FITSNews Political Stock Index – 9/3/2024

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Our labor day has come and gone,” Irish rocker Bono crooned on U2‘s 1987 hit ‘Red Hill Mining Town.’

In the 2024 presidential election, the passage of Labor Day marks the transition into the final homestretch of arguably the costliest, most consequential election in American history (although in fairness, the same was said of the 2016 and 2020 races).

With only 62 days to go before Election Day, it’s officially “game on” in the presidential race. Everything that’s happened on the long and winding road that began right after the November 2022 midterm elections has brought us to this moment. This is when the American people get serious about picking their next president – meaning there’s never been a more important time than right now to bring your political portfolio up to date.

Whose stock is rising? Falling? Holding? Find out with this week’s FITSNews’ political stock index…

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For more than a year, our founding editor Will Folks and political columnist Mark Powell have been monitoring the unprecedented political chaos via our FITSNews Political Stock Index.  As noted, each installment is an assessment of how our subjects fared over the previous week. Positive reports don’t reflect endorsements, and negative ones aren’t (necessarily) indicative of vendettas.

We just call ‘em like we see ‘em…

To view the most recent index, click here. And to get your historical fix, click here.

Got a hot “stock tip” for our consideration? Email Will (here) and/ or Mark (here). Just be sure to include “Palmetto Political Stock Index” in the subject line.

Where should you invest your political capital this week? To the index…

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KAMALA HARRIS

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STOCK: HOLDING

It’s a critical juncture for the veep. Kamala Harris did not receive much, if any, bounce in the polls coming out of last month’s Democratic National Convention. She holds a razor-thin lead in national polling, with 538’s aggregate showing her ahead of rival Donald Trump by a mere 3.2 percent – 47.1 percent to 43.9 percent.

Several key battleground states are even closer…

Harris does have significant wind in her sails, however. Enthusiasm among rank-and-file Democrats remains high, money is pouring in and the mainstream media remains as sycophantically supportive as ever (more on that in a moment).

Having said all of that, a case could be made that Harris has gone as far she can go by simply not being Trump. In other words, if her candidacy is to grow from here, she either needs to win over undecideds based on policy or catch an unexpected break via a major Trump gaffe – or an unforeseen wildcard event that directs voters her way.

Harris is clearly making inroads in several swing states Trump needs to win if he is to recapture the White House (including Arizona, Nevada and Georgia). But as of this writing, they are the narrowest of leads – meaning she still has a long way to go before she can seal the deal.

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PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

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STOCK: RISING

The stakes are always high when presidential contenders start talking in front of live television cameras. Don’t believe us? Just ask ex-candidate Joe Biden what happens when a debate goes bad.

But with a race this close hitting the home stretch, the stakes will be higher that ever when Harris and Trump face off at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday night. ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate this event, which could set records for viewership. 

Trump and Harris have never met in person, so there’s no way of knowing how they will interact – or how that interaction will impact the encounter. But it could be an influential factor. Will the candidates (especially Trump) be on their best behavior? Or will it get personal?

For her part, Harris is coming off a passable interview with her sidekick Tim Walz on CNN last week. Though she didn’t set hearts afire, neither did she stumble, cackle or get trapped inside one of her famous verbal quagmires.

Passable performances don’t move the needle in presidential campaigns, though. As noted, Harris needs to give people a reason to vote for her beyond just being “not Trump.”   

For his part, the former president needs to take full measure of the moment and control his natural inclination to go for the jugular. Tone down the name-calling putdowns (actually, he needs to turn that particular tap off; but we are talking about Donald Trump, after all). Hang Joe Biden’s dismal record of failure around Harris’ neck and press the case that with her as president, we’ll get four more years of the very same thing.

How will each candidate respond to the challenge? We’ll see next Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, for those of you interested in the undercard, vice presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Walz are scheduled to debate in New York on October 1.

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DONALD TRUMP

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STOCK: HOLDING

If the ex-prez has come up with a winning strategy for taking on Harris, he’s hiding it from the rest of us. At this moment, the best Trump can do is sound like Dem Lite – with a whiff of desperation thrown in for good measure.

Trump is trying to steal pages from the Harris playbook. For example, he said last Thursday he would mandate insurance and government coverage of in-vitro fertilization if he’s elected. On Saturday, he signaled support for a Florida ballot initiative to legalize marijuana there. 

(In fairness, Harris is doing her share of co-opting GOP issues by flip-flopping on her previous opposition to fracking, cribbing Trump’s “no taxes on tips” plan and coming to the belated realization that there’s a serious problem at the southern border.)

Still, it’s going to take more than trading notes with the Democratic nominee to beat her this fall…

Harris may have reached her ceiling in terms of winning over independents, but Trump has failed miserably to blunt her momentum since Democrats pulled their top-of-the-ticket coup in late July.

And now he’s running out of time to do so…

Are you listening, Mar-a-Lago?

