Harris campaign reportedly bracing for tight election, fears ‘blue wall’ could crumble
Kamala Harris’s campaign expects Donald Trump to put up a strong performance in the 5 November presidential election that could break apart the “blue wall” swing states for the first time in decades, according to two reports published this morning.
While neither story suggests that the vice-president’s campaign does not think it has a path to victory, the reports underscore the potency of Trump’s bid for office and the fact that the race remains essentially tied despite weeks of vigorous campaigning and fundraising by Harris and her surrogates.
Citing people with knowledge of Harris’s campaign strategy, NBC News reports that they are concerned that the blue wall of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could, for the first time since 1988, not vote as a bloc in November, imperiling the vice-president’s path to the Oval Office.
The campaign is also concerned that Hurricane Helene’s ravages in North Carolina and the struggles of the controversial Republican candidates for governor are undermining Harris’s chances of winning that state. Here’s more:
Recent discussions have centered on the possibility of an anomaly happening this year with just part of the blue wall breaking its way. The conversations have focused on whether Michigan or Wisconsin “fall” to former president Donald Trump while the two other states go blue, according to three sources with knowledge of the campaign’s strategy.
Losing Wisconsin or Michigan would mean that even if Harris secures Pennsylvania – where both Harris and Trump have spent the most time and resources – she would not reach the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House without winning another battleground state or possibly two.
“There has been a thought that maybe Michigan or Wisconsin will fall off,” said a senior Harris campaign official, who stressed that the bigger concern is over Michigan. Two other people with knowledge of campaign strategy – who, like others in this article, were granted anonymity to speak candidly – also underscored deep concern about Michigan. Those people still believe that all the states are close and that there are alternative routes to victory.
A Harris campaign spokesperson pushed back against the notion about deep concerns over Michigan, pointing to recent public polling. A Detroit News poll conducted 1-4 October found Harris, who was campaigning in Michigan on Monday, holding a slight lead in the state, as did a Washington Post poll on Monday.
…
While North Carolina is still in the campaign’s sights and Democrats maintain strong organization and leadership there, the Harris team is far less bullish about victory, four people with knowledge of the dynamics said.
“Of all of the seven [states], that one seems to be a little bit slipping away,” the Harris campaign official said of North Carolina.
CNN, meanwhile, heard from top Harris adviser David Plouffe, who acknowledged that the race may very well remain tight right down to election day:
Historically, it would be unusual to have seven states come down to a point or less,” David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager who now serves as a senior adviser to Harris, said of the battleground landscape. “But I think at this point, you have to assume that’s a distinct possibility.”
Plouffe and other Harris advisers do not believe Trump’s largely outsourced door-knocking and other on-the-ground outreach operations can match what the national Democrats and the Harris campaign – which inherited some of the same team from President Joe Biden – spent a year putting together. But they believe this advantage can only take them so far.
“Democrats wish Donald Trump wouldn’t get more than 46% of the vote,” Plouffe said, referring to the national popular vote percentage the former president secured in his previous campaigns. But in the battleground states, “that’s not reality. He’s going to get up to 48% in all of these states. And so we just have to make sure we’re hitting our win number, which depending on the state, could be 50, could be 49.5.”
Key events
Donald Trump has a small lead among likely voters in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports in a new poll.
He leads Kamala Harris with 47% support to the vice-president’s 43%, just outside the survey’s 3.1 percentage point margin of error.
However, all signs point to a race that remains either candidate’s to win. Here’s more from the Journal-Constitution:
But with 8% of likely voters indicating they’re still undecided, the race could break either way as early voting enters its second week.
Among the most telling takeaways of the poll is the stability of the race. As both campaigns pour time and treasure into Georgia, Trump’s support remains virtually unchanged since the AJC’s last poll in September. Harris’ dropped a fraction of a percentage point. The number of undecided voters has hardly budged.
“It’s a really close race. Neither side has this in the bag,” said University of Georgia political scientist Trey Hood, who oversaw the poll. “And that makes the next two weeks even more important.”
