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Tonight's Debate Matters a Lot

(Political Wire) Dan Pfeiffer: “The last debate ended the candidacy of the sitting President of the United States. It changed everything about this race — and Donald Trump will not stop yapping about it. If the June debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was the most important in modern history, tonight’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris will likely be the second most important. There’s an excellent chance this is the only time the two candidates share a debate stage before the election. Voters are thirsting for more information about Kamala Harris and could certainly use a reminder or two about Trump’s erraticism, instability, and declining cognitive function.”

Harris Needles Trump with New Ad on 'Crowd Size'

(Political Wire) “Democrats are trying to get under Donald Trump’s skin hours before his debate with Kamala Harris,” Politico reports. “The Harris campaign released an ad Tuesday featuring former President Barack Obama’s eyebrow-raising moment from the Democratic National Convention in which he meaningfully glanced down at his hands as he joked about Trump’s obsession with crowd size.” Playbook: “As with the spot we highlighted yesterday, this ad is being microtargeted to an audience of one, running nationally on Fox News and locally in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Abortion, abortion, abortion: Harris has a surefire path to knock Trump off his game

(Salon) Donald Trump is treated every single day by the various media that cover the presidential campaign as if he is a serious man. This is a grievous error, and Vice President Harris should not repeat it during the so-called debate. She does not have to fact-check Trump in real time. Every time he opens his mouth and another lie spills forth, all she has to do is look into the eye of the camera and utter those famous words of Ronald Reagan, “There he goes again,” followed by a reference to how dangerous it would be to have a man who spreads such lies as President of the United States.

Tuesday carTOONS

New Tracking Poll Of All Swing States Brings Bad Debate Eve News For Trump

(PoliticusUSA) Morning Consult released a ton of new tracking poll data showing that Donald Trump is not leading Kamala Harris in a single swing state (except Arizona). There is also a red state red alert as Trump is only up by two points in red state Florida. If Trump were to lose Florida, the election would be over. Trump can’t lose a single red state or he will lose the election. Harris is leading in enough battleground states to win the election if these were to hold. If Vice President Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the election will be over.

Donald Trump can't get any attack to stick to Kamala Harris

(Salon) Donald Trump is attacking Kamala Harris like it is the 1950s. He and his mouthpieces — most notably his vice-presidential running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance — are effectively arguing that the vice president, like other women, should know that her rightful place is in the home and not in the Oval Office. Trump, groping for effective avenues of attack and vulnerability against Kamala Harris, is now calling her a “Commie”, a “Marxist” and “Comrade Kamala,” falsely claiming that she wants to impose “Soviet-style price controls” on the American people. It is as though his mentor Roy Cohn, who was instrumental in the 1950s Red Scare, has been reanimated as a type of ghost who is advising the corrupt ex-president from beyond the grave.

'All the alarms going off all at once': Trump leans into extremism as election approaches

GOP in-fighting breaks out as Republicans threaten to tank Mike Johnson's spending plan

(Raw Story) House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had a big plan to pass a spending bill that included a massive GOP priority: a provision gutting the National Voter Registration Act by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. It was never going to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, but he wanted to push it through anyway as a show of unity by the GOP House majority. But instead, it's blowing up in his face, reported Politico, as faction-fighting among House Republicans could prevent him from even passing the bill there — and all of this comes as a potential government shutdown looms at the end of the month if no bill is passed.

Schumer plots judges blitz in White House call

(Axios) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and senior White House officials are strategizing how to beat former President Trump's record on confirming federal judges. For Schumer and President Biden, the judiciary is personal. But Democrats have two challenges in surpassing Trump's 234 mark: a clock that's ticking and a Senate that's functionally 50-50 on judicial nominations. Biden's top aides, as well as Schumer, know there's no guarantee that they'll control the White House or the Senate in 2025. On Friday, Schumer spoke with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and other officials on how to accelerate the pace of judicial confirmations.

'Grand Canyon-sized chasm': How this MAGA candidate proves 'the problem with judging'

(Alternet) North Carolina Republican gubernatorial Mark Robinson, journalist Billy Ball writes in a Monday MSNBC op-ed "has built his brand on judging, more than any politician I’ve seen in my two decades covering politics in" the state. "Women, liberals, public school teachers, atheists, LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, poor people — few have been spared Robinson’s righteous wrath," the columnist writes. Pointing to a report published by a state online news outlet called The Assembly last week, Ball notes "that in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Robinson was running for any offices, he would visit adult video stores in his hometown as often as five times a week."