Kamala Harris and Don Trump are in the Final Lap of the 2024 Election. Who's Got the Edge?
PLUS: "Why, God, why?": "Friends" is turning thirty.
Labor Day has passed, which means we’ve entered the final lap of the election season. Coverage of the horse race is going to intensify over the next two months, but it’s worth remembering that when it comes to the presidential contest, the vast majority of the electorate—I’d say between 90-95% of them—are already locked in to who they’re going to vote for. That may surprise some people, but when you factor in the pull of partisanship, the fact that even non-partisans tend to prefer one party over the other, and that the contours of this election have (for the most part) been in place for months, it’s clear it’s not hard for most people to make up their minds long before Election Day. I’d even assert an overwhelming majority of Americans already know what party’s nominee they’ll be supporting in 2028 and 2032.
That means the major party campaigns are devoting these final weeks to two projects: Winning over that remaining 5-10% of undecided voters, and making sure those inclined to support their candidate get to the polls. What should we make of those two pots of voters?
The media will focus on the undecideds, who can be the difference-makers in a close election, as this one is shaping up to be. But undecideds tend to be fickle and unpredictable voters. In some cases, they are genuinely conflicted (i.e, a pro-choice businesswoman who favors the GOP’s corporation-friendly policies.) More often than not, though, a voter who is undecided this late in the game doesn’t follow politics closely, lacks the information and intellectual constructs that make it easier for others to know who they’re going to vote for, or prioritizes fringe issues neither campaign is addressing. They may be susceptible to shifts in momentum generated by positive and negative media coverage. Come Election Day, they may simply choose not to vote. These are difficult voters to reach and win over.
I suspect, however, that Kamala Harris probably has an edge among undecided voters. It has nothing to do with issues, though. Instead, it has everything to do with Trump, who at this point is an extremely well-known political quantity. An undecided voter who isn’t inclined to support Trump at this point in the campaign probably has some fairly engrained misgivings about the man. They haven’t ruled out voting for him, but probably don’t want to. Consequently, Harris, who is less well-known at this point, probably has a better chance at winning these voters over.
It’s that other set of voters—those who are inclined to support a candidate but are undecided about voting—that the campaigns will really want to focus on. Armchair political pundits tend to think the American electorate is a defined pool of voters who faithfully turnout in every election and change their political preferences just enough from year to year to alter the balance of power in the United States. Not only does that model overlook the effects of generational change on electoral outcomes (just as many younger voters have registered to vote for the first time over the past four years, many older voters have passed away in that time as well) but it also doesn’t account for registered voters who choose to sit elections out.
Why would someone who is already registered to vote and inclined to support one candidate over the other choose not to vote? For clarity’s sake, I’m not thinking here about Americans who just aren’t interested in voting and never registered in the first place or are genuinely conflicted, as well as the possibility that a registered voter has changed residences (something Americans do a lot) and needs to re-register. Instead, I’m thinking about an unmotivated partisan. Such a voter may harbor faint partisan inclinations and identify only weakly with the party they generally support, so voting isn’t a priority. (These voters definitely don’t show up on primary day.) They may also have an aversion to or disinterest in politics and view the party they generally support as the lesser of two evils or engaged in an activity (politics) they find unseemly. These voters must somehow be convinced to do something they don’t like to do on Election Day: Participate in the political process.
In some cases, unmotivated partisans may find their party’s nominee uninspiring, ethically compromised, or out of step with them ideologically. If the nominee is an incumbent, they may conclude the nominee’s record doesn’t deserve their support. Remember, voters want to take pride in their vote and often regard casting a vote as an identity-defining activity. Despite the secrecy of the voting booth, they don’t want to vote for someone who makes them feel ashamed, meaning not voting is a way to keep their consciences clean. Choosing not to vote is also made easier when the opposition doesn’t appear threatening or if the voter can convince him- or herself that little is at stake in the election.
Both Democrats and Republicans were burdened with the problem of the unmotivated partisan in 2016, when Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in what resulted in a low turnout election. Democrats were staring down that problem again this year until Joe Biden dropped out. Signs now indicate Harris is reengaging wayward Democrats and Democratic leaners.
It is critical for campaigns to engage their base voters and turn out unmotivated partisans on Election Day. They’re a huge chunk of voters—combined, probably a little over 80% of the electorate, split somewhat evenly between the parties—and relatively easy to identify. Campaigns should try to persuade members of the opposite party to change their allegiances and convince undecideds to finally get off the fence, but if they don’t do the very basic work of banking the massive bloc of voters who are already inclined to support them, they just won’t win.