The poll suggests that Harris may still be struggling to woo Black voters, the bulwark of the Democratic coalition. About three-quarters of Black voters say they’ll vote for her, far behind the 88% that Joe Biden won in 2020 when he narrowly flipped Georgia.
That doesn’t mean those voters are gravitating toward Trump. One in 5 Black voters are undecided, while only 8% say they will cast their ballot for Trump. It indicates that Harris’ campaign, which has stepped up efforts to bolster her Black support, should be more worried about apathy than losing those voters to the GOP.
In another sign of concern for Harris, 11% of Democrats say they’re undecided. While few back third-party candidates — the Green Party’s Jill Stein and others registered minimal support — the poll suggests she has more work to do to consolidate her base and little time to do so.
CBS News reports that Republican former prosecutors have asked the justice department to investigate Elon Musk’s effort to pay voters to cast ballots for Donald Trump:
NEW: Justice Dept confirms to @cbsnews that it has received inquiry from former federal prosecutors and GOP appointees to “request that (Justice Dept) review payments that are being made by the Elon Musk-founded America PAC to voters in Pennsylvania and other states that…
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) October 22, 2024
Justice Dept confirms receipt of the letter… but declines to comment further
The former GOP-appointed officials want a DOJ review of Musk’s effort
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) October 22, 2024
Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro made a similar suggestion over the weekend:
Donald Trump’s freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness style of delivering speeches doesn’t always hit the mark. The latest example is the daughter of golf legend Arnold Palmer, who did not like the way the former president talked about her late father’s penis, the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:
Arnold Palmer’s daughter says Donald Trump disrespected her late father’s memory by fawning over the size of the champion golfer’s penis at a campaign rally over the weekend.
“Hackneyed anecdotes from the locker room … seemed disrespectful and inappropriate to me,” Peg Palmer Wears told ABC News on Monday, two days after the former president publicly suggested her father was well endowed.
Wears added that “people coming to these rallies” hosted by Trump as he seeks a second presidency “deserve substance about plans [he] has as a candidate”. She specifically called on him to address “some of the threats he’s made to people”, an apparent reference to how he recently suggested sending the US military against his political adversaries when voters go to the polls during the 5 November presidential election.
“These are important issues that should be discussed for people when they’re getting ready to vote, and using my dad to cover over the important things just seems unacceptable to me,” Wears said.
Trump was speaking to his supporters in Palmer’s home town of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday at a regional airport named after him when the former president suddenly invoked the genitals of the renowned golfer, an old acquaintance.
“Arnold Palmer was all man,” Trump remarked. “When he took showers with other pros, they came out of there – they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Trump’s McDonald’s shift was ‘making fun’ of workers
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, did not hold back in criticizing Trump’s minutes-long stint as a fry cook at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday, saying he was “making fun” of workers.
“You’ve got Donald Trump putting on a little McDonald’s costume because he thinks that’s what people do,” she said Monday at a United Auto Workers event, per the Hill. “They’re not trying to empathize with us. They are making fun of us.
“Donald Trump thinks that people who work at McDonald’s are a joke.”
Trump stopped by the fast-food restaurant for a staged campaign event where employees showed him how to make fries. He then served pre-approved customers at the drive-through window.
Trump used the event to needle Kamala Harris, whom he has claimed lied about her time working at McDonald’s during college. Trump has made these claims without providing any evidence whatsoever.
Top Senate Democrats released a report today urging voters to cast their ballots as early as possible. The document also sought to answer questions about the election process.
The lawmakers – which include New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar – reminded voters that the outcome might not be known on 5 November as different states have varying timelines for accepting and processing mail-in ballots.
Their document also emphasizes that voter intimidation, as well as violence, “is never acceptable and any attempts to suppress the vote will not be tolerated”. The report notes that under federal law, “it is illegal to intimidate, threaten, or coerce anyone in order to interfere with their right to vote”.
“In our democracy, every eligible citizen should be able to freely cast a ballot in the way that works best for them and should not face restrictions or barriers to voting,” the report says.
The document also appears to try addressing voters’ concerns about whether votes were safe from interference, noting that officials from both political parties have “confirmed the security of recent elections” and that the infrastructure “has never been more secure”.
