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      Call Her Daddy to Theo Von: how podcasts became a vital election tool

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      For much of this strange and unprecedented presidential campaign cycle, candidates have been making news for the press they aren’t doing, rather than what they say when they actually give interviews. Kamala Harris was criticized for a lack of real sit-downs following her sudden ascent to the nomination over the summer. Donald Trump, meanwhile, keeps pulling out of major-press interviews, including one with NBC News, as well as a 60 Minutes segment. (Harris did appear on the TV newsmagazine institution as scheduled.) But both candidates have firmed up their dedication to traveling into less traditional media territory: podcasts. Between the two of them, this may be the most podcast-favoring presidential campaign ever conducted.It might seem like an odd strategy. Even for hardcore podcast enthusiasts, it might feel like a medium that peaked in excitement a couple of election cycles ago, now lingering somewhere above Pokémon Go but below TikTok and Netflix. Format-wise, talk-based podcasts still hew closely to old-fashioned radio and – with video components now popular – talk shows, which don’t exactly feel like the most forward-thinking reference points. And though they can produce plenty of sound bites, podcasts aren’t exactly concise, either. Isn’t doing a big entertainment podcast akin to sitting for a lightweight Jimmy Fallon interview but at marathon length and, depending on the host, featuring even more self-satisfied cackling?Even if it is, though, it’s also considered a major avenue of access to certain broad audiences that might include undecided or undermotivated voters. Harris has initially gone both broader and more selective. Her biggest move was sitting for a 40-minute interview on Call Her Daddy, a relationships and advice podcast that’s a staple of the top five on Spotify’s charts. In other words, it’s the kind of broad-based show that sees itself as a relatively big-tent affair with a politically diverse audience. Host Alexandra Cooper began her episode practically apologizing for talking to a politician – the sitting vice-president of the United States! – because she generally tries to avoid politics.The first chunk of the interview did, indeed, largely avoid talking politics per se, given the show’s focus on mental and physical wellbeing, allowing Harris to get both personal and (in terms of her candidacy) pretty vague. But Harris did have the opportunity to talk about the major issue of abortion rights in the wake of Roe v Wade’s 2022 overturn, something Cooper obviously feels strongly about. And though the Call Her Daddy audience is too big to be completely homogenous, having Harris talk about this stuff with Cooper did feel like a tacit pitch to younger white women: here’s why this issue and this candidate should matter to you.View image in fullscreenIn that demographic sense, Call Her Daddy felt like an outlier in this recent season of podcast interviews. Harris’s other major podcast appearance so far was a longer (if often more personally focused) interview with All The Smoke, hosted by former basketball players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. So maybe the correct analogy isn’t the diminished influence of late-night talk shows or general-interest radio after all, but the unstoppable, evergreen blather of sports talk radio. Even Call Her Daddy, which has nothing in particular to do with sports, was owned by Barstool Sports for several years before it went to Spotify.Trump also went on a Barstool-affiliated show, Bussin’ With The Boys, hosted by former NFL players. His podcast playbook seems to be more focused on energizing the younger end of his base, the strange intersection of sports fans and comedy bros, where attaining some mixture of being perceived as kinda athletic or vaguely funny trumps, so to speak, all other concerns. Like Call Her Daddy, these shows also affect a kind of independent-thinking, quasi-apolitical posture – while also flattering their audience with the practiced pandering of a classic politician. In other words, it’s Trump country for people who don’t think of themselves as Trump country. So Trump gets to yuk it up with cult-of-personality comedians like Andrew Schulz or Theo Von, giving off the impression that, if you don’t pay too much attention, he’s a fun anti-woke bro who talks common sense. Even the occasional pushback he receives doesn’t actually question his basic worldview. When he misidentified the Olympic boxer Imane Khelif twice (as transgender, which she’s not; and as a man, which she’s not) on Bussin’ With The Boys, the hosts argued that her opponent should have stayed in the ring, rather than actually correct him about her gender status.Of course, no one is listening to a Barstool Sports podcast looking for heavy interrogation of a presidential candidate, and none of this seems likely to move the needle for truly undecided voters. (At best, it might raise a candidate’s profile among dudes who are undecided about whether they’ll remember to vote at all.) Maybe there was a point during the pre-Trump era where appearing approachable, sincere, funny or game on TV would change some minds in that classic Kennedy-over-Nixon way; the majority of voters seem too entrenched for that kind of perceptible shift today.That doesn’t make these shows aggressively marketing themselves as harmless, down to earth and essentially bipartisan are actually either of those things, though. Much as cultural critics are losing favor compared to friendlier, more “fun” influencers who serve as an ideally eager-to-please audience surrogate rather those cranky experts, actual journalists are losing ground to personalities like Joe Rogan – people in media positions who aren’t any more qualified to interview presidential candidates than a TV personality is to run the country. To wit: Harris is said to be considering an appearance on Rogan’s show because of its pull with a young and male audience. In the short term, in an close race, it might even make sense. But in pursuit of friendly, casual access to a lot of voters, candidates might well wind up in a podcast quagmire of their own making, where anyone can be turned into a harmless morning-zoo personality. By imitating the low-stakes bluster of sports talk, this chosen corner of the podcast world is upholding a questionable old-media tradition: turning a serious political moment back into a horse race. More

