Plus, the Supreme Court's ruling in Virginia.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 12 minutes.
My closing thoughts.
In tomorrow’s members-only Friday edition, I’m going to share a list of my closing thoughts as we head into Election Day. This includes revisiting my final predictions, the best case that Harris will win, the best case that Trump will win, and a bunch of other random observations about how these final days are playing out.
Quick hits.
- Police investigating two fires at ballot boxes in the Pacific Northwest found devices at both scenes marked with the words “Free Gaza.” The perpetrator of the attack is still at large. (The investigation)
- Vice President Kamala Harris attempted to distance herself from a recent comment made by President Joe Biden that suggested supporters of former President Donald Trump were “garbage," saying she “strongly disagree[s] with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” (The response)
- The U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.8% in Q3 2024 after increasing 3.0% in Q2 2024. Consumer spending, exports, and federal government spending were the primary drivers of the increase, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (The report)
- Rainstorms and flash flooding have killed at least 95 people across southern and eastern Spain. (The floods)
- A House panel referred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to the U.S. Department of Justice for potential prosecution for allegedly lying to Congress about his role in a Covid-19 report on nursing home deaths. (The referral)
Today's topic.
Harris’s closing argument. On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., that was billed as the closing argument of her campaign. Harris delivered the speech at the same site as former President Donald Trump’s address to his supporters on January 6, 2021, which preceded their march to the U.S. Capitol. Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, said the location of the address was meant to “crystallize the choice in this election” for voters.
In the speech, Harris framed her candidacy as a chance to “turn the page” on Trump’s dominance over the past decade of U.S. politics. “For too long we have been consumed with too much division, chaos and mutual distrust, and it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.
The vice president also recognized the unique nature of her campaign, having replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket after he ended his candidacy in July. While acknowledging that many voters are still getting to know her, Harris said she is well equipped to serve as president after a career in public service.
Much of the speech focused on the potential consequences of a second Trump administration. Harris suggested that Trump would target his political enemies, move to restrict abortion access nationwide, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and cut taxes for the wealthy. She also compared the stakes of the election to those faced by early Americans during the American Revolution, referring to Trump as a “petty tyrant.”
On policy, Harris reiterated her campaign’s promises to address price gouging, limit the cost of prescription drugs, make housing more affordable, and offer tax credits for families raising children. On immigration, she pledged to work with Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that includes a path to citizenship for migrants but also said she would quickly deport those who cross the border illegally.
Harris did not mention Israel or Gaza, though many in attendance reportedly held signs protesting the war. However, she did vow to “strengthen” America’s global alliances while casting Trump as an “easy mark” for authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday, we covered former President Donald Trump’s closing argument to voters from Madison Square Garden. Today, we’ll look at responses to Harris’s speech from the left and right, followed by my take.
What the left is saying
- The left mostly praises the speech, arguing it captured the stakes of the election.
- Some say Harris presented an optimistic vision for the future of the country.
- Others question her campaign’s decision to frame the election as a referendum on Trump.
The Washington Post editorial board said the speech expressed “seriousness about tackling seemingly intractable issues.”
“In a presidential race in which the two major candidates have occasionally agreed on some key policies, Ms. Harris drew a sharp contrast between herself and former president Donald Trump with an optimistic tone, a message of inclusion and a commitment to the nation’s democratic institutions,” the board wrote. “On the Ellipse, she reiterated her desire to secure the southern border as she promised to pursue comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for those such as the ‘dreamers,’ undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The Biden-Harris record on migration is a real vulnerability for the vice president, and she cannot run away from it, but her measured approach, not mass deportations, is the most practical solution.”
“Ms. Harris has at times struggled to explain how she would be different from the unpopular Mr. Biden. This has led her to propose some bad policy, such as a federal crackdown on ‘price gouging’... But Ms. Harris’s big-picture message remains clear: optimism vs. pessimism,” the board said. “Voters have heard Mr. Biden and, before him, Barack Obama campaign on breaking the fever in Washington, only to watch politics become more polarized and government more gridlocked. Voter patience is running thin, which is one reason Mr. Trump is mounting such a strong bid this time. But that does not mean his vision is the only way. Ms. Harris’s closing argument Tuesday suggests she gets that.”
In Bloomberg, Nia-Malika Henderson wrote “Harris' Ellipse speech rejected fear, division, and chaos.”
