, clunky turns of phrase and the perception of her as a perpetual also-ran.Since then, things have changed quite a bit, with Harris rising to the occasion and running a highly effective and exciting campaign that has seen her ascend to frontrunner in the race (even if her advantage remains razor-thin).Still, as I wrote in my article from July, her campaign and the Democrats as a whole would be wise to lean into comparisons to Veep. Despite how venal and vain the characters on the show were, the workplace comedy (which wrapped up in 2019) remains as popular and relevant as ever.When you consider this alongside the fact that the majority of the cast, including and especially its star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are outspoken liberals, it made all the sense in the world for some Democratic group to try to work with them to raise funds and awareness during this final leg of the campaign.That group ended up being the Wisconsin Democrats. A swing state that is likely to have a big hand in deciding not only who the next president is, but also which party controls the Senate, WisDems put together a live Zoom table read of a classic episode of Veep, featuring the majority of the cast, plus some big-name guest stars, to be livestreamed to the donors, with the money raised going towards presidential, congressional and assembly campaigns across the state.Fellow liberal comic and Veep super-fan Stephen Colbert took on hosting duties. Special guest stars included the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin in her acting debut (not counting her childhood performance in a school production of Finian’s Rainbow), actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a Syrian refugee (“I’m Pakistani, but I can play cat-eating immigrants from all over the world”), Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander as a pompous feature writer, film-maker Kevin Smith as a reporter, and Larry David – who, in the most fitting turn of events imaginable, spent the first several minutes of the live stream trying to figure out how to work his Zoom – as Selina’s chief hatchet man, Ben Cafferty.View image in fullscreenReprising their roles from the show were actors Diedrich Bader, Nancy Lenehan, Gary Cole, Sam Richardson, Sufe Bradshaw, Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus, while series regulars Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland took on other roles, since their characters don’t appear in this ep. (Patton Oswalt, who was also on the show, made a surprise appearance during the post-read Q&A.)The episode chosen was Crate, from season 3, which finds Selina and her cronies campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the upcoming primaries. Various mishaps involving a pricey photo-op prop, an incriminating cellphone recording and the suicidal first lady, ensue. This episode is regarded as one of the very best in the show’s history, mostly due to one scene: Selina, having just learned that Potus will be resigning from office, effective immediately, shares a joyous freakout alongside her body man/closest confidant, Gary. It’s a bravura performance from both Louis-Dreyfus and Hale, one that probably secured them each an Emmy the following year.(It’s also fitting that this episode should be chosen, given that this intimate scene is immediately followed by Selina betraying Gary, a dynamic that repeats itself in the most devastating moment of the series finale.)For the read-through, the cast slipped back into their roles with ease. Everyone was on point, but Louis-Dreyfus and Hale were extra-dialed in, especially during their big scene. You got goosebumps watching them recreate it 10 years later, over Zoom, while still bringing all of the emotion they did during the actual filming.The guest stars all acquit themselves well, but it should come as no surprise that it was David who got the biggest laughs. While it’s impossible for him not to play himself, his singular delivery proved a perfect fit with Veep’s uber-cynical, profanity-laden screwball dialog.After the reading, we alternated between cast members interviewing a handful of state legislature candidates (with the major focus of the night revolving around abortion rights) and them fielding questions from viewers. Show creator Armando Iannucci joined in for this portion of the event.We got treated to a mini-Seinfeld reunion between Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David; Louis-Dreyfus sounded off on her hatred of AI; Smith talked about his favorite scene of the show (Selina accidentally getting high on St John’s wort, naturally); and David went off on a funny tangent about bald men looking better with beards (although he himself would never grow one because comedians can’t be stroking their beards).Someone asked the cast to give their favorite individual lines from the show. Louis-Dreyfus: “Jolly green jizz-face.” Simons: “[You’re] a meme, ma’am.” Walsh: “I’ve met [some] people … and a lot of them are fucking idiots.” Chlumsky: “[That’s] like [trying to use] a croissant [as] a [fucking] dildo. It doesn’t [do] the job and it [makes] a fucking mess!” Bradshaw: “[Get] the government out of my [fucking] snatch.” Colbert: “Danny Wah!”Iannucci seemed to confirm that Kent and Sue indeed hooked up at some point (“It probably involved algorithms”) and speculated on various characters’ outcomes (married politicos Amy and Bill are probably hosting a podcast with their dogs, while the “late” Andrew Meyer is living under a new identity on an island that he’s trying to buy with a view to it being recognized as its own country).When asked about the future of satire, Iannucci said it depended on who wins this election, as the entire premise of political comedy hinges on people holding politicians up to certain standards, standards Trump and his ilk have never shown the least bit of concern over.Colbert wrapped things up by having the cast read aloud their favorite insults of the show’s most despicable and hilarious character, noxious political aide and eventual veep, Jonah Ryan. These cruel gems include: “Childless cat-lady man”, “Disney plus extra chromosomes”, “Harry No-Styles”, “Rape-It Ralph”, “Moonsucker”, “Satellite licker”, “face-circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm-bank reject”.Right as Simons, the actor who played Ryan, broke the news that the fundraiser exceeded its stated goal of $600,000, Iannucci tossed out on final new Jonah barb that he’d come up with earlier in the day:“Jonah, even if you fell into the world’s most powerful castration machine, you’d still come out of it a dick.” More

