Kamala Harris Energizes Weary Democrats

Happy Wednesday! We think America needs to see a basketball game between Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. Youngkin might have the advantage, though, since Shapiro was cut from his college basketball team, while the Virginia governor hooped for his.

Up to Speed

• Kari Lake, the former television news anchor who lost her bid for governor of Arizona in 2022, is the Republican nominee for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. Lake easily defeated her closest rival for the nomination, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, in Tuesday’s primary. In the general election, she will face Rep. Ruben Gallego, who ran uncontested in the Democratic primary. Lake and Gallego are running to succeed retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent who has served just one term. Lake, a close ally of Donald Trump, has never publicly conceded losing her race for governor against Democrat Katie Hobbs two years ago.
• Abe Hamadeh led Blake Masters who, in turn, led state House Speaker Ben Toma in the Republican primary for Arizona’s deep-red 8th Congressional District with 79 percent of the vote reported, according to the Associated Press. The race had not been called at the time of publication. The primary was a battle of endorsements. Trump initially backed Hamadeh while his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, sided with Masters. The district’s outgoing congresswoman, Rep. Debbie Lesko, endorsed Toma. Over the weekend, however, Trump endorsed both Hamadeh and Masters.
• After the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, Paul Dans, stepped down on Tuesday, Heritage President Kevin Roberts will lead the initiative, a Heritage source told Dispatch Politics, adding that the project itself is not shutting down. Conflicting reports about the status of the project, intended as a blueprint for the next Republican presidential administration, circulated after Dans announced his departure. But his letter announcing his resignation said the efforts to build a personnel database for staffing the next Republican administration will continue. The Trump campaign publicly rooted for the dismantling of what has been one of its electoral bugaboos, as Democrats have repeatedly tried to associate the former president with Project 2025 even as he has repeatedly disavowed it. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign— it will not end well for you,” Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a joint statement. The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
• Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has confirmed she will announce her running mate before her Tuesday rally in Philadelphia, where she will be joined by the VP pick. As it happens, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—who hails from suburban Philadelphia—is a finalist for the spot. Philly is one of seven cities in battleground states that Harris and her pick will hit in a four-day blitz next week.
• Dan Kanninen, Harris’ battleground states director, told reporters that the campaign was preparing to attack Trump’s record on abortion. “Trump has tried to hide his anti-abortion record, but we all know that actions speak louder than words. The biggest decision Trump has made in his campaign to date was his running mate. What did he do? He picked J.D. Vance, who called rape an inconvenience, voted to block protections for IVF, and compared abortion to slavery,” he said on a press call Monday. With Iowa enacting a six-week abortion ban this week, the Harris campaign will be doing “dozens” of events in battleground states that focus on abortion rights.
• But the Harris campaign did not mention abortion in its first TV ad, which it released Tuesday. Instead, it contrasted Harris’ record with what she characterized as Trump’s policy prescriptions. “This campaign is about who we fight for,” Harris says in a clip from a campaign rally that plays in the ad. “We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead, where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward, to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act—but we are not going back.” Meanwhile, Harris is accusing Trump of being weak on border security in a new campaign video.
• The Trump campaign, meanwhile, hit Harris hard on immigration, calling the vice president America’s “border czar” in a television ad that featured footage of her dancing. Alleging she is responsible for drugs and dangerous people crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, the spot climaxed in a clip from an older interview where she answered, “And I haven’t been to Europe,” in response to a question from NBC News anchor Lester Holt about why she had not visited the southern border. The ad concludes by calling her, “Failed. Weak. DANGEROUSLY Liberal,” echoing a previous ad.
• Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries revealed the seven Republicans and six Democrats who will serve on the committee to investigate the assassination attempt against Trump. Rep. Mike Kelly will chair the committee, and fellow Republican Reps. Mark Green, David Joyce, Laurel Lee, Michael Waltz, Clay Higgins, and Pat Fallon will join him. Rep. Jason Crow will serve as the committee’s ranking member, and fellow Democratic Reps. Lou Correa, Madeleine Dean, Chrissy Houlahan, Glenn Ivey, and Jared Moskowitz will join him. “We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified, and capable Members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and help make certain such failures never happen again,” Johnson and Jeffries said in a joint statement.

Kamala Harris Leaves Georgia Dems ‘Reenergized’

ATLANTA—It’s a Democratic party again.

