[🇺🇸] USA Election 2024

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Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/29/politics/video/graham-reacts-trump-harris-mentally-disabled-sotu-digvid

Sen. Graham on Harris: I'm not saying she's crazy, her policies are crazy

On "State of the Union," CNN's Jake Tapper speaks with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about former President Donald Trump's latest rhetoric on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/29/politics/video/graham-reacts-trump-harris-mentally-disabled-sotu-digvid

 

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Harris tries to turn the tables on Trump by embracing the border as a key issue​

By Eric Bradner, CNN
September 28, 2024

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris visits the US-Mexico border with US Border Patrol Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin, right, in Douglas, Arizona, on September 27, 2024.
Rebecca Noble/AFP/Getty Images CNN —

Vice President Kamala Harris made an aggressive move to cut into Donald Trump’s polling lead on immigration, traveling to the southern border for the first time as the Democratic nominee on Friday to lay out her plans to tackle what she described as a problem that has languished for decades.

Harris, during her trip to the key swing state of Arizona, lambasted Trump for his role earlier this year in tanking a border security bill that was the product of months of bipartisan negotiations.

It was one of Harris’ more specific policy speeches since becoming the Democratic nominee, attempting to use her past as California’s attorney general to prove that she has what it takes to attack Trump on his signature issue.

“It was the strongest border security bill we have seen in decades. It was endorsed by the Border Patrol union. And it should be in effect today, producing results in real time, right now, for our country,” she said at a rally in Douglas, a town on the US-Mexico border.

“But Donald Trump tanked it. He picked up the phone and called some friends in Congress and said, ‘Stop the bill,’” she said. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”

The former president responded to Harris’ border trip by amping up his own rhetoric on immigration. Highlighting violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, Trump told a crowd in Walker, Michigan, that Harris “delivered these horrors.”

“She unleashed these atrocities, and blood is on her hands at a level that, probably, nobody’s ever seen in this country,” he said.

Trump also falsely again accused Democrats of letting people enter the country illegally because “they want the votes.” Non-citizens cannot vote in US elections — a reality ignored by Trump, who for years has lied about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

The Democratic offensive on immigration and border security is an attempt to cut into one of Trump’s clearest-cut political advantages. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS released this week found the former president is trusted by 49% of likely voters to handle immigration, while Harris is trusted by 35%.

Harris on Friday also laid out proposals to strengthen restrictions that have largely barred migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. And she said she would seek paths to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought into the United States as children.

“They are American in every way. But still, they do not have an earned pathway to citizenship. And this problem has gone unsolved at this point now for decades,” Harris said.

 

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2024 race takes a backseat​

The battle over immigration and border security comes at a rare moment this late in a presidential race in which attention has shifted away from both parties’ nominees.

Dozens of people had been killed as Hurricane Helene swept across the Southeast, causing massive flooding. Meanwhile, Israel has escalated its battle with Hezbollah with a strike on a building in Lebanon that it said was storing missiles.

And both parties’ vice presidential nominees are preparing to take center stage next week, as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance meet for their one and only debate Tuesday night.

Fewer than six weeks from Election Day, the 2024 presidential map is still jumbled – with seven battleground states coming into focus.

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS on Friday showed Harris with a comfortable lead for a single electoral college vote in Nebraska that could have outsized implications.

Nebraska awards one electoral college vote to the winner of each congressional district. The poll of the Omaha-based 2nd District found Harris leading in the state’s most liberal region, with 53% support to Trump’s 42%.

That single electoral vote could be critical if Harris sweeps the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but loses the four Sun Belt swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. That could leave her with 269 electoral college votes – and one more from Nebraska could give her the 270 needed to win the White House.

Another CNN poll conducted by SSRS released Friday found the two candidates tied in North Carolina at 48% each. Trump faces limited paths to victory should he fail to hold North Carolina – the state where he earned his slimmest margin of victory in 2020. And the CNN poll found the scandal-plagued Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, far behind his Democratic rival, as the party faces questions about whether Robinson could hurt the overall GOP ticket there in November.

 

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GOP highlights undocumented immigrants’ crime​

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee on Friday held a press call ahead of Harris’ Arizona visit featuring three mothers of those killed by undocumented immigrants or accidental fentanyl overdose who blamed the vice president for what they described as a lack of accountability on border security.

“This is not a safe time for Americans. Kamala Harris has not acknowledged my daughter’s death,” said Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was raped and killed by a 23-year-old citizen of El Salvador. Rachel Morin was a mother of five herself.

“She is late coming to the table on this. At any point, she could do something,” said southern California mother Anne Fundner, whose 15-year-old son Weston died from a fentanyl overdose.

