ABC's The View | Poll-Vaulter

October 10, 2024

Former President Barack Obama will headline a rally on Thursday, October 10, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, as Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign seeks to use one of her party’s most popular politicians to mobilize the Democratic base, reports The New York Times.

Unleashing Obama is a sign that Harris is moving her campaign into its highest gear with Election Day less than a month away and the presidential race exceedingly close. This week, her operation is turning its focus from fund-raising and defining her message to getting out the vote as quickly as possible.

Obama’s rally on Thursday in Pittsburgh kick-starts that effort. And he is expected to continue rallying Democrats to the polls in several more battleground state events in the coming weeks.

“You bring in someone like Barack Obama to inspire people, to encourage them to participate, and to set the stakes and urge them to vote,” said David Axelrod, a former top strategist for Mr. Obama. “There’s no one better.”

Encouraging early voting is a key campaign strategy. As more Democrats cast their ballots early, it becomes easier for the Harris campaign to find and turn out the voters who are harder to reach.

Early voting has already begun in Pennsylvania, which Harris must almost certainly win to defeat former President Donald Trump. She holds a narrow lead in the polls there, having overcome the significant deficit she inherited from President Biden. Democrats are hoping for high voter turnout in the state’s biggest cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

But there are some worrying signs: Harris’s support among Black voters, for instance, is still lower than what Biden received when he won the state in 2020, according to a poll last month from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Siena College.

Black men in particular have been a weak point for Harris, and the vocal support of Obama, the first Black president, could help her there.

“He’s the biggest gun that Democrats have in their arsenal,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked on Obama’s presidential campaigns. “And here at the close, you’ve got to use the biggest gun you’ve got.”

“They’ve got to release the kraken,” said James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist—adding that the Harris campaign should be using Obama and other high-profile surrogates more aggressively. “He’s got, obviously, tremendous appeal to Black voters. He has tremendous appeal to suburban whites, which is another big part of the coalition. And he drives Trump nuts.”

Only Michelle Obama polls similarly well. The Harris campaign has not yet said if the former first lady will hit the trail in the last weeks of the election. Many Democrats saw Mrs. Obama’s speech as one of the sharpest at their national convention this summer, but she has long been reluctant to spend much time on the campaign trail.

The pivot by the campaign toward exhortations to vote comes as it adopts a far more aggressive media outreach strategy. This week, Harris appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and on the podcast “Call Her Daddy”—and sat down for friendly discussions with Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert, and the hosts of ABC’s “The View.”

Harris also has begun incorporating directives for supporters to not wait to return their ballots. Last Friday in Flint, Michigan, she reminded the audience that nearly two million voters in the state had already received their absentee ballots.

“If you have received your ballot, please do not wait,” she said. “Fill it out and return it today. Early voting starts statewide on October 26, and now is the time to make your plan to vote because, folks, the election is here.”

Research contact: @nytimes

March 4, 2019

As Rudy Giuiliani would say, “The truth isn’t the truth.” And that statement, made last August by President Donald Trump’s attorney, now seems especially relevant to the messages spun by the White House about how the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, got his top -security clearance

After denying it for months, President Trump finally has admitted that he ordered aides to put through a top-security clearance for Kushner. This presents no problem; it is the president’s prerogative to do so. But why the secrecy and lies?

Let’s go back to the beginning.

According to a report by ProPublica, nearly 18 months into the new administration, Kushner’s F.B.I. background check still had not been “completed.”

Kushner had gone back to make at least 40 changes to the disclosure report that he had filed with the Office of Government and Ethics to obtain his security clearance—and had formally submitted the form at least three times in total.

Yet, Intelligence officials and Executive Office personnel staff were digging in their heels and refusing to move forward to grant Kushner the high-security clearance he needed to access sensitive White House information.

He effectively was stuck in a holding pattern, unable to move forward due to family and business connections—and unwilling to back off from his high-profile White House position.

And in fact, Kushner never would have received his clearance, if he had stuck to the “standard process,” as both the president and ‘First Daughter’ Ivanka have claimed he did.

“I was never involved with the security” clearances for Jared Kushner, the president told two reporters from The New York Times for a February 1 report, adding, “I know that there [were] issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don’t want to get involved in that stuff.”

Daughter Ivanka said in a February 8 interview with ABC-TV’s The View, “There were anonymous leaks about there being issues, but the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance, zero.”

At that juncture, however, only one person could have—or would have—ended the standoff.

While the White House’s personnel security office is tasked with granting security clearances, if there is a dispute about how to move forward, the White House counsel makes the decision. However, in highly unusual cases, the president can weigh in and grant one, himself.

And that’s exactly what happened, the Times reported last week. Action only was taken to elevate the security clearance after Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, repeatedly had complained in person to the president—and Donald Trump had opted to take action himself.

In May, the president stepped in to direct his then-Chief of Staff John Kelly to overrule concerns and “fix the problem,” according to a person familiar with Kelly’s account who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity.

With great reluctance, Kelly moved forward, enabling Carl Kline, director of the Personnel Security Office in the Executive Office to overrule security experts and approve a top-security clearance for Kushner.

However, Kelly took precautions: In the scenario described by the news outlet, “… Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been ‘ordered’ to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

In addition, the White House counsel at the time, Donald McGahn, wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Kushner—including by the C.I.A—and how he had recommended that Kushner not be given a top-secret clearance.

Six months later, and for no clear reason, the entire process still is cloaked in secrecy.

An attorney for McGahn declined to comment. The former chief of staff, who left the administration at the beginning of this year, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders refused to weigh in on February 28, instead saying: “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

Finally, as Fox News reported when the news of the president’s intervention hit, “A spokesman for White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner’s attorney told Fox News [on February 28] that President Trump’s son-in-law received a top-secret security clearance through ‘the regular process with no pressure from anyone.’”

Research contact @nytimes

Posts tagged with "ABC’s The View"

Obama heads to Pennsylvania to give Harris a jolt of Democratic energy

Secrets and lies: Why were we misled about Jared Kushner’s security clearance?