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      Brats, dads and bravado: this US election will be decided on vibes

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      Now that the Democrats have found their vice-presidential candidate in Tim Walz, can anyone say what either of the parties are planning to do if they win?Of course not. Donald Trump says immigration is bad, but having claimed a wall would fix things, he’s pretty much run out of options. The Democrats are pro-reproductive freedoms, anti-inflation and environment-friendly, but what do they plan to do about it? It’s not at all clear. Not to worry though. This election is not being fought on proposed policies or past accomplishments. It’s being fought on vibes.The vibes election is a kind of free-association game that takes place in the recesses of the deep subconscious. The goal is to determine not who the candidates are but who you feel like they could be if they weren’t politicians.In the vibes election, huge political moments keep being superseded by online ephemera: Trump was almost assassinated by a sniper, but what resonated was how cool he looked in AP photos afterwards. Kamala Harris became the first Democratic nominee in modern times not to go through a primary process, but what really landed was Charli xcx tweeting “Kamala is brat”. Within minutes, Harris’s team changed their official campaign X header to brat green.It’s nothing new for presidential election campaigns to be led by viral moments and personality – Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was built on enthusiasm for change and the gaffes of Sarah Palin rather than policy positions. Trump’s 2016 win was about amorphous ideas of draining the swamp and making America “great”. But this is something different.Trump isn’t brave. Kamala isn’t brat, in the sense that Charli’s album is about it-girls who rip cigs and do bumps of cocaine – even though there’s something in Harris’s giggly personality that suggests she could have done that in another life. Her viral quote that you “exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” sounds like something that might be whispered in a smoking area after one too many tokes on the special vape.Walz is a shrewd politician with a progressive record as governor, but online he’s “the midwest prince”, a pun on an album by the gen Z pop star Chappell Roan you can feel confident Walz has never heard. He’s presented as a kind of gorpcore hero for the everyman (as Charlie Warzel of the Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the ballot”).Above all, and I’m sorry to be a party pooper here, JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch, although the Republican vice-presidential nominee definitely has the vibe of someone who might have. And that’s what counts. There have been panels on CNN about what it means that people say he did. Walz even joked about it in his acceptance speech.View image in fullscreenThis is a product of the Trumpification of politics. Ever since he managed to turn the 2016 Republican primary into a Comedy Central roast, more traditional politicians have been racing to compete with his headline-grabbing one-liners. But even though it’s his playing field, he’s not doing so well in 2024, struggling to find insults that land.In contrast, Democrats have become much better at checking the vibes. Compare Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment that half of Trump supporters were “a basket of deplorables” with the Democrats’ recent messaging that Republicans are “weird”.The former used strange, sneering verbiage to take aim at voters rather than politicians, and was said at a private event for rich fundraisers. It was easy for Trump supporters to reclaim the term and for Trump to use it to make Clinton look elitist. Clinton later acknowledged the comment was a big part of the reason she lost the election. Bad vibes.But calling Republicans “weird” punches up at the politicians themselves, using everyday language that most people, including rightwing voters, relate to. Democrats didn’t whisper this insult in private, like Clinton; they owned it with pride. That’s how you win at vibes – don’t address the person or the policy, address how it makes you feel.It’s true that not everyone is viewing the vote through this lens. Considerable numbers of people older than 50 still watch nightly TV news, where the election is being discussed in drier terms. But those under 50 don’t even have cable. The majority of gen Z’s news is coming from social media, where these conversations dominate.It goes without saying there are some pretty serious issues facing the US. People are dying from extreme heat. As Trump tried to make hay out of the assassination attempt, the family of his supporter who was killed in the crossfire mourned their loss, as did the families of the over 10,000 other Americans who have been killed by firearms this year alone. A war in Gaza, abortion rights, a far-right supreme court, mass incarceration – these issues are on voters’ minds.Certainly the Harris and Trump campaigns agree that the stakes are high. According to Democrats’ fundraising emails, American democracy is on the line and it’s up to voters to give 20 bucks before it’s too late. If Trump is to be believed, things are even more dire: he’s said that if Democrats win, they will unleash “hell on earth”. Either candidate could make this election about the issues, but that way controversy and expenditure lie. As long as they keep fighting the vibes wars, they can stay suspended in effervescent little fictions. More

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      Chopper whopper: Willie Brown shoots down Trump’s helicopter story

