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Former President Donald Trump holds a commanding lead over Vice President Kamala Harris on Polymarket — with a notable edge in every key swing state. Polymarket is the world’s largest prediction market. It notably forecast that President Joe Biden would drop out of the presidential race several days before he made the announcement. As of July 23, Trump has a 64% chance of winning the presidency, compared to Harris’s 34% — marking a 1% increase for Trump and a significant 4% rise for Harris over the past week. However, Trump’s odds have consistently been above 50% since March, showing an upward trend, while Harris’s recent gains have narrowed the gap slightly but remain behind the former president. Swing state lead. The swing states, crucial for any presidential hopeful, show a clear preference for Trump and the Republican party. Based on Polymarket’s latest data: Georgia: Republicans 68%, Democrats 32% Arizona: Republicans 66%, Democrats 34% Nevada: Republicans 65%, Democrats 35% Pennsylvania: Republicans 59%, Democrats 41% Wisconsin: Republicans 55%, Democrats 45% Michigan: Republicans 53%, Democrats 47% The numbers indicate that Trump’s support is solidifying in regions that have historically decided the outcome of presidential elections. The balance of power projections further highlight a Republican advantage: Presidency: 64% Republican Senate: 74% Republican House: 53% Democrat The market also predicts the potential of a Republican sweep is at 40% likelihood, while a Democratic sweep remains less likely at 17%.

Is there any daylight between Harris and President Joe Biden on policy? The answer is no. She has not criticized or attempted to distance herself from anything the Biden-Harris administration has done, on immigration, inflation, the pervasive antisemitism on college campuses, etc.

Actually, on that last one she has put a little daylight between herself and the president. She has been very sympathetic to the protestors, saying they are “showing what human emotion should be.”

{“ Kamala Harris is the best Democrats can do? Looks like they don't want to beat Trump,”} Cameron Smith (recovering political attorney who worked for conservative Republicans.). The Tennessean Published July 22, 2024, Accessed July 24, 2024. https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/07/22/kamala-harris-biden-trump-presidential-election/74498358007/-- AK

The future of the Democratic Party is now unburdened by what has been. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden doesn’t deserve our praise. He is not a hero. Exiting the presidential race via an unceremonious social media post is the final nail in the coffin of a campaign that should never have begun. If this is how Democrats fight against perceived threats to America, they don’t deserve to win.

With President Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race, how soon will pollsters have a read on how Vice President Kamala Harris is faring against former President Donald Trump?

As Harris looks to officially begin her campaign, questions about her presidential viability have long swirled about. Early national polling suggests that Harris is trailing Trump, but Northeastern University polling experts say that there should be good data on the presumptive Harris-Trump matchup by the end of the week — with the usual caveats.  

After President Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party’s nomination, questions have turned to her electoral viability — and how she might perform against former President Donald J. Trump Across recent polls, Ms. Harris trails Mr. Trump by two percentage points nationally, 46 percent to 48 percent, according to The New York Times’s polling average on Sunday.

{“ Can Kamala Harris Beat Donald Trump? Here’s What Polls Show,” ANNA GORDON (2021 POST-GRAD REPORTING FELLOW. journalist who graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 2021.). Time.com. Published July 23, 2024, Accessed July 24, 2024. https://time.com/7001741/kamala-harris-trump-election-polls/ -- AK

The Democratic Party appears to be injected with new energy following President Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to drop out from the race and endorse Kamala Harris. She raised a record-breaking $81 million within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy, and as of Monday night, Harris has secured enough support from delegates at the Democratic National Convention to clinch the Democratic nomination.

The initial spate of polling since Biden dropped out shows that Harris has speedily narrowed the advantage that Trump had been enjoying — but she has not entirely closed it, at least in most polls.

A Wall Street Journal poll released on Friday showed Trump up by two points on Harris, 49 percent to 47 percent, among registered voters. Biden had trailed Trump by six points in a poll from the same organization at the start of this month.

With President Joe Biden exiting the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris now becomes the overwhelming front-runner to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Harris’ biggest challenge lies further ahead, though: She has been polling the same as Biden — or just slightly better — against Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to multiple surveys taken before Biden withdrew from the 2024 contest.

Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has raised stacks of campaign money, she has mostly united and energized the Democratic Party, and she has received the backing of a majority of pledged Democratic convention delegates. 

That’s the good news for Harris and Democrats. 

As of July 23, Trump has a 64% chance of winning the presidency, compared to Harris's 34%.

Polymarket odds heavily favor Trump amid dominant lead in swing states

Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has raised stacks of campaign money, she has mostly united and energized the Democratic Party, and she has received the backing of a majority of pledged Democratic convention delegates. 

