| | | | |  | | By Ankush Khardori | | Presented by |  | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | |  A recent series of campaign strategies and tactics are likely to come under close scrutiny if Donald Trump loses to VP Kamala Harris. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo | If you are anxious about the election , skip this morning’s espresso — the latest batch of polls showing a tightening race will provide all the jolt you can take.
- Per ABC/Ipsos: VP KAMALA HARRIS leads DONALD TRUMP among likely voters nationally, 50 percent to 48 percent. In September, Harris led by 5 points in the same poll. … The Trump effect: “56% of Americans now favor deporting all undocumented immigrants, up 20 points from eight years ago.”
- Per NBC: Harris and Trump are tied among registered voters, 48 percent to 48 percent. Last month, Harris was up by 5 in the same poll.
- Per CBS/YouGov: Harris leads Trump nationally among likely voters, 51 percent to 48 percent, a 1-point tightening of Harris’ lead over the last month.
- Trump has chipped away at Dems’ margins among Black voters, per NYT/Siena: “About 15 percent of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago.”
- And among Latino voters, Harris’ support is “in dangerously low territory,” NYT/Siena finds. Fifty-six percent back Harris, while 37 percent back Trump.
And yet, if Trump loses his reelection bid this year, we are likely to revisit his day on the campaign trail yesterday. That’s not because he offered his usual assortment of grievances and false claims in front of a large rally of supporters (though that did happen), but because in the crucial final weeks of a toss-up election, he was campaigning in California — a deep-blue state that he is almost sure to lose, and that is literally on the other side of the country from critical battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia. Yesterday, we took a look at the anxiety percolating among Democrats in the final stretch of the campaign. Today, we shift the premise slightly and ask a different question: Is Trump blowing his chance to win this race? Let’s take a quick spin through a recent series of campaign strategies and tactics that are likely to come under close scrutiny if Trump loses to Harris. 1. Trump was campaigning … where? Trump’s rally yesterday was not a blue-state one-off. On Friday, he was in Colorado, and last week he announced that he will hold a rally in New York City before the end of the month. A variety of possible rationales for Trump’s stop in California have been discussed in the press — that he was there to help GOP Rep. KEN CALVERT in his reelection bid; that this is a campaign driven by national media; that he wants to increase his share of the popular vote ; or perhaps that he can tap into a large pool of potential volunteers and donors in the state. Whatever the case may be, remember all the post-2016 analysis about how HILLARY CLINTON didn’t spend enough time campaigning in certain battleground states? Expect something similar if Trump loses. 2. Trump’s media cocoon While campaigning yesterday in Pennsylvania, Sen. JD VANCE (R-Ohio) took a swing at Harris’ recent media strategy: “She’s going to friendly outlets to do these interviews because of course she can’t stand up to the scrutiny of a tough interview.” But it is Trump who has been in more of a media cocoon in recent weeks — really, since his controversial appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference in late July. He has largely (if not exclusively) kept himself confined to softball settings — for instance, the “interview” with his supporter ELON MUSK, a steady stream of appearances on conservative cable news networks and last week’s appearance on a comedy podcast where he spent more than 10 minutes answering a question about who he thought was behind his assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. (He eventually landed on Iran.) And, of course, Trump bailed on an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” last week after they told him they would fact-check his interview, and has refused to debate Harris again — forgoing the opportunity to get his message out to a large swathe of potential undecided voters in the waning weeks of the race. Trump is scheduled to appear at a Univision town hall Wednesday, but if he eventually loses the election, expect to hear about his decision to avoid mass media outlets in the final weeks of the race.