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      In his press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Donald Trump’s stream of invective, wild claims and outright lies included a story about a brush with death during a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, a veteran California politician who once briefly dated Kamala Harris, now Trump’s Democratic rival in the presidential election.Claiming to “know Willie Brown very well”, Trump said: “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought, maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was … a little concerned. So I know him pretty well.”Trump also said Brown told him “terrible things” about Harris and was “not a fan of hers very much at that point”.Both parts of Trump’s story turned out to be untrue.It quickly became clear after the news conference on Thursday that Trump was talking about a helicopter ride with Jerry Brown, then the California governor. Furthermore, Willie Brown had nothing bad to say about Harris.The pair dated nearly 30 years ago. Brown, 90, told the New York Times, adding: “No hard feelings.”Of Trump’s helicopter claim, he said: “You know me well enough to know that if I almost went down in a helicopter with anybody, you would have heard about it!”Speaking to KRON4, a San Francisco-area radio station, Brown said: “I’ve never done business with Donald Trump, let’s start with that. And secondly, I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him. There’s too many people that have an agenda with reference to him, including the people who service helicopters!”It was widely established that Trump’s helicopter ride happened in 2018, when Trump was president and he and Jerry Brown took a trip to inspect wildfire damage.Through a spokesperson, Jerry Brown said: “There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.”It turned out that Gavin Newsom, the current governor of California, was on the flight too, as governor-elect.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I call complete BS,” Newsom told the Times, while “laughing out loud”.Trump did repeatedly bring up the subject of crashing, Newsom said, but: “We talked about everyone else, but not Kamala.”Trump held his press conference in an attempt to highlight Harris’s lack of such events since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden dropped his re-election campaign less than three weeks ago and endorsed his vice-president to replace him at the top of the 2024 presidential ticket. But the former president’s chaotic and bad-tempered event did little to reset a campaign narrative showing Harris surging in popularity on the campaign trail as the former president flounders.Newsom told the Times he thought the press conference was “an act of desperation”. More

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      Harris and Trump agree to debate on ABC in September as race tightens

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off for the first time in a televised debate on 10 September, ABC News has confirmed.The event is expected to draw a huge viewership, and could be a make-or-break moment for both candidates in what polls indicate is an extremely close race.“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it,” the vice-president told reporters in Michigan on Thursday.The former president had previously agreed to appear on ABC News to debate Joe Biden, but after the president stepped down from his re-election campaign, Trump suggested he would back out.During a rambling press conference on Thursday, he backtracked, saying he was willing to debate Harris three times in September – on ABC, and on Fox News and NBC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionABC News confirmed in a statement it will “host qualifying presidential candidates to debate on September 10 on ABC. Vice-President Harris and former President Trump have both confirmed they will attend the ABC debate.”Harris had not committed to further debates on NBC or Fox, but told reporters: “I am happy to have that conversation about an additional debate, or after September 10, for sure.”More than 51 million people tuned in to watch the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden in June. Biden’s faltering performance at the event marked the beginning of the end of his campaign. Over the next month, Trump survived an assassination attempt, Biden stepped down and Harris became the Democratic candidate, launching a campaign that is quickly gaining momentum.Whereas Biden had been trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris has made gains – in some cases leading her rival in polls. An Ipsos poll published on Thursday found Harris ahead of Trump by 42% to 37%, compared to a 22 to 23 July Reuters/Ipsos survey, which showed her up 37% to 34% over Trump.Harris’s swift ascent has left the Trump campaign scrambling and struggling to develop a coherent attack line against her. During his Thursday press conference, which was his first public appearance since Harris named the Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Trump repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s name, questioned her racial identity, and made a number of outlandish, false claims about the economy, the Biden administration’s record and his own. More

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      Harris continues battleground campaign blitz after Trump’s rambling press conference – live

