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August 22nd 2024

A sharp round-up of the most important political news

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The US in brief

A sharp round-up of the most important political news

Tim Walz continued the Democrats’ attacks on Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on the third day of the party’s national convention in Chicago. Kamala Harris’s running-mate said that his Republican rivals do not “understand what it takes to be a good neighbour”. He also used his past role as a high-school American-football coach to score political points. The campaign “would leave it all on the field”, he promised. Scrambling the metaphor, he asked Democrats to “get in the trenches and do the blocking and the tackling”. In an earlier speech Bill Clinton, a former president, went with an attack rhyming couplet: when voters next listen to Mr Trump they should not “count the lies” but “count the Is”. The DNC’s biggest moment comes tonight, when Ms Harris will speak.

Correspondent’s dispatch: The protests that failed to ignite

Daniel Knowles
Midwest Correspondent

Before Democratic delegates arrived in the Windy City, Chicagoans fixated on 1968. During that year’s convention, blue-helmeted Chicago police officers, their identifying badges hidden, beat hippies protesting outside fancy hotels against the Vietnam war.

Such sights have been conspicuously absent this year. On Thursday protesters plan to march from Union Park, about half a mile north of the United Centre, where Democrats are meeting. Few expect violence. When I visited the park, I found perhaps a thousand people. Members of niche communist parties mingled with Palestinian-Americans, some of whom seemed a little taken aback by their loud allies.

There has been disruption, for sure. An event I attended was interrupted by young women shouting “Free Palestine”. They were hauled off stage by rather-too-enthusiastic bouncers. Protesters at a Pete Buttigieg event supposedly set off a stink bomb. But nothing has really upset the week’s proceedings. The stink bombers even apologised on the way out. Chicagoans, and Democrats, can probably relax.

Robert F. Kennedy junior is reportedly planning to end his campaign for president and endorse Donald Trump. He is due to speak on Friday in Arizona about “his path forward”. Mr Trump, who agrees with the third-party candidate on issues such as vaccine scepticism, earlier told CNN that he would “be open to” giving Mr Kennedy a role in his administration.

Preliminary data released by the Department of Labour suggested that the economy added 818,000 fewer jobs in the year ending in March than previously reported. Such revisions are frequent but usually smaller. The latest follows an unexpected labour-market slowdown in July. Mr Trump alleged without evidence that the government “PADDED THE NUMBERS” to help Ms Harris’s election bid.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology released demographic data about its incoming class, the first it has admitted since the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in June 2023. The share of black students dropped from about 15% to 5%. The percentage of Asian American students, meanwhile, rose from 40% to 47%. MIT is the first highly selective university to disclose enrolment data.

The host with the most

On Tuesday Senator Bernie Sanders denounced the “billionaire class” from the DNC stage. The governor of Illinois then took to the podium and bragged that he, unlike Mr Trump is a “real billionaire”. Meet J.B. Pritzker. If the DNC were a birthday party, Ms Harris would be the birthday girl. But Mr Pritzker would be the rich host, pouring excellent wine and basking in the gratitude of his guests.

A view from elsewhere
Kamala Harris’s ascent has “freshly charged” the atmosphere in America and “the electoral campaign is suddenly exciting again”, wrote Marion Horn in Bild, a German tabloid. That’s what the right candidate can do—“change the social climate”. Most Germans do not want to be led by any of their top politicians. “I must confess,” wrote Ms Horn, “I dream of a Kamala Harris moment for Germany.”

We want to hear from you
Readers are sending us lots of thoughtful emails so we’ve decided to publish some. If you have views on what is happening in America drop us a line at usib@economist.com. And, of course, we still welcome your feedback on this newsletter.

Editor’s picks

Our latest US coverage

Personality and policy

Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump. But how would she govern?

Being a politician is about more than campaigning. More policy detail is needed

Woolly warrior

Kamala Harris has revealed only the vaguest of policy platforms

Her record suggests she would be a pragmatist

Rent and the City

Our Carrie Bradshaw index: where Americans can afford to live solo in 2024

Compared with last year, rent on basic apartments looks more affordable

Today’s poll

Every week YouGov polls Americans on behalf of The Economist. This week, as Kamala Harris started presenting her economic platform, we asked Americans what they thought the annual inflation rate was. Just under a third were close to the actual figure, which was 2.9% in July. But 18% of Republicans thought it was over 16%—a rate not reached since the 1940s.

Daily quiz

Thursday: Hamburger University, which offers degrees in “Hamburgerology” and has its main campus in a suburb of Chicago, was founded by which fast-food chain?

Wednesday: In which John Hughes film does the protagonist feign illness to take a tour of Chicago with his mates?

See how to take part in the quiz at the bottom of this page.

If you enjoyed this week’s quiz, play Dateline, The Economist’s new history game.

Figure of the day

19,500, the number of encounters that US Customs and Border Protection has had with immigrants attempting to enter the United States illegally from Canada this fiscal year. Read our story about this new northern route and what it shows about the fluid nature of migration

Seen onstage at the DNC

—Stephanie Grisham, a former spokesperson for the Trump White House, said that this was Melania Trump’s reply to a text she sent on January 6th 2021 asking the then-First Lady whether she wanted to “tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence”.

Read all of our recent coverage of the 2024 election. Confused about a term? Check out our A-Z of American politics.

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