The News Not Noise Letter: The Succession Plan is Succeeding
Harris’s good week and Trump’s bad race math. Plus: Biden brings Americans home, and the Middle East on edge.
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Vice President Kamala Harris today secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. She’s had another solid week. She lit up the campaign trail with an Atlanta rally that gave Obama-2008 vibes, thanks in part to Megan Thee Stallion and a crowd of screaming 20-somethings. She’s leaned into the Obama thing, bringing his winningest campaign staffers onto her team – including political strategist David Plouffe and messaging guru Stephanie Cutter. The campaign says this month they raised $310 million, more than double Trump’s haul. And they’re driving anticipation over Harris’s pending VP pick. Harris is interviewing candidates this weekend, and expected to appear with her new running mate at a rally Tuesday in Pennsylvania. (Ignore whoever is telling you that she’s already finalized her pick – yes, we’ve heard the rumors it’s Gov. Shapiro. Just wait. You can read about the contenders here.)
A number of factors could still alter the race. Friday’s weak jobs report has everyone from Wall Street bankers to progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren worrying about the economy and the Federal Reserve. Iran, Hezbollah and Israel are locked in a cycle of escalation that could consume the region. All this is a reminder that with 94 days to the election, we don’t know what news events might shape voters’ late opinions as they cast their ballots.
A note: at the end of this newsletter, inspired by Trump’s latest drama, we take a closer look at multiracial America.
Here are your headlines:
Trump Campaign Updates: You’ve probably seen viral clips of former President Trump sniping at a journalist at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, and then questioning VP Harris’s Black identity. He was responding to a question about other Republicans who cynically called Harris a “DEI hire.” If Trump questioning Harris’s race was meant to be strategic, it backfired. Hard.
Why Did He Do It? It’s possible Trump brought up Harris’s race to trigger any white voters who suffer from, shall we call it, racial panic. Or, maybe it was meant to erode support among an imagined subset of Black voters resentful of biracial Americans. You’ll notice that Trump is attempting to paint Harris as both “too Black” and “not Black enough.”
Doubling Down: When Trump’s comments sparked outrage, his team doubled down. Sen. Vance called Harris a “chameleon” who “pretends to be somebody different, depending on the audience she’s talking to.” Across social media, Trump allies are sharing videos of Harris with morphing skin tones and features, coming in and out of traditional Indian attire, evoking age-old tropes about “shapeshifting” multiracial people. (Note: you can watch one video here to see for yourself. Don’t click if you don’t want to.)
Distance: Some GOPs have distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks and denounced them as “embarrassing,” “uncomfortable,” and “abhorrent.”
Back Heels: Meantime, Harris and her surrogates have managed a total tone shift for Democrats. They’ve replaced prior dour warnings of Trump as an “existential threat to democracy,” instead casting their opponents as out-of-touch angry dudes who romanticize “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and mock America’s GOAT, Simone Biles. And so far, Trump and Vance haven’t found an effective way to flip the script. In my experience, when it feels like a campaign is “fired up” and having fun, that campaign tends to win. (To wit: Obama 2008, Trump 2016.) Right now Harris is the happy warrior on the campaign trail.
Silver Lining? The racial-identity firestorm Trump ignited stepped on his message about the border and the economy. That’s not great for his campaign. On the other hand, after struggling to break into the news cycle last week, Trump’s now generating plenty of headlines. Maybe that was the goal all along.
Jobs Report Fears: Job growth in July fell far short of expectations, prompting warnings from Wall Street and sharp condemnation of the Fed from Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She said the Fed made a “serious mistake” not cutting interest rates sooner and called on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to “cancel his summer vacation and cut rates now.” The Dow today fell more than 600 points on the weak report.
Historic Prisoner Swap: This week President Biden pulled off a historic prisoner swap, the culmination of multi-year, multinational negotiations. Russia freed three US citizens and one US permanent resident who were wrongly detained. In all, 24 prisoners were released from seven countries, in the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War. President Biden and his administration worked with Germany, Slovenia, Poland and Norway to swap prisoners with Russia and Belarus. When President Biden convinced German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to free a convicted Russian hit man who killed a Russian exile in Berlin in broad daylight, Scholz reportedly told the president, “For you, I will do this.” And just an hour before Biden announced he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election, he placed a phone call to Slovenia’s prime minister to secure a final piece of the deal. In all, the Biden administration has negotiated the release of more than 70 Americans detained abroad, and this will undoubtedly be a cornerstone of his legacy. You can see moving videos of the prisoner’s return here.
Uncertainty in the Middle East: Israelis have been told to clean out their bomb shelters and stock up on nonperishables as the region braces for Iran’s response to the killing of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. Iran has signaled it plans to strike Israel August 12-13 during the Jewish holy day of Tisha B’Av, a solemn commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples and historic Jewish persecution. Because Iran is telegraphing its intentions, Israel and allies have time to prepare. This might be a signal Iran doesn’t want this to escalate into a regional war, but a lot remains uncertain. Some unknowns: will the attack come from Iran itself, or will one or more of its regional proxies attack at the same time? How big will their assault be? The scope and fallout of the attack will determine whether it can be contained or escalate to a wider regional war.
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Multiracial America
This week Donald Trump asked of Kamala Harris, “Is she Indian or is she Black?” That used to be a question many Americans had to contend with. Before 2000, the US government only allowed people to select one race when filling out a census form. That’s changed. Here’s some data about multiracial America and a little of the history around how we define race in this country.