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      “Let the collective come together around a common experience, which at its core is about dignity and the dignity of labor, and then let the people come together to negotiate so you make the balance, and then the outcome will be fair,” said Kamala Harris.“And isn’t that what we’re talking about in this year election? We’re saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do,” she added.Since launching her campaign, Harris has turned to the ideas of freedom and individual liberties – concepts long associated with the rhetoric of the conservative movement – and turned them back on Trump and the modern Republican party. In Harris’s campaign rallies so far, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and, in this speech, labor rights form the basis of freedom.“Even if you’re not a member of a union, you better thank unions. I’m here to say thank you, thank you, thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do over these next 89 days,” said Harris at the UAW earlier today.During her speech, the vice-president referred to a political “perversion” of the Republican party, “where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, making people feel alone, but isn’t that the very opposite of what we know, unions know, to be strong? It’s about the collective. It’s about knowing that no one should ever be made to fight alone.”Trump put out a dizzying number of falsehoods at his press conference earlier. Here are just a few:1) He said the crowd at his speech on January 6, 2020 was comparable to the crowd that gathered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. An estimated 50,000 people attended Trump’s speech. About a quarter of a million gathered to hear King speak.2) He claimed that the US economy was at the brink of a depression. “Not a recession, a depression,” he said. While the stock market took a dip recently, many indicators suggest that the US economy is generally on firm footing. Today, Wall Street saw its best day of trading in two years.3) He said “the vast majority of the country” supports him, and that his base includes “75 percent of the country”. That’s a bold claim for a former president who never won the popular vote. Polls currently indicate that about 43% of Americans currently hold a favorable view of Trump. The majority (more than 51%) have an unfavorable view.JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions between the political persona he has sought to project, his history as a venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte, and his status as a hard-edged tribune of the so-called “new right”.Companies he has invested in include a firm that carries out medical testing of therapies that may include stem cells in scientific research to tech firms with records of harvesting data. Vance and some of the people behind the various firms he is involved with also exhibit an obsession with references to the mythology around The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy world.The revelations come in part from an analysis of his financial disclosures to the Senate ethics committee since 2022, first as a Senate candidate and then as a junior senator for Ohio. The Guardian’s reporting also drew on other public records and open source materials.The most recent disclosure, which covers until the end of 2022, also showcases the peculiar preoccupations that Vance as an investor shared with a Thiel-adjacent network of rightwing Silicon Valley venture capitalists who later spent millions supporting Vance’s candidacy to the Senate in 2022.Joe Lowndes, a political science professor at Hunter College and the author of several books on the American political right, said: “Vance has been a chameleon his whole life – that’s how he described himself in his autobiography.The Cook Political Report had moved Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from “lean Republican” to “toss up” – a reflection of Harris’ momentum in the presidential race.“For the first time in a long time, Democrats are united and energized, while Republicans are on their heels. Unforced errors from both Trump and his vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance have shifted the media spotlight from Biden’s age to Trump’s liabilities,” Cook Political Report’s Amy Walters wrote. “In other words, the presidential contest has moved from one that was Trump’s to lose to a much more competitive contest.”Whereas Biden was trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris is tied with Trump or sometimes leading in more recent polls.During Donald Trump’s rambling press conference today, the former president revived many of his go-to talking points, including falsehoods about the economy, his opponets’ policies and his own record.But one of his most audacious claims was that no one died in the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” after the 202 election.In fact, four Trump supporters died in the crowd.Ashli Babbitt, 35, died after she was shot in the shoulder by a Capitol Police officer while protesters “were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place,” according to a statement from the former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund.Two other “Stop the Steal” died of heart attack, according to the DC medical examiners office and another of accidental overdose.Three law enforcement officers also died after the the attack, including one who died from blunt force injuries while defending the capitol and two who died by suicide. The families of the latter two officers, along with some elected officials, sought to deem their deaths as “line of duty” – noting they suffered from trauma following the riot.Leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign spoke with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, before a rally in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo”, the organization said in a statement.But a Harris aide said on Thursday that while the vice-president did say she wanted to engage more with members of the Muslim and Palestinian communities about the Israel-Gaza war, she did not agree to discuss an arms embargo, according to Reuters.Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, also said on Twitter/X that the vice-president did not support an embargo on Israel but “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law”. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.The uncommitted movement, a protest vote against Joe Biden that started during the presidential primary season to send a message to the Democratic party about the US’s role in the Israel-Gaza conflict, began in Michigan and spread to several states. In Walz’s Minnesota, it captured 20% of the Democratic votes.Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate on Tuesday was met with celebration and even hope by many different parts of the Democratic electorate. But those in the uncommitted movement are still weighing their response, and hoping for a presidential campaign that will comprehensively address the mounting death toll in Gaza.“[Walz] is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way. That’s really important here. But he is also someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” said Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, and one of 35 delegates nationwide representing the uncommitted movement.Kamala Harris has finished her address to the UAW, saying:“ I’m here to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do on these next 89 days. God bless you.”“You know, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We know what we stand for, and we stand for the people, and we stand for the dignity of work, and we stand for freedom,” said Kamala Harris.“We stand for justice. We stand for equality, and so we will fight for all of it. And the bottom line about UAW is that I also know, and I’ll say to all the friends watching, look, even if you’re not a member of the union, you better thank unions,” she added.“Let the collective come together around a common experience, which at its core is about dignity and the dignity of labor, and then let the people come together to negotiate so you make the balance, and then the outcome will be fair,” said Kamala Harris.“And isn’t that what we’re talking about in this year election? We’re saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do,” she added.Kamala Harris has taken the stage.“I understand the concept and the noble concept behind collective bargaining. And here it is…fairness. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, in a negotiation, don’t we all believe the outcome should be fair?’ I mean, who could disagree with that?” Harris said.The outcome should be fair. It should be fair, right? But when you’re talking about the individual and a big company, and you’re applying that one individual to negotiate against a big company, how’s that outcome going to be fair?,” she added.“You know, things work really well in life and really well with your neighbors and really well in communities when you mind your own damn business, things work better. Stay out of our business. Stay out of our business,” said Tim Walz.“He’s not fighting for you. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about your family. And his running mate is just as dangerous and backward as he is,” he added.“So this is very simple, you know it, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot of hard work, but this election is a simple choice, what direction and what’s our country going to look like? What direction are we going?” said Tim Walz. “You know what we’ve said, If Donald Trump’s going to take it backwards, he’s going to, we aren’t going back. We’re not going back,” he added.Tim Walz has now taken the stage.“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket and couldn’t be prouder to stand with UAW,” said Walz.“You got two people up here that were on the picket line of striking UAW members, that’s a place Donald Trump will never be,” said Shawn Fain.“You know, anyone can be your friend when the sun’s shining, things are going great, but you find out who your friends are when things get tough. And you know…when we look at tough times, we’ve been at tough times, we see who chose to stand with us and who chose to sit on the sideline to do nothing,” he added.“This is not a time to sit back and hope for the best. This is our generation-defining moment. Everything is at stake,” Fain continued.“You know, Donald Trump calls me stupid and you know why? Because he thinks auto workers are stupid, but we’re not stupid. We don’t fall for Trump’s alternative facts, or what we all call lies,” said Shawn Fain.“This isn’t about opinions. This election is not about party politics. All we have to do is look at these candidates in their own words and actions. That’s all the facts we need, and that paints a very clear picture of which side the candidates are on,” he added.He went on to note Trump’s absence during UAW’s strikes in recent years, saying Trump was “missing in action.”“The man’s a con-man,” Fain added.UAW president Shawn Fain is currently addressing the room.“I think you already know this, but what’s at stake in this election? It’s very simple, everything is at stake. It’s about a choice of whether we continue forward or whether we go backwards,” he said.“Kamala Harris is one of us. Governor Tim Walz is one of us. You know, they’re working class people. They have working class roots. They know struggle They know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck,” he added.Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have just taken the stage in Detroit, Michigan where they are set to deliver remarks to the United Auto Workers union.Harris and Walz entered the union hall to a crowd of cheering supporters.ABC News has confirmed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will debate each other on September 10.Both Harris and Trump have confirmed they will attend the debate.During his news conference in Mar-a-Lago a few minutes ago, Donald Trump, who in recent weeks has refused to debate Harris on the originally scheduled network, said that he has agreed to ABC News’ offer to debate the vice president.Speaking to reporters, Trump said:
      “We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed other than some fairly minor details – audience, some location, which city would we put it into but all things that would be settled very easily.” More