| | | | A message from United for Democracy: Banning IVF, abortion, and many types of contraception. Creating a national pregnancy registry. Criminalizing porn. Making you pay more for healthcare and housing. Sound like a nightmare? No - it's Project 2025. And if Trump is elected, it will be the MAGA movement's dream that the corrupt Supreme Court justices made come true. But we can vote to stop them – learn more at Project2025.wtf. | | | 3. Trump’s dubious surrogate Both Trump and Vance have argued that vice presidential nominees don’t matter in presidential races. The logic was dubious, but appeared to reflect the fact that the Vance rollout was a historically bad one. Even after his debate against Minnesota Gov. TIM WALZ, Vance’s favorability numbers remain underwater . But it was Vance who just gave a lengthy interview to the NYT in which he repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. And it was Vance who was campaigning for the ticket in Pennsylvania yesterday — at a rally in Johnstown and at a town hall in Reading. While there, Vance continued to dodge questions about Trump’s responsibility for the siege at the U.S. Capitol by arguing that there are more important issues at stake in the election, and once again falsely implied that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump : “I think the election of 2020 had serious problems. You wanna call it ‘rigged,’ call it whatever you want to.” (He echoed that line this morning on ABC’s “This Week”: “You wanna say ‘rigged,’ you wanna say ‘he won’ — use whatever vocabulary term you want.”) THE COUNTERPOINT: That’s the critical way of looking at it, but here’s another one: This is what a disciplined Trump 2024 campaign looks like. It’s notoriously difficult for Trump to avoid being the center of attention, but as his debate performance and his continuous dodges of the mainstream media indicate, he often does more harm than good for himself when speaking to people outside the Trump/MAGA echo chamber. On top of that , the read on the election among much of the political class is that there has been a subtle shift in Trump’s favor in recent weeks. (Call it a “vibe shift” if you must.) Under those circumstances, a Roman turtle campaign strategy makes some sense. But the stakes for Trump are considerable — and they are more than merely electoral. If Trump loses his reelection bid, he will be fully exposed to the pending criminal prosecutions against him and will face at least the prospect of time behind bars. The Supreme Court may ultimately bail him out in that scenario, but there is no guarantee of that. In a race that is this close, however, one thing is certain: When the dust settles after Election Day, analysts and strategists will pore over the final weeks of the campaign to assess how the campaigns maneuvered in the home stretch. With the benefit of hindsight, the winner can look like a genius, and the loser can look like an idiot. The question is which one of those Trump ends up as. Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop me a line: akhardori@politico.com. SUNDAY BEST … — Vance on Trump’s misinformation about Tren de Aragua in Aurora, Colorado, on “This Week”: “You just said the mayor said they were exaggerated. … That means there’s got to be some element of truth here. … Unfortunately, when you let people in by the millions, most of whom are unvetted, most of whom you don’t know who they really are, you’re going to have problems like this.” — Kentucky Gov. ANDY BESHEAR on Vance refusing to acknowledge that JOE BIDEN won the 2020 election fairly, on “This Week”: “All you’re asking him to do is admit reality, and we deserve to have a vice president who believes in democracy.” — Speaker MIKE JOHNSON on why he’s not calling Congress back early to pass more disaster aid, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “Congress appropriated $20 billion additional to FEMA … Less than 2 percent of that funding has actually been distributed … We’ll provide the additional resources. But it would be premature to call everyone back now, because these storms are so large in their scope and magnitude, it’s going to take a little bit of time to make those calculations. … FEMA was slow to respond. They did not do the job that we all expect and hope that they will do.” — Rep. JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) on whether he commits to certifying the election if Trump wins, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Absolutely. … AL GORE presided over his own defeat. So that is what this country’s all about: Have the election, and when the election’s over, you put it behind us and move on with trying to continue this pursuit toward a more perfect union. You don’t sit around and tell lies about the election or resist the process; you go forward.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
| | | | A message from United for Democracy: If MAGA extremists win this fall, they will pursue Project 2025 policies to gut the checks and balances that protect American freedoms.
You think the Courts will save us?! LOL. The six MAGA Supreme Court Justices are already implementing some of Project 2025’s worst ideas.
Learn more at Project2025.wtf. | | | | | WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY | | At the White House Biden traveled this morning to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, where he’s taking an aerial tour, getting an operational briefing and meeting with locals/first responders in the wake of Hurricane Milton’s hit on Florida. He’ll deliver remarks at 11:30 a.m. Biden will travel to Wilmington, Delaware, in the afternoon. On the trail Harris will travel from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Greenville, where she’ll speak at a church service along with the launch of the “Souls to the Polls” effort, meet with Black farmers and then hold a rally at 4:40 p.m. She’ll return to D.C. in the evening. Trump will hold a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona, at 4 p.m. Eastern, as the WSJ previews.