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      US presidential election updates: Trump and Harris spar over stamina in Michigan

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      Kamala Harris took aim at Donald Trump’s energy levels as both candidates scrambled across the battleground state of Michigan, with election day looming. Harris referenced a report that the former president was “exhausted,” saying “being president of the United States is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world and we really do need to ask … is he fit to do the job?”Questions about Trump’s energy levels emerged after he backed out of some interviews with mainstream media outlets, including 60 Minutes and CNBC. But speaking before a rally in Detroit, the Republican candidate shot back, saying: “I’ve gone 48 days now without a rest … I’m not even tired. I’m really exhilarated.”With both candidates in Michigan, focus turned to the midwestern state that promises the winner 15 electoral college votes. Polling shows razor-thin margins in the state, which Trump won by 11,000 votes in 2016. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by 155,000 votes.Here’s what else happened on Friday:Donald Trump election news and updates

      Trump was back in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, for a rally that got off to a difficult start after the former president’s microphone stopped working. “I won’t pay the bill for this stupid company that rented us this crap,” he said after the audio started working.

      In a Fox & Friends interview earlier in the day, Trump griped about negative television ads on Fox and said he would ask Rupert Murdoch to ensure such ads are not broadcast until Election Day.

      Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan”, the Wall Street Journal reported. “I would say: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150% to 200%,” the former president was quoted as saying. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese president Xi Jinping respected him.

      Trump has raised more money from the oil and gas industry than at this stage of his previous campaigns for the US presidency, with a surge of fossil fuel funding coming in the six months since he directly requested $1bn from oil executives and then promised he would scrap environmental rules if elected. While the Republican nominee hasn’t quite managed to get to that $1bn figure, he has received $14.1m from the oil and gas industry in the period up to 31 August, donation filings show.
      Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Harris campaign in Grand Rapids, the heart of more conservative western Michigan. She is reportedly shifting the strategy of her whirlwind campaign to win over more Republicans and men of all races.

      In Oakland County, Harris welcomed members of the Arab American community to her rally and touted prospects for peace in the aftermath of the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

      Some prominent Lebanese Americans endorsed Harris, saying in a letter that the US had been “unrelenting” in its support for Lebanon under the Biden administration. A number of Arab Americans and Muslims are abandoning the Democratic party over the administration’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      A new poll has revealed that more than a third of Americans agree with Trump’s warning that undocumented immigrants in the US are “poisoning the blood” of America. “This is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric, find this kind of support from one of our two major political parties,” said Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute.