So which candidate has the advantage in turning out their unmotivated partisans in this election? Right now, I’d say Trump, mainly because most of his supporters are already highly motivated to vote for him while many Republicans who are repulsed by him have swallowed their self-respect and plan on voting for him regardless the threat he poses to the country. Additionally, Trump has a knack for connecting with voters who get their news from untraditional media sources, meaning he’ll have better luck turning out voters who might otherwise stay home on Election Day. As I mentioned earlier, however, Harris has reengaged Democrats who were drifting away from Biden and probably still has room to grow there, while Trump has likely maxed out his support. Harris’ chances depend on whether she can bring all of Biden’s voters back into the fold, which could be a challenge given the extraordinary circumstances that led those voters to back Biden in 2020 and their subsequent disillusionment with Biden since then. Fortunately for Harris, her campaign offers those voters—who have already demonstrated a willingness to vote for a Democrat over Trump, making the persuasive mission less daunting—something of a fresh start.
Currently, it appears Harris has a slight edge in the major media polls, where she leads Trump by 2-3 points. The good news for Democrats is that’s an improvement on how Biden was polling about two months ago. But Democrats should be concerned for several reasons. First, Harris didn’t get a bump coming out of the DNC. Her numbers rose instead following her selection of Tim Walz as her running mate. I think the Harris campaign misplayed their hand by taking the weekend following the convention off, which allowed Trump to reclaim the media’s attention. Harris should have stayed on the campaign trail not only to keep the good vibes going but to counterprogram Trump. When Trump is the center of attention, he ends up driving the narrative, and it doesn’t matter if the narrative he’s driving results in a car crash, as he’ll just use that to air his grievances. When Trump has to share the spotlight, though, the comparison typically reminds people that Trump is an awful driver.
Beyond that, there are other reasons Democrats should be a little worried about the current polling. In past elections, polls have underestimated Trump’s support, so it’s possible Trump’s standing is better than it currently is. Since the race is within the margin of error, it’s even possible Trump is in the lead. Furthermore, most political analysts believe Harris needs to win the popular vote by 3-4 points to win the electoral college vote. That concern is borne out by recent polling as well, which shows Harris running even with Trump in the must-win state of Pennsylvania.
There are still two months to go, though, which is plenty of time for Harris to win over the few remaining undecideds and bring wayward Democratic voters and 2020 Biden supporters back into the Democratic column. If we want to guess how those voters will end up shaping the race, rather than look toward the polls, I’d recommend considering the larger structural factors that shape voter behavior. But even that picture remains murky. Consider:
Incumbency is usually a powerful advantage in a presidential race. But is Harris—a member of an incumbent administration and the incumbent party—technically an incumbent? Does she really want to run on the incumbent president’s record? As a former president, isn’t Trump—who can point to his own record of accomplishment as president—also running as something of an incumbent? But if people recall how Trump’s presidency ended, doesn’t that wipe out Trump’s incumbent advantage?
Voters tend to reward politicians for good economic stewardship, and the economic metrics right now are actually quite good: Inflation under 3%, unemployment just over 4%, solid GDP growth, solid stock market growth, solid wage growth, and a pending interest rate cut. But voters are still sore about that post-pandemic burst of inflation and seem intent on holding Biden accountable for that. Are voters better off now than they were four years ago? Most people probably are. But they don’t feel that way, and most don’t feel they’re better off now than they were five years ago, when Trump was president.
Americans list immigration as a top national priority and trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the issue. But illegal immigration has dropped to mid-pandemic levels due to Biden’s border crackdown. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott doesn’t have enough undocumented migrants to bus to Democratic-led cities anymore. How will voters react if they realize Trump killed the border law Biden ended up implementing via executive order in the hopes of perpetuating the problem and using it as a campaign issue against Biden?
MAGA candidates have fared poorly in battleground states in recent elections when facing off against “generic” Democrats. That wouldn’t seem to bode well for Trump. But when Trump is on the ballot, he’s been able to drive up turnout among those in the MAGAverse. Then again, he’s also really good at rallying the opposition. Have Americans in battleground states had enough of the MAGA movement? Is Harris enough of a generic Democrat to serve as an outlet for anti-MAGA votes? (Aaron Blake of the Washington Post looks at a recent CNN poll and concludes she is.) Can she stay generic enough for the remainder of the campaign, or will Trump successfully paint her as a left-wing radical?
In other words, this is an unprecedented election, making it difficult for political analysts to apply the usual rules they use to assess the political environment and make predictions about its outcome with a high level of confidence. In truth, every presidential election is unprecedented in that they each feature variables the established models can’t fully account for. But this election, which pits an unpopular former president/convicted felon who fomented an insurrection and leads a cult of personality against a sitting vice president who became her party’s nominee less than two months ago when the aging current one-term president bombed in a debate and stepped aside, is hard to figure out.