“Harris’ three-month campaign has been something Americans have never seen in modern history. The vice president has been underestimated at every turn, yet she has delivered each time in moments big and small. All the while, she has contended with an uneven playing field shaped by racism and misogyny,” Henderson said. “Add to that a press that has been intent on both siderisms, false equivalency, and ducking long-held traditions like endorsements, and it’s clear how difficult Harris’ campaign has been. As she said in her speech, ‘This has not been a typical campaign.’”
“Yet, for undecided voters, she tried to make the stakes plain, re-introducing herself and laying out policies that would make raising kids, caring for an elderly loved one, and buying a home more affordable. She recalled her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, sitting at the kitchen table like so many Americans, struggling to figure out how to pay the bills,” Henderson wrote. “Now, it’s up to voters to decide if they want to make progress, particularly social progress, by joining other countries that have already elected women leaders. They must choose between Trump, who is running on a dark and disturbing vision of a country in decline, and Harris, who is running as the joyful warrior pledging to unite the country.”
In Vox, Eric Levitz suggested “Harris's closing message might be a mistake.”
Harris “has played clips of Trump’s most authoritarian remarks at her rallies, called him a fascist on national TV, and released an ad focused exclusively on the threat he poses to liberal democracy,” Levitz said. “All this represents a departure for Harris, who had focused more on conventional political issues — such as abortion and taxation — earlier in the campaign. Many Democrats believe her new message is a mistake — and they’re plausibly right.
“To be sure, their case is counterintuitive: Common sense dictates that, when running against a Hitler-admiring authoritarian, it’s wise to emphasize that your opponent is a Hitler-admiring authoritarian. But judging by the available data, swing voters are largely unmoved by such assertions, however objectively true and important they may be,” Levitz wrote. “This said, Harris’s closing argument remains defensible — but only if her warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism complement her economic message, rather than overshadowing it.”
What the right is saying.
- The right says the speech demonstrated the myopic nature of Harris’s campaign.
- Some argue Harris emphasized fear over hope for the future.
- Others suggest her core message fell flat.
In The New York Post, Michael Goodwin argued that Harris failed to distinguish her candidacy from Biden’s.
“Kamala Harris had one job Tuesday night — to separate herself from the last four years of a failed administration and make a persuasive case that the difference between that and the next four years under her leadership would be like night and day. Achieving both goals would pose a challenge to even the most gifted and sincere candidate. Because Harris is neither, her claim that she’s ready for a promotion fell flat,” Goodwin wrote. “Although her speech was predictably heavy on the dangers Donald Trump supposedly represents, it was otherwise good enough to serve as a closing argument, and her delivery was nearly flawless. She sounded strong and looked almost as confident as when she delivered her acceptance speech at the party convention in Chicago.
“But a lot has changed since then, and Tuesday offered no escape from the two shadows looming over her… To this day, Harris cannot say what she would do differently from Biden, which simultaneously makes her a blank slate and a full partner in a disastrous term. Even the setting of her speech — the Washington Ellipse, with the White House in the background — was a reminder of that baggage,” Goodwin said. “The other shadow looming over her, of course, is Trump, whose presidency was a roaring success compared to the last four years… That Harris couldn’t escape the shadow of either Biden or Trump tells me she has run out of fresh arguments for her election.”
In The Baltimore Sun, Armstrong Williams wrote about the “telling” message in the speech.
Harris went after “Donald Trump and Republicans almost immediately. In one of her first sentences, she stated that this vote will be one of the most important votes that you ever cast. She then immediately accused Trump of being a leader who would rule with chaos and division,” Williams said. “It’s desperation and it’s telling. Harris doesn’t have anything good to say. She relies on stoking fear in her voters. Nothing more.
“Of course, like with all of her speeches, it was far less about policy and more about the threat that Trump and Republicans pose to the nation. In fact, over the 30 minutes she spoke, the majority of it was deriding and spreading harmful rhetoric about what the nation would look like if Trump won. If Harris’ closing argument showed us anything, it’s that she will go as low as she possibly can to win this race. That’s it.”
In Reason, Eric Boehm said “Democrats changed candidates but didn't shift their message.”
“Trump's threat to democracy became the dominant theme of Biden's campaign, until it came to a screeching halt this summer. When Harris ascended to the top of the ticket, Democrats made an attempt to differentiate her from Biden. Her campaign was about ‘joy,’ we were relentlessly informed during the Democratic National Convention. It was turning a page, not looking back, going forward,” Boehm wrote. “Yet, here in the final stretch of the campaign, Harris finds herself not embracing joy but pushing fear. This reversion underlines Harris' inability to define herself and her campaign.”