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      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz boost union credentials in event at UAW local

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      At a union hall in the Detroit area on Thursday, Kamala Harris and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, addressed members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) at a campaign stop intended to play up the Democratic candidates’ support for unions.During the town hall-style event, which was held at the headquarters of UAW Local 900, Harris and Walz emphasized their support for organized labor and slammed Donald Trump for his anti-union record.Members of Local 900 were among the first to go on strike last year, when 3,300 workers from a Wayne county plant producing pickup trucks and SUVs walked out on 15 September. During the strike, which ended with UAW ratifying contracts with Ford, GM and Stellantis that secured 25% wage increases and cost-of-living adjustments, Joe Biden visited the picket line – becoming the first US president in history to do so.Unions, which already overwhelmingly backed Harris, welcomed Walz – who signed a raft of worker protections and pro-union bills into law in 2023 – on to the Democratic party ticket.Sean Fain, the president of the union, introduced Harris and Walz, contrasting the candidates with Trump and JD Vance, who have attempted to court workers in recent months but whose policy records are notably anti-union.“You know, this is a ‘which side are you on’ moment, and the choice cannot be any clearer,” said Fain. Trump and Vance, Fain said, “spent their lives serving themselves, representing the billionaire class and enriching themselves at the expense of the working class”. He shot back at Trump, who called the UAW president a “stupid person” during a Fox News interview that aired this month.“Donald Trump calls me stupid,” said Fain. “You know why? Because he thinks auto workers are stupid. But we’re not stupid. We don’t fall for Trump’s alternative facts, what we call lies.”During their remarks, Walz and Harris spoke appreciatively of the UAW, drawing a sharp distinction between their position on labor and Trump’s.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I couldn’t be prouder to stand with UAW,” said Walz, who spoke about Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his anti-union posture. Speaking about the rightwing presidential playbook, Project 2025, Walz said one of the goals was to “get rid of labor unions and get rid of the voices they bring, so they can do whatever the hell they want”.During Harris’s speech, the vice-president referred to a political “perversion” of the Republican party, “where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, making people feel alone, but isn’t that the very opposite of what we know, unions know, to be strong? It’s about the collective. It’s about knowing that no one should ever be made to fight alone.”Since launching her campaign, Harris has turned to the ideas of freedom and individual liberties – concepts long associated with the rhetoric of the conservative movement – and turned them back on Trump and the modern Republican party. In Harris’s campaign rallies so far, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and, in this speech, labor rights form the basis of freedom.“Even if you’re not a member of a union, you better thank unions. I’m here to say thank you, thank you, thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do over these next 89 days,” said Harris, exiting to Beyoncé’s Freedom, now a Harris campaign anthem. More