These statements come as Donald Trump, who still makes the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, has said that election fraud is unfolding in this race. (There is no evidence of massive voter fraud, including alleged irregularities surrounding mail-in ballots or non-citizens casting votes.)
“There have been efforts to stoke fear and chaos about the election with false allegations of voter fraud,” the report said. “The American people should beware of election misinformation.”
The day so far
Election day is exactly two weeks away. Gulp. While there’s no telling who is going to win, NBC News and CNN reported this morning that Kamala Harris’s campaign is bracing for a very close election that could potentially see the “blue wall” swing states not vote as a bloc for the first time in decades. They are deploying a variety of surrogates on the campaign trail to make the case for the vice-president in the final two weeks, with Eminem reportedly set to introduce Barack Obama when he appears in Detroit tonight, and Bruce Springsteen to headline two concerts as part of a series that will hit every swing state. Obama will also campaign with Tim Walz in Wisconsin later today, JD Vance will hold two events in Arizona, Donald Trump will campaign in North Carolina, and Walz will hold a second event in the Badger state before the evening is through.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
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Trump held a round table with Latino leaders but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc.
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Harris will campaign in Houston on Friday, with an eye towards picking up Texas’s Senate seat and highlighting how abortion bans have affected women in the Republican bastion.
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The US economy is poised for stronger growth than many wealthy nations, the IMF said in forecasts released today.
Bruce Springsteen to appear with Harris, Obama as campaign launches battleground state concert series
Kamala Harris’s campaign will hold concerts in the seven swing states, with legendary performer Bruce Springsteen to appear alongside the vice-president and Barack Obama on Thursday in Georgia, a senior campaign official said.
The Atlanta concert is the first of what the campaign is calling the When We Vote We Win series, and is aimed at whipping up voter enthusiasm ahead of 5 November. It will continue on Monday of next week in Philadelphia, when Springsteen and Obama will appear together, and concerts in the five other swing states will be announced soon, the official said.
Springsteen has backed Democrats before, and endorsed Harris earlier this month:
Richard Luscombe
Donald Trump’s round table with Latino leaders in Doral, Miami, has just concluded. The audience livened a little as the former president turned his attention, briefly, to immigration.
He repeated baseless and often-aired claims that foreign countries, especially Venezuela, were opening their prisons to send “violent gang members” and drug dealers into the US with military weapons. He called Kamala Harris “a stupid person” as he falsely labeled her Joe Biden’s “border tsar”.
His remarks segued quickly into an attack on Democrats for allegedly allowing transgender men to play women’s sports and a somewhat fanciful tale of a “a man who transitioned into, congratulations, a woman” smashing a baseball so hard it hit a female player on the head and “these young ladies said they’d never seen anything like it”.
Perhaps sensing things were going off topic, event host Jennifer Korn, a former White House aide and executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, attempted to interrupt with a “Mr President … ”
“I’ll leave it at that,” Trump said. “Does anyone else have anything to say?”
Robert Unanue, the president of Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the US, took the microphone for a lengthy speech praising Trump, then the event wound down with a prayer session.
Honduran televangelist Guillermo Maltonado, founder of Miami megachurch the King Jesus International Ministry, said Trump would be re-elected because “there’s a higher assignment for him to finish with this nation”:
God sets up kings. We’re praying for the will of God to make [Trump] the 47th president.
Eminem to introduce Obama at Detroit rally tonight – report
Detroit’s own Eminem will introduce Barack Obama during his rally in support of Kamala Harris this evening in Michigan’s largest city, and likely weigh in on the presidential election, CNN reports.
It’s a rare public appearance by the rapper who has been synonymous with the Motor City throughout his career, and who has occasionally condemned Harris’s opponent, Donald Trump.
The vice-president is not scheduled to attend the event, which begins at 7.45pm and is one of two appearances Obama is making for her campaign today. The former president is also rallying with Tim Walz in Madison, Wisconsin, at 2.30pm.
Richard Luscombe
Donald Trump hasn’t yet turned his attention to issues affecting Latino voters at his round table in Miami.