      At a campaign event in Arizona, former president Barack Obama said: “I understand why people are looking to shake things up … What I cannot understand is why anyone would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you.”

      Barack and Michelle Obama will make their first appearances alongside Harris on the campaign trail next week, aiming to provide a powerful boost in the closing weeks of the election. Harris is scheduled to appear with the former president in Georgia on 24 October and with Michelle Obama in Michigan on 26 October.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Kamala Harris questions Trump’s stamina: ‘Is he fit to do the job?’

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      Kamala Harris used a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Friday to seize on reports that Donald Trump had been canceling media interviews to question whether he has the stamina for a second presidency if voters choose him over her in November’s election.“If he can’t handle the rigors of the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?” the Democratic vice-president, 59, told rallygoers about the 78-year-old Trump.She said: “Trump is unfit for office.”Harris and her Republican opponent were in Michigan as the weekend began while trying to shore up support in a battleground state that could decide their 5 November race. Polling suggests Michigan as well as its fellow “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remained in play for both candidates as the campaign’s waning days arrived.“This is the place that is going to decide the election, right here,” Democratic congresswoman Hillary Scholten told Friday’s audience as she opened the event.Among the crowd, some Harris supporters struck a hopeful tone. “It’s about time for a woman to lead,” said Jenifer Lake, who took her daughter Adeline Butts to the rally for a chance to “see history in the making”.Butts, who will be old enough to vote for the first time this election, described herself mostly concerned about the cost of living, tuition and housing affordability. And her fellow attender Bill Bray, who came to the rally from Adrian, Michigan, said he believed Harris would better promote economic opportunity for those situated like him than Trump would.Bray grew up “in a poor neighborhood” but said he is doing well thanks to benefits from his prior military service as well as his long career at Ford Motor Company. He said he wants other people to have a chance at that same trajectory.“Trump doesn’t understand equality,” said Bray, a veteran of the Vietnam war who also accused the former president of dodging the military draft that would have sent him to the same conflict.Bray also said he supports stronger federal gun control after seeing “what guns to do to people” and has no faith in Trump – who is widely supported by the firearms industry – taking that issue seriously.Other attenders said abortion access was at the top of their mind. Harris has campaigned on preserving abortion access while three of Trump’s appointees to the US supreme court helped eliminate federal abortion rights in 2022.“It’d be nice to have control of my body back, and then I’ll think about listening to the other side,” Kim Osborn said.Lauren Rockel said she would like to see Harris fight to reinstate the Roe v Wade protections that Trump’s supreme court appointees helped strip away.“There are people dying” as a result of abortion restrictions that have since gone into effect in many states, Rockel said. “It’s awful.”To them, Harris said it was “time to turn the page” on Trump.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, spoke before Harris took the stage. Four other Democratic state governors joined her.Her presence and that of the other governors “shows how important you are, Michigan,” Whitmer said. She told the crowd that they would be the ones to “take our country forward” if they helped send Harris to the White House.Michigan’s Democratic US senator Debbie Stabenow also spoke before Harris, alluding to how it got “scarier and scarier” the more she thought about the proposed policies of Trump’s supporters. The former president has sought to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation, whose Project 2025 plan calls for the mass firings of civil servants and exalts the idea outlawing abortion altogether during a second Trump presidency.But he has struggled to effectively do that, with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, having written the foreword for a book by the Heritage Foundation’s president. And, echoing Stabenow, many attenders said they were fearful and terrified of what a return to the Oval Office for Trump may produce.The Democratic nominee’s message resonated with Richard Bandstra, who described himself as a “former Republican”. Bandstra said he came to the rally to hear a message of hope – and, as he saw it, to fight for what he called the most important issue of the race: preserving American democracy. More

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      ‘I’m all about the straight talk’: Kamala Harris trades barbershop campaign stops for a blitz of Black media