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      Uncommitted voters respond to Harris-Walz ticket with hope and reservations

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      Leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign spoke with Kamala Harris and her newly announced running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, before a rally in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo”, the organization said in a statement.But a Harris aide said on Thursday that while the vice-president did say she wanted to engage more with members of the Muslim and Palestinian communities about the Israel-Gaza war, she did not agree to discuss an arms embargo, according to Reuters.Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, also said on Twitter/X that the vice-president did not support an embargo on Israel but “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law”. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.The uncommitted movement, a protest vote against Joe Biden that started during the presidential primary season to send a message to the Democratic party about the US’s role in the Israel-Gaza conflict, began in Michigan and spread to several states. In Walz’s Minnesota, it captured 20% of the Democratic votes.Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate on Tuesday was met with celebration and even hope by many different parts of the Democratic electorate. But those in the uncommitted movement are still weighing their response, and hoping for a presidential campaign that will comprehensively address the mounting death toll in Gaza.“[Walz] is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way. That’s really important here. But he is also someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” said Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, and one of 35 delegates nationwide representing the uncommitted movement.Walz, a former schoolteacher, has been described by some as a progressive and open-minded candidate, who made school lunches free for children and enshrined reproductive rights such as abortion into law. He said he listened to his then-teenage daughter on gun reform and went from an A rating from the National Rifle Association to an F after championing gun control legislation.On Israel’s war in Gaza, Walz is considered by others, like Mohammed, to be a moderate, and it is not yet clear if that is another issue on which he is willing to change his position. In February, protesters gathered on Walz’s lawn to call on the governor to divest state funds from Israel, which he has not responded to.When he was serving as a congressman representing Minnesota’s first district, Walz traveled to Israel, the West Bank, Syria and Turkey on a diplomatic trip in 2009 and met with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He also voted to allocate foreign aid to Israel and condemn a United Nations resolution declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were illegal.But Walz has not been silent, or resistant, when it comes to the uncommitted platform. When addressing the Palestinian supporters who voted uncommitted in March, he told CNN: “The situation in Gaza is intolerable. And I think trying to find a solution, a lasting two-state solution, certainly the president’s move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to a ceasefire, that’s what they’re asking to be heard. And that’s what they should be doing.”He continued: “Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more.”Elianne Farhat, a senior adviser for the Uncommitted national campaign and the executive director of Take Action Minnesota, said in a statement on Tuesday: “Governor Walz has demonstrated a remarkable ability to evolve as a public leader, uniting Democrats diverse coalition to achieve significant milestones for Minnesota families of all backgrounds.”Meanwhile, after a private meeting with Netanyahu during the Israeli leader’s visit to Washington in July, Harris also publicly echoed calls for a ceasefire and said she would not be silent about the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza – a move which seemed like a rhetorical departure from Biden.Harris said she told the Israeli prime minister she “will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah”, and added: “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.”Some of the uncommitted delegates and activists are also supporting Walz because they prefer him over Harris’s other top choice for running mate, Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor who took a more hardline stance on pro-Palestine protesters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think the biggest issue there was that [Shapiro] became such a controversial figure that I think Kamala Harris probably saw him as a liability,” Mohammed, 32, said. “And Tim Walz, while, yes, is still supportive of Israel, didn’t have these very public scandals and very public support of Israel in the same way.”Now Mohammed and other uncommitted voters are pushing for representation at the Democratic national convention later this month in Chicago, hoping to be allotted time to speak about the violence committed against Palestinians in Gaza. But many who support the movement will face their November ballot with mixed emotions.Key Muslim groups have found overlap with uncommitted voters in their support for Palestinians, but have more forcefully thrown their weight behind Harris, including the Muslim Civic Coalition and the Black Muslim Leadership Council Fund.Salima Suswell, the founder and chief executive of the Black Muslim Leadership Council Fund, told NBC: “[Harris] has shown more sympathy towards the people of Gaza than both President Biden and former president Donald Trump.”Muslim Americans, like Suswell and Rolla Alaydi, voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, a decision Alaydi said she now regretted and felt guilty about. But when Biden stepped aside and made way for Harris, Alaydi said she had “1% of hope”.“I’m really numb when it comes to the election,” Alaydi added. “I don’t know which direction to go. The only option I see is Harris, but if there’s someone way better tomorrow who says ‘this will end immediately’, I’ll go and vote for that person.”Alaydi, from California, said she was also “torn” in this election because nearly all of her family is in Gaza. Alaydi said she had just received news that her cousin was bombed for the second time by the IDF. One of his legs was amputated earlier. Alaydi’s niece, who has epilepsy, has been going without medication for months. Alaydi also said she had not heard from her brother since November, when he was taken captive by the IDF.“Inshallah, he will survive,” Alaydi, 44, said through tears. She said she can only hope the new administration, whoever it may be, will allow refugees from Gaza, such as her family, to enter the US.She plans on casting a ballot for the Harris-Walz ticket – for now – because she has “no other other option”. More