Instead he’s on a tear about the Biden administration’s policies that encourage the use of electric vehicles:
They want to go to all-electric cars. A charging station is the equivalent of a gas pump … They spent $8b for nine charging stations. It’s so out of control. They don’t want to change.
He was referring to a slow-moving $7.5bn federal program that by May had yielded a small number of charging stations, but has ramped since with more than 1,000 new installations nationwide each week, according to government figures.
Trump is promising that if he is re-elected US businesses would continue to benefit from tax cuts he enacted in his first term:
We gave you the biggest cut in taxes in the history of the country. We have a great foundation to build on a lot of companies coming in very fast.
At one point Trump confused Kamala Harris, the vice-president and his Democratic opponent, with Hillary Clinton, whom he beat in 2016, calling the nonexistent Biden-Clinton administration “the worst ever”.
Richard Luscombe
Donald Trump is telling a roundtable of Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, that he expects Hispanic voters to help sweep him to victory on 5 November.
He claimed falsely that “all the polls” show him ahead among Hispanic voters in swing states, despite surveys showing exactly the opposite.
He kicked off the event by addressing the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, where he was campaigning yesterday. It was a “horrible event” he said, repeating debunked claims about the federal government’s emergency response.
“Fema responded not well, the White House has done a poor job. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.
Numerous politicians, including some prominent Republicans, have praised the speed at which federal resources and help reached the hardest-hit areas.
Trump has yet to start answering questions, instead delivering a lengthy monologue with familiar attacks on Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, whom he beat in 2016.
It’s the second time in a week that the former president has addressed Latino voters in Miami.
In a town hall hosted by Univision, the largest US Spanish-language network, on Thursday, Trump mostly dodged awkward questions about immigration, and repeated debunked claims that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets and “other things too that they’re not supposed to”.
Meanwhile, senator Ted Cruz’s campaign has hit out at Kamala Harris after it was announced she would visit Texas and appear alongside his opponent Colin Allred on Friday.
“Colin Allred is Kamala Harris. They have spent the last four years working hand-in-hand against Texans and the American people with their radical policies, whether those be pushing to allow boys in girls’ sports, allowing dangerous illegal aliens to come into our country or trying to destroy the oil and gas industry in Texas,” a Cruz campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
“Colin and Kamala share an agenda, and now they’ll share a stage for all Texans to see.”
Trump to meet with Latino leaders in Florida
The first campaign event of the day is Donald Trump’s round table with Latino leaders, which is scheduled to begin now at his golf resort in Doral, Florida.
Latinos are a voting bloc whose support is expected to be crucial to deciding the election, both in swing states and in states and congressional districts that will determine which party controls the Senate and House of Representatives.
Ahead of the event, Miami’s Trump-supporting Republican mayor, Francis Suarez, told CNN in an interview that he does not believe the former president’s vows to carry out mass deportations and impose draconian policies against undocumented migrants will hurt his support with Hispanic voters:
Law-abiding Hispanics care more about having a prosperous future for themselves and their children than they do about people who are in this country illegally. And so I think there’s a misperception that all they care about is, you know, immigration. And I think … that is, frankly, somewhat racist.
You know, I think Hispanics care more about making sure that they have an opportunity to succeed, making sure that inflation doesn’t crush them every single day as it’s done under this administration. And they’re law-abiding people, like my parents are, who came to this country at 12 and seven from – from Cuba, which is a communist country and has – and has only produced misery and poverty for its people. And they see a lot of the same rhetoric being, unfortunately, espoused by the Democratic party and that’s something that concerns them.
Harris campaign reportedly bracing for tight election, fears ‘blue wall’ could crumble
Kamala Harris’s campaign expects Donald Trump to put up a strong performance in the 5 November presidential election that could break apart the “blue wall” swing states for the first time in decades, according to two reports published this morning.
While neither story suggests that the vice-president’s campaign does not think it has a path to victory, the reports underscore the potency of Trump’s bid for office and the fact that the race remains essentially tied despite weeks of vigorous campaigning and fundraising by Harris and her surrogates.
