Happy Thursday! Election Day is 12 days away. Let’s take a look at the action on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where musician Yung Gravy led a group of students to vote early. (We’ve come a long way since that first Rock the Vote PSA with Madonna.)

• Vice President Kamala Harris in recent weeks has shifted her messaging to emphasize how former President Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy, which was especially pronounced at a CNN town hall Wednesday night. Host Anderson Cooper asked Harris if she believed her opponent was a fascist. “Yes I do,” she replied, citing claims from retired generals who served under him: Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and John Kelly, Trump’s onetime chief of staff. Both have called the former president a fascist, and the latter has said Trump offered praise of Adolf Hitler.
• Some in the Democratic Party’s left flank are unhappy with Vice President Harris’ bringing Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney on the campaign trail. Our Revolution, a progressive group spun off of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, doubted the effectiveness of Harris’ relying on the former congresswoman to reach disaffected Republicans in a press release Wednesday. “In a world of limited time and resources, Democrats should invest resources into their base, not in courting Republicans who aren’t coming over,” the group’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, said in the statement. “We’ve seen time and again that it is not a winning strategy to waste precious time chasing GOP endorsements that won’t translate into votes.” The group cited polling that showed 3 percent of voters who chose Trump in 2020 are backing Harris this time around, while 4 percent of Biden voters have flipped from the 2020 Democratic nominee to Trump.
• It’s not unusual, in the course of reporting on presidential elections, to run into political tourists. Journalists who descend on New Hampshire every four years ahead of that state’s primary have to be on guard for the possibility that the voter they’ve been interviewing about their views on the various presidential candidates is actually a Massachusetts resident who drove across the border. But Dispatch Politics experienced a first in this regard on Wednesday when, following a J.D. Vance rally in Las Vegas (more on that below), our reporter was unable to find an attendee who actually lived in the key battleground state of Nevada. There were two women from Oregon who extended their Vegas vacation by a day to catch Vance. Another couple were there from North Carolina. A doctor and Trump supporter named Stefan Brettfeld was among a surprisingly large number of people from Wisconsin (itself a battleground state) who were in town and carved out some time to see Vance. “There’s a conference at the Wynn I’ve been at since Friday that just wrapped up,” Brettfeld told Dispatch Politics. “So I saw it pop up on the news and I figured I’d drop over.”

LAS VEGAS—There is a jauntiness to J.D. Vance as he campaigns these days. You might even call it a sense of joy. After all, in less than two weeks he could be the vice president-elect of the United States. Vance beams as he walks out to cheers from the crowds, which are smaller but no less fervent than those for his running mate, Donald Trump. He cracks jokes about Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz. Vance is having fun; just ask him.

“We’re having fun at this event, and we’re having fun on the Trump campaign,” Vance said Wednesday morning in a ballroom at the Treasure Island Hotel (owned by close Trump friend Phil Ruffin) on the Las Vegas Strip. A day earlier in Arizona, at a rally in the Phoenix suburbs, Vance said the same thing. “This is a lot of fun, and I like being here,” he told the crowd at the Tyr Tactical, a tactical gear manufacturer in Peoria.

It’s not an act. Vance looks loose and confident, and it reflects how good Republicans feel about the state of the presidential race. “I don’t think it’s that close. That’s my personal opinion,” Jason Beck, the Republican mayor of Peoria and the founder and CEO of Tyr Tactical, told Dispatch Politics. Brad Larsen, a voter from Fountain Hills, Arizona, was a little more realistic. “I think Arizona’s gonna go for Trump. I think it’s gonna be very, very close,” Larsen said. “Very close.”

“We’re going to take this state back,” Stavros Anthony, Nevada’s Republican lieutenant governor, said before Vance took the stage Wednesday. “And I will tell you, I feel very confident because of what’s happening today and what’s going to happen in the next two weeks.”

And why shouldn’t they? 