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      Harris holds Las Vegas rally as Nevada becomes crucial swing state in election

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      Kamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favour either candidate.Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s rally takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.Before the raucous Las Vegas crowd estimated at 7,500, Harris renewed her jabs at Trump over refusing another debate, saying, “the American people have a right to hear us discuss the issues. And as you say here in Las Vegas, I’m all in. I’m all in.”Harris offered her condolences for those affected by Hurricane Helene, and her campaign said she would visit affected areas as soon as doing so would not disrupt the emergency response to the storm that has hit the country’s southeast.“We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild,” Harris said on Sunday.On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”. More

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      Trump and Harris speak in swing states as running mates prep ahead of VP debate – live

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      Kamala Harris is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward,” a move far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabalized. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”More on Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record:Donald Trump is slated to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, and receive a briefing on the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and “facilitate the distribution of relief supplies”, his campaign announced.The former president is expected to deliver his remarks at 2pm ET.During a speech in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Trump sent his condolences to the families affected by Helene, which killed at least 64 people.Robert F Kennedy Jr will participate in a “Make America Healthy Again” event with Dr Phil McGraw in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump’s campaign announced.Kennedy, who was staging an independent bid for the presidency, endorsed the former president after dropping out of the race in August.Kennedy has hopes of influencing federal health policy under a possible Trump administration. The former third-party candidate has questioned the safety of vaccinating children and promoted theories that suggest HIV is not the true cause of AIDS.Joseph Costello, a Kamala Harris campaign spokesperson, reacted to Donald Trump’s speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, picking on the former president’s comments about overtime pay.“As president, Trump took executive action to rip away overtime pay for *millions* of workers, including nearly 5 million workers without a college degree,” Costello said on Twitter/X.Costello attached a link to a paper by the Economic Policy Institute titled: More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime proposal.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, by summing up his proposals as a presidential candidate, pledging to end crime allegedly by migrants, strengthen the military, and “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools”.Donald Trump repeated his plan to close the Department of Education if he’s elected as president in November.“Let the states run their own education,” he said.“We spend more money per pupil than any other nation in the world, by far, and yet we’re ranked at the bottom of every list,” Trump said. “So you know the expression: what the hell do you have to lose? Right?”Donald Trump claimed Butler, Pennsylvania, has become a tourist site after his attempted assassination in July.“Cars are riding by. They’re taking pictures. It’s become an amazing tourist site,”he said.Trump announced that the event in Butler will honor the firefighter who was shot and killed at the rally in July, Corey Comperator.During his speech, Donald Trump confirmed he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination attempt in July. His visit is scheduled for 5 October.“We have a lot of people coming, and I really believe that will be the safest place on Earth,” said the former president.Donald Trump brought US Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania to the stage. McCormick, ex-CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is trying to unseat Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who is seeking his fourth term.“It’s a race between strength, a guy who says ‘fight’, and weakness,” McCormick said. “We need to bring law and order to secure that border and stop these illegal immigrants coming in and bringing crime and fentanyl into Pennsylvania.”Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance that workers’ tips should not be taxed.He was the first candidate to endorse this proposal during a rally in June. Months later, Kamala Harris also expressed support for the plan, prompting the former president to label her “Copy Cat Kamala” at other rallies.“We will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security benefits for seniors,” Trump said on Sunday.“When I win, we will get Pennsylvania energy workers, fracking, drilling, pumping and producing like they have never produced before,” Donald Trump said.“Kamala vowed to repeatedly ban fracking, and she imposed a natural gas export ban that was a killer, that is starving a state right now of your wealth and wealth that you deserve right now,” Trump said.Trump criticized Harris’s support for expanding access and manufacturing of electric vehicles in the US.“Her insane electric vehicle mandate will decimate Pennsylvania’s economy by abolishing gas-powered cars and trucks for American roads and destroying your fossil fuel industry,” he said. “And there are very few states that benefit like you do from fracking.”Donald Trump quoted the lyrics of a song supposedly warning against immigration during his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania.Trump read the lyrics of The Snake, which was written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963. The song was later a hit for soul singer Al Wilson five years later.In Trump’s interpretation, it serves as a cautionary tale about the alleged danger posed by immigrants. The former president recounted the allegorical tale of a woman who foolishly embraces a dangerous serpent.The former president once again called Kamala Harris “mentally impaired” during his speech in Pennsylvania on Sunday.“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said, adding that Harris “was born that way”.“There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what? Everybody knows it,” Trump said.He later played an ad against the vice-president, composed of a compilation of her comments regarding immigration.“Honestly, we could give you clips like that all day long. This is not your president. This president would destroy our country, worse than Biden. He’s the worst president in history,” the former president said. More

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      ‘Running away from good news’: why is Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record?

