Tangle - The 2024 election is now a toss-up.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

Tomorrow.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a personal essay about Israel and what is happening in Gaza. In tomorrow’s members-only Friday edition, I’ll be sharing that piece and discussing how my feelings continue to evolve.

Quick hits.

1. The World Health Organization declared the deadly new form of mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) spreading through Africa a global health emergency. (The declaration)
2. Russia has recalled troops from Ukraine to its southwestern Kursk region where Ukrainian forces continue to advance into Russian territory. (The withdrawl)
3. Roughly 450,000 of the 3.3 million people living in Puerto Rico are without power after Hurricane Ernesto made landfall yesterday. (The hurricane)
4. The Biden administration announced an agreement with drugmakers to lower prices on a list of 10 common, high-cost prescription drugs covered under Medicare, including blood thinners and diabetes medication. The changes will go into effect in 2026. (The prices)
5. Columbia University's President Minouche Shafik resigned yesterday in the wake of her handling of Israel-Hamas war protests on campus. (The resignation)

Today's topic.

The latest in the 2024 election. Less than a month after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his bid for reelection, Democrats have transformed their ticket, spurring a shift in the polls and renewing voter engagement. With Vice President Kamala Harris officially replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee and naming Gov. Tim Walz (MN) as her running mate, both parties have sought to reestablish their footing and adapt their campaign messaging to the new dynamics of the race. 

In the past week, a slew of major polls have shown Harris catching or overtaking former President Donald Trump in key battleground states. On Saturday, a New York Times/Siena poll found Harris leading Trump by four points in three key swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — a notable shift from their prior polling that consistently showed Trump leading or tied with Biden in those states. 

On Wednesday, new polls from Cook Political Report and Pew Research showed similar momentum for Harris; Cook Political found her leading or tied with Trump in six of seven battleground states, while Pew found Harris leading Trump 46%-45% nationally. Not every poll shows the same surge for Harris, though: The latest Fox News poll still showed Trump leading Harris 49%-48%, the same margin as they found for Trump’s lead over Biden in July. Broadly, FiveThirtyEight’s average of presidential polls gives Harris a 46.2%-43.5% lead over Trump as of Thursday morning; prior to Biden’s exit from the race, Trump led polling averages 43.5%-40.2%. 

With two-and-a-half months until Election Day, both parties are gearing up for a sprint to the finish. The Democratic National Convention is next week in Chicago, and ABC News will host the first debate between Trump and Harris on September 10; Trump has also reportedly agreed to two additional debates in September. Meanwhile, Walz and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance have agreed to a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News on October 1. 

The past weeks have also brought new challenges for each campaign. While the Harris campaign has brought in record fundraising and volunteer sign-ups, Harris herself has faced criticism for not giving any interviews since becoming the Democratic nominee. She recently suggested that she would schedule an interview before the end of August, but has not offered further details in the week since that comment. Additionally, Harris has been slow to roll out her campaign platform, though she plans to give her first policy-focused speech in North Carolina this week. 

Conversely, Trump has been active in the media, including a two-hour, live-streamed conversation on X with Elon Musk on Monday and a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence last Thursday. Those events followed Trump’s contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31. Separately, strategists on both sides have suggested that the Trump campaign is struggling to adjust to campaigning against its new opponent. 

Today, we’ll survey what commentators on the right and left are saying about the latest in the presidential race. Then, I’ll share my take. 

What the right is saying.

• The right points out that Harris’s strategy of avoiding the media could backfire on her.
• Some acknowledge that Harris’s campaign has momentum, but say that Trump still has a path to victory.
• Others say Trump’s campaign has been dysfunctional since Harris entered the race.

In Blaze Media, Christopher Bedford wrote about “Kamala’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ strategy — and its danger.”