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      ‘Edgelords’ and ‘butt-sniffers’: will Trump’s tour of hyper-masculine podcasts win over young men? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Donald Trump may be falling behind in the polls, but the former president is planning a comeback utilizing a secret weapon: edgelord influencers. In a bid to win over young male voters, the Trump campaign has been cozying up to controversial online streamers and podcasters who trade in stunts and testosterone.In June, for example, Trump sat down with Logan Paul for a podcast interview in which the pair talked about alien life forms. Last week, JD Vance made his TikTok debut alongside the Nelk Boys, a Canadian YouTube collective who have collaborated with the self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate. Then on Monday, apparently on the advice of his 18-year-old son Barron, who told his father Ross was “really big”, Trump livestreamed a 90-minute interview with Adin Ross. Trump told Ross that America was a “drug-addicted, crime-infested nation” and called Kamala Harris “strange”. The pair also talked about how the rapper Young Thug was being treated unfairly by the legal system and Ross suggested that Trump might want to call in some favors to make sure he gets treated OK. Then they did a little dance together.Who is Ross, other than someone Barron Trump thinks is cool? Well, it’s hard to explain his career trajectory in a way that doesn’t sound completely unhinged, but essentially the 23-year-old rose to fame by playing video games such as NBA 2K on Twitch (he’s since been banned from that platform after consistently allowing hateful unmoderated content in the chat, and now streams on Kick, a less moderated and more rightwing-friendly alternative).He then launched into a broader content creation strategy that involved him making a bunch of homophobic jokes and trolling celebrities. “A big part of Adin Ross’ whole persona is that he jokes about being gay in front of his celebrity guests and uploads videos of himself being ‘sus’ around them,” a 2021 Complex profile on Ross explains.Part of Ross’s “sus” schtick involves … wait for it … making a big show of sniffing people’s recently vacated chairs. There are a bunch of videos of him sniffing chairs, but he’s most famous for a video where he gets a good whiff of Andrew Tate’s chair during a livestream after the guy leaves the room. This has resulted in certain people terming Ross the “butt-sniffer”.Aligning yourself with someone who is famous for sniffing chairs in a sexually suggestive way is an interesting political strategy, especially when your nominee for vice-president is the butt of a number of jokes because of an online rumour about him once having sexual relations with a couch. Still, at least Trump and Vance, both of whom have a habit of putting their futon their mouth, are on the same page sofa.To be fair, Ross, who has 1.36 million followers on Kick, is known for more than his weird jokes. He’s famous for hosting white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes on his show, for example. And he made headlines for inadvertently getting Tate arrested this year by revealing, during a livestream on Kick in March, that Tate intended to leave Romania soon and never come back. This tipped off McCue Law, the firm representing four British women accusing Tate of rape and sexual assault, that the influencer was planning to flee and helped to get an arrest warrant issued.It’s possible Monday’s livestream might result in another spot of legal bother. During the interview, Ross gave Trump a Rolex and custom Cybertruck, which could possibly be a campaign finance violation. (He did not, however, sniff Trump’s seat.)While it’s easy to laugh at Trump’s interview with Ross, I don’t want to appear dismissive of the livestream, which, at its peak, was watched by around 580,000 people; clips from it will be viewed by millions more on TikTok and YouTube. The interview was part of a broader strategy to stir up support among young men, who are a key component in Trump’s path to the White House. Trump seems to have settled on a strategy of focusing his energy on appealing to men in extremely online, heavily masculine spaces rather than broadening his appeal via mainstream media. Interviews with people like Ross and Logan Paul cover off the youngest, more UFC- and video-games-focused end of this spectrum, while his June interview with the All-In podcast (run by a bunch of tech bros), help him stir up support in Silicon Valley and amongst the crypto crowd. His next big interview will be on Monday with Elon Musk: the crown prince of angry young men.Of course, appealing to young men doesn’t mean anything if those men don’t get up off the couch and actually vote. Which is why, last week, a group of Trump allies launched a $20m initiative called Send the Vote aiming to increase voter registration and turnout among young men. Per the Wall Street Journal, “plans include voter-registration drives at major sporting events, and parties in which admission is proof of voter registration”.Trump’s strategy to woo men under 30 has been fairly successful so far. For decades, young men have leaned left, but their support for Trump has grown since 2020. It helped Trump, of course, that Joe Biden did a brilliant job at alienating a lot of younger voters. While Harris has re-energized young voters (100,000 new voters registered during the first week of Harris’s campaign), the vice-president’s still trailing Trump when it comes to men (54%-45%). That may change, though: a recent “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom had almost 200,000 participants and raised more than $4m. Trump may have the support of guys who like to make racist jokes on the internet, but Harris has extraordinary momentum and a broad coalition. I reckon Trump may want to take a close look at the Rolex he’s been given because his time in the political spotlight may just be running out. More