The call was an effort to cast doubt on Harris’ proposals to tackle border security, as Trump argues that she and President Joe Biden have had four years to do so and have failed.

After a dramatic drop, border crossings are currently at the lowest they’ve been since 2020. US officials have touted back-to-back months of low border crossings, citing recent executive action to curb asylum access at the southern border.

Republicans have labeled Harris the Biden administration’s “border czar,” overstating the president’s more limited 2021 assignment for Harris to tackle the root causes of migration in Central America.

Harris on Friday sought to tap into another part of her resume: Her time as California attorney general. She highlighted efforts to prosecute members of transnational criminal organizations, including traveling to Mexico City with other attorneys general to share intelligence on gangs and cartels.

“Stopping transnational criminal organizations and strengthening our border is not new to me, and it is a long-standing priority of mine,” she said. “I have done that work, and I will continue to treat it as a priority.”

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, Ali Main, Ariel Edwards-Levy and Kit Maher contributed to this report.

 

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US election polls: Who is ahead - Harris or Trump?​

the Visual Journalism and Data teams
BBC News

BBC
Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is - will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we'll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Who is leading national polls?​

Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.


The two candidates went head to head in a televised debate in Pennsylvania on 10 September that just over 67 million people tuned in to watch.

A majority of national polls carried out in the week after suggested Harris's performance had helped her make some small gains, with her lead increasing from 2.5 percentage points on the day of the debate to 3.3 points just over a week later.

That marginal boost was mostly down to Trump’s numbers though. His average had been rising ahead of the debate, but it fell by half a percentage point in the week afterwards.

You can see those small changes in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing how the averages have changed and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.


While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they're not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That's because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

Who is winning in swing state polls?​

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election with just one or two percentage points separating the candidates.

That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven states and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in these seven states.

 

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New General election poll - North Carolina

Trump 50% (+2)
Harris 48%

 

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VP debates rarely matter - the Walz v Vance showdown is different​

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent•

Getty Images

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance will meet for their one and only vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night in New York City.

While the stakes in these kind of running-mate face-offs are typically low – an undercard to the presidential main event - this one might be different.

In a tight race that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, every opportunity to generate positive attention and political momentum is precious.

At the very least, the debate will be a fascinating contrast between two men with very different styles and political beliefs and two campaigns with distinct strategies for winning the White House.

Donald Trump announced his selection of Vance back in July, at the start of the Republican National Convention and just a day after his near-assassination.

The former president was riding high in the polls, and his pick of the 40-year-old Ohio senator was viewed not only as a play to the white working class in the industrial Midwest – a key demographic in a region that is a top electoral battleground – but also as a way to establish his political legacy.

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Who is JD Vance?​

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Unlike Trump’s first vice-president, Mike Pence, Vance is an ideological kindred spirit, whose focus on trade and immigration match Trump’s top political priorities.

If Vance was a front-runner to be Trump’s running-mate, Walz’s path to the Democratic number-two spot was considerably more unlikely. After Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid, Vice-President Kamala Harris stepped in as the standard bearer and shortly thereafter began her ticket-mate search.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, was not a leading contender for the job, but his viral appearances on television, deriding Republicans as “weird”, and his ability to defend liberal policies in moderate-friendly language won Harris over.
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Vance sells Trump’s message to disaffected America​

On the campaign trail, both men have sought to put the political skills that earned them the running-mate jobs to work.

Vance is polished and practised – a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist with an Ivy League pedigree that belies his rural Appalachian roots. Walz is a high-school teacher turned politician with a penchant for folksy Midwestern humour.

Vance has been a frequent advocate for the Trump campaign on mainstream media news programmes. He’s also rallied potential supporters in rural areas of the Midwestern battleground states, part of the Trump campaign’s strategy of engaging sympathetic voters who may not have participated in previous elections.

Last week in Traverse City, Michigan, Vance gave his standard stump speech, which is focused on immigration, the economy and trade.

“We’re going to pursue some commonsense tax and economic policies,” he told the crowd of a few thousand cheering supporters gathered in a local fair ground. “We will do it with American workers rather than foreign slave labourers.”

While many of the rally attendees didn’t know much about Vance prior to his selection as candidate for vice-president, they said they liked what they had heard so far - even as Vance has frequently flirted with controversy. His amplification of untrue rumours that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets in Ohio is a recent example.

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Walz appeals to voters Harris struggles to reach​

The Democrat has been a regular fixture in more rural areas of the battleground states - often appearing in places that are traditionally more conservative. As a former high school football coach, he’s sought to play up his background and links to America’s most popular sport. On Saturday, he was at the Michigan-Minnesota college football game which was played in front of a crowd of 110,000.