My gut still tells me Harris will come out on top. She’s the exciting, new candidate who represents if not exactly change then a turning of the page. I’ve always underestimated Trump’s appeal, but I just sense he’s worn out his welcome even if his cult remains devoted to him and his party (despite presumably knowing better, although I’m doubting that) once again falls in line. And despite writing earlier that 90-95% of Americans have already made up their minds as to how they’re going to vote, given Harris’ late entry into the race, I suspect more voters than usual at this point in time are open to giving her a chance to win their support. They need to learn more about her before they make up their minds, come off the sidelines, or even switch their votes. Harris has room to grow, and that gives her the edge if she can take advantage of it.
Which is why I think this week’s debate could be one of the few presidential debates in history that actually changes the trajectory of a campaign. (Weirdly, we’ve already had one of those this year.1) This will be the first time many Americans will take the measure of Harris, and that will happen when she’s sharing the stage with Trump. A good performance could not only bury Trump, but prompt voters to ask why the Republican Party doesn’t do what Democrats did two months ago and ditch their faltering nominee.
To that end: Madame Vice President, if you’re reading this, a few recommendations:
When Trump goes off about how bad things have gotten in this country, admit that he’s on to something. Borrow some of Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric about how the system is “rigged” against working-class Americans. Talk about how the government is often too quick to support corporations and special interests when times get tough but hesitate to pass laws that would make a direct difference in the lives of ordinary Americans. Use that to pivot to a conversation about paid leave, making child care more affordable, and school lunch programs. Steal the populist billionaire’s thunder.
Then hammer Trump as a chaos agent and a walking distraction, someone who can’t get his act together long enough to make a real difference in people’s lives. Use the incident at Arlington National Cemetery as an example: Trump did a good thing by honoring those who lost their lives serving our country but distracted from that moment by turning it into a debate about whether his campaign could take photographs there. Tell the American people that rage and anger only get us so far and that we need a president who isn’t his own worst enemy.
When questioned on the Biden administration’s economic record, admit it’s been a rough road coming out of the pandemic but that we’ve made it through and have finally turned the corner. Tell voters they shouldn’t upend the progress we’ve made on the economy by rehiring the chaos agent. Then pivot to your economic agenda. Don’t get into a debate about the Trump economy vs. the Biden economy; turn it into a debate about whether we should rewind the clock on the economy or build a better economy.
Defang Trump. If he insults you by, say, calling you “nasty,” tell him it doesn’t bother you. That you’re strong enough to take it, and do it with a smile on your face. Tell him you’ve been called worse, by murderers and rapists no less, and that when they’ve said that about you, you’ve taken it as a compliment. Tell him in your experience, when someone has called you “nasty,” you’ve interpreted that not as a sign of strength or menace but as a sign of weakness. Tell him he’ll need to try a lot harder if he wants to get under your skin. If he calls you mean, tell him if he can’t handle the heat, he should get off the debate stage.
Then brush the dirt off your shoulder. You’ve got an election to win.
Signals and Noise
Don Trump, at the New York Economic Club, responding when asked, “If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”:
Well, I would do that. And we’re sitting down—you know, I was—somebody we had, Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because, look, childcare is childcare, it couldn’t—you know, there’s something—you have to have it. In this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with childcare. I want to stay with childcare. But those numbers are small, relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth—but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you.
In other words:
By Parker Malloy for The New Republic: “How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity” (“This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.”)
The 2024 Election: Policy
The Harris campaign is out with a small business tax break proposal aimed at drawing a contrast with Trump’s corporate tax break proposal.
Trump said he would vote to expand abortion rights in Floridain its upcoming state ballot measure. His campaign responded by immediately saying Trump did not affirmatively state how he intended to vote.A day later Don Trump said he would vote against the ballot measure.
In direct contradiction of comments made by his running mate, Trump refused to rule out vetoing a federal law banning abortion.
Trump told NBC News he wants to make either the government or insurance companies pay for IVF treatments.
By David A. Graham of The Atlantic: “The GOP’s Pro-family Delusion” (“Today’s Republican Party aspires to be a pro-family movement, but it has struggled to turn that desire into much more than a plea for people to have more children. Twice in the past two days, the GOP presidential ticket has demonstrated that it has no idea how to help people care for children once they’re born.”)
Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson wants to ban abortions at conception. Robinson could single-handedly put North Carolina in play for Kamala Harris.
The 2024 Election: The Campaign Trail
Jonathan Martin of Politico makes an argument that he says many Republicans won’t make in public: That Republicans would be better off in the long term if Trump not only loses in November, but loses big. MORE: Politico apparently called around to get a reaction from DC Republicans to the piece and many accepted its premise (although Politico also noted why Republicans wouldn’t want to lose and why losing could be bad for the GOP.)