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      Five years ago, with an eye toward South Carolina’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Kamala Harris dropped by a barbershop in the state capital for a roundtable with a group of Black men led by 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell, of Me So Horny fame. Pitted against some skeptical voters, Harris won the room over with her personal stories and willingness to let her hair down some. “I’m all about straight talk, and there’s no better place to do that than in the barbershop,” she said. In that 20-minute discussion, which largely focused on entrepreneurship, Harris introduced many of the points that form the core of the Opportunity Agenda for Black Men unveiled this week.The Black barbershop ranks among the most enduring tropes in American politics – the go-to place for office-seekers looking to win the Black male vote without getting into specifics. Democrats in particular have used the setting as their official co-sign, submitting to naturalistic photo-ops in hydraulic chairs with the fellas when they aren’t directly addressing Black church congregations or glad-handing at fish fries. Even Donald Trump has leveraged the barbershop trope for his own ends, dropping by a Maga-friendly location in the Bronx on Thursday for a private meet-and-greet.A product of segregation, the Black barbershop is as much a symbol of Black entrepreneurship as it is a safe space for Black men to socialize and strategize – at no point more so than during the civil rights movement. Harris could have easily gone back to the barbershop for this presidential campaign. Instead, she built from that foundation while huddling with Black male leaders away from the cameras and doing interviews with Charlamagne tha God, two former NBA players and other Black media tastemakers who cultivate a barbershop vibe with audiences.View image in fullscreenPopular narratives of Harris are at pains to characterize her as unpopular with Black men. Some polling data has detected a slight rightward drift among young Black men. But that’s only part of the picture, the pollster Henry Fernandez argues. His firm, the African American Research Collaborative, has tracked voter attitudes over the past decade and found that young Black men, more so than young women, are more willing to consider a Republican candidate initially than older Black voters but eventually come home to the Democrats – which sets them apart from other young voters in other racial and cultural groups, who start out more open to considering progressives.“It reflects the fact that Black men are making a choice,” says Fernandez before raising three polls he took in the run-up to the 2020 election. “In July, Black men were at 43% support for Joe Biden. In September, it was 78%. In November, it was 86%. Black men’s support for Democratic candidates doesn’t start out at 100%. It consolidates.”Which is to say: Harris still enjoys widespread backing from Black voters in the aggregate. But her campaign has made a mission of addressing dubious Black male voters regardless. This week, while thanking Harris volunteers at a campaign field office in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama openly wondered whether Black male voters might be holding out on supporting Harris because they “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president”.Harris, though, isn’t deterred. Through her dogged outreach to Black male voters, she has underscored the value of their vote while demonstrating how the idea of the Black barbershop as a catch-all forum has evolved. “First of all, my barber comes to me,” says Roland Martin, the former CNN contributor turned Black digital media maven. “The reason why I’m saying this is because Democrats are still trying to figure out where Black men are congregating.”Obama has done more than any candidate to stress the importance of the Black barbershop, including campaign stops in 2008 and 2012 – by which point Coming to America, Barbershop and other films had entrenched the Black barbershop in the mainstream imagination. Before the 2020 election, Obama appeared on The Shop, LeBron James’s barbershop-inspired TV showcase for freeform conversations with luminaries from disparate arenas, to make a last-ditch pitch for Joe Biden.For Obama, the barbershop was a platform to relate the broad strokes of his cultural identity to Black men who remained wary – his obsession with sports, his pride in his Black family; at a 2012 barbershop stop in South Carolina, he traded the dozens with waiting customers before grabbing a quick shape-up.Harris, though, is more intentional about using the barbershop trope to relate her personal biography. In an April interview with BuzzFeed, she shared her “hair story”. an allusion that hints at the fraught politics of Black hair care. At the barber shop in South Carolina in 2019, she made sure to let the brothers know she grew up celebrating Kwanzaa, a weeklong winter celebration of African American culture that was invented by a Black male PhD.