| | | |  | ABOUT LAST NIGHT — Trump rallied before a sizable crowd in Coachella, California, yesterday, slamming the state’s Democratic leadership and hammering Harris on immigration, the L.A. Times’ Faith Pinho and Seema Mehta report. He and other speakers sought to exploit Harris’ California vulnerabilities by criticizing her record as a state official. In addition to making false claims about election fraud, Trump took some verbal shots at local nemeses like Rep. ADAM SCHIFF (“one of the least attractive human beings”) and repeated a threat to block federal firefighting funds for the state if Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM doesn’t change course on water rules. Trump also fantasized about a heckler having “the hell knocked out of her,” per WaPo’s Hannah Knowles and Marianne LeVine. He then had an unusual moment at a Latino roundtable afterward in Las Vegas, where one man talked about formerly living in the U.S. illegally — but said he’s now a Trump supporter, AP’s Thomas Beaumont and Nicholas Riccardi report. The 30,000-foot view: “We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker,” by Myah Ward: “His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors … And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.” “The American people care about results that impact their lives,” press secretary KAROLINE LEAVITT responded in a statement. “President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear.” RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
|  VP Kamala Harris is trying to figure out how to separate herself from President Joe Biden. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images | WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? — Republicans have seized on Harris’ comment this week that she wouldn’t have done anything differently than Biden — and now, with less than a month to the election, her team is still trying to figure out how and where to put distance between them, NBC’s Monica Alba and Carol Lee report. Some possibilities include the Middle East, “the care economy and overall leadership style, but no final strategy has been settled on,” and Harris is very loyal to Biden. 2025 DREAMING — “Trump tested the limits on using the military at home. If elected again, he plans to go further,” by AP’s Stephen Groves: “Trump’s vision amounts to a potentially dramatic shift in the role of the military in U.S. society, carrying grave implications for both the country’s place in the world and the restraints that have traditionally been placed on domestic use of the military. … Advocates for human rights and civil liberties have grown alarmed.” LEDE OF THE DAY — “Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power,” NBC’s Sahil Kapur reports. THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT — Evangelical Christians flocked to the National Mall yesterday for “A Million Women” march, where tens of thousands of attendees prayed fervently for Jesus Christ to help deliver the presidency back to Trump, NBC’s Mike Hixenbaugh reports . Speakers said they view America as locked in an existential struggle between good and evil, promoting charismatic Christian ideas with apocalyptic warnings. Notably, attendees were “more racially and ethnically diverse than [at] most conservative political rallies.” The event was named after the Biblical story of Esther, whom many conservative Christian women see as emblematic of this political moment, NYT’s Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham report. THE STAKES FOR NOVEMBER — “How the Election Results Will Raise or Lower Your Taxes,” by WSJ’s Richard Rubin UP IN THE AIR — The DNC is flying banners or skywriting to boost Harris above several NFL games today, per WaPo’s Amy Wang. LONG READ — “Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign,” by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos: “Three months ago, the Vice-President was fighting for respect in Washington. Can she defy her doubters — and end the Trump era?” THE CANADA YEARS — There are new examinations of Harris’ under-covered adolescence in Montreal out this morning from both WaPo’s Michael Kranish and WSJ’s Vipal Monga . She lived through a period of political turmoil in Quebec and faced racist bullying at school, some classmates recall, though she was popular overall. Her experience “vividly showed Harris the real-world consequences of deep political division,” Kranish writes. Harris’ path as a prosecutor was also inspired by her experience of taking in a friend there who’d been molested by her stepfather. THE SACRAMENTO YEARS — NYT’s Jazmine Ulloa and Nicholas Nehamas dive into another part of Harris’ record she doesn’t talk about much: fighting transnational crime as California AG. Taking on drug and human traffickers, Harris improved law enforcement coordination to take down criminals. The experience could have implications for her border policy as president. But she’s also drawn criticism for her support for tactics like civil asset forfeiture. RACE FOR THE SENATE KARI INTEREST — Why is KARI LAKE running so far behind Trump in Arizona polls? From Phoenix, Dana Liebelson reports for POLITICO Magazine that Lake’s efforts to win over moderates and non-MAGA Republicans have stumbled: Her record of extreme rhetoric has made it harder for voters to buy a new tone. THE MAN WITH A PLAN — DSCC Chair GARY PETERS (D-Mich.) has a tough task to defend Democrats’ Senate majority, and he’s feeling the stress, Adam Wren reports from Auburn Hills. But the very low-key Peters says “I just put my head down and work and ride motorcycles” — and he’s not giving up on the Montana or Ohio races. RACE FOR THE HOUSE WHERE THE CHAMBER IS WON — From Connecticut to Pennsylvania, a circuit of 11 swing congressional districts in a 90-mile radius of NYC could be pivotal for control of the House, AP’s Anthony Izaguirre reports from Nelsonville, New York. In this “broad territory of dense suburbs, leafy exurbs and former mill towns,” whose representation is currently nearly evenly split, the gap between a less popular Trump and more successful local Republicans could be decisive. POLL POSITION Florida: Trump +6 and GOP Sen. RICK SCOTT +7, per Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy.
| | | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | | | 
President Joe Biden is traveling to Florida to survey damage from Hurricane Milton. | Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo | 6 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. STURM UND DRANG: As Biden heads to Florida today, he officially signed off on a major disaster declaration to help get more federal money to the Milton recovery, per the NYT. On the ground, after Democrats criticized Gov. RON DeSANTIS over fuel shortages, he announced yesterday that a handful of free gas sites will open, Gary Fineout reports from Tallahassee. And though the damage was less than initially feared, the private insurance market could nonetheless be hit hard after the state has worked to stabilize it in recent years, Gary reports. The market, “already a political flashpoint,” faces a difficult moment in absorbing both Helene and Milton. 2. WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT: “Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped,” by WSJ’s Gordon Lubold, Lara Seligman and Aruna Viswanatha: “Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet [over Langley Air Force Base], which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces. … Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after they first appeared in December last year.” 3. CLIMATE FILES: Can California protect its pace-setting climate regulations from a second Trump administration? NYT’s Coral Davenport reports that the state is trying to “Trump-proof” preemptively and working to strike deals with private industry that can’t be overturned by judges. Sacramento’s standards have been adopted by many other states and countries, so whether they can survive Trump rollbacks and court challenges could have major implications for the world’s fight against climate change.