“Harris is a mysterious public figure indeed. Despite hitting the campaign trail, she’s managed to stay virtually entirely on script — and never off the cuff. She's distanced herself from her past positions, sponsorships, and even her current agenda,” Bedford said. “You might call it the ‘Wizard of Oz’ campaign strategy. ‘Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain! The great Her has spoken!’ It’s not bad; brilliant in its simplicity. But with every passing day, the act grows a little more dangerous… Democrats are even telling reporters (on background, of course) that there’s no reason to muck up the ‘enthusiasm and energy’ with policy, and they’re right. Democrats have nothing to gain and everything to lose by putting Harris on the stand.”

“The strategy worked for Joe Biden in 2020. But he had COVID to hide behind — and an incumbent weakened by his own COVID policies and consumed by his personal gripes and feuds. The unintended consequence of all that hiding, however, was declining public trust. When his actual abilities were finally revealed during the first re-election debate against former President Donald Trump, it all came tumbling down,” Bedford wrote. “The longer Harris waits before giving an interview, the closer the focus it will receive.”

In RedState, Jeff Charles said Harris’s “honeymoon phase won't last forever.”

“These numbers aren’t looking great for Trump, who has enjoyed favorable polling numbers, especially since the assassination attempt. But it is worth noting that much of Harris’ favorability is coming from the expected polling bump after she became the nominee and announced her running mate. There is a decent chance that the honeymoon phase will soon wane, and the numbers might even out,” Charles wrote. “Still, it would not be wise for the right to discount this data. Harris is garnering a significant level of support.”

“Harris’ campaign is dominating the news cycle at the moment, which is an expected development since she just officially became the nominee. The vice president has also adopted a positive messaging strategy rather than relying solely on attacking her opponent. Moreover, she has been desperately avoiding the press and any unscripted encounters while giving rallies and playing to her strengths,” Charles said. “Now is the time for Team Trump to find a way to disrupt Harris’ momentum instead of waiting for it to fade out on its own. There is still plenty of time between now and November.”

In National Review, Mark Antonio Wright asked “does Donald Trump know what time it is?”

“Donald Trump is on track to lose this election. Is it impossible for him to turn things around? No, of course not. But the Trump campaign is behind, it’s losing ground, it’s running out of time, and it doesn’t appear to have the nimbleness to adjust course and get back in the game,” Wright wrote. “Sure, any one poll can be an outlier. Sure, one may choose to doubt that Harris is ‘really’ up four points in the Midwestern Blue Wall states. One can discount the ‘vibe shift’ or its effect on the brass tacks of the horse race. But this is a real trend. And it’s backed by a wide variety of data from a wide variety of sources.”

“The question is: Does Donald Trump know it? Does Donald Trump realize that he’s on track to lose? He sure doesn’t seem to be acting like it,” Wright said. “As Harris locked up the nomination and galloped ahead in the polls, as Democratic enthusiasm surged and fundraising dollars poured in, Trump and his campaign have: litigated whether Kamala Harris is actually black… boasted about his own crowd sizes and compared them to the crowd that witnessed Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and, in general, comported himself like a lunatic late at night on Truth Social. Inflation, mass illegal immigration, and chaos and weakness abroad have been complete afterthoughts.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is encouraged by Harris’s recent poll numbers, suggesting that she’s seized the upper hand in the race.
• Some argue Trump’s campaign was not prepared to run against a non-Biden candidate.
• Others say the Harris and Trump campaigns both lack substance.

In The Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr. wrote “it’s not just vibes. Harris is polling really well.”

“We are in the middle of a Harris surge. Basically all election experts agree on that, and it shows up in numerous metrics. Harris is doing at least two percentage points better than Biden was in all seven major swing states,” Bacon said. “Biden trailed Trump by about three points in national polls before he dropped out, according to FiveThirtyEight. Harris leads by two. A five-point swing is huge in today’s deeply polarized politics. Harris’s gains are coming from across demographics. She is doing better than Biden was among Black, Latino and White voters, those under 45 and over 45, and Democrats and independents.”