Zack Beauchamp of Vox digs into sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book Stolen Pride, which is about Kentucky’s 5th congressional district, one of the poorest, whitest, and most pro-Trump districts in the nation. Beauchamp marshals evidence to support one of Hochschild’s key arguments: That Trump’s most ardent supporters in impoverished white regions in the United States aren’t the poor but rather the relatively well-off people who live there, who lament their region’s economic struggles but attach that to concerns about cultural decline and dwindling political power.
Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times looks at Trump’s use of the Gish Gallop, which is when he unleashes a string of falsehoods and exaggerations, and considers how Harris can counter that in debates.
As he has done countless times before, Trump is already prebutting a potential debate loss by claiming ABC (who is hosting the debate) has it out for him. Trump employs this strategy—including when it comes to elections—because his entire brand is built around “winning.”
By Darrin Bell:
From the Washington Post: “How a Trump Visit Sparked Turmoil at America’s Most Sacred Cemetery” (“Officials said they wanted to respect the wishes of grieving family members who wanted Trump there, but at the same time were wary of Trump’s record of politicizing the military. So they laid out ground rules they hoped would wall off politics from the final resting place of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. Instead, they got sucked into exactly the kind of crisis they were hoping to avoid.”) MORE: By Jonathan Chait of New York magazine: “Trump Honors ‘Suckers and Losers’ With Illegal Arlington Cemetery Photo Op” (“This is one of those scandals that is relatively small-bore by Trump standards but would be catastrophically damaging by normal-politician standards.”)
By Ben Kesling of the Columbia Journalism Review: “Trump’s Disastrous Visit to Arlington Was Too Much for the Media to Handle” (“But the coverage this week left many readers with the impression that the whole thing might have been a bureaucratic mix-up, or some tedious violation of protocol. It focused on bland horse-race coverage so common during election season, rather than clearly stating what really took place: an egregious and willful violation of long-standing norms. What was missing from the coverage was a willingness to quickly and decisively state what a grievous insult the whole debacle was to the dignity of Arlington. The sacred had been profaned.”) MORE: “The Ugly Case of ‘False Balance’ in the New York Times” by Margaret Sullivan (“Nearly 10 years after Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, the media has not figured out how to cover him….And what’s more — what’s worse — they don’t seem to want to change. Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don’t see the problem as they normalize Trump. Nor do they appear to listen to valid criticism. They may not even be aware of it, or may think, ‘well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.’ Maybe they simply fear being labeled liberal.”
Elaine Godfrey of The Atlantic heard Trump tell a Moms for Liberty gathering that school officials are authorizing and performing sex change operations on children.
Judd Legum of Popular Information looks at Jamie Davidson, a drug kingpin convicted of murdering a federal law enforcement officer whose life sentence was commuted by Trump on Trump’s last day in office. Davidson was recently sentenced to three months in jail for strangling his wife.
If you have a spare $1,485, you can purchase fifteen digital Don Trump trading cards (at $99 a piece) and get a piece of the suit Trump wore during his debate with Joe Biden.
“He is representative of people who are coming into our country. Doctor Hannibal Lecter, he will have you for dinner. You know that he will have you for dinner.”—Trump, at a rally in Wisconsin
Jazmine Ulloa of the New York Times investigates what Nikki Haley voters are thinking about as they weigh their options this November.
David Ingram on NBC News considers how Elon Musk’s endorsement of Trump may have backfired.
Politico writes about how Trump would make Musk an American oligarch. (“Beyond the possible competing interests, Musk’s potential foray into government would represent a striking development for the tech titan, who would essentially have a role at the highest levels of business, manufacturing, media and Washington.”)
Tim Balk of the New York Times lists twelve times that Robert Kennedy Jr. criticized Trump (i.e., “Donald Trump was a terrible president,” from July 2, 2024).
David A. Graham of The Atlantic looks at Trump’s penchant for using the phrase “the likes of which you’ve never seen before” (i.e., “We’re here today to talk about how we are going to stop the Kamala crime wave that is going on at levels that nobody has ever seen before.”)
Jonathan Bernstein of Good Politics/Bad Politics writes about how the number of competitive states in national presidential elections has declined decade-by-decade, which he argues has made the weakness of the Electoral College system even more glaring.
This Week in “WTF is Wrong With J.D. Vance?”
Following the school shooting in Georgia, Vance called school shootings a “fact of life” in America and called for increased security at schools to counter them. Vance seems to have forgotten a school security officer was present but was not able to stop the shooter until four people were killed and nine others wounded.
Jason Wilson of The Guardian reports J.D. Vance told a podcast in 2021 that women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize their careers over having children.
