Thursday, October 10, 2024

Kamala Harris Isn’t Listening to U.S. Intelligence on Iran

Who is “America’s greatest adversary?”

That is the question 60 Minutes asked Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” was her answer. She gave two reasons for her verdict: “Iran has American blood on their hands” and “what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities.” All three claims are strange.

That Iran is America’s greatest adversary comes as a surprise after the U.S. has spent the past two and a half years comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler and painting him as bent on the conquest of Europe. The U.S. has spent in the neighborhood of $175 billion helping Ukraine fight Russia.

As early as 2018, the U.S. National Defense Strategy ranked China as the “primary concern in US national strategy.” Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, the focus has been on “growing rivalry with China [and] Russia,” as the Interim National Security Guidance of 2021 put it. It was China, and not Iran, that was considered “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge” to the U.S. led system. In 2021, it was Russia and China that the National Intelligence Council flagged as “rising revisionist powers,” while the 2022 National Defense Strategy named China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security” and called Russia an “acute threat.”

Up until the moment Harris answered the question, the U.S. had seen Russia and China as America’s greatest adversaries.

Harris did not specify the American blood Iran had on its hands. But her quick description erases the historical record of the second partner in the bloody dance. The history of Iranian blood on American hands traces from the 1953 coup in Iran, which the CIA has formally acknowledged it helped plan and execute, to cyber attacks on Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site, and the 2020 assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Harris’ third, and strangest, claim is that one of her highest priorities is to “ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power.” But Harris knows that Iran is not pursuing the ability to be a nuclear power. At the same time the Vice President was prioritizing blocking Iran from building a nuclear bomb, CIA Director William Burns was telling a security conference, “No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program.”

Burns added that “We don’t see evidence today that such a decision [to build a bomb] has been made. We watch it very carefully.” He added that, if Iran were to make such a decision, “I think we are reasonably confident that – working with our friends and allies – we will be able to see it relatively early on.”

This is not the first time Burns has made the intelligence assessment clear. In February 2023, Burns said, “To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003.”

And, as Harris knows, it is not Burns or the CIA alone that assesses that Iran is not in pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concludes that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”

Iran never was pursuing one. The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, consistently ruled that nuclear weapons go against Islamic morality. The current supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has consistently reiterated that ruling. Khamenei has insisted that “from an ideological and fiqhi [Islamic jurisprudence] perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons as unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin.” In 2003, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa that declared nuclear weapons to be forbidden by Islam.

And Khamenei was neither going rogue nor the exception: “There is complete consensus on this issue,” Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, one of the highest-ranking clerics in Iran, has said. “It is self- evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed.”

In 2015, Iran agreed to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Eleven consecutive International Atomic Energy Agency reports verified that Iran was completely and consistently in compliance with their commitments under the agreement prior to the U.S. illegally and unilaterally pulling out of the agreement in 2018. Despite promises by the Biden-Harris administration to return to diplomacy with Iran, they never have. Instead, despite Iran’s expressions of willingness to return to diplomatic negotiations, the State Department has said that negotiations with Iran are “not our focus right now” and that “It is not on our agenda…we are not going to waste our time on it.”

In July 2024, Masoud Pezeshkian was elected president of Iran. Pezeshkian is a reformist who has called for direct negotiations with the U.S on improving relations and returning to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But, in a July 8 press briefing, when National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was asked if the U.S. is now ready to resume nuclear talks, other talks, or make any diplomatic moves with Iran in light of this new president,” he answered, “No, we’re – we’re not in a position where we’re willing to get back to the negotiating table with Iran just based on the fact that they’ve elected a new president.”

Unphased, in his September 24 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Pezeshkian said that “we have the opportunity… to enter a new era” and declared that Iran is “ready to engage with JCPOA participants” and that “[i]f JCPOA commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow.”

Contrary to her assertion that “ensur[ing] that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power… is one of [her] highest priorities,” the Biden-Harris administration has stubbornly refused to take the easiest and surest road to that end by honoring its promise to “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy.”

It is strange and concerning that after encouraging and supporting two and a half years of war with Russia in Ukraine, that Harris considers, not Russia, but Iran to be America’s “greatest adversary.” It is also disturbing that Harris deletes America’s role in coups, sabotage and assassinations in Iran from history. And it is alarming and dangerous that Harris wants to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, seemingly unaware that her military-intelligence community is telling her that they are not attempting to acquire a bomb, while showing no inclination for returning to the nuclear diplomacy with Iran that was already working.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

Reject the Failed Hawkish Consensus n Iran

No matter who wins the presidential election next month, US policy towards Iran seems likely to remain extremely hostile and confrontational. Both campaigns seem determined to out-hawk each other. The Iran policy debate in Washington, such as it is, is focused entirely on the same bankrupt coercive measures of sanctions, threats, and military action that are guaranteed to make things worse. There is no serious discussion of reducing tensions or resuming negotiations in the new year. The persistence of this failed hawkish consensus is dangerous for the US, Iran, and the wider region, and it needs to end.

The failed bipartisan hawkish consensus on Iran closes off paths for resolving disagreements peacefully, and it paves the way for unnecessary wars. The consensus embraces escalation as the solution to each new crisis, and it writes off diplomacy as naïve and useless. It is the same kind of bankrupt, outdated thinking that has dominated US foreign policy in the region for at least the last thirty years, and it is why US Iran policy remains so destructive and dangerous. We are desperately in need of some fresh and different policy ideas.

Unfortunately, both presidential candidates are content to keep the US on a collision course with Iran for the time being, and that means that the US will be stuck with the same rotten foreign policy in the Middle East for at least another four years. Donald Trump recently expressed support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. During the vice-presidential debate, Sen. Vance said that he would support whatever Israel wanted to do. On the Democratic side, Vice President Harris bizarrely claimed that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary” in response to a question in her interview with 60 Minutes. Harris asserted that Iran was an “obvious” candidate for being the greatest adversary because its government “has American blood on its hands.”

