This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 12 episode of "Alex Wagner Tonight."
There may be just over 50 days until Nov. 5 ... but the first ballots of the 2024 election have already been cast. On Wednesday, absentee ballots went out in the state of Alabama — and according to local news reports, people are turning those in. We are off to the races, people.
Next week, Wisconsin will begin mailing out absentee ballots. Pennsylvania, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia will start in-person early voting. Slowly but surely, the rest of the states will follow. What that means for the presidential race is that the window to change voters' minds is closing.
The question for the Harris campaign is: How do you reach those voters before, as Trump put it, “it’s too late”?
On Thursday, Donald Trump announced he would not participate in a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. The vice president, however, said that she and Trump “owe it to the voters to have another debate.” Trump tried to explain why he’s declining to face off against Harris again, writing on his Truth Social account, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, “I WANT A REMATCH.”
In the same post, Trump claimed that “Polls clearly show that I won the debate.” (For the record, the one national post-debate poll we have so far tells a different story. According to Morning Consult, before the debate, Harris was leading nationally by three points, within the margin of error. On the day of the debate, Harris’s lead widened to four points. After the debate, that lead widened to five points.)
But, according to Trump, he doesn’t need another debate. On Thursday, he told a crowd in Arizona, “Because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate. It’s too late anyway, the voting’s already begun.”
On at least one of those points, Trump is right — the voting has already begun. And it’s about to begin in some of the states that will decide the election — like Pennsylvania. So without any more debates on the horizon, the question for the Harris campaign is: How do you reach those voters before, as Trump put it, “it’s too late”?
One way is through ads. On Thursday, the Harris campaign announced that in the 24 hours after the debate, the vice president had her best fundraising day since the launch of her campaign, raking in $47 million in 24 hours.
That could help bolster the $370 million the Harris campaign has already committed in TV and digital ad buys, running from Labor Day to Election Day. Those ads will keep the memory of Harris’ victory on the debate stage very much alive: the campaign will release a series of ads highlighting footage from the debate, to get Harris’ performance in front of as many voters as possible.
Beyond ads, the Harris campaign is planning to meet swing state voters where they are, doubling down on retail politics. On Thursday, Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, was in Michigan and second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, did events in both Nevada and Arizona. Harris herself held two rallies in North Carolina.
The Harris campaign is making a big bet that North Carolina is in play this year.
You might be thinking … North Carolina? Democrats haven’t won North Carolina in a presidential election since Barack Obama in 2008. Before that, they hadn’t won the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But the Harris campaign is making a big bet that North Carolina is in play this year.
According to polling from Quinnipiac this week, Harris is now leading Trump in North Carolina by three points. That’s within the margin of error but it’s still a hopeful number for Harris. An official with the campaign told NBC News that they have set up 26 field offices across the state and that, since Harris became the nominee, more than 20,000 North Carolinians have signed up to volunteer for the campaign.
Again, I know we’re still quite a few days out from Election Day but the first ballots of the 2024 election have already been cast. So while this is a marathon for both campaigns, it’s also a sprint.