| | | | A message from United for Democracy:   | | | | 4. DISINFORMATION DIGEST: “This threat hunter chases U.S. foes exploiting AI to sway the election,” by WaPo’s Cat Zakrzewski: OpenAI’s BEN NIMMO is “at the vanguard in confronting the dramatic boost that artificial intelligence can provide to foreign adversaries’ disinformation operations … So far, the 52-year-old Englishman says Russia and other foreign actors are largely ‘experimenting’ with AI, often in amateurish and bumbling campaigns that have limited reach with U.S. voters. But OpenAI and the U.S. government are bracing for Russia, Iran and other nations to become more effective with AI, and their best hope of parrying that is by exposing and blunting operations before they gain traction.” 5. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: As war keeps raging across the region, the U.S. has switched to a much more hands-off approach to the Israel-Hezbollah escalation, a shift from its previous efforts to achieve a cease-fire, Reuters’ Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk report. Though U.S. officials are still largely in the dark about how Israel will respond to Iran’s recent attack, they now think Israel has drawn up a shortlist of potential military and energy targets, NBC’s Courtney Kube, Monica Alba, Andrea Mitchell, Mosheh Gains and Carol Lee report. In Gaza, a hunger crisis is worsening as no food has entered the northern part of the territory this whole month, CNN’s Mick Krever reports. Meanwhile, new troves of secret Hamas documents show that the militant group tried to get Iran to join in the Oct. 7 attack, NYT’s Ronen Bergman. Adam Rasgon and Patrick Kingsley report, and dreamed of launching a much broader assault to destroy Israel completely, WaPo’s Joby Warrick, Souad Mekhennet and Loveday Morris report. The step back: The ultimate outcome of the Israel-Hamas war could depend a lot on what happens in the West Bank, where Nahal Toosi writes that the Biden administration faces unanswered questions about why it took so long to act. 6. ANNALS OF DIPLOMACY: “A Port Deal Unsettles U.S. Counterterror Fight in the Horn of Africa,” by WSJ’s Michael Phillips: “The U.S., which has 450 commandos and other defense personnel stationed in Somalia to advise local troops fighting al-Shabaab and Islamic State, worries the [Ethiopia-Somalia] contretemps [over Somaliland] is distracting Mogadishu from the 18-year counterinsurgency war.”
| | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | | Kevin Walsh is shaking up the New Jersey political establishment. Kamala Harris packed supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery in North Carolina. Tim Walz came up empty on a pheasant hunt. Janet Yellen shopped at Wegmans. SPOTTED: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore at the University of Maryland-Northwestern football game Friday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Second gentleman Doug Emhoff (6-0) … Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) … Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) … Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Clarence Wardell … Tiffany Trump … Fox News’ Harris Faulkner … Revv’s Gerrit Lansing … Ari Fleischer … Jack Krumholtz … FGS Global’s Nedra Pickler and Gregg Rothschild … Nate Brand … POLITICO’s Ry Rivard, Emily Cadei and Jenny Scarbrough … The 19th’s Candice Norwood … WaPo’s Alice Crites … K&L Gates’ Dan Crowley … former Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) … NBC’s Rebecca Shabad and Alexis Saunders … Carla Sands … Michael Tomasky … Richard Siegel … CAP’s Jerry Parshall … Judy Pino … Jeffrey Kimbell … Christen Linke Young … Daryl Muller … Dawn Le … Joanna Burgos …Carrie Adams … Billy Bush … Sarah Callander of Rep. Becca Balint’s (D-Vt.) office … Kris Anderson … Sarah Stevens Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
| | | | A message from United for Democracy: Project 2025 is a policy blueprint created by the far-right Heritage Foundation meant to gut America’s system of checks and balances. Their goal? Take control of the government… and our lives.
If MAGA extremists win this fall, they will pursue Project 2025 policies like banning IVF and setting up a national abortion and pregnancy registry to force states to report abortion data. While raising taxes on middle-class Americans, they’ll also remove many environmental protections so companies can pollute our air, soil, and water with known cancer-causing toxic chemicals.
You think the Courts will save us?! LOL. The six MAGA Supreme Court Justices are already implementing some of Project 2025’s worst ideas.
In fact, they already deemed a president immune from all criminal acts they deem “official,” and stripped women of their reproductive freedom.
Learn more at Project2025.wtf, before it’s too late.
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