Kamala Harris isn’t just asking for money, she’s telling you why
Plus: Trump, who likes early voting now, launched an early voting initiative called “Swamp the Vote”
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
Kamala Harris isn’t just asking for money, she’s telling you why
Trump, who likes early voting now, launched an early voting initiative called “Swamp the Vote”
Why Biden looked to Reagan for his trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day
Scroll to the end to see: how Charli XCX is celebrating the release of her new album brat through graphic design 🟢
Kamala Harris isn’t just asking for money, she’s telling you why
Politicians are always asking for your money. In a new fundraising ad, Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t just ask, she tells viewers why and why now.
“Did you know that by giving to our campaign earlier rather than later, you will have a much greater impact?” Harris says in the ad “KDH Early DTC.” “That is because it takes time to hire organizers and staff, it takes time to open offices and connect with voters in battleground states, so the earlier we do it the better.”
Small-dollar political donations are down this year. Federal Election Commission data reviewed by NOTUS found Democratic and Republican House and Senate campaign committees all brought in less money from donations under $200 in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the first quarters of 2022 and 2020, and donation requests that once worked no longer do.“Facebook’s dead,” Republican digital strategist Mike Hahn told Campaigns & Elections earlier this year. “I don’t think there are any donors on the platform anymore.”
So Harris is trying a different approach with her new fundraising ad. The 44-second spot seeks to convey a sense of urgency, explaining where that money will go and why they need it sooner as opposed to later. A dollar raised in June is more valuable than a dollar raised in late October.
“Please send a donation to support Joe and me,” Harris says. “This is going to be a tough fight and we are all up for it. We must defend our democracy, we must defend our fundamental freedoms, and we must win this election against Donald Trump.”
The campaign spent between about $67,000 to $85,000 to air the ad since May and it’s reach between 5.4 million and 6 million views, according to data from Google Ad Library.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) tried something similar during California’s U.S. Senate primary earlier this year with an ad titled “$15” about how far a $15 donation went towards airing persuasive TV ads.
Trump, who likes early voting now, launched an early voting initiative called “Swamp the Vote”
A longtime critic of early voting, former President Donald Trump has now changed his tune with a new initiative calling on his supporters to vote before Election Day.
The Trump campaign announced “Swamp the Vote” on Tuesday to promote absentee, mail-in, and early in-person voting. The initiative is sponsored by Trump Force 47, the Republican National Committee’s neighbor-to-neighbor grassroots organizing program in swing states.
“Republicans must win and we will use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country,” Trump said in a statement. “We must swamp the radical Democrats with massive turnout. The way to win is to swamp them, if we swamp them with votes they can’t cheat.”
Swamp the Vote was launched with a website that features an embedded video of Trump promoting early voting and making false claims about voter fraud, as well as links to request a ballot, check voter registration, and pledge to vote.
Despite voting early himself in 2020 — Trump voted by mail during the primary and voted early in-person at the Palm Beach County Main Library before Election Day (while living in the White House, he registered to vote in Florida using his Mar-a-Lago home address) — Trump has claimed the practice is a hoax or “stealing” the vote.
“Mail-in voting is largely corrupt,” he said at a rally last month in New Jersey.
Trump’s attacks on early voting seem to have influenced Republicans’ perception of the practice. A Pew Research Center survey released in February found 76% of U.S. adults believe early, in-person voting should be available at least two weeks before Election Day and 57% believe in allowing any voter to vote by mail if they want to. But those figures were all higher for Democrats than Republicans.
Why Biden looked to Reagan for his trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day
Forty years ago, then-President Ronald Reagan visited Normandy, France to commemorate the 40th anniversary of D-Day. To mark the 80th anniversary this week, President Joe Biden took some notes from the man once called the “great communicator.”
In Reagan’s speech at the time, he spoke about “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” who scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on the English Channel to surprise Nazi forces. Footage from the speech was used in a video at the 1984 Republican National Convention.
“The speech was a plain-faced one,” Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote in recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. “It was about what it was about, the valor shown 40 years before by the young men of Operation Overlord who, by taking the Normandy beaches, seized back the Continent of Europe. But there was a speech within the speech, and that had to do with more-current struggles.”
Biden’s own remarks this week struck a similar tone, comparing the Allies’ fight against the Nazis in World War II to the war in Ukraine today.
“As we gather here today, it’s not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day June 6, 1944,” Biden said in a speech at the same location where Reagan delivered his. “It’s to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us. They’re asking us what will we do. They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs. They’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for.”
According to Politico, members of Biden’s team studied the Reagan trip in advance of Biden’s, and “Biden’s appearance and all the accompanying stagecraft are similarly being engineered for public consumption in packaged clips that the campaign and DNC plan to disseminate in the coming weeks.”
That a Democrat would look to Reagan for inspiration might seem unusual, but as Biden looks to court Republicans turned off by Trump, drawing parallels with the man who proclaimed, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” is smart politics considering Trump’s public remarks about America’s Western allies and Russia.
Trump said in February that if he returned to office, he’d “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” if NATO countries didn’t spend enough on their defense.
In Biden’s remarks Thursday, he offered a counterpoint, saying NATO has never been stronger, America’s ability to bring countries together is a source of strength, and that autocrats are watching what happens in Ukraine to see if it goes unchecked.
“To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable,” Biden said. “Were we to do that, it means we’d be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches. Make no mistake: We will not bow down.”
The line was turned into a social media post on the joebiden Instagram account with “we will not bow down” underlined in red.
Have you seen this?
GOP’s convention website shows Ho Chi Minh City, not host city Milwaukee. The wrong photo was on the Republican National Committee's website as far back as February, according to an archived version of the site. [Huffpost]
Milwaukee-based retail giant Kohl’s says “No” to sponsoring Republican convention events. “Kohl’s is not a political organization nor donor and is not sponsoring nor engaging in any specific RNC events,” a spokeswoman for the company said. [NBC News]
House Republican proposes putting Trump on a $500 bill. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) filed a bill called the "Treasury Reserve Unveiling Memorable Portrait (TRUMP) Act” to have the Federal Reserve print a $500 note featuring the 45th president. [Fox Business]
How Buc-ee’s gas stations became the unlikely champion of EVs. At a time when many electric vehicle makers are pulling back on production, the cult gas station brand is building out its EV charging infrastructure. [Fast Company]
Charli XCX updated all her old album artwork in the style of her new album brat. The minimalist album art, which shows the album name written out in low-res, was recreated for her entire discography lol.
.uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ƃɐlɟ ǝɥʇ ƃuᴉʎlɟ ǝɹɐ suɐɔᴉlqndǝɹ ¿ǝǝs noʎ uɐɔ ʎɐs ɥO Americans have used the upside-down U.S. flag as a symbol of protest before, but the way it’s being used by right-wing protesters today represents something unique. [Yello]
History of political design
“Now more than ever.” button (1972). The slogan, used in Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, dates back to 1860 when it was used in the Republican Party platform, according to the Nixon Foundation.
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