Eric Hananoki of Media Matters reports Vance told Newsmax in 2021 that “childless elites” have made the United States a “dangerous place to live,” a comment that drew pushback from his conservative interviewer.
Vance told Charlie Kirk that one way to address the high cost of childcare in the United States is for parents to ask “Grandma and Grandpa…to help out a little bit more.” He also recommended asking aunts and uncles. Weird how parents in this country already do that when they can and childcare is still really expensive!
Vance claimed John McCain would vote for Trump if he were still alive today. Vance seems to have forgotten that one of the last decisions McCain made in his life was to ban Trump from his funeral.
Democracy Watch
“Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it?”—Don Trump, on FOX News
During an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, Trump insisted he would have won California if Jesus had counted the votes. Trump lost California in 2020 by 5.5 million votes.
Election law expert Richard Hasen disagrees with my previous article in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why It Will Be Harder for Trump to Challenge This Year’s Election”.
Alexandra Berzon of the New York Times looks at how Republicans are using baseless claims that non-citizens are voting to stir concerns about election fraud.
David Gilbert of Wired reports on VoteAlert, a new app developed by the True the Vote election denial group that allows users to follow the latest claims of so-called voter fraud and efficiently report their own claims.
By Peter Nicholas of NBC News: “Democrats Grow Concerned Republicans are Planting Seeds With Legal Suits to Overturn a Trump Defeat”
Trump threatened on social media Saturday to imprison election officials whom he believes engage in “unscrupulous activities” during the upcoming election. Wrote Trump, “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Mariah Timms of the Wall Street Journal writes about the flurry of lawsuits filed by both parties about who gets to vote and how votes will be counted in the upcoming election.
Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Trump have feuded publicly over the past four years but now Kemp is holding a fundraiser for the ex-president in Atlanta.
Trump lost his shit on his social media site after he was re-indicted by Jack Smith. Among the posts he re-posted was a call for military tribunals to prosecute Barack Obama, images of his political enemies in orange jumpsuits, and a sexually crude post about Kamala Harris.
Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security have a timeline of the times Trump has called for the prosecution of his political enemies.
The value of Trump Media stock has fallen below
$20$18 for the first time since the stock went public. Trump currently owns $2 billion worth of the overpriced meme stock and can begin selling his shares on September 20.Jasper Goodman of Politico writes that as their father embraces the growing crypto community, Trump’s sons are rolling out a cryptocurrency startup that has been plagued by scams and that government watchdogs argue could lead to a conflict of interest.
Tucker Carlson hosted a so-called historian on his podcast who argued Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II because he opposed appeasement after Hitler invaded Poland and that the Holocaust happened because Germany didn’t plan well enough for what they would do with the millions of people they encountered after invading other countries. (“[Germany] launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners, and so forth, that they were going to have to handle. They went in with no plan for that, and they just threw these people into camps and millions of people ended up dead there.” That second “and” in that last sentence is doing a lot of work there.) Carlson described this individual as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” Carlson addressed the RNC in July and is set to appear with J.D. Vance in Pennsylvania next week.
By Matt Bai of the Washington Post: “I Understand Trump Voters. Do I Also Have to Empathize With Them?” (“To say that Trump’s voters aren’t aware of these things, or don’t fully comprehend them, or are firmly in the grip of misinformation, is to say that they’re simply fools. And I’ve met way too many rural Americans to believe that. If they’re ignorant, then their ignorance, at this point, is willful.”)
“I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states. As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”—Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney. Cheney also endorsed Democrat Colin Allred for Senate, who is running against Ted Cruz in Texas.
Congress
Nicholas Fandos and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times look at the Democratic-leaning seats held by Republican members of Congress in California and New York that Democrats are finding tough to win.
The Char-Koosta News reports Republican Montana senate candidate Tim Sheehy told a group gathered at a fundraiser in 2023 that he ropes and brands with members of the Crow nation because it’s “a great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8:00 A.M.”
Bethany Rodgers of USA Today reports that while serving as the CEO of a hedge fund, Republican Pennsylvania senate candidate Dave McCormick urged women who received unwanted sexual advances from other employees to remain silent.
Intriguing: A The Hill/Emerson College poll found Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida only leading Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by one point, 46-45%. Scott is predicted to win re-election easily. Something to keep an eye on…
Politico notes Congress needs to pass a funding bill by October 1 to keep the government open but far-right conservatives are toying once again with a government shutdown. And now Trump has endorsed shutting down the government unless a provision making it illegal for non-citizens to vote (which is already illegal) is included in the bill. (I’m waiting for Republicans to threaten shutting down the government unless Democrats agree to make the American flag the official flag of America.)