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      As much as this stretch-run media tour might look like a last-minute plan for Harris, it’s worth remembering: a) she’s only been in the race for two months; and b) chopping it up with Black men is not a new look for her. Those who have only just tuned in might not fully appreciate that Harris is a Howard University-educated member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority – bona fides that have kept her connected to a cultural network that includes leadership-minded Black men, a number of whom have signed on to organizing efforts like the Win With Black Men Pac. “She’s been meeting with Black men for years,” says Martin, a graduate of a historically Black college who is prominently active in the Pac. “I was part of a dinner that she did with a group of Black men in November of last year. She was at the 100 Black Men conference in Atlanta earlier this year. At the Howard-Hampton football game in DC at the beginning of the year. Folks just had no idea because the vice-president is not covered like the president. The issue is the national media.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven as Harris met with mainstream media outlets over the past two weeks, she was careful to signal to the Black men who might also be paying attention. On 60 Minutes, she sat down with Bill Whitaker, the program’s lone Black correspondent. On Howard Stern, she came out as an F1 fan who cheers for Lewis Hamilton, the series’ only Black driver. On Fox News she pushed back against the host Bret Baier’s attempts to cast her as incompetent and in over her head – and, of course, was labeled an “angry Black woman” by Trump supporters for standing her ground. “Went to @FoxNews with 787 million reasons not to, and looked presidential, held her own and portrayed poise,” wrote Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative turned Harris surrogate.View image in fullscreenElsewhere, Harris took the extra step of appearing on digital platforms with robust Black male followings. On All the Smoke, a sports podcast hosted by the NBA retirees Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, she stated a desire to promote on-ramps for Black men into the cannabis industry while coming out in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. On Monday, Harris appeared on Martin’s daily digital show and stressed the importance of creating more Black homeowners and uplifting Black-owned businesses. Both ideas are central tenets of her opportunity agenda – her plan to give Black men more economic opportunities through forgivable business loans, decriminalizing marijuana and protecting cryptocurrency investments.In a Tuesday digital town hall with Charlamagne tha God, co-host of The Breakfast Club, Harris reinterpreted Obama’s rebuke of Black male voters as a call to arms. (“What is happening here is we are all working on reminding everyone of what is at stake,” Harris said.) She popped up again later that night at the Hip Hop awards on BET – the same network that sounded the alarm on Project 2025 at another awards show back in July. On Tuesday’s show, Harris was interviewed by the rapper Fat Joe – who met with the Democratic nominee and the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, a rumored VP pick, in March to discuss marijuana reform. “When the vice-president calls me,” Joe said at the White House summit, “I drop everything.”For the past six weeks, the actor Wendell Pierce, a prominent Harris surrogate, has hosted talks at Black barbershops in key districts around the country with special guests and film screenings to drum up voter enthusiasm. This week, he pushed back against Obama’s rebuke, urging Democrats to “stop scapegoating Black men” in an X post. In a Thursday CNN appearance, the Wire star revealed that Obama had called him in response to his post – and he further explained to the former president that Black men just wanted to be heard and taken seriously.With each appearance she makes, Harris proves that there is no such thing as a Black male monolith, or field offices where those brothers can be reliably reached any more. By meeting Black men where they are and taking in their straight talk, she doesn’t just make clear that she isn’t pandering for a photo op; she shows that she’s willing to go farther than any presidential candidate in history to earn the Black male vote. More

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      Kamala Harris urged to flesh out climate plan amid warnings about Trump

