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Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are finally due to square off in their first, and so far only scheduled, debate. It is simultaneously a high-stakes and inconsequential event.
Many voters in both camps have begun to “come home” as the ticket is set. Indeed, a lot of independents are already leaning toward one candidate at this point.
In reality, the debate just signifies the final phase of the campaign. With 56 days left, and a vice presidential showdown between Tim Walz and JD Vance next month, the campaign will continue in earnest in the final weeks.
Typically, this means that candidates do multiple rallies, speeches or meet-and-greets in one day. They will do radio hits for local television and radio stations, as well as interviews with local newspapers in the swing states.
In the days after the debate, the Harris campaign will begin a set of trips headlined a “New Way Forward”. This will send Harris to North Carolina, where she will hold rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro. Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will also head to swing states, spending Thursday in Nevada and Arizona before spending Friday in Central Florida.
Harris’s running mate Walz will travel to the midwest, specifically Grand Rapids, Michigan and Mosinee, Wisconsin. Sending Walz to Grand Rapids makes sense given that Kent County voted for Trump in 2016 before it snapped back and broke for Biden in 2020. The campaign dispatched him with success to rural parts of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania last week.
Gwen Walz will take part in a debate watch party in La Crosse, Wisconsin on Tuesday night. Part of Wisconsin shares a media market with the Twin Cities in Minnesota, so the familiarity likely is a plus — and part of the reason Harris picked Tim Walz in the first place.
Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz already traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina on Monday for an event in support of reproductive rights. The First Lady of Minnesota has proven to be an effective surrogate for the campaign. In Raleigh, she spoke openly about undergoing fertility treatments to conceive her children Hope and Gus and, as a former schoolteacher, she attacked Vance for his position on public schools.
During the rally in Raleigh, Emhoff spoke about how little he’s seen his wife since the convention.
“Seriously, we had to literally go for a walk on an airstrip yesterday just to spend some quality time together,” he said. “But we don't have time for happy couple moments right now. We really don't.”
The same cannot be said the Trump campaign. After the debate, Trump will hold a rally in Tucson, where he will court Latino voters, a key demographic in Arizona. But other than that, the only event on his schedule is a press conference at his Los Angeles area golf course on Friday before a fundraiser, according to The Los Angeles Daily News. That’s a very open schedule for a presidential nominee in the final stretch.
So far, Vance has nothing on his calendar this week in terms of major campaign rallies or events, which is surprising given the normal “attack dog” role of the running mate. But while Vance has proven he is willing to go anywhere and talk to different people over the past couple weeks, he has also proven to be incredibly caustic and polarizing to groups including women and Hispanic voters. When he appears in public, it seems to rarely go down well.
Bafflingly, Trump seems to be farming out his campaign operation to his surrogates during this all-important time. After the debate, surrogates including Representative Byron Donalds of Florida and Dan Bishop of North Carolina, a candidate for attorney general, will join former Trump administration official Kash Patel in the Tar Heel state. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who was a candidate to be Trump’s running mate, will be dispatched to Morgantown, Pennsylvania. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem will make her way to Georgia.
Having surrogates on the campaign is not entirely surprising, nor is sending them to swing states. After all, the candidate cannot be everywhere at once.
But it appears that Trump, who blitzed the country holding multiple rallies per day in 2016, isn’t so willing to repeat the performance this time around. On Monday’s newsletter, I mentioned how this is the fourth quarter. But the GOP’s star player seems content riding the bench.