As the audience waited for Vice President Kamala Harris here on Tuesday evening, Tish and Tammy Morgan, a sister duo manning a microphone and a DJ stand, blasted music to hype up the crowd. On the floor and in the bleachers at the Georgia State Convocation Center, people danced to hip-hop, soul, and rock music for hours before Harris actually took the stage. They got down to the “Cupid Shuffle,” belted out “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and vibed to “Welcome to Atlanta.” And that was all before rapper Megan Thee Stallion and a troupe of dancers ran through a medley of her hit songs to really get everyone moving. 

The scene was infectiously fun. Several large American flags were unfurled in the stands, along with a large white banner with the word “Freedom” written in blue capital letters. At one point, Tish asked the crowd to sway to the beat of “Swag Surfin” by Fast Life Yungstaz as nearly everyone held up blue signs that read “Kamala.” The room was humming.

Once Harris did take the stage, a crowd that had given loud applause to former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and, yes, Megan, gave the presumptive Democratic nominee their most raucous response yet. The vessel for Democratic hopes to keep Donald Trump out of the White House for good had arrived.

Her understated, brisk address (clocking in at just under 19 minutes) benefited from the hours of hyping up. Harris speaks with neither the soaring cadence of Barack Obama nor the rambling but irresistible theatrics of Trump. Instead, she is deliberate, employing a sense of rhythm befitting of a former prosecutor but not necessarily a stellar political orator.

“I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right through this state,” Harris said.

But if there was any trepidation within the crowd about Harris as their new presumptive nominee, her still-a-work-in-progress stump speech delivered more than enough to reassure them. She reprised her spiel, first delivered last week in Milwaukee, contrasting her experience as a prosecutor with the crimes and wrongdoing of Trump.

“As a prosecutor, I specialized in child sexual abuse cases and sexual abuse cases. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse,” Harris said. “And then as an attorney general, I held the big Wall Street banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud.”

The audience erupted in cheers, which suddenly transformed into a chant of “lock him up,” reminiscent of how Republicans at Trump rallies in 2016 would frequently chant the same thing about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Harris paused and looked down, looking unsure of how to feel about the chant. But it died down quickly, and she continued.

“So in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his,” she said, again to rousing cheers.

The riff about Trump’s legal issues—plus a mention of the latest Democratic bugaboo, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—was about the closest the vice president came to delivering progressive red meat to this very Democratic audience. The rest of her speech seemed designed for the array of television cameras and the swing voters who will be watching clips of the speech in the days to come. Her message? She will move the country forward, Trump will take it backward.

On the economy, Harris claimed credit for the good things happening under President Joe Biden but acknowledged the problems: “Inflation is down and wages are up, but prices are still too high. You know it, and I know it.” 

On health care, she accused Trump of wanting to roll back the Affordable Care Act and undo the ban on insurance companies denying coverage for customers with preexisting conditions: “You guys remember what that was like?” 

And on abortion, she used the term only to refer to “Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans” (laws actually passed by state legislatures) and positioned herself as a protector of freedom of choice: “And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.”

In her most interesting decision, Harris tried to insulate herself from one of her biggest weaknesses—her role as the Biden administration’s point person on border and immigration issues—by throwing the issue back at Trump. Paraphrasing Atlanta-based rap group Migos, whose member Quavo spoke earlier in the evening, she said on immigration that Trump “does not walk it like he talks it.”

Harris walked through how Trump worked to sink a border security bill in Congress that had been backed by some of the Senate’s staunchest conservatives. “It was all set to pass when at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down,” Harris said. “He tanked, tanked, the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election.”

Whether or not Harris’ gambit can close the sale to swing voters in the less than 100 days until the election, one thing was clear in Atlanta: Democrats are ecstatic about the presidential race again. 

That’s thanks to an eleventh-hour withdrawal from Biden, yes, but also a sense that Harris, who is just shy of 60 years old, has the energy to defeat Trump. Signs that read “Let’s WIN this” and “When we fight, WE WIN” formed the backdrop to Harris’ speech, while the latter slogan was displayed across the ribbon screen encircling the arena. Implied is the inverse, that when Democrats don’t fight, they don’t win. The uncomfortable truth for Democrats is that Biden, running a limp reelection effort as his cognitive and physical abilities faltered, wasn’t able to fight. With Harris, they now say, that’s changed.

“I feel more excited,” Karen Green, a Democratic voter from Snellville who drove to downtown Atlanta to see Harris with her husband James, told Dispatch Politics. “Reenergized.”