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META

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STOCK: FALLING SHARPLY

Social media is still smarting from the big, black shiner it received last week. While the admission from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the Biden White House pressured it to censor some COVID-19 content during the pandemic was certainly a huge black eye, it was hardly a surprise.

If only it had ended there. What else are Meta and its fellow social media giants censoring right now, with the presidential election entering its most crucial phase?

Zuckerberg’s confession and his expression of “regret” for falling in line and doing as instructed is just the last confirmation of what conservatives have been saying for years: Social media is in lockstep with the far left and can always be counted on to do big government’s bidding.

Critics say it’s yet another reminder that Big Tech has grown too big for its britches. Yet what do we hear from those constantly haranguing how “our democracy is in danger?”

Crickets.

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FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

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STOCK: FALLING

They say truth is the first casualty of war. In the intensely partisan political warfare of the 2024 campaign, freedom of the press is among the first victims, too. 

Not only is Kamala Harris refusing to talk to reporters at an open news conference – and determining which handful of reporters she will talk to in private – she’s selectively barring news outlets from even covering her campaign.

And we’re not talking about just any old fish wrapper here, either. This muzzling involves the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It all stems from some internal labor issues within the paper two years ago. Labor bosses told Harris to give the paper the cold shoulder, and she dared not defy them. As a result, Post-Gazette journos and photogs are now persona non grata at Harris-Walz events.

“It’s a form of political pandering at the expense of core democratic principles — exactly what the campaign claims to be fighting against in the Republican Party,” editor Brandon McGinley wrote in an op-ed. “Today, the Harris-Walz campaign considers the Post-Gazette to be its enemy, and it denies us the rights accorded to others. Tomorrow, who’s next?” 

Indeed…

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TIM WALZ

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STOCK: HOLDING

Have you noticed this guy enjoys cussing like a sailor in public? His speeches contain a generous sprinkling of four-letter words. While that’s considered “folksy” among “Minnesota Nice” voters, it has some people wondering if Walz would observe proper decorum as veep.

His apparent affection for profanity aside, Walz is clearly using his Joe Sixpack persona to appeal to blue-collar workers in critical Rust Belt swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin (which is why he was chosen as Harris’ running mate in the first place.)

Consider his Labor Day visit to the latter.  While bragging about being a union member at a rally in Milwaukee, the Minnesota governor said, “Republicans came up to me in one of my campaigns, and they said, ‘Tim is in the pocket of organized labor.’ I said that’s a damn lie. I am the pocket. And I told them if you want to attack me for standing up for collective bargaining… you roll the damn dice. I’ll take my chances on that.”  

Walz’s trip to the Dairy State also marked the debut of the campaign’s spiffy charter plane. Its fuselage proclaims, “Harris-Walz…. A new way forward.” Given that outgoing Joe Biden was the most blatantly pro-union president in the last 50 years, there’s nothing “new” in what the Democratic ticket is proposing. Just lots more of it. 

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J.D. VANCE

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STOCK: FALLING

A good rule of thumb is that running mates rarely help presidential candidates… but they can hurt them. Strategists still cringe when they recall George Wallace’s selection of Curtis Lemay as his VP pick on the American Independent Party ticket in 1968. During his first interview as the nominee, the retired Air Force general said Americans should get over “their phobias about using nuclear weapons.”

Those and other eye-popping remarks from “Bombs Away Lemay” created a gender gap among women voters that blew up Wallace’s chances of pulling off a third-party upset. 

Ohio senator and Trump vice presidential selection J.D. Vance hasn’t said anything that extreme (yet). But he is making plenty of comments that have political pros shaking their heads in confusion. And one recent Vance utterance included a South Carolina connection.

Remember how Miss South Carolina in the Miss Teen USA contest, Caitlin “Caite” Upton, famously flubbed her question that went viral back in 2007?

Asked why so many Americans couldn’t find their own country on a map, the then-17-year-old replied, “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps. And, uh, I believe that our education, like, such as, uh, South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like, such as …”

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Hanahan, South Carolina-
WOW! A viewer tells me her dad took these pictures. This fell out of the sky and onto the parking lot of Divine Redeemer School in Hanahan around 4pm today.
?: H. Nguyen @ABCNews4
Update: A military pilot tells me that’s a rear tail cone off a C-17.… pic.twitter.com/o2J8eewbRp

— Trooper Bob (@TrooperBob_SC) September 12, 2024

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We’ve all experienced teenage angst moments, but that one was a doozie.

Fast forward to last Thursday, when someone on Vance’s staff posted a clip of Upton’s doozie on his social media with the words, “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”

Upton responded on X the next day.

“There’s not much else to say about it at this point,” she wrote. “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop.”

Whereupon she promptly deleted her X account.

While Vance’s snarky post doesn’t rise to the level of bullying, its efficaciousness was dubious at best. Though Vance’s tough talk seems to impress would-be boss Trump, it’s not scoring points with many others. And in a tight race where gender is an issue – and where Democrats are working overtime to woo female voters with their staunch support of abortion – was playing what some saw as a gender card smart in the first place?

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WANNA SOUND OFF?

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