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      As Joe Biden walked on the set of The View, one of America’s most popular daytime television programmes, he was greeted by Hail to the Chief and a studio audience erupting in wild applause and cheers. “They love you!” said the co-host Joy Behar. The US president replied wryly: “It’s always better when you’re leaving.”During the ABC show, filmed live in a New York studio where digital screens showed images from Biden’s career, he claimed to be “at peace” with his decision not to seek re-election in November. Yet he also insisted that he could have beaten “loser” Donald Trump. And the co-host Whoopi Goldberg criticised the way Democrats forced Biden’s hand: “I didn’t like the way it was done publicly.”The wistfulness might be owed in part to Biden supporters’ faith that, for all the concerns over his age and mental acuity, his record should be viewed more as an asset than a liability. Their argument has been bolstered of late by trends that could neutralise three scourges of his presidency.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabilised. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept. Far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House, the 59-year-old is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward”.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”View image in fullscreenTravelling by motorcade, helicopter and Air Force One, the Guardian accompanied Biden for two days this week, from his daytime TV slot to a Ukraine event with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, from a glamorous reception at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a gun safety event with Harris where the audience chanted: “Thank you, Joe!”There were reminders of the 81-year-old’s struggles, which culminated in a career-ending debate performance against Trump in June. “Welcome to Washington!” he told a room full of world leaders, diplomats and journalists at the InterContinental New York Barclay hotel in New York, New York.But this was also a man seeking to cement his legacy, calling for a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, pledging $8bn in military aid for Ukraine and signing an executive order to combat emerging firearms threats and improve active shooter drills in schools. That legacy will also include economic growth, low unemployment and a string of legislative wins.Biden’s tenure has been overshadowed, however, by inflation – in 2022 the prices of gas, food and most other goods and services surged by 9%, a 40-year high – insecurity at the southern border and fears over crime. His approval rating has hovered below 40%. But with less than four months left in office, there are clear signs of the tide turning.Inflation has returned to close to where it was shortly before the Covid pandemic, defying predictions of recession and giving the Federal Reserve confidence to cut interest rates. Petrol prices, always a key indicator of discontent, have been coming down for months; in August the national average for a gallon was $3.38 – about 47 cents lower than the same time a year ago.Border security, long Trump’s signature issue, is also improving. After the former president compelled Republicans in Congress to block a border security bill, Biden stepped in to partially suspend asylum processing. In July the number of people illegally crossing the southern border dropped to 56,400, the lowest level in nearly four years, according to government figures.View image in fullscreenMoreover, Trump recently claimed that crime was “through the roof” under Biden’s administration. But this week the FBI released statistics that showed violent crime in the US declined an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before, part of a continued trend since the Covid pandemic. Last year witnessed the biggest ever decline in the homicide rate, now 16% below its level in 2020. And for all Trump’s rhetoric, violent crime is now at a near 50-year low.Yet in a polarised political atmosphere, with rightwing media constantly attacking him, Biden is receiving little credit. Opinion polls showed him trailing Trump badly when voters were asked which candidate they trust to handle the economy, immigration and crime (Trump has a narrower lead over Harris on these issues).Sabato said: “Everything’s getting better except the American public thinks we’re in a recession and there are thieves outside their door every evening and those immigrants are trying to eat their pets. It’s insane. A classic case of the failure of civic education. I know that’s basic and people laugh about the term but it’s absolutely the root cause of all this.”In this climate, Harris appears to have concluded that, whatever the headline economic figures say, people are not feeling it. She has acknowledged many families are struggling with the cost of living, including the price of groceries and the dream of buying a home. She has promised to focus on basics such as being able to save for a child’s education, take a holiday and buy Christmas presents without financial stress.View image in fullscreenWendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, noted that in the last quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, every state in the country had growth in real disposable income. “The problem for the Democrats is that inflation eroded the power of that income up until, you could argue, the late spring of 2024. Do consumers now feel like their wages are buying them something and that things are less expensive?”She added: “You can tell them things are better but, unless they’re feeling it, it won’t help the Democrats in November. There’s a disconnect between voter impression of the economy and personal voter feelings about the economy. But certainly having a series of indicators and the news feed going from negative to positive can help sustain Kamala Harris’s campaign message that she, in fact, will produce a good economy.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, acknowledged that inflation, immigration and crime are heading in the right direction. “The political damage is done and I wouldn’t say that these developments are too little but I would say they are too late,” he added.View image in fullscreen“That’s especially true for immigration because, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing that President Biden did eight months ago that he couldn’t have done four years ago. I’m ever mindful of the fact that immigration is the issue that Trump rode to the presidency the first time in 2016.”Harris has accused Trump of killing the bipartisan Senate compromise that would have included tougher asylum standards and hiring more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers. She says she would bring back that bill and sign it into law. Trump promises to mount the biggest domestic deportation in US history, an operation that could involve detention camps and the national guard.As for Biden, a memo released by the White House this week said he intended to “aggressively execute” on the rest of his agenda and hit the road to highlight the Biden-Harris record. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he delivered an address on the sidelines of the UN general assembly while surrounded by sculptures from antiquity; a moment, perhaps, to consider his own place in history.“I’ve seen the impossible become reality,” he told guests, recalling how he saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of South African apartheid and war criminals and dictators face justice and accountability for human rights violations.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There’s a very strong argument that we will hear from historians about Joe Biden getting a bad break. He was a better president than was appreciated in his time. If Kamala Harris loses, one of the major critiques is going to be that the Democrats were too quick to turn on Biden and that Harris ran a campaign running away from the good news.” More

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      Walz v Vance: two midwesterners miles apart in politics ready for debate