For the Harris Campaign, ‘Freedom’ Is In, ‘Trump Threatens Democracy’ Is Out

AMBLER, Pennsylvania—For more than an hour Monday afternoon, prominent Democrats, led by hometown Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, rallied grassroots liberals in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’ days-old White House bid. None accused Republican nominee Donald Trump of threatening American democracy.

Instead, Shapiro and Whitmer argued broadly that the November 5 election is all about “freedom.” The former president, the two governors claimed in twin speeches, “keeps trying to rip away our fundamental freedoms.” Only once did either of them, in this case Shapiro, reference the issue of Trump and democracy—the main staple of President Joe Biden’s 2024 message until he dropped his reelection bid 10 days ago. And it was a rather oblique reference at that.

“It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. That’s not freedom. It is not freedom to tell people they can go to work but they can’t join a union. That’s not freedom. It is not freedom to tell women what they’re allowed to do with their bodies. That’s not freedom,” Shapiro thundered, to a passionate crowd of more than 1,200 packed into a high school gymnasium in Montgomery County, a key suburban Philadelphia battleground in this crucial swing state.

Next, the charismatic, 51-year-old Shapiro—a first-term governor and potential Harris running mate—offered this single, subtle-yet-pointed comment on concerns many Democrats harbor about the viability of democracy under Trump: “It’s not freedom to tell people they can go vote but he’s going to pick the winner. That is not freedom.” The apparent messaging shift atop the Democratic ticket that has accompanied Harris replacing Biden as the party’s presumptive nominee is noteworthy, suggesting a possible pivot in campaign strategy. 

Democratic base voters may respond to rhetoric that paints Trump as a constitutional usurper. But charging that the former president would undermine basic “freedoms” could help Harris connect with left-wing partisans as well as persuadable disaffected Republicans, independents and swing voters. The audience here, largely suburban Democrats who do believe the former president would assault constitutional norms, liked what it heard. 

“That resonates with people because [Trump] wants to take away freedoms from us that people have already died to get for us. So we can’t go backwards and let that be in vain,” said rallygoer Rachael Dicks, a middle-aged Democratic voter. “Freedom is what we need.” Just as important as approving of the new messaging, the crowd was excited to be here—in stark contrast to the malaise that had settled over the party toward the end of Biden’s campaign.

Perhaps 100 people lined up outside the gym before the doors opened. Several hundred more streamed in hours early, standing for the duration of the event, and many stayed late to take selfies and shake hands with Shapiro and Whitmer. And Harris wasn’t even the headliner, although her campaign played host. It’s a sign that the vice president’s ascension has made them believe victory over Trump is possible after nearly a year of fearing his return to the White House was inevitable.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, and I just wanted to be part of it,” said Joe Jennings, a member of the Chester County Democratic Committee. 

Shapiro and Whitmer appeared together as top Democrats continue to fan out across crucial battleground states to boost the nascent Harris campaign and, in the case of some, audition for the party’s vice presidential nomination. Whitmer quickly pulled herself out of the running, saying she would honor a commitment to finish her second term as Michigan’s chief executive. Shapiro has made no such declarations and is believed to be on Harris’ short list. 

The Harris campaign declined to comment, although she is expected to announce her running mate selection early next week in Philadelphia and embark on a joint swing through the battleground states. Harris and her to-be-determined No. 2 are scheduled to head to western Wisconsin; Detroit; Raleigh, North Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Phoenix; and Las Vegas.

But Shapiro and Whitmer’s messaging Tuesday mirrored what Harris said (and didn’t say) during a campaign rally in Milwaukee last week and Atlanta on Tuesday. “We are the party, as Gov. Shapiro likes to say, of real freedom for Americans,” Whitmer said Tuesday.

Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic pollster, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about the strategy of a campaign that is not yet two weeks old. 

The argument that Trump poses a danger to democracy, emphasized by Biden through his presidency and often given top billing in his since aborted 2024 bid, remains potent with many Democratic voters, Trippi said. Indeed, that rhetoric is still present in the Harris campaign’s social media messaging. He added, however, that the vice president’s fresh focus on freedom would help her reach beyond the Democratic base.

“It does expand to a larger percentage of Americans who, when you talk about democracy in terms of freedom, opportunity and responsibility, you get a much broader response to the message,” Trippi said. “So far, I think the campaign is doing a good job of expanding into that message.” 

Notable and Quotable

“Women’s freedom is Exhibit A after Donald Trump demolished the right to choose, but, of course, men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion care.”

—Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg at a “White Dudes for Harris” event, July 29, 2024