The 24 Seven: Enthused
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
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1. Energy Spike
Monmouth University is out with an interesting poll picking up on the “vibes” as they say in this election cycle, and said vibes seem to be real indeed. Pollster Patrick Murray and his team found a major jump in enthusiasm from Democratic voters with Vice President Kamala Harris now at the top of the ticket and a pretty sizable jump in engagement from self-identified independents. Republican enthusiasm was already amped up well before President Joe Biden stepped aside last month.
What’s interesting on the surface how much “the other side” showing up to the race has not only turned this back into a race between the Democratic candidate (now Harris) and Republican nominee Donald Trump — in part due to many voters who seemed to have been “parking” their support with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until a more appealing alternative showed up — but also how tight that race remains. Savvy observers have pointed out that even nominal leads (within the margin of error or just outside it) in swing states don’t necessarily portend victory for Democrats, as polling in 2016 and 2020 did not translate directly to Democratic votes at the ballot boxes.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has dabbled in supporting Trump — heartily endorsing him and touting him from the stage at the Republican convention in Milwaukee — recently told Fox News that Trump and his team are going to have to change their tone to win over independents.
If, as this poll indicates, both major parties’ bases are now well-activated, this would seem to indicate a need to start winning over swing voters and “persuadables” in the middle.
2. Right to Work
The Republican convention speech by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is increasingly sounding out of step with the Trump Republican Party, even as Trump and his team continue their efforts to win over working class voters throughout the Rust Belt.
In response to Trump telling media mogul Elon Musk that he would fire any worker who went on strike if he was CEO, the United Auto Workers filed a federal complaint against Trump and Musk.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, hammered the issue at his first solo stop on the trail Tuesday, speaking at the AFSCME convention, reminding the state and local government workers that when in office, Trump signed a “right to work” executive order cracking down on federal employee unions.
Winning the union vote is seen as critical to winning the Rust Belt swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which will determine who wins the White House.
3. Pressed
There’s an old saw that if both sides are angry at you, you’re doing something right. (We can debate the veracity of that, but it is prolific and especially apropos this election cycle.)
This cycle, it’s the press getting hammered from both sides — for very different reasons. Veteran conservative talk show host
writes that Trump should step up his attacks on the press for going easy on Harris. (Your author would note that Trump has made a career out of attacking reporters.)
Meanwhile, from the left, long-running New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait writes that pressing Harris for policy specifics equates to a double-standard of letting Trump skate without explaining his proposals.
And long-running lefty media critic Jeff Jarvis writes at Buzz Machine that Harris shouldn’t feel pressure to sit down with legacy media who, he writes, are more interested in “gotcha” journalism than policy.
4. Hacked
The material stolen from the Trump campaign and distributed to reporters, including a vetting packet on Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has not been reported on.
This is notable in contrast to the historic hacks and subsequent leaks throughout the 2016 campaign.
The hacked emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 helped usher in the era of dominance of conspiracy theories in politics. “Pizzagate” led a North Carolina man to drive to D.C. in an effort, he believed to break up the alleged child sex-trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant. That man shot up the restaurant as families and workers fled, he was sentenced to four years in prison.
Meanwhile, in the real world, this investigation from The Miami Herald’s Ben Wieder and Julie K. Brown — after flight troubles stalled his travel to a campaign rally in Montana last week, Trump started flying on a plane formerly owned by Jeffrey Epstein. (A campaign spokesperson told The Herald they did not learn it was an Epstein plane until being alerted to it by reporters.) The Epstein plane, The Herald reports, is now owned by a private charter company.
5. Ukraine’s annexation of Russia’s Kursk Region …
… Continues.
It is, of course, not an “annexation” it’s a successful and surprising military offensive into Russia winning control of a good chunk of territory — though still dwarfed by the massive swaths of Eastern Ukraine Russia has now held for quite a while.
The team over at
makes this interesting comparison — as Putin, in typical psyops, style has thrown out a multitude of sequiturs to explain his ongoing war against Ukraine, one of the consistent arguments is that Ukraine is traditionally a part of Russia and the Russian culture.Counteroffensive reporters Mak and Mariana Lastovriya note that as part of the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Ukrainians have claimed a Russian city which was long ago Ukrainian.
6. Trump trials
24sight News friend and Just Security fellow Adam Klasfeld reports that Trump’s sentencing after being convicted of campaign finance violations for meddling in the 2016 election is still set for September 18 (about a week after the ABC News debate between Trump and Harris) and that Trump’s latest effort to get Judge Juan Merchan removed from the case is dead on arrival.
7. Snoop a Loop
Politico Magazine writer Joanna Weiss is out with this solid observation, the political press corps should take a page from NBC’s highly successful run covering the Olympics and enlist Snoop Dogg for coverage.
Weiss writes, celebrities’ “presence, supplementing NBC’s traditional sports coverage, has turned out to be more than just a ratings play. It’s also a vibe play. An alternate entry point. A way to sidestep the conventions of sports reporting — the clinical critiques from technical experts, the ‘how does it feel’ questions from sideline reporters — and channel the odd exuberance of fandom.”
Weiss also grabs at a critical dynamic in this race, and a big reason why news viewership is way, way down from its long-running sugar high in 2016 and through the start of the Trump administration: after nine years now, the former president is no longer surprising, it’s a norm.
With the stark divisiveness of modern politics many in pop culture have shied away from it. But conventions are known to draw some on-air, on-stream firepower and Democrats have generally had better success enlisting top talent than Republicans in the Trump era of the party.
If you’ve got Snoop heading with you, or any other major stars, drop a note: tom@24sight.news.
The 7 gets better every time.