The Question Republicans Can’t Answer: Who Won the 2020 Election?

Happy Thursday! Election Day is 33 days away. Even if you liked Sen. J.D. Vance’s performance on Tuesday, you probably didn’t like it as much as Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, who posted a picture of the Republican vice presidential nominee that was edited to make him look … different.

Up to Speed

• The International Longshoremen’s Association, a union that represents 45,000 dockworkers across the country, declared a strike Tuesday at 36 East Coast and Gulf Coast ports from Maine to Texas, and the two major-party presidential candidates used the work stoppage as an opportunity to slam each other. “The situation should have never come to this and, had I been President, it would not have,” former President Donald Trump said in a statement. “This is only happening because of the inflation brought on by Kamala Harris’ two votes for massive, out-of-control spending, and her decision to cut off energy exploration.” On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that she believed the striking workers “deserve a fair share” of shipping companies’ profits. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, wants to pull us back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize,” she stated. “As President, he blocked overtime benefits for millions of workers, he appointed union busters to the NLRB—and just recently, he said striking workers should be fired.” The strike could affect U.S. exports, raise prices for consumers, and stoke economic discontent in the final month of this year’s election.
• Trump’s campaign raised $160 million during the month of September, it said in a news release, bringing its cash on hand to $283 million. That monthly total is an increase from the $130 million the campaign raised in August. The Harris campaign has not released its September numbers yet, but it took in $361 million in August.
• The Trump campaign raised “north of $350,000” at a debate watch party Tuesday evening at New York’s Harmony Club, sources tell Dispatch Politics. The fundraiser was organized by the Republican nominee’s “Jewish Leadership Coalition.” More than 150 people showed up, including wealthy GOP donors Charles Herbster, Scott Bessent, and Carol Adams. Also attending were Empire State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York. Per a copy of the invitation we obtained, the minimum contribution required to attend was $1,000. The event coincided with the vice presidential debate pitting Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
• The National Republican Senatorial Committee is canceling all of its independent expenditure advertising in favor of running “hybrid” spots, in which it shares the cost with individual campaigns, Politico reported Wednesday. The cost-saving measure, which comes as Republicans have complained about trailing their Democratic counterparts in fundraising for Senate and House races, allows the committee to secure reservations at the lower rate candidate campaigns receive. However, rules for hybrid ads ensure that they cover both the specific campaign itself and national issues, which can make them difficult to craft. That also means more messaging coordination between the campaign and the NRSC, potentially making for more effective ads.
• Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s campaign said it brought in close to $31 million in the third quarter. The record-breaking total makes Brown more competitive in a tight race against Republican challenger Bernie Moreno that will help determine control of the Senate.

Trump’s Election Denials Tie Vance, Republicans in Knots

NEW YORK—Imagine what the presidential campaign might look like had Donald Trump conceded defeat to Joe Biden four years ago, attended the inauguration, and not insisted on insisting—all these years later, every chance he gets—that the 2020 election was stolen.

With Biden’s job approval stuck near 40 percent and Trump leading Kamala Harris on critical issues like the economy and border security, the Republican nominee might have built a durable lead that did not rely on the president’s advanced age, a lead that has vanished since the Democratic incumbent made way for his vice president. 

But as witnessed during a vice presidential debate here, fidelity to Trump’s unsubstantiated stolen election claims is among the very few non-negotiable positions for a GOP ticket that has softened its conservative edges on abortion, health care, and government control of the economy, to say nothing of spending and debt. 

And that inflexibility gifted the Democratic Party a viral and potentially politically potent moment at the tail end of a prime-time debate that Republican nominee J.D. Vance otherwise dominated. During a discussion about Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and the ensuing riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Tim Walz said: “This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say—he is still saying—he didn’t lose the election.” 

Then the Minnesota governor asked Vance directly: “I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?” The Ohio senator’s response? “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?” To which Walz retorted: “That is a damning—that is a damning non-answer.” It took Team Harris less than 12 hours to turn the moment into a campaign advertisement.

Let’s compare Vance’s obfuscation on the outcome of the last presidential election with the contrition he showed when explaining his opposition to abortion rights.  

“As a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us,” Vance said. “The proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy.”

That’s some surprising pliability from Vance on a topic that for decades has been a third-rail issue in the avowedly pro-life GOP. (Trump in a social media post during the debate said he would veto any legislation implementing a national abortion ban that crossed his desk.) And so it went throughout the debate. But it’s not just Vance. 

In the close-quarters spin room set up for the vice presidential faceoff inside CBS News headquarters on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, prominent Republicans on-site to promote Vance—and criticize Walz—also pointedly refused to cross Trump on the matter of who won the 2020 election. Here’s an exchange we had with Sen. Katie Britt, the very capable freshman Alabama Republican seen by some in her party as a future majority (or minority) leader:

Dispatch Politics: Sen. Vance, he had a great night. But he wouldn’t say that Donald Trump lost the last election, and it really rubs a lot of voters the wrong way. Shouldn’t the ticket, once and for all, say, yeah, Joe Biden won?

Britt: “I think J.D. did a really nice job of talking about being truthful.”

Dispatch Politics: But he didn’t answer the question. He wouldn’t say that Biden won. Maybe you agree with him.

Britt: “What I’m saying is, I think he did a really nice job. I think he answered it. You may not like the answer that he gave.”

Dispatch Politics: Did you like the answer?

Britt: “Well, I think he did a nice job. I do. He talked about—there were some things that people were concerned about and I think to brush that off is probably—it’s not smart to not think about the things that citizens are concerned about and work to fix those. I mean, obviously Joe Biden is the president of the United States.”

Dispatch Politics: You think he won? Or you think he’s just president?

Britt: “He’s the president of the United States.”

Dispatch Politics: Did he win?

At that point, Britt smiled but did not respond. We thanked her for engaging our questions and moved on.

Less than five weeks before Election Day, Trump is positioned to win. He trails Harris by more than 2 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls and is statistically tied with the vice president in the swing states poised to crown the winner. But in a game of inches, wouldn’t the former president do his campaign a big favor if he acknowledged Biden beat him four years ago—or at least stopped declaring that the only way he’ll lose again is if the Democrats cheat while vowing to fight the results all the way until Inauguration Day?

Dispatch Politics put that question to Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser who has counseled the 45th president in all three of his White House bids. Miller’s answer?

“Democrats want to keep looking in the rearview mirror. We’re looking forward to 2024,” he said. “Again, we’re looking forward to 2024. Democrats want to look to the past because they know they’re not going to win in this next election.”

Eyes on the Trail

• President Joe Biden travels today to Georgia and Florida to survey damage wrought by Hurricane Helene. 
• Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Ripon, Wisconsin, today for an evening campaign event at a historic one-room schoolhouse building considered to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. There, Harris will be joined by Republican Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman and vocal Trump opponent who has endorsed the vice president.
• Former President Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally this afternoon in University Center, Michigan, a community in greater Saginaw.

Notable and Quotable

“I believe that we are going to have the safest and most secure election in 2024 that we’ve had because the RNC is fighting for election integrity in a way that it frankly wasn’t four years ago.”
—Sen. J.D. Vance at a rally in Auburn Hills, Michigan, October 2, 2024