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      As the US south-east struggles to rebuild after two deadly and climate-fueled hurricanes, some environmental advocates are demanding Kamala Harris flesh out a strong climate plan.Since Hurricanes Helene and Milton ravaged parts of the country, the vice-president has slammed Donald Trump’s climate record by airing a new campaign ad showing the oft-criticized moment the former president redrew a hurricane’s path with a marker, and taking aim at Trump’s spread of climate misinformation and history of withholding disaster aid.Harris has also raised the alarm about Trump’s plans to slash environmental regulations. Yet she has not said much about her plans to deal with the climate crisis, instead pledging not to ban gas-powered cars in a Michigan speech and touting “record energy production” from the oil and gas industries during her vice-presidency on her website.The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, said that Harris had failed to build upon the strongest moments during her TV debate with Trump when she referenced the mounting costs of climate-driven disasters and their toll upon Americans’ ability to get home insurance.Since then, he said, the campaign had been “understating the depth of the danger”.“The American public need to know there are storm clouds ahead,” said Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate budget committee. “We will have to see if Harris and Walz are elected how they will move forward on policy but at the moment most Americans are not well informed of how serious this is going to get.”The lack of a climate focus from the campaign has been “frustrating” but was probably a calculation that there is little political benefit to bringing up such a glaringly obvious divide with Trump, according to Paul Bledsoe, who was an adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House on climate.“That might be the right political decision,” he said.But others are skeptical that Harris’s climate approach will deliver electorally. Though polls show that voters place more importance on other issues, such as the economy and immigration, they also indicate that a strong majority of US voters would prefer to vote for a candidate who supports climate action. Many surveys indicate there is broad support for renewable energy even in fossil fuel-heavy areas.“Pundits say she can’t risk losing any potential voters in Pennsylvania,” said Edward Maibach, the director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. “Taking a strong pro-climate action stance would almost certainly not cost her votes in [Pennsylvania] because more than half of voters in the state want to see the president take more, not less, climate action.Many national climate policies – from job training for fossil fuel workers to full fossil fuel phaseout by 2050 – also enjoy majority support.“I’m not convinced it’s good electoral strategy, because climate is an issue where voters trust Democrats more than Republicans so it actually would be a good issue to lean into to highlight the difference,” said Michael Greenberg, founder of the controversial activist group Climate Defiance, which endorsed Harris last month after meeting with her top climate aide.A major hurdle for Harris’s campaign, polls show, is that undecided voters feel they don’t know what she stands for, said Collin Rees, campaign manager at advocacy group Oil Change US.“It’s actively electorally harming her to not be more detailed,” he said.If Harris wins the election, Bledsoe said, “she will need to level with the American people about how emissions reductions need to happen or these storms, heatwaves and floods will get far worse”.But Rees said her approach has left space open for Trump to convince voters that climate policies are harmful, and that he is skeptical that Harris would make such a shift if elected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I don’t know that there’s ever been an issue in history where somebody didn’t talk about it on the campaign trail … but then turned around and prioritized it after they were elected,” Rees said.Further irking advocates have been Harris’s attempts to appeal to conservatives. Last week, she pledged to create a bipartisan council of advisers if elected. The same day, she boasted her endorsements from former vice-president Dick Cheney and George W Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who helped craft a legal case justifying torture.“We’re talking about courting neocons who support endless war when the military is one of the largest triggers of the climate crisis,” said Rees. “She’s courting members of a party that we know is not serious on climate even though we are all around us seeing the climate emergency.”Other Harris allies are sanguine about the absence of climate from her campaigning, pointing to her record as a prosecutor in taking on big oil and their expectation that she will push for aggressive climate action if she claims the White House.“She needs to talk about what will win this election, there’s only so much time for subjects and people have a limited bandwidth,” said Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington and a prominent climate advocate. “I’m not critical of the way she’s run her campaign, they’ve made decisions on how to use limited communication time and I’m confident when she’s in the White House she’ll be an effective leader on clean energy.”But the issue is not only one of messaging, but also of substance, said Rees.“I don’t think climate has to be the only issue or the top issue, but right now she’s denigrating climate policy, boasting about oil and gas exports, playing to the right,” he said. “But the terrible disasters of Helene and Milton provide an opening to show how climate is very closely connected to people’s lives and economic struggles. I don’t think it’s too late.”The youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement, which also endorsed Harris, is also demanding she “change course”, noting Trump is gaining ground in swing states.“In 2020, Joe Biden won because he ran on bold climate action and economic justice, showing that you can both win swing voters and the Bernie Sanders base,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, the group’s communication director. “In the last 20 days, we’re giving everything we’ve got to contact millions of people and turn out young voters to elect Harris. What we’re asking is that the Harris campaign help us do that.” More