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      The football coach and the “Yale law guy” go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces the Republican senator from Ohio, JD Vance, in a vice-presidential debate that promises to be unusually significant in this white-hot election year. They will joust for 90 minutes under the moderation of CBS News as they seek to give their respective running mates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – a leg up to the White House.Walz has been prepping for the debate in Minneapolis with the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, masquerading as Vance. (Buttigieg may have been suffering deja vu – he posed as Mike Pence during Kamala Harris’s prep sessions ahead of the 2020 VP debate.)Vance has been holding mock debates with the Republican whip in the US House, Tom Emmer, standing in as Walz. Emmer is a fellow Minnesotan, so has the benefit of having studied Walz up close.The two running mates bring contrasting strengths to the gladiatorial ring. Vance is an experienced debater who will relish confrontation under the glare of the TV lights.“Look, he’s a Yale law guy,” Walz has said about his opponent. “He’ll come well prepared.”Walz by contrast will be able to lean on skills learned in the school classroom. Walz spent 17 years as a public school teacher, so he knows how to think on his feet – and deal with a disruptive kid.“I expect to see a very heated debate,” Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, told CBS News.One of the big questions of the night is likely to be whether Vance can redeem himself after a troubled start to his candidacy. Will he be able to get past all the “weirdness”, as Walz has framed it, and bring consistency to the messaging of an often chaotic Trump campaign?From awkward encounters with doughnut shop workers, to the ongoing furor around his “childless cat ladies” remark, Vance has been the subject of online mockery that has at times appeared to engulf him. He also seems to be stuck on the same culture war issues that consume Trump.“Vance does not seem to have drawn additional voters to the Trump ticket, as the controversies he gets into are exactly the same as those the former president gets into,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Most egregiously, Vance has doubled down on the false and racist narrative that Haitian immigrants are eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite categorical denials from local authorities. He recently confessed to CNN that he was willing to “create stories” if it meant that he attracted media attention.Such comments have sunk Vance underwater in the opinion of the voting public – his unfavorability rating is 11 points higher than his favorable, according to FiveThirtyEight.Walz by contrast is basking in the glow of a positive four-point gap between his favorability ratings, which poses him with a completely different set of challenges on debate night. He will need to parry Vance’s attempts to frame him as the misinformation candidate based on misrepresentations Walz made about his military record, defuse his rivals claims that he is dangerously liberal, and refuse to be knocked off track.“Walz just needs to get in and out of the debate without causing trouble for his ticket,” Burden said.John Conway, director of strategy for Republican Voters Against Trump, said that Walz was best advised to follow Harris’s playbook. He organised focus groups the day after Harris’s debate with Trump, involving voters from five battleground states who backed Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.The focus group attendees were enthusiastic about Harris’s dual approach to the debate – attack Trump for his lies and felony convictions, but also lay out a positive plan for the future of the country. “That’s the blueprint Walz must follow,” Conway said, “attack when appropriate but also be substantive on the issues.”There have been several memorable made-for-TV moments from the VP debates since the first in 1976 between senators Bob Dole and Walter Mondale. Most celebrated is the 1988 incident when the Democrat Lloyd Bentsen chastised George H Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, for comparing himself to John F Kennedy.“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”“That was really uncalled for, senator,” Quayle wailed.More recently, John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, ribbed Joe Biden, the Democratic VP candidate running with Barack Obama, in 2008, by telling him: “Aw, say it ain’t so, Joe.”Those were neat soundbites that entered the lexicons. But it is notable that neither Bentsen nor Palin were rewarded where it matters – at the ballot box.In fact, vice-presidential debates have tended to be underwhelming in terms of the lasting imprint they have left on US elections. Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, pointed out that even after the dynamic presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, which was watched by 67 million TV viewers and which Harris was widely judged to have won, the race remains essentially neck-and-neck in the critical battleground states.Sabato said that given the lack of consequences from the debate at the top of the ticket, he expected Tuesday’s vice-presidential tussle to be equally inconclusive. “I don’t expect the vice-presidential debate to make any impact,” he said.Yet this is no ordinary election. Joe Biden’s departure and the sudden elevation of Harris, together with Trump refusing to participate in a second debate with her, has raised the stakes.Tuesday’s spectacle will probably be the final debate before election day on 5 November. “This is really the last main national moment in the campaign, so I do think it is important,” Mook said.Apart from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are certain to be addressed during the debate, a more amorphous struggle is likely to play out on stage: who will own the mantle of “authentic midwesterner”? Will it be Nebraska-born Walz, or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s Vance.The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. It resonates heavily in those states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“I don’t know if the word ‘midwestern’ will be used in the debate, but feelings about the midwest will come through,” Burden said.The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartlands. Walz’s midwest is folksy and homely, a world where neighbors look after each other, where football coaches double up as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West high school from 1997), and where joy fills the air.Vance’s is a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. His is the midwest of Trump’s “American carnage” dystopia.Two utterly contrasting visions. Two tough and determined candidates. Gentlemen, shall we begin? More

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      Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