Public Policy
The Biden administration is looking at steps it could take to make its recently imposed restrictions on asylum difficult to reverse.
The Biden administration aims for a redo on some of its student loan forgiveness programs next month.
Due to an increase in enforcement funding included in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high-end tax cheats since last fall. It is estimated the top 1% of earners in the U.S. are responsible for at least 20% of all unpaid taxes.
Following the school shooting in Georgia, the FBI acknowledged they had received tips about a potential school shooting in 2023 and referred the threat to local authorities, who investigated the 14-year-old now accused of the act. The suspect denied making the threats and his father assured authorities the suspect would not have access to his family’s firearms. (Turns out the father gave his son the gun used in the shooting as a Christmas gift last year following the law enforcement inquiry; the father has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder.) As this demonstrates, the Constitution protects the gun rights of Americans who threaten to use guns to kill others. It’s also more proof that good guys with guns do not reliably prevent people from becoming victims of gun violence.
The Courts
Texas has sued the Biden administration to prevent it from shielding the medical records of women who cross state lines to seek an abortion.
The judge in Trump’s hush money case delayed his sentencing to after the election.
ProPublica reports Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni has privately praised a group fighting against Supreme Court reform, an initiative that has received renewed interest due to her husband’s ethical conflicts. You can see why she’s worried: How else would she be able to afford a vacation? On a Supreme Court justice’s salary no less?
The Economy
Economic growth in the United States was revised up to a healthy 3% for the last quarter. Spending, income, and inflation were all moving in the right direction.
Gas prices have fallen to a six-month low, with prices in ten states dropping to below $3 per gallon. Some analysts predict the average price of gas will drop below $3 by Thanksgiving.
Katy O’Donnell of Politico writes about a “ticking time bomb” within the economy: The plunging value of commercial real estate in city centers, which have not recovered their value since the pandemic. Banks own over $1 trillion in loans attached to these properties.
The Biden administration intends to block a Japanese firm’s purchase of U.S. Steel.
Goldman Sachs estimates a Harris victory would be more beneficial to the economy than a Trump victory given Trump’s hardline positions on tariffs and immigration.
International News
Following the discovery of the bodies of six Israeli hostages in Gaza, 800,000 Israelis participated in a general strike to demand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do more to secure the release of the remaining hostages. An Israeli court ordered the strike to end, and Netanyahu refused to change course. Meanwhile, the U.S. is planning a final “take it or leave it” Israel-Gaza ceasefire offer.
Mongolia, a member of the International Criminal Court, hosted Vladimir Putin last week and ignored calls to arrest him in accordance with an international arrest warrant.
Alternative für Deutschland won a state election in Germany last week, becoming the first far-right party to win an election in Germany since the Nazis. (A Republican state senator in Arizona posted a rallying cry associated with the Nazi Party to social media following news of its victory.) Bertrand Benoit of the Wall Street Journal writes that the rise of far-right parties in Europe isn’t just about immigration but economic and security fears.
Pope Francis said it was a “grave sin” not to offer aid to migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ordered the arrest of his political rival Edmundo Gonzalez, whom international observers assert won the nation’s recent presidential election. He also declared Christmas would begin in October.
Vincent’s Picks: Friends Turns Thirty
Allow me to date you: Emma Geller-Green probably graduated from college last year. Her twin cousins—Jack and Erica Bing—are probably juniors in college. Emma’s older brother Ben is twenty-nine. He could be married. He could have kids. That would make his father and stepmother, Ross Geller and Rachel Green, grandparents.
Friends turns thirty this month. If the show is anything like its main characters, it is not handling this development well:
Friends is by no means the best TV show of all-time. It’s not even the best TV show of its decade. (Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The X-Files, and Homicide: Life on the Street set that standard.) Nor is Friends the funniest, although its best episodes (“The One Where No One’s Ready”, “The One With the Embryos”, “The One Where Everybody Finds Out”, “The One Where Ross Got High”, etc.) rank high in that regard, and merely dropping a line of dialogue from the show (here, let me try one: “Pivot!”) can send a whole room into a paroxysm of laughter.
But if you set aside children’s programming like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Friends may be the most beloved television series of all-time. It’s a matter of concept and timing. Conceptually, Friends is a show about friends, specifically, a group of six twentysomething friends living in New York City that includes a pair of siblings, two sets of roommates, a pair of college roommates, a pair of ex-roommates, a pair of high school friends, neighbors who would eventually fall in love with one another and get married, and an on-again off-again couple whose will-they-or-won’t-they romance fueled the show’s ten-year run and provided it with its most heart-pounding moments (i.e., “when were you…under me?” and “The One With the Prom Video”). The concept—a group of friends who just hang out with one another—is so basic it’s amazing network executives hadn’t landed on it prior to 1994. Actually, I take that back: They had, with Cheers (1982-1993), the show NBC desperately needed to replace on its Thursday night schedule in the mid-90s. The creators of Friends just took that concept, made the cast younger, and switched out the bar for a coffeehouse.