Citing people with knowledge of Harris’s campaign strategy, NBC News reports that they are concerned that the blue wall of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could, for the first time since 1988, not vote as a bloc in November, imperiling the vice-president’s path to the Oval Office.
The campaign is also concerned that Hurricane Helene’s ravages in North Carolina and the struggles of the controversial Republican candidates for governor are undermining Harris’s chances of winning that state. Here’s more:
Recent discussions have centered on the possibility of an anomaly happening this year with just part of the blue wall breaking its way. The conversations have focused on whether Michigan or Wisconsin “fall” to former president Donald Trump while the two other states go blue, according to three sources with knowledge of the campaign’s strategy.
Losing Wisconsin or Michigan would mean that even if Harris secures Pennsylvania – where both Harris and Trump have spent the most time and resources – she would not reach the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House without winning another battleground state or possibly two.
“There has been a thought that maybe Michigan or Wisconsin will fall off,” said a senior Harris campaign official, who stressed that the bigger concern is over Michigan. Two other people with knowledge of campaign strategy – who, like others in this article, were granted anonymity to speak candidly – also underscored deep concern about Michigan. Those people still believe that all the states are close and that there are alternative routes to victory.
A Harris campaign spokesperson pushed back against the notion about deep concerns over Michigan, pointing to recent public polling. A Detroit News poll conducted 1-4 October found Harris, who was campaigning in Michigan on Monday, holding a slight lead in the state, as did a Washington Post poll on Monday.
…
While North Carolina is still in the campaign’s sights and Democrats maintain strong organization and leadership there, the Harris team is far less bullish about victory, four people with knowledge of the dynamics said.
“Of all of the seven [states], that one seems to be a little bit slipping away,” the Harris campaign official said of North Carolina.
CNN, meanwhile, heard from top Harris adviser David Plouffe, who acknowledged that the race may very well remain tight right down to election day:
Historically, it would be unusual to have seven states come down to a point or less,” David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager who now serves as a senior adviser to Harris, said of the battleground landscape. “But I think at this point, you have to assume that’s a distinct possibility.”
Plouffe and other Harris advisers do not believe Trump’s largely outsourced door-knocking and other on-the-ground outreach operations can match what the national Democrats and the Harris campaign – which inherited some of the same team from President Joe Biden – spent a year putting together. But they believe this advantage can only take them so far.
“Democrats wish Donald Trump wouldn’t get more than 46% of the vote,” Plouffe said, referring to the national popular vote percentage the former president secured in his previous campaigns. But in the battleground states, “that’s not reality. He’s going to get up to 48% in all of these states. And so we just have to make sure we’re hitting our win number, which depending on the state, could be 50, could be 49.5.”
The Harris campaign just announced that the vice-president will campaign in Philadelphia on Sunday.
The announcement was light on details, but needless to say it’s difficult for Harris to win the White House without carrying Pennsylvania, and many Democratic voters live in and around Philadelphia.
Harris to campaign in Texas with eye towards pulling off Senate surprise
Lauren Gambino
Kamala Harris will return to Texas in the final days of the presidential campaign for an event that will highlight the stories of women harmed by the state’s strict abortion ban.
In Houston on Friday, she will appear alongside the Democratic nominee for Senate, Colin Allred, who is locked in an unexpectedly tight race with the Republican incumbent, Ted Cruz.
Democrats have turned their attention to the Texas Senate race, despite a long history of falling short in the Republican-dominated state. With Democrats poised to lose a seat in West Virginia and Montana appearing to slip away, their best opportunity to keep control of the Senate may run through the Lone Star state.
According to a senior campaign official, Harris will travel to Texas from Georgia, two states with the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The Democrat has repeatedly assailed Donald Trump for appointing the three supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe v Wade and paved the way for a wave of new restrictions and near-total bans in Republican-led states.
Harris has made abortion rights the centerpiece of her short campaign for the White House. At campaign stops, and the party’s convention, she has shared the stories of women and families affected by abortion bans, among them Texas resident Amanda Zurawski, who nearly died after being denied an abortion under the state’s law.
Zurawski, along with the family of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after her medical care was delayed under the state’s abortion law, have become powerful surrogates for Harris’s campaign.