“Journalists, political strategists and others have a lot of theories for why Harris is doing better… But the most important explanation is the obvious one: Many voters, including left-leaning ones, had been saying for years that they felt Biden was too old and that they wanted a different Democratic candidate,” Bacon wrote. “As someone who really doesn’t want another term of Trump, I love seeing these shifts. But while the past month has moved the race in the Democrats’ direction, it’s still very close.”

In MSNBC, Hayes Brown said “Trump is struggling.”

“Most infuriating to Trump is his campaign being in a position it has rarely been in: chasing the spotlight. Rather than setting the media’s agenda every day, he’s been forced to watch as Harris has sucked up all the oxygen in the room,” Brown wrote. “Trump hasn’t been doing himself many favors in this post-Biden campaign. While Harris and Walz are crisscrossing six swing states introducing themselves this week, Trump is mostly off the campaign trail. His sudden decision to hold a press event was a clear attempt to draw the focus back to himself, an attempt that will likely prove to be less effective than it’s been in the past.”

“The problem is that Trump and his campaign spent the last several years preparing to run against Biden and are having difficulty shifting gears,” Brown said. “It doesn’t help that the Trump campaign hasn’t landed on an effective message to deploy against Harris beyond the boilerplate anti-Democrat language that typifies the Trump era. (Soft on crime, bad on the border, secretly a communist — you know the drill.) Without a firm strategy in place, we see Trump trying to find something — anything — that works.”

In The New Yorker, Jay Caspian Kang asked “how generic can Kamala Harris be?”

“Does it actually matter if Kamala Harris stands for something?... We know that Harris was a prosecutor. We know that Donald Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, are ‘weird.’ And we know that Harris has erased much of Trump’s lead in swing states, and that things are looking up. That’s about the extent of it,” Kang wrote. “In tennis, a ‘pusher’ is a player who safely returns the ball over the net, again and again, waiting for an increasingly frustrated opponent to make a mistake. This appears to be Campaign Kamala’s strategy: don’t make any unforced errors, keep things vanilla, and eventually Trump or Vance will implode.”

“As wildly different as Harris and Trump are, their campaigns seem to share a degree of indifference to the specifics of what their candidates are saying, because both campaigns realize that many of their voters are unconcerned about such details—or, at the very least, are unlikely to be moved by them. What matters to many voters right now is their hatred and fear, however justified, of the opposing candidate, and the fun they have calling the other side weird, dangerous, and deranged. Harris and Trump, under differing circumstances, and in different ways, have floated above what was once the perfunctory and deeply unsexy muck of campaigning on a platform.”

My take.

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• Ever since Harris replaced Biden, this race has clearly taken on a whole new dynamic.
• Democrats have the momentum and are setting the narrative, and it’s possible Harris’s lead still has room to grow.
• Conversely, Harris has not sat for any tough interviews like Trump has, and how she handles the debates and coming scrutiny will be pivotal.

A few weeks ago, my read on the 2024 race looked something like this: Donald Trump was in the driver's seat; Democrats were the underdogs, but poll-watchers were underestimating how many Americans still dislike Trump (and how well organized the Democratic Party was on the ground). Basically: Trump was winning the race against Biden, but not by a whole lot, because our country is very divided and the reds and blues really don't like each other right now.

I'm not sure whether this is "going out on a limb" or not, but today — Thursday, August 15 — I think Kamala Harris is in the driver's seat.

That lead might not stick. Remember — election dynamics can change quickly. It has been one month since someone tried to kill Trump. Since then, JD Vance became Trump's running mate, Biden dropped out of the race, Harris took over the nomination, and Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate. As has basically become my mantra for this election: A lot can happen in a week, let alone a month, or months.

But right now, Harris is winning. She is leading in the highest-rated polls, which consistently show her ahead in swing states. She has received a massive surge of fundraising and inherited the campaign infrastructure that was keeping Biden relevant and has helped Democrats win most of the close and competitive races since 2018. On the ground, her rallies are driving big audiences that might be typical for Trump but are not typical for past Democratic nominees. She's pivoted the campaign's message away from "democracy" and toward "freedom," which I think was a smart move, and she's emphasizing her own working class bonafides to voters (a recent campaign ad talks about how she worked at McDonald's while going to college). 