The concept is so generic that Friends could have turned out vaporous, a show about nothing, which is actually the high-concept behind Seinfeld, another show about a group of friends who just hang out with each other. Usually a show needs a hook, a reason why the characters are together. They’re usually members of a family, but they could also be the members of a TV news team, the doctors and support staff of an army medical unit, a group of cabbies, or four senior ladies sharing a home. The characters on Friends, however, were just that, but it worked not only because the show was funny, but also for the simple reason that viewers really enjoyed hanging out with these characters. Friends offered friendship with a fun and friendly group of people. There may have been six actors listed in the credits, but it was always you—not Tom Selleck, not Julia Roberts, not Bruce Willis, not Paul Rudd, not Brad Pitt—who was the seventh (albeit silent) cast member. It’s why so many turn to the show as comfort viewing: Ross and Rachel and Monica and Chandler and Joey and Phoebe will be there for you.
The series also benefitted from timing. Friends premiered in 1994, the year Pulp Fiction was released, when grunge rock was in full bloom, when the Internet first landed on the cover of a thing called Time magazine. It was an age of irony, reflected on the show by the sarcastic wit of its funniest character, Chandler Bing (played by the recently deceased Matthew Perry.) Lisa Kudrow’s free-spirited Phoebe Buffay may not have been a distinguished singer-songwriter, but she did foreshadow the decade’s neo-bohemian Lilith Fair movement and its legion of female fans. The series, at least initially, seemed to channel the adrift lifestyle of Gen Xers. By the end of its run, though, it was actually a show about how Gen X went mainstream.
But by timing, I’m thinking more about where Friends lands within the history of television. It’s still a product of the era when networks dominated television production and churned out crowd-pleasing if mostly unambitious sitcoms and dramas. But the show also began airing a few years before the dawn of the Golden Age of Television, and in retrospect you can sense that era’s creative spirit ever-so-slightly beginning to influence Friends’ production. Friends would share Thursday nights on NBC with Seinfeld and ER, two shows that pushed the creative envelope. Of those series, Friends was the most conventional, but the company it kept encouraged Friends to up its game. You can’t mistake the show for your standard paint-by-numbers 80s sitcom. Friends, therefore, feels like a transitional program: It’s influenced by television’s increasing attention to quality, but it’s still committed to formula.
That extra attention to quality has made Friends very rewatchable. In fact, due to the timing of its mid-90s premiere, viewers who want to watch reruns of Friends have always been able to find the show on TV, something that can’t be said about many sitcoms that preceded it. Friends went into syndication in 1998 and continues to air on multiple cable stations as a centerpiece of their programming. When studios began releasing whole seasons of TV series on DVD in the early 2000s, Friends was well-positioned to capitalize on that, too. The show was a top-ranked series on Netflix when Netflix almost had the streaming market all to itself in the 2010s. HBO paid $425 million in 2019 for the rights to air the program on its platform, where it reportedly became Max’s most streamed show.
And consider who watches the show. Friends was primarily aimed at Gen Xers, but Baby Boomers tuned in to the show as well in the 1990s. Today, thanks to streaming, it’s found an audience among Millennials and Zoomers. (Show creator Marta Kaufmann once said her daughter’s high school friends, who discovered the show on Netflix, had assumed the series was a period piece about the 1990s.) That means nearly the entire American viewing public are familiar with the show.
There’s no secret, therefore, to understanding the enduring appeal of Friends, a funny, warm-hearted, crowd-pleasing yet well-made show about a young group of friends that has never gone off the air. It will likely go down in history as the show most people watch when they’re looking for something to watch. Yet there’s more to the cultural legacy of Friends than its status as the most beloved TV show of all-time. No, I’m not thinking about how Friends influenced style trends in the 1990s (i.e., “the Rachel” hair-do) or shaped our collective sense of humor (i.e., “Could I be wearing anymore clothes?”) And no, Friends shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as a socially-conscious show like All in the Family, although it did air a same-sex marriage in 1996. (We should be careful about assuming the show was ahead of its time in that regard, however, as it did occasionally turn to homophobic and transphobic jokes for laughs.)
Instead, I’m thinking about a couple of more subtle cultural developments that Americans today take for granted. I’m not arguing Friends caused these things to happen, but perhaps the show accelerated them.