“She did not have the chance to run a typical campaign, it's true, but Harris has had months to stake out her positions. Instead, her campaign has spent much of that time backing away from unpopular stances she took during the 2020 primaries,” Boehm said. “If all the talk about Trump as a threat to democracy has not definitively swung the needle in Harris' favor yet, why would one more speech accomplish much? Voters have heard this argument for two years, and have presumably already made up their minds whether to vote against Trump on those grounds.”
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
- I’ve never thought Kamala Harris has great political instincts, and the way her initial lead has disintegrated shows that.
- But this was a great speech, one that she should have been delivering much earlier.
- I thought the speech actually showed strong political instincts, but wonder whether it came too late.
I have never thought Vice President Kamala Harris is a great politician. When I say that, I'm thinking of the stereotypical things that make good politicians: They are good on their feet, good orators, and have good instincts reading the political winds. Plenty of prominent Democrats right now fit this description: Pete Buttigieg, Nancy Pelosi, and Gavin Newsom to name a few. Harris? Not so much.
This doesn't mean Harris can't be a good legislator or a smart person or even good at her job — there's a lot more to being vice president or a senator then just being "a good politician," but being a good politician helps you get elected. Harris is even good at some of the traditional "politician" things, like debating (we saw how well she did against Trump).
Still, I think we've seen this reality set in over the last few months. When Harris jumped into the fray, she immediately seized the momentum. She was up in all the swing states, controlling the narrative, and redefining herself to the public. Democrats got an injection of enthusiasm, cash, and support. On August 15, I said she was in the driver's seat. The energy was palpable and real, and that initial pop still might be enough to carry her to victory on Election Day.
But could anyone argue she is in a better position now than she was two months ago? I don't think so. I think her time in the limelight, her interviews (or lack thereof), and her pitch to voters as she tours the country have eroded her initial support, not galvanized or solidified it.
Which, to me, made her closing remarks more striking. As I was watching Harris’s final speech, my dominant thought was why didn't she give this speech 100 times in the last two months?
It was a good address. It wasn't too long, it wasn't wishy-washy, it appealed to moderates, and it put the focus on economic issues and an opponent who is historically unpopular. It was in some ways traditional and Biden-esque — talk of American history, the pride she takes in the job, her vision for bringing America together.
As I've said over and over again, the biggest difference between Trump in 2016 (when he won) and Trump in 2024 (now) is that his campaign is so much more focused on him and less focused on you. It's a parade of grievances and promises for revenge rather than a powerful vision for changing your life. I think if Trump were running his 2016 campaign, he’d be a lock for re-election. But he isn’t — and Harris knows it. Here is what she said:
Donald Trump has told us his priorities for a second term. He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute. He says that one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on January 6.... And on day one if elected, on day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list, full of priorities of what I will get done for the American people.
It’s a corny line, but it’s smart politics.
Her campaign even finally came up with a half-decent response to the question of the differences between her and Biden. Somehow, this took the campaign months — and of course came in a scripted moment — but they finally got there:
I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president, but I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office. My presidency will be different, because the challenges we face are different... Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. Now our biggest challenge is to lower costs, costs that were rising even before the pandemic, and that are still too high. I get it... I will enact the first ever federal ban on price gouging on groceries, cap the price of insulin and limit out of pocket prescription costs for all Americans.
She emphasized the fact she's spent most of her career outside Washington, D.C., (people love outsiders), hit some notes about preserving democracy, and beat the drum on "freedom," which she's been doing consistently since the day her campaign launched. On the whole, it was an effective speech — perhaps the most focused speech I've seen her give on the campaign trail yet.
Of course, it was drowned out immediately by Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” and then by Trump driving around in a garbage truck — but, for anyone who tuned in for a final message, it was still effective.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of her speech was what she didn't say: There was nothing about race, nothing about her gender, very little about foreign policy, and very little about immigration. This was a person reading the room — who understands that identity politics are not going to win this election, and also clearly sees her electoral strengths (abortion, her record as a prosecutor, and protecting democracy) as well as her electoral weaknesses (immigration, race, foreign policy).
That's the stuff that makes a good speech and a good politician. The only question now is whether it was too little, too late.