In sum, she’s launched an energetic, organized, fresh and focused campaign — and she hit the ground running. Not incidentally, Democrats are strongly outperforming Republicans in the most-watched and competitive Senate races, a clear sign of the party’s strength.

Trump, meanwhile, seems to be in reset mode. His campaign needed a few weeks to start landing punches on Harris and Walz, and his off-the-cuff style (which is often an asset) now looks more costly; he spends far too much time attacking Republicans, lamenting that Biden dropped out of the race, and ad libbing about his crowd sizes. His pick for running mate is getting decidedly mixed reviews from the right and has become an easy target for the left. While Trump and Vance could (and should) be hammering Harris for all of her policy reversals and for moving wherever the political winds blow, they've spent way too much time simply complaining. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Trump 2016 was often about you, but Trump 2024 is far too often about him. It's one of the biggest ways his campaign and his message have floundered, and has (rightly) drawn criticism from even his most adoring allies.

The honeymoon bounce for Harris was entirely predictable. It might continue through the DNC next week, and it might even go on longer. Generic Democrats have long been polling ahead of Trump — so while Biden struggled, there was always an opening for an alternative candidate. Given that Harris is still running behind Senate Democrats, it’s even possible her numbers will keep improving. But there’s another Harris factor at play here, too. As comedian Tim Dillon put it: Harris is the one throwing the party. And the party always wins.

Trump, to a lot of Americans, is now predictable. Yesterday, conservative pundit Megyn Kelly even called his ramblings boring. It's genuinely hard to overstate how serious of a problem this is for his campaign. A big part of Trump’s appeal in 2016 was that he was novel — a flamethrower and comedian unlike any we had seen in American politics. Novelty appeals to the masses. It draws eyes and interest. And even if a lot of those eyes see something they don't like, plenty will see something they do. Right now, Democrats are drawing the eyes, and they are throwing the party.

Of course, that’s going to dissipate at some point. How soon that happens, and with what kind of velocity, is probably what is going to determine the outcome of this race.

Trump is standing before hostile press scrums and talking to the media regularly. Where is Harris? And what is her excuse? She isn't the president and is in full campaign mode. Yet she hasn't sat down for one primetime interview, not even with the major networks who would give her a friendly conversation — MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or NBC — and certainly not with the harder hitters like Fox News or The Wall Street Journal. I’m a politics reporter, and I’m still unsure what she even believes. Electorally, that might even be the point (again: A generic Democrat polls better than Trump). 

Whenever she does take a tough interview (and she could do so soon), she is going to be challenged on her record. She'll be asked about her flip-flops, her role on the border as vice president, the Biden administration's record, and what she really believes now. One of three things will happen: 1) She'll step on a few rakes, remind us why she struggled so much in the 2020 Democratic primary, and bleed some support; 2) She’ll show that she is the refreshing and engaging candidate, give us something new, and the enthusiasm will go into overdrive; or 3) She’ll have some gaffes and some great moments, each side will cherry-pick those parts, and the race will not actually change much.

I don’t have a crystal ball in my office, so I can't say what direction we are headed. Right now, Harris is throwing the party. But she's also less tested, less known to the public, and less vetted than her opponent. It’s hard to judge a candidate who has yet to answer a tough question. 

One way or another, that's going to change before November 5.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: How much room do you think there really is for politicians to openly disagree with their core constituents on very hot topics? For instance, it feels like the Republicans that have chosen the side of loudly criticizing Trump or supporting Biden are largely on their way to being voted out by voters.

— Matthew from Boston, MA

Tangle: I think you’ll find that the answer really depends on two things: How crucial to the identity of the party is the thing a politician is disagreeing with their constituents about, and what is the makeup of their district? 