That’s the good news for Harris and Democrats. 

Last May, the Department of Justice (DOJ)  a rule that would move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the most restrictive category, to Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, and anabolic steroids. The public comment period for that  expired yesterday. According to an  by the Drug Policy Alliance, most of the commenters thought the DOJ proposal was too timid: Nearly 70 percent of the 30,000 or so comments favored "descheduling, decriminalizing, or legalizing marijuana at the federal level."

That breakdown jibes with  indicating that 70 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization. And judging from the positions that she took as a California senator and a 2020 presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris is one of those Americans. Although she was a latecomer to the cause, Harris, unlike the man she is poised to replace as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, has repeatedly urged the repeal of federal pot prohibition.

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to stick largely to Joe Biden's foreign policy playbook on key issues such as Ukraine, China and Iran but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she replaces the president at the top of the Democratic ticket and wins the U.S. November election.

As the apparent frontrunner for the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her on Sunday, Harris would bring on-the-job experience, personal ties forged with world leaders, and a sense of global affairs gained during a Senate term and as Biden's second-in-command.

The pharma industry has long been accused of holding sway in Congress, with companies and lobbying groups giving around $1.6 million to lawmakers during the first six months of 2021, according to a KFF Health News report. Since 2008, more pharma lobbyist cash has generally been directed toward Republicans. But during her first presidential bid in 2020, Harris raked in thousands of dollars of donations from pharma companies, according to a report from The Intercept. Her campaign had previously told CNN that she didn’t take “any money from pharmaceutical executives.” While she returned some of the money, including a $2,700 donation from an executive at Pharmaceutics International, records showed there were donations from other executives from Pfizer, Vertex and others, The Intercept reported.

Still, Harris has shown support for drug pricing reform and took a hard line in several suits against pharma companies during her tenure as attorney general in California. After a handful of billion-dollar-plus settlements with drugmakers, California won $46 million from GSK for illegal marketing and drug pricing, $89 million from Johnson & Jonson and Janssen Pharma over unlawful marketing practice and $23.6 million from McKesson for inflated drug prices.

Yesterday, former President Donald Trump told a group of supporters that they won’t have to vote again if they elect him to the presidency. “You won’t have to do it anymore,” Trump said at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit in Florida. “It’ll be fixed; it’ll be fine; you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Trump’s remarks represent an extraordinary departure from democratic norms in the United States—rarely, if ever, has a major party’s presidential candidate directly stated his aim to make elections meaningless, a notorious hallmark of autocracy.

Donald Trump is plotting to overthrow American democracy. It is not a secret, and he is not subtle. The only question is whether enough people will care enough to stop it.

Trump is not hiding his intentions for a second term. Echoing Hitler’s rise to power, he has called his political enemies “vermin” and promised his supporters that, if elected, he would be their “retribution.”

On June 22, 2018, the dean of conservative columnists, George Will, provided his advice to the nation in a Washington Post article titled, “Vote Against the GOP this November.” His thesis was simple: Donald Trump was a danger to the nation and to American democracy, and the Republican Congress was equally dangerous in their blind, shameless support of Trump. Together they constituted a “carnage of Republican misrule in Washington.”

Will stated that Trump needed to be “quarantined” and the nation protected from Republicans. The threat to the nation was far greater than his low opinion of Democrats.

In the hours after the president dropped out, my first concern was the same concern I had before he dropped out – party unity. With it, Joe Biden might have survived* the crisis. Without it, no alternate could hope to defeat Donald Trump. 

Unity is the main reason why I have said the only Plan B is the vice president. The nominee can’t be some other relatively unknown Democrat, no matter how good they might look on paper. If the party stepped over Kamala Harris, the first biracial woman to be second in command, the Democrats would crack from within. There are not enough white swing voters around to make up for the loss of Black women and women of color who would stay home with a vengeance.

Would Donald Trump follow through on his more extravagant anti-democratic fantasies? His rhetoric certainly suggests so, but with Trump you never know.

If Trump does carry out his threats, we are likely to see something unlike anything America has lived through: an incipient dictatorship that invites massive resistance. What would that look like? Could it restrain Trump? Would it lead to mass arrests? What would blue-state governors and mayors do? And how should citizens be preparing?

Former President Donald Trump would likely take his trade war and economic decoupling policies to new levels if he were elected to a second term in the White House, experts told CNBC.

While Joe Biden also placed strategic competition with China at the forefront of his economic policy, economists and trade experts largely expect Trump would further cut and destabilize trade relations between the world’s two largest economies.