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      The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation’s industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region’s economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation’s political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work – unions oppose the sale and the administration’s position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation’s steel capital.Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.“I’ve learned not to be comfortable with any election because we didn’t think Trump could win in 16 … but I think people are going to vote more common sense this year,” said Keli Vereb, a steelworker union rep and Lincoln borough council member.Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.Some union leaders say the comment may have cost her Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump won by 0.7%. After four years of pro-labor policies from Joe Biden, the party has begun to win back some who left, and with Trump proposing to block the US Steel sale if he were elected, Democrats risk a 2016 repeat if it is allowed to proceed.“Trump would pounce on them if they let [the sale] go,” said Allen George, a lifelong Democrat who worked in unions adjacent to the steel industry.The companies are making a powerful argument that the deal is vital to US Steel’s survival. US Steel claims it will be forced to cut Pennsylvania jobs and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh if Biden blocks Nippon’s $14.1bn bid, while it has promised to invest $2.4bn in its facilities if the sale goes through. The company’s “scorched earth” public relations campaign on the factory floors has at least some rank and file supporting the sale, said Bernie Hall, Pennsylvania director for USI.“Some are scared and think: ‘We should just take this and live to fight another day,’ and that’s natural,” Hall said.Many more, however, oppose the sale. The union’s contract is up in 23 months and they fear a Nippon-US Steel would cut jobs, or continue to send them to non-union states. They point to Nippon’s long history of “dumping” steel in the US, which has cratered prices and cost American jobs, and many fear the purchase is a ploy to continue the practice.US Steel’s record of closing factories and failing to keep promises has generated a deep mistrust and disdain for the company, workers told the Guardian on a recent Monday afternoon outside the Harvey Wilner’s pub in West Mifflin, just south of Pittsburgh. They rattled off a list of facilities that have closed over the decades.“Nippon can have at it,” said Barry Fez, who has worked in manufacturing in the region for decades, but, he says, in a few years he expects they will go back on their word.But that sentiment is colliding with Wall Street and Beltway support for the deal. The latter argue that the administration’s protectionist plan would run counter to international trade norms because Japan is an ally and close economic partner.The idea that trade decorum with Japan is more important than Pennsylvania union members’ security drew scoffs from some workers.“And then they’ll wonder why they lost an election,” said Mike Gallagher, a retired union member.‘They lie all the time’Banking legend JP Morgan created US Steel in a mega-merger in 1901. It grew to be the largest US producer, employing more than 340,000 people at its second world war peak. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, has closed many of its Mon Valley facilities, and now employs about 4,000 people, although the company says it indirectly supports 11,000 jobs and generates $3.6bn in economic activity annually.In the face of waning American steel power, the company has looked for a buyer, and many feel a US-Japan alliance makes sense in countering increasing Chinese domination of the industry.But the union is opposed, and in Pennsylvania, 25% of the electorate is unionized, making it a formidable bloc intensely courted by both political parties.Trump in January said he would stop the deal. Biden has said the same, including in a private meeting with steel workers in April, when the president insisted “US steel will stay US-owned”, according to Don Furko, president of Local 1557 in Clairton. “He said he ‘guarantees’ it.”The administration’s decision on whether the deal should be blocked largely lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is made up of Biden’s cabinet members and other appointees. It can veto mergers and acquisitions it finds present a national security risk.CFIUS was expected to issue an opinion on 21 September, but the administration punted until after the election. Union members say they aren’t worried.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been pretty clear and they will follow through,” Hall said.Harris has got the message: “US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” she told a rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month.David Burritt, the CEO of US Steel, has warned of consequences if the deal is blocked. He says the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace production in the region, and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.“We want elected leaders and other key decision makers to recognize the benefits of the deal as well as the unavoidable consequences if the deal fails,” Burritt said last month.That threat has further inflamed tensions. Furko said it reminds him of his young son flipping over the Monopoly board when he loses: “That’s really what’s going on here – if this deal doesn’t go through, then they’re going to flip over the Monopoly board.”Asked about US Steel’s claims that it will revitalize the region if the sale goes through, workers told the Guardian that there are no guarantees that the investment will be in Mon Valley. People would be “foolish” to believe that, Vereb said.That was echoed outside the Wilner’s pub. Fez recalled the pub’s heyday, when “you couldn’t get in there at 7am because it was so packed”, and the floor was littered with quarter wrappers from the slot machines.On a Monday afternoon around shift change time, a group of about a dozen retirees sat around the bar. They blamed US Steel for the region’s slowdown, and while they say they do not expect Biden or Trump to save the city, they have even less confidence that US Steel and a Japanese company will turn it around.“They lie all the time, and I don’t trust either one of them,” said Jack, a retiree who worked for US Steel for more than 30 years, who declined to use his last name.‘He gets credit for that’The political price that the Biden-Harris administration could pay for allowing the deal to go through can be seen in the 2016 election’s wake.Before 2016, the region was largely Democratic. But when Clinton made the comment about the clean energy industry putting coalminers and barons out of business, “Things turned on a dime,” Vereb said. Her borough of 900 was once about 80% Democrats. It’s now about 75% Republican, she estimates.About 75% of those working at US Steel’s Clairton Mill Works, several union leaders estimate, support Trump, and there is little Democrats can do to win back many of them.The situation is also complicated by US Steel’s intense campaign to convince workers that the sale will save their jobs. The company sends regular emails, holds meetings, takes out ads in newspapers and makes their case to reporters.“They say: ‘If you don’t support us, then we’re gonna shut this place down, and if that happens you can thank your union leadership,’” said Rob Hutchison, president of Local 1219. “When [rank and file] have that threat in their face eight to 12 hours per day, then it starts to become something they think about.”That also presents another political risk: if the Biden-Harris administration were to block the deal, and US Steel shuts down a plant, Democrats may again lose some voters.However, so far, the controversial move seems to be paying dividends.“I don’t know if the average Joe is thinking about CFIUS or is that in the weeds, but I think from a macro level, people see it, that it’s Biden supporting the union workers, and he gets credit for that,” Hall said. More