For Republicans, the party’s positions have been more aligned with the opinions of one person — Donald Trump — than at any time I can remember. For some of his positions (immigration, taxation, gun control, policing, education, etc.), that doesn’t create much tension with mainstream conservative opinions. But on others (abortion, the 2020 election, foreign policy) it does. We saw Trump refuse to admit that he lost the 2020 election, putting many Republicans in awkward positions. Some, like Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and Josh Hawley (MO), followed Trump’s lead and went as far as trying to legally challenge the results. Others, like Lisa Murkowski in moderately conservative Alaska, said they thought the election was fair and held their positions. Some, like Mark Lamb in Arizona, did the same and were primaried in their districts by candidates who adopted Trump’s line. 

For Democrats, the divide is less about the party's leader and more about the progressive vs. establishment divide. On Israel, for instance, you can see some politicians successfully bucking the party and some of their constituents (someone like Rep. Ilhan Omar) and others getting lots of negative press and even losing races in part because of that position (someone like Rep. Jamaal Bowman).

But you can also see examples where the reverse is true. For instance, Democrats who loudly criticized Biden actually survived his removal from the 2024 ticket and now look rather smart, given the momentum Harris has. Democratic voters have mostly aligned with that position, even though many objected to the idea a few months ago.

On the whole, I think it’s very uncommon for politicians to stake out controversial stances that are contrary to their voters’ beliefs and survive, largely because there is always another politician willing to use their stance against them. Even Omar, you could argue, was representing a big chunk of her constituents and their feelings about Israel while she broke from the party. Typically, if politicians disagree with their constituents on key issues in competitive districts, you can all but write their political obituaries.

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Under the radar.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought a meeting with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to discuss the possibility of serving in her administration if he throws his support behind her campaign and she wins, Kennedy campaign officials told The Washington Post. Harris and her advisers have not responded with an offer to meet or shown interest in the proposal. Kennedy’s offer comes just weeks after he reportedly made a similar approach to Republican nominee Donald Trump. The Kennedy campaign has produced polling allegedly showing that both Harris and Trump would benefit by publicly announcing that he was joining their administrations. The Washington Post has the story.

Numbers.

• 81. The number of days until Election Day.
• 26. The number of days until the first presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. 
• 48%. The percentage of voters who said they were enthusiastic about the race between President Joe Biden and former President Trump in June 2024, according to a Monmouth University poll.
• 68%. The percentage of voters who said they were enthusiastic about the race in August, after Vice President Harris replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket. 
• +39%. The increase in the percentage of Democrats who say they are enthusiastic about the election between June and August. 
• +19%. The increase in the percentage of independents who say they are enthusiastic about the election between June and August.
• 0%. The change in the percentage of Republicans who say they are enthusiastic about the election between June and August. 
• -3%. Harris’s net favorability rating with registered voters, according to an August 2024 Fox News poll. 
• -6%. Trump’s net favorability rating with registered voters.

The extras.

• One year ago today we reran a Friday edition about Isaac's insufferable friend Jared.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the UAW lawsuit against Trump and Elon Musk.
• Nothing to do with politics: Move aside, Steph Curry — a high school basketball coach set a new record for most three-pointers in an hour.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,090 readers responded to our survey asking readers if they’re concerned that the U.S. could have riots similar to the U.K riots with 36% saying they were a little concerned. “I am more concerned about riots for other reasons. I do see unrest growing,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

In July, doctors from Shanghai Chest Hospital in China successfully completed a remote surgery using a robot. The patient, located 5,000km away from their surgeon, needed a lung operation, which was ultimately carried out within one hour. The primary doctor, Luo Qingquan, remained in Shanghai while doctors in Kashgar were present as assistants. Dr. Luo said, “This surgery marks a major milestone illustrating the clinical capabilities of domestically produced surgical robots, providing significant advantages to patients, especially in remote and rural areas.” The Economic Times has the story. 

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