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      The electoral college has become a gun held to the head of US democracy | Lawrence Douglas

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      These are not easy days for supporters of American democracy. But what twists my innards is not the prospect that in three weeks’ time, the majority of voters could hand the reins of power to a vengeful authoritarian demagogue. Instead, I’m sickened by the prospect that the electoral college can do that for us – that Kamala Harris could win the national popular vote, but come up short where it counts.We know the popular vote winner has already twice lost in this young century, in 2000 and again in 2016. But few realize how narrowly we missed a catastrophic result in 2020 when Biden won the national popular vote by a substantial margin – over 7 million votes. In every other democratic nation, such a result would have settled matters. Not in the US. Biden’s margin of victory in three key swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – was razor thin, with fewer than 44,000 votes combined.It was no accident that Trump trained his efforts – the stuff of outstanding state and federal indictments – to overturn Biden’s victory in these three states. Had Trump succeeded in pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” the votes necessary to overcome Biden’s state lead, had he succeeded in submitting bogus slates of electoral college votes from Arizona and Wisconsin, he could have recaptured the White House.Now, once again, our nation is held hostage to our manifestly defective means of electing the president. How did we arrive at this perilous point? The drafters of the constitution, exhausted by long days of toil in Philadelphia’s steamy Independence Hall in the summer of 1787, settled on the electoral college in something of an afterthought. Unable to decide between letting Congress elect the president or giving full power to the people, they ended up retrofitting a device used by the Holy Roman Empire to “elect” monarchs and emperors. By letting every state legislature choose a body of electors (equal to the state’s representation in Congress), the system was meant to find citizens of public standing capable of wisely choosing a chief executive.Almost from the get-go, the system did not function as designed. With the rise of parties, states realized they could best leverage their power over the national outcome by awarding all their electoral college votes to the statewide winner of the popular vote – the system we have now. (By defeating Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida, George W Bush captured all of the citrus state’s electoral college votes and, with them, the White House.)Those who nowadays defend the electoral college as a device designed to make sure the presidency isn’t always captured by “coastal elites” are offering a justification that has nothing to do with college’s original logic and ignoring the fact that the vast number of American citizens live in coastal states. An electoral system that awarded four votes to citizens of Wyoming and a single vote to citizens of California would be dismissed as a transparent violation of the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote”. And yet this is exactly what the electoral college does.Worse still is how the electoral college dramatically magnifies the vote of citizens in a handful of swing states. Tens of millions of voters in non-competitive states are essentially disenfranchised. Kamala Harris presently enjoys a 24-point lead over Donald Trump in California. Votes for Trump in California count, then, for nothing, while all votes for Harris over the bare majority needed to win are utterly wasted. In the key swing states, things look very different.The entire election will turn on what happens in seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Voters in the remaining 43 states are reduced to the role of spectator. And so we’re left holding our breath, wondering whether American democracy will survive based on whether Arab Americans in Michigan feel betrayed by the Democratic party or whether Black men in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia will vote in sufficient numbers for Harris.A system that permits a national election to turn on the outcome in a handful of counties in a handful of states is tailor-made for a candidate intent on sowing electoral chaos. When Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021, his effort to remain in power had already failed. Every state (and the District of Columbia) had already certified its result, thanks to the honest and tireless efforts of election officials of both parties. The insurrection simply promised to delay the inevitable.This time around, the Maga team knows better. This time, it will devote its efforts to monkeying with the state count. They have already succeeded in inserting a substantial number of Trump loyalists into key positions within the election infrastructure of the swing states. It doesn’t take much to muddy the outcome of a close state contest by targeting specific counties – especially when Trump has primed his supporters to reject any result that doesn’t result in his victory.Given the dangers and dysfunctions of the electoral college, it is unsurprising that since 1816 there have been over 700 proposed amendments to reform or simply abolish the system. And yet all have foundered on the constitution’s arduous amendment process, which throughout our history has frustrated vitally needed constitutional change and now leaves us stuck with an electoral process that no one would seriously consider if tasked with designing a fresh system.And so we face the ominous prospect that this defect of constitutional design may – against the wishes of the majority of American people – deliver a result that tolls the end of liberal democracy in America. Sickening.