Abortion has been a central issue in the Texas Senate race. Allred has made Cruz’s staunch anti-abortion views a central plank of his campaign. Polls show Cruz with a steady lead, though the race has appeared to tighten in recent weeks.
While in Houston, Harris will also sit for an interview with academic turned Ted talks host and popular podcaster Brené Brown.
Despite campaign rhetoric, IMF projections show US economy better than most
On the campaign trail, you’ll hear Donald Trump assail the state of the economy and say Kamala Harris is to blame. And you’ll hear Harris vow to lower prices for everything from housing to healthcare.
There is no doubt that Americans have suffered from the wave of inflation that racked the country over the past three years, but has recently subsided. What’s less discussed is that the US economy is, in fact, far healthier than many others.
Just-released forecasts from the IMF, the Washington-based crisis lender whose economic data is closely watched from Wall Street to the White House, shows that the US economy is poised for some of the strongest growth among wealthy nations in the years to come, beating out the United Kingdom, Japan and many European nations:
IMF Growth Forecast: 2024
🇺🇸US: 2.8%
🇩🇪Germany: 0.0%
🇫🇷France: 1.1%
🇮🇹Italy: 0.7%
🇪🇸Spain: 2.9%
🇬🇧UK: 1.1%
🇯🇵Japan: 0.3%
🇨🇦Canada: 1.3%
🇨🇳China: 4.8%
🇮🇳India: 7.0%
🇷🇺Russia: 3.6%
🇧🇷Brazil: 3.0%
🇲🇽 Mexico: 1.5%
🇸🇦KSA: 1.5%
🇳🇬Nigeria: 2.9%
🇿🇦RSA: 1.1%https://t.co/sDv9tK6YQb pic.twitter.com/epCi3VT13o— IMF (@IMFNews) October 22, 2024
These are, of course, just projections, and as the Guardian’s Larry Elliott reports, various things could undercut them – including some of the policies Trump is campaigning on:
The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino earlier this month took the political pulse of young voters nationwide, particularly when it came to the question of which presidential candidate to support. Here’s what she found:
It was the height of “brat summer”. Kamala Harris was a “femininomenon”, electrifying a high-stakes presidential race that many of the country’s youngest voters had been dreading: a rematch between the two oldest candidates in American history.
Chartreuse-blocked memes and coconut emojis filled social media feeds. The tidal wave of young “Kamalove” sparked a rush of small-dollar donations and volunteer sign-ups for her days-old campaign. For an extremely online generation of young Democrats, the vibes were so good.
On the ground in St Louis, a cadre of young progressives were gathering for an entirely different election – one with virtually no bearing on the balance of power in Washington, but one they believed mattered deeply. There in Missouri’s first congressional district, representative Cori Bush was fighting for her political survival.
Many of the twentysomethings had traveled from out of state, sacrificing summer jobs and sleeping on yoga mats to campaign for Bush in the sticky August heat. “We just stopped our lives and went to St Louis,” said John Paul Mejia, a 22-year-old student and climate activist.
Mejia was there as part of Protect Our Power (Pop), a youth coalition that came together earlier this year for what he described as a “David-and-Goliath” mission to defend leftwing members of Congress against a well-funded effort to unseat them.
To them, Bush, the nurse turned racial justice activist, was one of the few elected leaders who shared their sense of urgency about everything from the country’s affordability crisis to safeguarding abortion access.
As a newly elected member of Congress, Bush had slept on the steps of the US Capitol to protest against the expiration of a federal eviction moratorium. The action paid off: the Biden administration extended the pause. In warning about the threat to reproductive rights, Bush testified before a House panel that she had had an abortion at 18 after becoming pregnant by rape. In 2023, she emerged as one of the strongest critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, a stance that reflected a groundswell of youth dissent but ultimately imperiled her congressional career.
“There’s pretty much nobody else, even members of Congress who are closer to our age, in some instances, who actually represent what our generation cares about,” Vincent Vertuccio, a 21-year-old college student and an activist with Pop, said of the progressive Squad members. “If we lose these people, even one or two, it’s a direct diminishment of our power.”
