Trump Shows Up for the Bros. Will They Show Up for Him? As the 2024 campaign comes to a close, honing in on the grievances of young men everywhere is the Trump campaign strategy. The theory here is that young men are ready to stop being nice and start being real about their desire to brush back feminism and egalitarian politics in favor of dudes being dudes in the Trump White House.
Polling has shown a historic gender split this cycle, and so it is now widely said that if Trump can get the bros to vote, the bros will carry the day. Suddenly an election cycle that began with questions about Donald Trump’s Dobbs problem is ending with questions about Kamala Harris’ young men problem.
Trump is scheduled to appear in State College, Pennsylvania, twice in the final days of the campaign to court the young, male and angry. NOTUS’ Katherine Swartz went to the first event, a rally at the campus arena on Saturday. Trump “called out the Penn State wrestling team by name and brought them onstage with him,” she reports. He “said he’d ‘maybe wrestle one or two of them.’”
“He’s been going to UFC, he’s been on the Nelk Boys, he was just on Joe Rogan,” the president of the Penn State College Republicans told Katherine. “He’s really presenting himself as one of the boys.”
If the election really does hinge on young men, it would be a very rare outcome. White young men voted at a higher rate in 2022 than other demographics of men, according to researchers at Tufts. But still, young women vote at a much higher rate across the board than young men. Another Tufts study finds young white men to be much less likely to be civically engaged versus their peers. All of this could be proving Trump’s point, of course: Give young men something to rally around, and there’s a lot of votes to be found.
But it could also be proving the point that young men just are not very reliable voters, and basing a campaign around them is, at best, very hard and, at worst, very silly. Michael McDonald, who tracks early voting on his Substack, says his early results show a gender split among young voters that basically matches the gender splits on the voter rolls, meaning more women, by several percentage points.
“It’s a double-bias, advantage, whatever you want to call it,” he told NOTUS. “There’s more of them, and they tend to have higher turnout rates.”
A senior Democratic operative in a swing state texted us incredulously on Monday morning that the “Trump campaign and Republicans have been freaking masterful at convincing the media that this election is about the rage of young white men.” Abortion rights are still a pretty big deal, the operative ranted, and Trump’s record on that is still really unpopular. This operative said the young men focus from Trump is basically a smoke screen to cover that fact. “I wouldn’t fall for the okey doke that fast,” they added.
McDonald says this week will be the one where we start to see if young people are turning out in greater or surprising numbers, because young people wait to vote. But so far, the young men this campaign is supposedly about are not showing up to weigh in on it.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro | Read Katherine’s story here.
Where’s Joe Biden? Campaigning, but Quietly
As his presidency winds down, Joe Biden has popped up to campaign for Harris in strategic locations — places like labor unions where he thrived in 2020, but operatives fear Harris is losing ground.
The incumbent president has otherwise been pretty MIA in some swingy spots. Democrats there are still enthusiastic about the job he’s done as president, but they’d like him to stick to it. As the co-chair of the Democratic Party in Columbia County, Wisconsin, Mary Arnold put it to NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer, “Biden is really not on the front burner for us right now.”
Amanda Renteria, the political director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said keeping Biden out of the spotlight is good politics.
“I think it’s smart that every surrogate has a phase with the candidate, and we’ve moved beyond the Biden phase of this campaign,” she said.
The Harris campaign did not answer a question from NOTUS about how it is choosing when and where Biden should appear on the campaign trail.
“Vice President Harris is grateful for President Biden’s support and appreciates that he is campaigning for her,” said Ian Sams, a campaign spokesperson, in a statement to NOTUS.
Front Page
- Democrats in Wisconsin’s Bluest County Want the Party to Make Inroads Everywhere Else: “[A]ll the eggs in the two-basket strategy eventually may not be successful,” the Dane County Democratic Party chair said.
- The FBI Is Investigating Two Ballot Box Burnings in Washington and Oregon: Hundreds of ballots were damaged in early-morning acts of arson, triggering concerns about voting access.
NOTUS Scoop: These Harris-Walz Ads Aren’t From Harris-Walz
There are some videos on Snapchat that look an awful lot like Harris campaign ads.
Take this 90-second video showing Nevadans in front of Harris-Walz signs explaining why they’re for the Democratic ticket. It ends with “Don’t forget to get involved by visiting go.KamalaHarris.com,” flashing the distinctive, capitalized Harris-Walz logo.
But that video wasn’t paid for by the Harris campaign. Nor is it from a supportive super PAC. It’s from Courier Newsroom, a left-leaning media company founded by a former Democratic political consultant, Tara McGowan. Courier is now the second-largest spender on political ads on Snapchat in the final two months of the election, following the Harris campaign itself.
A review of the more than 100 ads Courier ran on Snapchat in the past two months found that less than half featured its editorial content. The rest are clips of Harris or campaign surrogates, and many are unbranded.
Courier Newsroom is not required to report political spending after the FEC unanimously ruled the outlet was a “press entity” exempt from campaign finance laws.
Spokesperson Danielle Strasburger defended Courier as a “transparently progressive digital news network.” But experts told NOTUS’ Claire Heddles that its latest ad spending pushes the limits of FEC regulations and sheds new light on the unprecedented — and largely unregulated — scope of political ad spending on social media.
Harris’ Closing Argument
Harris’ closing pitch to voters tonight — on the Ellipse — will center on turning the page from the Trump era and comparing their visions of America, a senior campaign official tells NOTUS’ Jasmine Wright.
The Ellipse is a symbolic location for the buzzy speech that serves a couple of purposes. For one, it’s in front of the White House, where Harris would be the first woman behind the Resolute Desk. For another, it’s where Trump hosted his rally on Jan. 6, 2021. (Sounds to us a little like the pitch Biden made during his short-lived reelection bid, which the vice president deliberately moved away from in July.)
It should make for a shareable split screen moment, which the Harris campaign loves to lean into, that’s expected to attract some 20,000 people to the National Mall. (D.C.: You might want to WFH today.)
Number You Should Know
$1.8 million
Giffords PAC, the political arm of the gun violence prevention group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, announced a new $1.8 million campaign last week featuring a gun owner advocating for Harris.
It’s no surprise gun rights are a centerpiece for Democrats running in red states, but it’s become central to the Harris message as she courts moderate Republicans. Her recent disclosure that she owns a Glock was an important signifier that she isn’t trying to confiscate guns and supports the right to bear arms for personal protection.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by … not us.
- Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement by NPR’s David Folkenflik
- One big thing is missing from the GOP campaign to reclaim Michigan’s state House: Trump by NBC News’ Henry J. Gomez
- Biden and Trump put in danger by Secret Service agents by Le Monde’s Sébastien Bourdon, Antoine Schirer, the video investigation team and Sinead McCausland
- Anti-Gerrymandering Groups Warn That Ohio’s Ballot Language Is Misleading Voters by Daniel Nichanian at Bolts
- Trump’s Shock Comic Was Set to Call Harris a ‘C*nt’ by Marc A. Caputo at The Bulwark
Be Social
Logan Roy — er, we mean Brian Cox — disapproves of the pop girlies.
@yevit I don’t think he got it @Brian Cox ♬ original sound - Yvette
Tell Us Your Thoughts
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