Charts and Remarks

The public’s perception of the vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: refreshingly civil and positive. A CBS News/YouGov poll found 74% of debate watchers thought Walz sounded reasonable, while 65% said the same about Vance. Our take on the debate was that Vance clearly performed better, but per FiveThirtyEight’s average of four post-debate polls, viewers were pretty split on who won (48% for Vance and 46% for Walz).

Partisanship is almost certainly playing a role here, as it has in assessments of past debates. For instance, two New York Times opinion writers (in other words, people who are paid to analyze politics for a living) called President Biden’s disastrous June Debate with Donald Trump a draw!

Kamala Harris’ best bet when it comes to campaign messaging might be to throw President Biden under the bus. According to a new analysis from Blueprint, the worst-performing Harris campaign statements “portrayed a future Harris administration as building on the accomplishments of the Biden era.” The best-performing statements did the opposite. This makes sense as Americans are pretty down on the current state of the economy, which happens to be the top issue for voters.

How are progressive lawmakers like Rep. Ilhan Omar, D., Minn., taking Kamala Harris’ blatant move to the center and disavowal of some of her past left-wing positions? That’s the subject of a new Washington Post report. The upshot? Omar and other progressives recognize the vice president is playing to centrists for votes and are waiting until Harris is in the Oval Office to start pushing her back to the left. Relevant: A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found a plurality (44%) of voters think Harris is “too liberal and progressive.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said this week the Federal Emergency Management Agency “does not have the funds” to make it through the rest of the hurricane season. As the conservative media has pointed out, FEMA allocated a combined $1.014 billion in 2023 and 2024 to its "Shelter and Services Program" for noncitizen migrants. On the one hand, that’s a relatively small share of the agency’s roughly $30 billion annual budget. On the other hand, it’s still a lot of money that could have gone toward assisting Americans suffering through the next natural disaster.

Melania Trump’s forthcoming memoir contains a fierce defense of abortion and a “woman’s right to choose.” It’s hard to imagine the former first lady making such a declaration in 2020 or 2016 and is a major indicator of how the abortion debate has shifted. Donald Trump has moderated significantly on the issue in the Post-Roe era, this week saying he’d veto a federal abortion ban as president. Trump disturbed some pro-lifers earlier this year when he promised to be “great” for “reproductive rights,” a term commonly used by Democrats. According to Pew Research, “63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.”

68% of Democrats say men have it easier in America these days, while only 32% of Republicans agree, according to a new report from the Survey Center of American Life. Overall, 47% of Americans believe men have it easier than women, up from 35% in 2017.

On the other hand, fewer Americans are identifying as feminists. One possible explanation: The culture war fights over gender have made an explicitly political label like “feminist” more radioactive. But that hasn’t stopped Americans from becoming more liberal on women’s issues in general.