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      Why Donald Trump won’t make major inroads with Black voters | Musa al-Gharbi

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      Throughout the 2024 cycle, polling has suggested that Republicans are poised to do extraordinarily well with African Americans.Even with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, nearly one out of five black voters say they support Donald Trump. Younger Black voters seem especially open to casting ballots for the Republican party.On its face, this seems like a sea change in Americans’ electoral affinities. The last time Republicans put up numbers anywhere near that level with Black voters was in 1976. And given that Black voters currently make up nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base, a scenario where almost 20% of these constituents defected to the other side would be absolutely devastating for the vice-president’s electoral prospects.The good news for Democrats is that, even if the polls have been genuinely capturing overall Black sentiment in the US, they are unlikely to be accurately predicting the final vote distribution in November.To clarify why polls are unlikely to reflect the eventual vote margins for this particular subset of voters, it might be helpful to look at how things typically shake out for third-party candidates.Elections are decided by voters, not poll respondentsDuring the 2016 electoral cycle, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson consistently hovered around 9% of the vote in polling. As the race tightened in the weeks before the election, voters began defecting to one of the top ticket candidates. However, in the week before ballots were cast, he was still polling at more than 6%. Ultimately, he ended up with just over 3%.In the 2020 cycle, Green party candidate Howie Hawkins polled at 2% of the national vote six weeks before the election. He ultimately secured roughly one-quarter of 1% of ballots.In the current cycle, Robert F Kennedy Jr polled above 10% for most of the race and, at his high point, was more than double that. However, as the race has tightened (we’re less than 90 days out), and after Joe Biden dropped out, Kennedy is now polling around 4%. In the end, he’d probably be lucky to get half that many votes in November.In short: despite most Americans consistently expressing support for alternatives to the Democratic and Republican nominees, third-party candidates consistently underperform at the ballot box relative to their polling – even in cycles (like 2016) where unusually high numbers of voters dislike both major party candidates.One of the primary causes of this gap between polling and outcomes is that contests are ultimately decided by who shows up to vote on election day. And Americans who are disgusted with both major-party nominees often find other things to do on a Tuesday afternoon than standing in line at a polling place to cast a ballot for someone who has little prospect of actually winning. And when these voters do show up at the ballot box, it’s often to hold their nose and vote for whomever they perceive to be the lesser of the two major party evils, in order to deny victory to the candidate they least prefer. And so, in the end, few Americans who express support for third-party candidates in polls actually show up to vote for them. The polls may accurately capture Americans’ preferences for third-party candidates, but they don’t predict well voting behavior with respect to those candidates.A similar tale holds for Black support of Republicans.Although polls this cycle have consistently found that nearly one in five Black Americans are open to voting for Trump, they also show that most Black voters could be easily swayed to vote for someone other than who they’re leaning towards at the moment, most Black voters have much weaker commitments to their current candidate of choice than other Americans, and roughly a third say they will probably not vote at all. This pattern in responses is also reflected in historical voting behavior: Black voters are more likely than most other Americans to sit elections out.Across the board, the Americans who are most likely to show up on election day – highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban voters – now tend to favor Democrats, even as lower-propensity voters (younger, working class and low-income, and/or less educated Americans, especially those who live in small towns and rural areas) have been shifting to the right.Historically, the dynamic has gone the other way. Democrats benefitted from high turnout and sought to expand access and participation while Republicans aggressively sought to suppress turnout by increasing voting restrictions, purging voter rolls, gerrymandering districts and otherwise undermining the Voting Rights Act. However, as the Democratic party was reoriented around knowledge economy professionals, many other constituencies swung in the other direction. And because there are far more “normie” voters than there are symbolic capitalists, high turnout increasingly came to favor Republicans instead.This matters because Republicans’ polling gains among African Americans are concentrated most heavily among lower-propensity voting blocs (such as younger and less affluent or educated constituents) and, as a consequence, the lower overall electoral turnout is, the more we should expect to see Republicans underperform among black voters relative to the polls.In 2020, the GOP got a bigger share of the black vote than in previous cycles, but this was in part because of record turnout among non-white voters (whereas Democrats overperformed in subsequent special elections that had much lower overall turnout). Unfortunately for Trump, there are signs that African American turnout this cycle may be significantly lower among lower-propensity voters. Consequently, the vote share Republicans ultimately receive in 2024 among black voters may end up being significantly lower than the polling suggests.The bad news for Democrats is that Trump doesn’t necessarily need to get around 20% of the black vote to freeze Kamala out of the White House. If he’s to even marginally exceed his numbers from last cycle, Democrats would be left with a highly precarious path to victory unless they can make up the losses with other constituents in swing states.Both parties have been alienating core constituenciesSince 2010, Democrats had been consistently losing vote share among African Americans in every midterm and general election.And it wasn’t just African American voters who were leaving, but also Hispanic Americans, religious minorities, and less affluent or educated voters. The very populations that Democrats often fancy themselves as representatives of and advocates for. The very constituents that were supposed to ensure Democrats an indefinite electoral majority.These defections were highly consequential: they contributed to enormous congressional wipeouts from 2010 to 2014 and cost Democrats the White House in 2016 (as Black voter attrition helped flip states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, even as Hispanic alienation helped tilt Arizona, Texas and Florida toward the Republicans).Many assumed that with Trump in the White House, minority voters would come flocking back to the Democratic party. Instead, the GOP held their margins with non-white voters in the 2018 midterms. Democratic gains in that election were near-exclusively due to shifts among highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban white people.In 2020, Black voters in states such as South Carolina helped save Biden’s floundering primary election campaign. In response, the president vowed to appoint a Black woman as his running mate should he win the Democratic nomination. Upon securing the vote, he ultimately settled on Harris.This choice was striking because Harris was not popular with Black voters during the primary. She typically trailed behind not just Biden, but also Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and sometimes other competitors as well – consistently polling about 5% with African Americans.That general sentiment seems to have continued through to the general election. Although Harris’s nomination was historic in virtue of her being potentially the first Black, female and/or Asian vice-president, her appearance on the ticket generated little enthusiasm among any of these voter blocs. Democrats ultimately got a smaller share of the black vote and the Asian vote in 2020 as compared with 2016 (across gender lines). Democrats were able to nonetheless carve out a narrow electoral college win primarily because white men (especially self-identified “moderates” and “independents”) shifted away from Donald Trump in 2020.These patterns continued through the 2022 midterm elections: non-white people, including non-white women, shifted much further towards the GOP than white people (especially white men). And it seems likely that Democrats will see further attrition in 2024, even if it’s less than current polling suggests.Contrary to optimistic narratives that circulated as Obama was ushered into office, it’s actually quite difficult to hold together a coalition that is centered around knowledge economy professionals but attractive to less advantaged Americans as well.With respect to the Democratic party’s current core constituency, although knowledge economy professionals have been straying from the Democrats since the election of Biden, they seem poised to turn out in force for Harris. The record-breaking “White Women: Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris” online events seem like a strong indicator – as does the huge outpouring of support from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and big law. The symbolic professions seem to be 100% coconut-pilled.Black people, on the other hand, seem much less enthusiastic. And should Harris lean heavily into her race or gender in an attempt to rally support – although this might be appealing to (disproportionately white) knowledge economy professionals – it would likely alienate non-white “normie” voters even more (who tend to prefer messages that are less identitarian and more focused on bread and butter issues).The big question for 2024 is whether or not Trump will continue to alienate white people at an equal or greater clip as Democrats are driving away voters of color. The answer will likely determine control of the White House.

      Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. He is a Guardian US columnist. More