In these two battleground states of the Southwest, Trump is narrowly leading Harris in the poll averages: by 1.8 points in Arizona and by 0.9 points in Nevada. Initial returns of early-vote ballots, which registered Democrats have dominated in recent years, now show a Republican edge in both states. If Trump can take back Arizona and Georgia—two of the longtime red states Joe Biden won in 2020—and pick off Nevada, which Democrats have kept in their column since 2008, he’ll need just one of the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A run on all of them would have Republicans looking at an Electoral College landslide they haven’t seen since 1992. 

The possibility is thrilling for the GOP.

“It’s going to be very fun to beat Kamala Harris on November 5,” Vance said in Peoria.

The truth is more complicated: The election remains close. The margin of error in the polls suggests the race is as tight as ever in the battleground states. Operatives from both parties say the Democratic ground game—the coordinated effort to make sure their voters get to the polls—appears much more robust than the Republican effort. And while the boost in Republican early voting numbers out West is a better situation for the GOP than it was four years ago, when Trump regularly trashed the practice, these initial numbers are hardly conclusive of what the final vote tally will look like.

Yet it’s hard to ignore how self-assured Republicans sound, given the way the Harris campaign appears to have stalled out in recent weeks. Her campaign has been described as “jittery” and “concerned” about her position in the battleground states. Her recent interviews, especially her sit-down with Fox News anchor Bret Baier last week, have given her opponents plenty of fodder to argue Harris is not up to the job. In his rallies in Arizona and Nevada, Vance had plenty of cracks about the vice president’s shaky media strategy.

“One of the things they make [here] is body armor and other protective equipment,” Vance said at Tyr Tactical in Peoria. “And I think maybe I’ll have to take some to Kamala Harris for every time she does a softball interview.” 

And in Vegas, he had the room laughing loud and hard at this one: “You know, I told the president yesterday, ‘President Trump,’ I said, ‘Sir, my goal is, every time I do a major national media interview, is to pick us up 50,000 votes. But I think Kamala Harris, she gets us 100,000 votes.’”

On top of the comedy routine, Vance works hard to make the case that it’s the Republicans, not the Democrats, who wear the mantles of happy warriors. In Vegas, he referenced a recent video where he claims Harris was “scolding” Trump for being funny. (It wasn’t immediately clear what video Vance was referring to, and the campaign did not respond when asked.) 

“She was like, ‘How can you, how can you dare have a sense of humor about American politics?’” Vance said. “It’s one of the things I love about my running mate, is he does have a sense of humor.” 

Then Vance added what might as well be the guiding principle of the final stretch of the race: “You can fix the country but have a good time while you’re going around and campaigning across the United States,” he said as the audience applauded. “Right?”

• President Joe Biden this afternoon travels to Phoenix.
• Vice President Kamala Harris hosts a get-out-the-vote rally this evening in Atlanta with former President Barack Obama. 
• Former President Donald Trump this afternoon hosts a campaign rally in Tempe, Arizona.
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz today campaigns for Harris in North Carolina, with stops in Durham and Greenville. In the evening, the Democratic vice presidential nominee hosts a Harris campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. Afterward, Walz heads to Philadelphia, where he is scheduled to stump for Harris on Friday.
• Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio this evening campaigns for Trump in Waterford, Michigan.
• Second gentleman Doug Emhoff today headlines two “early vote block party” events in Wisconsin, with stops in Kenosha and Milwaukee, joined by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West.
• Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, headlines a Team Trump Women’s Tour event in South Fulton, Georgia, this evening.
• West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice this evening campaigns for Trump in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, joined by his pet English bulldog, Babydog.
• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and former GOP former Rep. Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania stump for Harris in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Warnock also headlines a get-out-the-vote rally in Philadelphia.

“I’m still a Traditional Republican. … There are some on my side now who don’t sound that way. I’m going to be arguing more with them probably than the Democrats.”

—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell commenting on potential outcomes of the 2024 elections, October 23, 2024