Let’s begin with coffee and coffeeshops. Did many Americans really hang out in coffeeshops before Friends? Did people buy fancy coffee drinks prior to Friends? The characters on Seinfeld drank coffee, but did so in a diner, so it was probably cheap coffee straight from a Mr. Coffee maker, and a waitress would come around to offer them refills. Frasier Crane and his brother Niles often met in a coffeeshop on Frasier (which debuted in 1993) but they drank gourmet coffee because they were snobs and because the show was set in Seattle, which had an established coffee culture.
Quaint coffeeshops like Central Perk certainly existed prior to Friends. But consider this: When Friends premiered in 1994, there were a little over 400 Starbucks stores in the United States, most of which were on the West Coast. The first Starbucks opened in New York City less than six months before the first episode of Friends aired. When Friends ended in 2004, there were 8,000 Starbucks in the United States. (There are now over 17,000 Starbucks stores in the US alone.) When I began college in 1996, the student union housed a little-used bowling alley on its lower floor. By the time I graduated in 2000, the college had turned that space into a dining establishment that sold Starbucks-style coffee drinks. And what did they place directly inside the main entrance? A sofa flanked by two cushy chairs.
Correlation, of course, is not causation. Maybe Friends simply reflected this developing trend, but perhaps the show and its millions of fans, many of whom wanted to emulate the lifestyle of the show’s characters, helped turn this country into massive consumers of expensive coffee.
There’s another trend Friends may have played a part in developing, and this one has had a major effect on American society. Before Friends, how many young Americans wanted to live in cities? Not in metro areas, not in suburbs, but in the core of major American cities? Everybody knew cities were full of people, but Friends made urban life highly appealing. There was so much to do there! I remember in one episode either Ross or Chandler came back to Monica and Rachel’s apartment with tickets to see either the Rangers or Knicks and he asked if anyone wanted to go with him to the game and I was blown away. This wasn’t something they needed to plan for. It didn’t involve a time-consuming commute. Going to a Rangers game was something they could do on a lark after work, like getting the groceries or going out for pizza or hanging out at the coffeeshop. What a way to live!
It is important to remember that cities did not have a good reputation in the United States in the early 1990s. Many Americans regarded them as dangerous, full of crime, dirty, poorly managed, and impoverished. And let’s be honest: There was a strong racial dimension to this perception. Many white Americans—many of whom had fled core cities for the suburbs—attributed the urban decay of the 1970s and 1980s to the high numbers of minorities who called these cities home. By the dawn of the 90s, cities weren’t known as places people would want to voluntarily live in, let alone visit on vacation; they were better known for their slums and record murder rates.
Television shows in the 1980s idealized suburban and rural life. Meanwhile, shows set in cities were often either centered on Black characters (i.e., The Cosby Show) or, like Night Court, implied cities were teeming with weirdos and deviants. By the time Friends debuted, there were already shows focused on white characters (like Seinfeld and Mad About You) that portrayed cities—and specifically New York City—in a more positive light. But Friends romanticized city life. Friends told its Gen X and Millennial audiences that if they moved to the city, they could live in a quirky but nice apartment, get an interesting job, maybe keep a duck or a chick or a monkey as a pet, find a family of friends to hang out with at a cool little coffeehouse, and fall in love.
Over the past thirty years, the downtown areas of most major American cities have been revitalized, a trend driven in part by a steady stream of young (and often white) Gen X and Millennial residents. The effects of this demographic shift can be seen in the economic redevelopment of downtown business districts, debates over gentrification, and the increasingly progressive tilt of urban politics.
Did Friends cause this? It’s probably more accurate to say the significant drop in violent crime that began in the 1990s (driven by a huge decline in Rudy Giuliani’s NYC) and a booming tech economy served as the foundation for that shift. Whatever responsibility Friends has for that change may also need to be shared with other TV shows like MTV’s The Real World and Living Single, a series that aired on FOX from 1993 to 1998 starring Queen Latifah and Kim Fields about six young Black professionals living in Brooklyn. (Living Single was, like Friends, also produced by Warner Bros. but did not receive the same promotional push as its NBC counterpart. It consistently ranked near the bottom of the Nielsen ratings but was a top five show among Black audiences and performed well for a 1990s FOX program.) But even if Friends simply reflected a population shift that was already emerging in 1994, it seems to me the show has at least served as a lifestyle template for millions of young Americans over the past thirty years.
Exit Music: “Sometimes a Fantasy” by Billy Joel (1980, Glass Houses)
Besides the June 2024 debate between Biden and Trump, I’d say there have only been two presidential debates in American history that actually shaped the outcome of the election: The first one, in 1960, between Kennedy and Nixon, which was the first ever televised debate, and the 1980 debate between Carter and Reagan, which opened the floodgates for Reagan. Other debates have generated memorable moments, but probably had a minimal influence on the final result.