      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More

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      US presidential election updates: Trump’s insults draw laughs at Catholic charity dinner as Harris appears remotely

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      Donald Trump laid into Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. The Republican nominee repeatedly criticised his Democratic campaign rival over her decision to skip the event – a break with presidential electoral tradition, as she prioritised campaigning in the swing state of Wisconsin, rather than New York, a safe Democratic state. Harris recorded a video that was played instead.Trump questioned the mental fitness of Harris and the president, Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made jokes about transgender people. The dinner was emceed by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who portrays the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, on Saturday Night Live.Harris, in her pre-recorded remarks – which featured the comedian and actor Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic school pupil – mocked Trump for lying, a sin, about the results of the 2020 election, and comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticising Detroit in Detroit”.Here’s what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news

      A poll has revealed that Harris continues to lead Trump among Black likely voters in battleground states. The poll, conducted by Howard University’s Initiative on Public Opinion from 2 October to 8 October, surveyed 981 Black likely voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for the vice-president, while only 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.

      With three weeks left, Harris is spending most of her days trying to shore up support in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as she tries to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s collapse there eight years ago. Her schedule reflects the Democratic nominee’s focus on her most likely path to victory over Trump. Harris visited Milwaukee on Thursday seeking support from college-age voters. She dropped by a business class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and held a student rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, closing out the day with a rally in Green Bay.

      The Democratic governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week embarked on a swiftly organised bus tour, rolling through the autumn landscape to press the urgency of the case for Harris in must-win states where some Democrats worry she is struggling. Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Tony Evers descended on Flint on Thursday afternoon, joined by the chairman of the national Democratic party, Jaime Harrison.

      Harris and Walz will attend church on Sunday in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. Harris will also sit down for an interview with the Rev Al Sharpton that will air on Sunday night on his MSNBC programme, according to a Harris campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details not yet officially announced.
      Donald Trump election news

      Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be banned from a future administration, with special emphasis placed on those with links to the radical Project 2025 plan to overhaul the US government. The former president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, is spearheading the drive to compile the list of barred staffers, according to Politico, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.

      Trump was joined at the Al Smith event by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail. The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along – or at least pretend to – for one night in the election’s final stretch.

      Gaffigan referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters in its buildings. “If vice-president Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn’t be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”

      Elsewhere on the campaign trail, a Nevada man who was arrested with guns at a security checkpoint outside a Trump rally in the southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterising his arrest as a thwarted assassination attempt, for the sheriff’s own personal gain.

      The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, falsely told a reporter on Wednesday that there were “serious problems” in the 2020 election and suggested that the then president, Donald Trump, did not actually lose the race. “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”
      Other election news:

      The Nevada Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown painted each other as extremists on Thursday night in the presidential battleground state where the election could determine control of both the White House and the Senate. The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator seen as a political consensus-builder, against Brown, a retired army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is endorsed by Trump.

      Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centres. Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people.
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      Do Democrats have a ‘men’ problem? – podcast

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      The Harris campaign, which has been praised for how it has managed to reach out to women, is now having to balance their attention and pitch some policies that would appeal to men.
      But is it too little too late? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Gloria Oladipo, a breaking news reporter for Guardian US, about why men could decide this year’s election and why both campaigns might be taking them for granted

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