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“HOLY COW!!!!!” read the subject line of a fundraising email just after the debate on Tuesday evening. Democrats and their allies were quick to use Kamala Harris’s strong performance to ask voters to chip in. Many heeded the call—Harris’s campaign reportedly raised $47 million in the 24 hours following the debate.
Presidential debates aren’t everything in the grand scheme of an election, and Tuesday’s looks to be the last of this cycle, given that Donald Trump is refusing another round. But one tangible effect of the debate is that it sparked major donations for Harris. And it may end up doing the opposite for Trump: The New York Times reported yesterday that the former president’s rambling, falsehood-filled performance aggravated some of his very rich supporters. Although the full picture of donations won’t become clear until next month, the debate is likely to strengthen Harris’s already solid fundraising lead.
In a standard election, donations tend to flood in after big moments such as debates and conventions. Harris’s memorable 2019 primary-debate comments about busing led her to exceed her previous best fundraising day; Joe Biden broke his single-hour fundraising record following a 2020 debate against Trump. But this is not a standard race: In addition to the normal fundraising touchstones, real money movement has also followed felony convictions and last-minute candidate swaps. In the 24 hours after Trump’s conviction in May, he raised nearly $53 million, according to his campaign, far surpassing his previous single-day fundraising high point, and his camp quickly fundraised after the attempt on his life in July (“NEVER SURRENDER,” his team wrote, demonstrating a bipartisan propensity toward all-caps email subject lines). Harris, meanwhile, got an influx of donations after Biden announced that he was leaving the race: Her campaign said she raised more than $100 million just after Biden endorsed her, and she went on to reverse the cash lead that Trump had held over Biden earlier this summer.
Harris’s money momentum has stayed strong: Last month, she reportedly raised nearly triple the amount that Trump did ($361 million to his $130 million), including a $40 million bump just after the Democratic National Convention. And she arguably needs the money more than Trump does right now. Having inherited Biden’s campaign infrastructure, she has a large presence in many states, and although those regional offices may prove valuable, they also cost money to operate. Trump, meanwhile, has been working with a much smaller staff than Harris; his campaign outsources much of its on-the-ground work to PACs and organizations not formally affiliated with the campaign.
In past cycles, having more money has tended to help the challenger more than the incumbent. Among the many odd things about this election cycle is that both candidates are a kind of mix of incumbent and challenger. Harris is well known as the vice president, but Trump’s persona is much better understood by the public—in a New York Times poll this month, many voters said that they still need to learn more about Harris. Donations will help her the most if she uses them to boost her name recognition and get out the vote, Michael J. Malbin, a political-science professor and a co-founder of the Campaign Finance Institute, told me. He suggested looking at this particular debate “as a stimulator of enthusiasm,” especially for volunteers.
Harris has certainly been spending her money. She’s bought up a slate of national ads, including lots of time during the Paris Olympics. Trump has also spent lots of campaign money this year, though some of it has gone toward his pesky legal bills. In June, his campaign spent just $10 million on actual campaigning, Politico reported. The next month, he spent more than double that—still less than a third of what Biden and Harris spent that same month—and more recently, he has started ramping up his spending in swing states.
We are at an in-between moment in the race: Election Day is near, but so much can still happen in the next two months. Money can buy ad time to sustain and boost the candidates. But it only goes so far. Ultimately, people vote for the person they know and like. Becoming that person requires a mix of approaches: good ads, yes, but also strong public appearances and conventions and volunteer efforts. And, of course, random events can upend a race—or at least energize groups of voters. On Tuesday evening, Taylor Swift posted her endorsement of Harris’s ticket. By Wednesday, Harris’s campaign had a new fundraising ask of voters: “Will you join Taylor Swift in supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign?”
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Today’s News
- A Georgia judge threw out three more charges in the election-interference case against Donald Trump and his allies.
- Russia started its counteroffensive campaign to take back its territory in the Kursk region, which is partly occupied by the Ukrainian military, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
- New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned. His phone was recently seized in a criminal investigation, which is one of four federal probes into New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
What I Saw on the January 6 Committee
By Jacob Glick
Throughout these investigations, the question I wanted to answer wasn’t so much what had happened on January 6 itself—that was clear enough to me—but what the insurrection could become, if we failed to contain the forces that had fueled it. I saw firsthand why we cannot remember the insurrection as only a dangerous anomaly or an ideologically agnostic moment of chaos, whipped up by a repugnant but vapid ex-president. It was the manifestation of an organized and growing authoritarian movement that seeks to shatter our pluralistic society.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Watch (or skip). Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (streaming on Prime Video) is still dealing with the Sauron Problem, Emma Stefansky writes. Because viewers know how the tale ends, the series is trying to manufacture suspense by dragging out the story.
Read. Rumaan Alam’s latest novel, Entitlement, details how a Black woman’s quest for status runs up against her blind spots, Tope Folarin writes.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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