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      Harris to call for tougher border action on Arizona visit; Trump threatens to prosecute Google for ‘bad stories’ – as it happened

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      Kamala Harris has arrived at the US-Mexico border in Arizona, where the vice-president was briefed by two customs and border protection officials.Harris stepped out of her motorcade on a dusty desert road outside Douglas, Arizona, and shook hands with two men, the Associated Press reported. Harris chatted with the uniformed agents as they walked along the rust-colored border wall in temperatures that neared 100F (38C).The section of the wall Harris is viewing was constructed during Barack Obama’s administration, in 2011-2012, according to the White House pool reporter.Harris’s conversation with the CBP officers was not audible to the pool reporter on scene. A White House official told him that Harris had “heard directly from CBP officials on their efforts to combat traffickers and transnational criminal organizations”.Kamala Harris delivered a speech on immigration policy, laying out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.Donald Trump threatened to prosecute Google for “displaying bad stories” about him. In the middle of a busy day of presidential campaign events in Michigan, a key swing state, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform that, if elected president, he plans to prosecute Google for, he alleged, “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump” while “only revealing Good stories about Kamala Harris”.And, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Alabama for last-minute voter purges. The justice department is suing Alabama for what it alleges is an illegal attempt to remove voters from the rolls too close to November’s election.Here’s what else happened today:

      Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke after his meeting in New York with Donald Trump and said the two men had a “very productive” talk. Ukraine’s president said the two “thoroughly reviewed” the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two-and-a-half years ago, Reuters reports.

      In a video address on Friday, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, spoke of the indictment of three Iranian nationals for their role in a “wide-ranging hacking campaign sponsored by the government of Iran”. Wray said: “These individuals, employees of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted a US political campaign, current and former US officials, and members of the American media, all in an attempt to sow discord and undermine our democracy.”

      Kamala Harris arrived in Tucson, Arizona, from Washington DC for election campaign events, including a visit to the US-Mexico border.

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied among voters in North Carolina, a new poll shows. The CNN poll, released today and conducted from 20 to 25 September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of support among likely voters in North Carolina.

      Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, pleaded not guilty to corruption charges when he appeared in court in Manhattan. He denies federal bribery and fraud charges. The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York. It is the first time that a sitting mayor of the city has been charged with crimes.
      After Kamala Harris spoke about her policies related to the southern border during a speech in Douglas, Arizona, the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union representing the US border patrol, said that Harris “has ignored the border problem she created for over three years”.“She goes down there for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the NPBC has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3 1/2 years?” the union wrote on X, repeating a Trump talking point.Google followed up on Donald Trump’s claim that the search engine is illegally using a system to only reveal bad stories about him and good stories about Kamala Harris by issuing a statement:
      Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,.
      Following up on a report by Fox News, Google continued: “This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”Hugo Lowell in Washington dug into these claims:The progressive advocacy group Center for American Progress Action Fund reacted to Harris’s speech tonight.“Donald Trump’s failed leadership fanned the flames of hate and did nothing to actually fix the problems at the border,” the group posted on X.During her speech, Harris said Trump made the challenges at the border worse.“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages, and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” Harris said.Here’s some more in-depth reporting from the Associated Press, capturing how the reality of what is happening at the border has changed dramatically in the past few months, even as the political rhetoric (Trump’s in particular) really hasn’t:
      As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso.
      No one is waiting there now.
      Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days.
      In McAllen, at the other end of the Texas border, two Border Patrol agents scan fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.
      It’s a return to relative calm after an unprecedented surge of immigrants through the southern border in recent years. But no one would know that listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking about border enforcement at dueling presidential campaign events. And no one would know from the rate at which Texas is spending on a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star – $11 billion since 2021.
      Read the full Associated Press article here.If you’re looking to put both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s claims about what’s happening at the US-Mexico border in context, this article from August is a good place to start:Here’s how Hamed Aleaziz, a longtime immigration reporter, summed up the substance of Harris’s immigration policy today for the New York Times:
      In a sign of how the politics of immigration have changed, Harris is promoting a policy that resembles a Trump-era effort to ban asylum for those who cross the border illegally. Harris says that she understands that people are desperate to come into the United States, but that the system must be ‘orderly.’
      In the same speech, Harris slammed Trump for separating immigrant children from their families and putting “children in cages”, and called for a gentler rhetoric about immigrants, and a focus on solutions, rather than blame and attacks.Harris is getting big cheers from a Democratic audience as she shifts from talking about tough enforcement and Congress’s failures to pass immigration reform to talking about legal paths to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the US for years, the importance of helping “Dreamers” – undocumented young people who came to the US as children – and the many contributions of immigrant farm workers.Harris is repeating a central part of her immigration rhetoric: that Donald Trump deliberately torpedoed a bipartisan immigration reform bill because “he prefers to run on a problem than fixing a problem.”Harris’s campaign, like the Biden administration previously, is highlighting Mitch McConnell’s own remarks about Trump’s influence on the legislation.The White House has been using this approach to the immigration issue since early this year: “Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a statement in early 2024. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”As Kamala Harris begins her speech on immigration policy, she lays out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.Among the people who introduced Kamala Harris, who is beginning her remarks on immigration and border policy, was Theresa Guerrero, a woman from Tucson, Arizona, who has become an activist after her son, Jacob, died of a fentanyl overdose.Trump’s campaign also previously featured remarks, during the Republican national convention, from a parent of a child lost to fentanyl.The Harris campaign is already attacking Donald Trump using a video of his comments from Warren, Michigan, tonight, talking about tariffs and how prosperous the US was in the 1890s.Trump has been making the case for high taxes on imported goods, which Congressional Republicans who oppose tariffs hope they can “water down” if he’s elected, the Washington Post reported yesterday.Mark Kelly, the US senator from Arizona, has been shepherding Harris during her visit to the border town of Douglas on Friday.Kelly began his remarks by sending greetings from his wife, the former Arizona representative Gabby Giffords, setting off a round of cheers for the beloved former representative.He retold the story of negotiating the bipartisan border deal in Congress only to see Trump torpedo the package by pressuring Republican senators to reject it.“This is the most hypocritical thing I’ve seen in three-and-a-half years in Washington,” Kelly said, calling the plan “the deal that Arizona needs”. Harris has vowed to revive the bill, if elected, and said she would have signed it into law.Kelly ended his remarks by saying that the playbook for winning in November was simple: hard work.“This is not rocket science. If it was, I could help,” the former astronaut quipped, as he campaigned for the vice-president.Biden embraced a more Trump-like border policy. Trump still claims Harris is weak.Some context, as we wait for Harris to give a campaign speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she is expected to call for tougher action at the US border with Mexico:

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made criticism of Trump’s harsh immigration policies part of their bid for the White House in 2020. But the Democratic administration has increasingly moved right on immigration, leading to criticisms that, though Biden certainly does not verbally attack and revile immigrants as Trump does, Biden’s actual policy regarding the US-Mexico border made him a kind of Trump 2.0.

      This past June, Biden signed an executive order limiting the number of asylum seekers admitted at the US-Mexico border, a policy that that split Democrats, and that some advocates said “will only cause suffering.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the Biden administration over the policy.

      Since June, migrant crossings have plunged, though Democrats are asking: at what price?

      Harris, who supported decriminalizing undocumented border crossings in 2019 during her brief presidential run, has moved away from that stance in her new campaign, also striking a more law-and-order tone, which she is expected to continue in her border policy speech today.

      In contrast with Biden or Harris, Trump’s current immigration policy is a pledge to carry out “mass deportations”, which he has promised will be the largest in US history. That is expected to include a legally dubious roundup of up to 11 million people, “deployments of military and police units, and the creation of vast detention camps along the southern border”.

      Trump has made political attacks against Harris, blaming her for the border crisis, a central part of his campaign against her. Polls have suggested US voters trust Trump more than Harris on immigration.

      The global picture: in the US, as in the UK and Europe, wealthy democracies have spent decades trying to deter immigrants from coming across their borders to seek a better life by making border crossings increasingly surveilled, militarized and deadly. This has not, broadly speaking, stopped people from continuing to migrate in hopes of finding safer lives for themselves and their families, particularly as wars, climate change and other crises provide reasons to seek asylum elsewhere. But deterrence policies do mean that children and adult attempting to migrate are more likely to die because of the conditions that wealthy countries create at their borders, in hopes of persuading people that it’s too dangerous to migrate.
      A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that 43% of voters favored Trump on the issue of immigration and 33% favored Harris, while 24% either didn’t know, chose someone else or declined to answer, Reuters reports.Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s town hall in Warren, Michigan, is running about an hour behind schedule, the New York Times reports. (The Detroit Free Press has a livestream here, should you wish to follow along.)PBS also has a livestream of Kamala Harris’s expected campaign remarks on border policy in Douglas, Arizona, that will go live in about a half-hour.Asked what she had learned from her conversation with customs and border protection officials, Kamala Harris told today’s White House pool reporter:
      They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job. They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do. More

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      ‘She’s our vision of the future’: Black Nevadans rallying for Harris hope to make history