When Harris introduced Walz as her vice-presidential pick at a Philadelphia rally in early August, she repeatedly referred to him as “Coach Walz” - and highlighted his high-school teacher background.

The Democrats may be hoping his plainspoken, salt-of-the-earth appeal could cut into the Republican margins outside major metropolitan areas.

“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbours and their personal choices that they make," Walz said in Philadelphia. “Even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves, there’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

 

[Sharma Ji]

kamla devi slept her way to the top

she disgusting

 

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CNN Instant Poll: No clear winner in VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance​

By Ariel Edwards-Levy and Jennifer Agiesta, CNN
October 2, 2024

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s debate between vice presidential nominees Tim Walz and JD Vance were closely divided over which candidate did the better job, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, and the event left viewers with more positive views of both candidates than they held pre-debate.

Among debate watchers, Walz remains the candidate who’s seen more positively and as more in touch with their needs and vision for the country. Vance, who suffers from more of an image deficit among both viewers and the public at large, boosted his standing among the debate audience, outperforming expectations and gaining ground on the share who perceive him as qualified. He was also narrowly seen as doing a better job than Walz of defending his running mate. Both men, the poll finds, are viewed by a majority of debate watchers as qualified to assume the presidency if needed. And practically none of the voters who tuned in saw the debate as a reason to change their votes.

Following the debate, 51% of viewers said that Vance did the better job, with 49% picking Walz. In a survey conducted of the same voters prior to the debate, Walz held the advantage as the candidate they expected to perform more strongly, 54% to 45%.

 

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Middle East conflict has added to "heightened threat environment" in US ahead of election, DHS official says​

From CNN's Holmes Lybrand

The threat environment in the United States “remains high” ahead of the November presidential election and conflict in the Middle East, according to a new assessment by the Department of Homeland Security.

The annual assessment released Wednesday warns of possible threats from violent extremists driven by the heated political environment in the US as well as foreign and domestic threats from terrorist groups and others inspired by conflicts abroad. It also comes amid a wider conflict in the Middle East after Israel assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and began a ground offensive in Lebanon. Iran retaliated on Tuesday by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel.

A senior DHS official told reporters Wednesday that the department is still working to figure out what Iran’s escalatory attack on Israel in recent days could mean for US security.

“It’s of course true that events in the Middle East over the last 12 months have contributed to this heightened threat environment and continue to do so, and we’re in a constant effort to evaluate and monitor what’s happening abroad to determine what implications it has for here in the homeland,” the official said.

The official also noted that the attack from Iran, paired with the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel last year, could “drive particular violent extremists here in the homeland to accelerate or look to take action on a timeline that may not have been anticipated.”

“We are literally in the earliest days of trying to understand what exactly Iranian intentions might be,” the official said.

Some of those intentions of Iran and other countries, according to officials and the report itself, are to sow confusion and chaos in the US 2024 presidential election.

 

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The sentiment behind the words Americans used to describe what they’d heard about Harris remained more positive than the words they used to describe the news about Trump. This doesn’t mean that they expressed warmer feelings about her personally but that what they said about her tended to be framed in relatively positive terms and tone.

However, the gap in sentiments about the two candidates was significantly smaller than it was last week in the wake of the debate. The tone of responses relating to Harris were slightly more negative than positive, bringing her sentiment number roughly in line with where it was prior to the debate, while Trump’s remained in negative territory.

 

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October surprises are piling up, but a toss-up race seems impervious to shocks​

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
October 3, 2024


October surprises are coming at a dizzying pace. But the question is whether grave crises at home and abroad can break a dead heat between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in an election that’s already been marked by huge turmoil.

The White House is grappling with three challenges that could threaten the vice president’s hopes and offer an opening to the Republican nominee’s narrative of Biden-era negligence. A month before Election Day, the US faces the grave possibility of being dragged into a Middle East conflagration; a port workers’ strike could harm inflation-weary consumers; and political pressure is rising in the fallout of Hurricane Helene.

Trump, meanwhile, was hit on Wednesday by the unsealing of a 165-page document in which special counsel Jack Smith gives the fullest picture of his case in the federal 2020 election interference case. The ex-president has pleaded not guilty, but the filing re-injected his attempt to steal the last election into the frantic endgame of a campaign partially shaped by Democrats’ claims he poses an existential threat to American democracy.

Each situation highlights potential vulnerabilities for both candidates as voters make up their minds. The trio of tests facing Harris comes with potential economic, political and humanitarian consequences if the administration errs. And the new scrutiny of Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election could cause some voters to again question his fitness for the Oval Office.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at Dane Manufacturing in Waunakee, Wisconsin, October 1, 2024.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images

 

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Trump’s election meddling thrust back into 2024 race​

One of the most bewildering aspects of the 2024 election is that a former president accused of trying to overthrow the previous election has an even chance of winning this one.

