A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
Editor's note: The Trump "flood the zone with shit" strategy is working all too well. Earlier today I checked the homepage of a major left-of-center magazine (New Republic). There wasn't a single headline about anything Harris has proposed to do as president. But there was story after story about Trump/Vance rhetoric and acts. Trump and his people must have been overjoyed. I fell into this reaction-mode trap in my post here yesterday. That was a mistake on my part, and I'm going to keep this mind going forward.
The video below worth watching for many reasons. Oprah Winfrey does this kind of TV hosting better than anyone, and she is a kindred spirit with Harris, as we saw at the Democratic convention. The stories from real people were powerful, and highlighted some of the things that are at stake in this election. Harris – while sounding a bit too glib at times – nonetheless showed how comfortable, and often eloquent, she has become as the standard-bearer for her party. The video is a reminder that one of the two presidential candidates has a truly hopeful plan for running an administration, not a rancid one.
And while the 2000 presidential election, ultimately decided by a few thousand late-arriving mail ballots in Florida, was a lesson in how a tiny percentage of mail ballots can have an enormous impact, some election officials anticipate bigger 2024 problems with Congressional or local races, often decided by just a handful of votes. “The post office is influencing elections and hurting trust in elections by not taking this issue seriously,” said Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab. “It seems like every election cycle, they've been regressing, and not improving.”
How is it even remotely possible that Trump's slow-the-mail-delivery Postal Service head still has his job? I realize it wasn't (necessarily) an easy process to get him out, but the Biden administration has had four years to figure this out. Complaining that the Senate won't seat Biden's board nominees is barely credible. The most likely explanation is that the Biden people have been unwilling to spend enough political capital on this. But it's four years later, and here we go again, in the throes of a campaign season where a (most likely deliberately) slug-like postal operation is screwing things up. It's nuts, and despite complaints even from red states, this could become one of the unforced Democratic errors that combine for a Trump win. If you're voting by mail, send your ballot as early as possible, and make sure it was received and counted.
Now, it is not ideal to run a presidential administration with retreads from the last administration. But it is a very possible reality that Harris will have to face. I’m not breaking news when I say that Democrats holding the Senate doesn’t look like a good bet right now. ... Given this likelihood, if Harris is elected, she’ll have a choice to make: spend months trying to get her nominees in place in a Senate that is more inclined to deliver her bad headlines, or roll with a near-term continuity plan. She could pick some high-profile fights, but the idea of reaching all the way down to subcabinet appointments and independent commissioners sounds like a needless headache.
This sounds like inside baseball, but it's important. Lina Kahn has been a superb head of the Federal Trade Commission – an antitrust titan, among other things – a powerful advocate for fair, competitive markets, consumer rights, and honest business practices. She and her colleagues have come up with useful regulations and put teeth into the ones that previous administrations ignored. If the Senate goes Republican, as now seems likely, Kamala Harris will be fighting uphill to get anyone she nominates through the sure-to-be hyper-partisan Senate. Kahn is one Biden appointee she absolutely needs to keep, and this piece explains a) how she can do it, and b) have a template for other posts.
Republicans would not even need to switch the electoral college seat to win. They only need to muddy the waters. If, for example, the Nebraska legislature ensured that their electoral college votes were in dispute, and the courts had not decided the matter by 6 January, and no one had reached the threshold of 270, that state of affairs would automatically trigger a contingent election. In a contingent election, another abstruse mechanism of the US electoral system, each state delegation, whether it’s California or Wyoming, gets a single vote, which means that the Republicans would always win.
More seemingly inside baseball – sorry about that. But again, this is important to understand what's at play, and at stake. The Republicans are trying to change all kinds of rules in many states to give Trump a better chance of winning the Electoral College outright – even if it takes dirty legislative tricks to pull that off – and have options for stealing an election he loses. Public bewilderment is their ally. And part of the Nebraska maneuvering, as the author explains, to feed more confusion into the mix.
Half a dozen interviews later, her media strategy is taking shape, even if viewers in New York and Washington might not be seeing it. In recent days, Harris has granted sit-downs to local media outlets and fielded questions in unconventional forums to target crucial swing state and minority voters. Her running mate Tim Walz is doing the same. Earlier this week, Harris parried tough questions from the National Association of Black Journalists and taped an appearance with Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis, a popular Spanish-language radio host and podcaster. On Thursday, she will participate in a live-streamed event with supporters hosted by Oprah Winfrey. (Editor's note: A video of that interview, held after the article was published, is posted above.)
Brian Stelter is a superlative reporter about media. He sees the big picture and the details, and connects the dots. This piece for CNN, where he's just returned after being cast out several years ago for doing his job too well, is a dot-connector. It offers helpful context on a topic that is of paramount interest mostly to journalists in New York and Washington. But it does matter more broadly. It's entirely reasonable to ask that candidates for president take unscripted questions on the issues. Our standard political journalism craves content-free melodrama – with reporters as co-stars – in its interactions with (some) candidates. I hope Harris will offer expanded opportunities to serious journalists. But as Stelter observes here, she has been far more in touch with the press and the public than her Big Journalism critics want you to think.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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Noah Pransky
David Dayen
Stephen Marche
Brian Stelter