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      Las Vegas’s historic Westside has long been celebrated for its Black community’s entrepreneurship, activism and resilience. The neighborhood became “historic” when America’s first racially integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1955, employing Black card dealers and chorus line dancers, and welcoming singers such as Sammy Davis Jr and Ella Fitzgerald to not only perform, but to dine and gamble. Today, campaign organizers for Kamala Harris hope the community will play a history-making role again in November.The 2024 presidential election could hinge on how Nevada swings. To win the key battleground state, Democrats will have to run up the score in Las Vegas to overcome deficits in rural counties and the evenly divided electorate in Reno.About 10% of the state’s population identifies as Black or African American, a majority of whom live in the Las Vegas Valley. According to the Harris campaign, this subset is fired up, and turnout and enthusiasm in the critical Democratic constituency may make a difference.“It’s been pandemonium,” says Ishmael Carroll, the campaign’s regional political director focused on outreach to southern Nevada’s Black community. “I’ve been inundated with calls, texts, emails. It’s complete excitement. In previous elections I had to go find people. People are calling me now first thing in the morning, late at night – ‘How can I be involved? How can I participate? What can I do to help?’“I think they identify the importance of this moment in our history,” Carroll adds.Lya Harvey, a 52-year-old nurse practitioner, is one of those first-time volunteers. Though she always votes, she had never attended rallies, volunteered or donated to a campaign before, she said.“I’m really not that into politics, but given the situation right now between the two parties, I think it’s necessary to be out here getting involved,” she says. She’s tired of the “mean and nasty” attacks that have divided communities and contributed to dysfunction in Washington.View image in fullscreen“We’ve always had Democrats and Republicans and different views,” Harvey adds. “But right, I don’t think we can deal with any problems until we deal with [the division].”Nevada’s winner has gone on to the White House in 10 of the past 12 presidential elections. Democrats enjoy a winning streak in the battleground state that goes back four election cycles, to Barack Obama’s double-digit victory in 2008. But each of those wins was tighter than the last, and though Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump here in 2020, Trump held a significant lead in the polls of their expected rematch, contributing to Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid for lack of a viable path to victory.Harris’s Sun belt strategy to challenge Trump in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada has its strongest chance of a win here, according to current polling estimates.Daniele Monroe-Moreno, a Nevada assemblywoman and chair of the Nevada state Democratic party, says the reasons for Harris’s appeal in the Westside community are multifold. It’s a diverse city with multicultural families that see themselves, their friends and neighbors in Harris’s narrative, she said, which matches their “vision of the future”.“We’re Black, Native American, Hispanic and AAPI all in my family,” Monroe-Moreno shares. “But we’re also straight, gay, bi, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, so when I talk about ‘the community’, I talk about all of us, because it takes all of us working together for a better future. And I believe the excitement we’re seeing with Kamala Harris is that there are so many families like mine that see her and Tim Walz, who is like that guy next door who mows the lawn for the senior who can’t do it any more … They see Kamala and Tim as people they know and can personally attach themselves to.”Volunteers say they’ve been encouraged by voters’ responses to Harris and Walz’s proposals. The anxieties that Las Vegas organizers and volunteers “hear at the doors”, as they say, are consistent all across Nevada. The state’s education system isn’t preparing children for success. Rent and home prices are through the roof. Essential items like food and gas are frustratingly expensive.Harris’s effort to distance herself from criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the economy has included plans that seem tailored for door-to-door canvassers to assuage skeptical voters. There is the promise to build 3m new homes over four years. Tax credits for parents and small business owners. A plan to investigate corporations that engage in price-gouging on groceries.There’s also clear excitement for a younger, vibes-ier candidate who provides a striking contrast to Trump. There’s fresh hope that she can actually win a race that once looked like a Democratic death march. And then there’s the opportunity to shatter what Hillary Clinton often referred to as the “ultimate glass ceiling”.Harris rarely acknowledges the chance to overcome centuries of biases and oppression that have prevented a woman of color from representing one of the two major political parties as the presidential nominee. She may fear hearing the same attack lines Clinton faced about being driven more by personal legacy than by the kitchen table issues voters ultimately prioritize. Still, to borrow a famous Bidenism: this is a big fucking deal.Being one ballot away from electing the first Black Indian American female president has those communities fired up, along with Democrats who value diverse representation in positions of power.“You can see she actually cares about people,” Harvey, the first-time volunteer, says, “and being a Black woman – and I’m a Black woman – she understands that it’s about a lot more than just being a politician.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer T-shirt suggests a new slogan: “kaMALA: Make America Laugh Again”. If Harris succeeds, historians will note that joy and humor proved surprisingly effective in galvanizing support against the perceived threat of Maga authoritarianism.There are nonpartisan voters in Las Vegas’s historic Westside who would welcome courtship from Republicans. Brian Harris, 64, founder of the Independent Black Voters group on Facebook, says: “It’s not about the party, it’s about the agenda.”There’s one problem, however. “Until Republicans get rid of the white nationalism, I can’t support them,” he says. “If they stop being the party of Trump and become conservative, I’ll talk to them. And if there are good people, they may get endorsed by us, but it comes down to us picking what’s best for us.”What about the complaints that Democrats only show up every four years when they need the Black community’s vote?Carroll, the Democrats’ regional director, says he grew up in the historic Westside and has been organizing here for years. All the campaign’s outreach teams, he adds, are led by individuals with deep community ties and in partnership with neighborhood non-profits and small business owners who host events.Those include Souls to the Polls gatherings in the Baptist community, neighborhood block parties and a weekly roundtable discussion at the Westside Oasis bar and restaurant.A registered independent, Terry Adams, Westside Oasis’s owner, participates in these discussions in which voters air concerns, analyze the issues and share research on news-making items like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s proposed agenda for a second Trump term.View image in fullscreenThough the event is called Black Voices of Las Vegas, Adams proudly shares that often a majority of the attendees are white women. “This is for everybody,” he says, adding that it’s his civic duty to provide space for the event. “It’s the principles of the United States of America that matter. That’s what everybody strives for.”Longtime Democratic activists are also turning out with excitement to rally support for a Harris presidency. La Toya Laymon, 49, volunteers in every election. She was raised to understand that if you don’t like the way things are, you need to step up and get involved, she said. Her mother was a freedom fighter in Mississippi who was arrested at age 14 for demonstrating for equal rights and detained for three days afterward in a boxcar.“How could I not fight?” Laymon says. “I am her walking dream.”As a human resources professional, she feels frustrated by efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs. As a woman, she feels disturbed that the right to an abortion was won and lost during her lifetime.“A lot of people don’t understand the gravity [of elections] because they are reaping the benefits of people like my mother and my grandparents,” Laymon says. “This election is just because we didn’t do the job in 2016, and now everyone is like, ‘OK, who is going to get us back on track to democracy? Kamala Harris is that person.’” More