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Your questions, answered.
Q: What do you think about the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Virginia to remove 1,600 people from its voter rolls?
— Anonymous from Minneapolis, MN
Tangle: It’s complicated.
For background, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order in August that directed the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to provide state election officials with information about suspected noncitizens. The state DMV already shares this data, but Youngkin’s order sped up the process, mandating daily reports and removing those identified as suspected noncitizens from the rolls if they could not verify their citizenship within 14 days.
The Biden administration and several civil- and immigrant-rights groups challenged the order on the grounds that it violated the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) “quiet period” provision, which prohibits states from “systematically” removing ineligible voters within 90 days of a federal election. A federal judge and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Biden administration, but Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court. In an unsigned decision on Wednesday, the Court temporarily blocked the federal judge’s ruling that would have reinstated the registration of roughly 1,600 people removed under the program.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m obviously opposed to noncitizens voting in our elections, and in principle, I support the intent behind Youngkin’s order.
That said, I have mixed feelings about this outcome.
On one hand, Virginia has a strong argument. The state argued that the order did not violate the NVRA’s quiet period rule because it did not systematically remove voters from its rolls; instead, it said it reviewed each potential noncitizen registration on a case-by-case basis. Further, these individuals were flagged because they self-identified as noncitizens by checking a box on a DMV form, so it’s entirely reasonable for a state to audit its rolls based on this information.
On the other hand, it's clear the Virginia Department of Election was not truly analyzing every voter on a case-by-case basis. For instance, they “treated a voter as matching a potential noncitizen identified by the DMV based on as little as a shared ‘first and last name,’” according to the federal government’s filing in the case. That sounds less individualized and more like the kind of “systematic” approach the NVRA prohibits.
Local Virginia outlets also found numerous cases of Youngkin’s program removing legal voters from the rolls because they improperly filled out a DMV form. But common mistakes like that are exactly why the “quiet period” provision exists — to prevent relatively last-minute changes that create confusion. It’s fair to ask why this program wasn’t implemented more than three months out from Election Day.
Eligible voters who were removed by mistake can still register and cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, so they still have a way to vote. But in my view, the predictable issues that arose from a program implemented so close to the election undermined an otherwise reasonable effort. The good news is that legal voters aren’t being purged on a massive scale, and hopefully these voters can get their situations sorted before or on Election Day.
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Under the radar.
A major U.S. Department of Transportation rule went into effect this week that requires airlines to give automatic refunds for passengers whose flights get canceled or significantly delayed, promising to change the future of air travel. A delay of three hours or more for domestic flights and six hours or more for international flights triggers this automatic refund, as does any change to a passenger’s arriving/departing/connecting airport, an added connection, or a switch to a less accessible plane for those with a disability. Additionally, customers will not need to request a refund; airlines must automatically return their money in full. If this rule had been in effect last year, United, American, and Delta would have each doled out an estimated $1 billion in refunds. Morning Brew has the story.
Numbers.
- 75,000. The estimated number of attendees at Kamala Harris’s speech in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
- 24. The number of times Harris mentioned Donald Trump in her speech.
- 9. The number of times Harris said “freedom” in her speech.
- 2. The number of times Harris said “abortion” in her speech.
- 2. The number of times Harris said “immigration” in her speech.
- 1. The number of times Harris said “economy” in her speech.
- 60,603,354. The total number of early votes cast in the 2024 election as of October 31, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.
- -13.4. Harris’s net favorability rating on July 22, the day after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, according to FiveThirtyEight.
- -1.5. Harris’s net favorability rating on October 30.
The extras.
- One year ago we wrote about the end of the United Auto Workers strike.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the (now closed) link to vote for Tangle for the Shorty Awards.
- Nothing to do with politics: Happy Halloween. Watch the spookiest video on the internet — if you dare.
- Yesterday’s survey: 2,027 readers responded to our survey asking about Donald Trump’s New York City rally with 75% saying it will have no effect on how they vote. “Already voted but it wouldn’t have changed my mind,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
Each year, airlines in the U.S. damage or destroy 10,000 to 15,000 wheelchairs and other mobility devices. However, Delta Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Department of Transportation recently announced plans to allow passengers to fly while seated in their wheelchairs. Sophie Morgan, an advocate for accessibility on flights, said “This is the first step on a long journey towards change. Now, we call on all airlines to adopt this invocation and change the world for wheelchair users.” USA Today has the story.
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