The depth of Trump’s alleged election stealing plot was laid bare in Smith’s filing, which said that he “extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results.” Smith, trying to get around this summer’s Supreme Court ruling that granted presidents substantial immunity for official acts, added that Trump “operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

In one of the most damning parts of the filing, Smith said he had evidence that showed the then-president told family members, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Trump has falsely claimed that all his legal exposure proves that the Biden administration has weaponized justice against him to meddle in this election. Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung claimed that “President Trump is dominating, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are freaking out.”

Trump has also forced fellow Republicans to adopt his false claims of fraud in 2020. In the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, his running mate JD Vance couldn’t bring himself to publicly say his boss lost the last election.

While Republican voters seem willing to buy into Trump’s false narrative, it remains unclear how deeply events four years ago still weigh on the minds of swing-state voters and how much, if at all, Smith’s unsealed document will shape the race.

Vice President Kamala Harris walks with Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson as they survey the damage from Hurricane Helene, in the Meadowbrook neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia, on October 2, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Events threaten to conspire against Harris​

The greatest vulnerability for Harris may lie in a sense the post-pandemic normality that Joe Biden pledged to restore in 2020 is still unrealized, while Republicans make a case that Democratic leadership is outmatched by cascading events at home and abroad.

A long-dreaded war between Iran and Israel could force the United States into fighting with Tehran after more than four decades of proxy antagonism and put Americans in harm’s way. Any consequent energy crisis could send gas prices soaring and shatter Harris’ economic credentials. The port stoppage is pulling the administration between its support for unionized labor and an imperative to prevent supermarket shortages and hiked prices. Meanwhile, Helene is the second deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Katrina in 2005, which became a symbol of how mismanaged natural disasters can create political cataclysms.

“Look at the World today — Look at the missiles flying right now in the Middle East, look at what’s happening with Russia/Ukraine, look at Inflation destroying the World. NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. His argument ignores the daily chaos that raged when he was in office. But unlike in 2020, amid his botched handling of the Covid-19 crisis, Trump is not an incumbent and his post could be a crisp election argument against the current administration. Proliferating crises also allow Trump to revive one of the key themes of his campaign – that he offers strength and Harris and Biden are weak.

Each of the problems looming over the White House race might qualify for the cliche October surprise. Yet their impact is hard to assess since this campaign’s many twists have yet to have a decisive impact. Trump has, for example, been convicted of a crime and escaped two assassination attempts. An incumbent president running for reelection abandoned his campaign a few months before Election Day.

Still, after the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night, there are now no scheduled set-piece occasions that offer the prospect of a major twist in the campaign. That means effectively navigating the crises that do arise could become even more vital.

Any development could in theory take on outsize significance among the perhaps several hundred thousand voters in a handful of swing states that will decide this election. Harris has a narrow lead in some national polls, but most swing state surveys show no clear leader and margins within sampling errors.

 

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US election 2024: A really simple guide to the presidential vote​

BBC

Americans will head to the polls in November to elect the next US president. The vote will be closely watched around the world.

They will also be voting for members of Congress, who play a key part in passing laws that can have a profound effect on American life.

When is the US presidential election?​

The 2024 election is on Tuesday, 5 November 2024. The winner will serve a term of four years in the White House, starting in January 2025.

The president has the power to pass some laws on their own but mostly he or she must work with Congress to pass legislation.

On the world stage, the US leader has considerable freedom to represent the country abroad and to conduct foreign policy.

Who are the candidates and how are they nominated?​

The two main parties nominate a presidential candidate by holding a series of votes called state primaries and caucuses, where people choose who they want to lead the party in a general election.

In the Republican Party, former president Donald Trump won his party's support with a massive lead over his rivals. He became the official Republican nominee at a party convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Trump chose Ohio senator JD Vance to be his vice-presidential running mate.

For the Democrats, Vice-President Kamala Harris joined the race after President Joe Biden dropped out and no other Democrats stood against her. Her running mate is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

There are also some independent candidates running for president.

One of the most prominent was Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew to former president John F Kennedy, but he suspended his campaign in late August and has endorsed Trump.

What do Democrats and Republicans stand for?​

The Democrats are the liberal political party, with an agenda defined largely by its push for civil rights, a broad social safety net and measures to address climate change.

The Republicans are the conservative political party in the US. Also known as the GOP, or the Grand Old Party, it has stood for lower taxes, shrinking the size of the government, gun rights and tighter restrictions on immigration and abortion.