Harris’ answer that Iran is the greatest adversary of the United States is absurd on its face. Iran is not and has never been that much of a threat to US interests, and it has no ability to threaten the United States directly. Hawks have been exaggerating the power and ambitions of the Iranian government for decades to justify incessant US meddling in the region, but this is nothing but propaganda. Maybe the vice president said this to pander to hardliners, or maybe she believes it to be true, but either way it suggests that Iran policy in a Harris administration will be every bit as bad as Biden’s and possibly even worse.

The US is already squandering an opportunity to reopen diplomatic talks with Iran. The Iranian government has signaled its willingness to negotiate a new nonproliferation agreement following the election of their new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian campaigned and won on a platform of diplomatic engagement and pursuing sanctions relief, and his agenda has received a green light from Iran’s Supreme Leader. The problem is that Pezeshkian has no credible negotiating partner in Washington or in any other Western capital. If the US doesn’t take advantage of this opening to find a compromise, it may not get another chance for many years.

It is clear that US Iran policy needs a complete overhaul. Reviving nuclear negotiations would be a good beginning for establishing better US-Iranian relations, but if there is going to be real improvement in the relationship that lasts US diplomacy with Iran cannot be limited to the nuclear issue. A new nonproliferation agreement could clear the way for closer trade and diplomatic ties, and the US and Iran should build on that foundation to create a constructive bilateral relationship. The absence of normal diplomatic relations between our countries for forty-five years has been detrimental to both. It is past time to remedy the situation.

The US has greatly improved relations with other states that it fought in major wars with much higher American casualties. The United States normalized relations with the same Vietnamese government that it had fought bitterly a quarter of a century earlier. There is no compelling reason why past US-Iranian enmity must endure after almost half a century. If the Iranian government has American blood on its hands, the US government is responsible for spilling even more Iranian blood between its support for Iraq’s invasion of Iran, shooting down Iran Air flight 655, the Tanker War, and decades of crippling sanctions. Instead of dwelling on the injuries that the US and Iran have done to each other, US policymakers would be wise to work on burying the proverbial hatchet and establishing normal ties.

Daniel Larison is a columnist for Responsible Statecraft. He is contributing editor at Antiwar.com and former senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @DanielLarison and at his blog, Eunomia, here

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Iranian ‘Ahmad Chalabis’ Are Helping Israel Plan Bombing of Iran

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the conservatives, the Israel lobby in the United States, and allied groups have been searching for an Iranian version of Ahmad Chalabi, the notorious Iraqi figure that was allied with the neoconservatives in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, who for years fabricated lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

For at least a decade, the leading candidate has been Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi whose regime was overthrown by the 1979 Revolution. The younger Pahlavi has been trying for over 40 years to return monarchy in Iran, but as I documented elsewhere, his efforts have been dedicated to receiving the support of foreign governments to put him in power.

In the 1980s the CIA provided Reza Pahlavi with funding. He has also had long-term relations with the Israel lobby in the United States. He met with Sheldon Adelson, the man who suggested that the United States attack Iran with nuclear bombs, and has spoken at the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Israeli-American Summit, and other pro-Israel outlets. Pahlavi has also called on Israel to help the “cause of democracy” in Iran, the same country that has been waging brutal wars in Gaza and Lebanon for a year.

The new efforts to prop up Pahlavi began immediately after Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, even before he formally took office, but the large-scale demonstrations in Iran in September-December 2022 in the aftermath of death of Mahsa Amini, the young woman who died while in custody of the security forces, provided a new opportunity for presenting the Iranian Chalabi as Iran’s “next leader.” Pahlavi’s close advisers include Amir Taheri, Amir Etemadi, and Saeed Ghasseminejad, all of whom are supporters of Israel.

Taheri, 82, a “journalist,” is Chairman of Gatestone, Europe, the right-wing Islamophobe institution, who has lied about Iran multiple times, with the goal of provoking a backlash against it. For example, In May 2006, the National Post, the right-wing Canadian newspaper, published a piece by Taheri in which he claimed that the Majles [Iranian parliament] had passed a law that “envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public.” This was quickly refuted by many, such as Maurice Motamed who at that time was the Jewish member of the Majles. The National post retracted the piece and apologized for publishing it, but Taheri did not.

Taheri also accused Iran’s former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of being one of the students who stormed U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November of 1979, whereas at that time Zarif was a student at San Francisco State University. Right after the nuclear agreement with Iran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in July 2015, Taheri claimed that the “14-year-old Akbar Zargarzadeh hanged from a tree in Islamic boys’ camp after camp’s mullah accused him of being gay deserving death.” This too proved to be a hoax.

While Taheri is too old to be an Iranian Ahmad Chalabi, Ghasseminejad and Etemadi are relatively young and have their own ambitions for being the next Chalabi. Etemadi, 43, co-founded the small monarchist group, Farashgard [which in ancient Persian means revival] in 2018. He and Ghasseminejad both belonged to the so-called “Iranian Liberal Students Group,” a small ultra-right group of student activists in Iran, most of whom moved to Canada and the United States. Before Trump was elected in 2016, Etemadi retweeted a tweet by Mitt Romney in which he had called Trump “a phony and a fraud,” but as soon as Trump was elected, Etemadi and his monarchist ilk fell in love with his Iran policy and supported the “maximum pressure policy” of the Trump administration against Iran, which the Biden administration has, more or less, continued. A well-informed source in Washington told the author that Etemadi is on the payroll of Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), although I could not confirm the assertion independently. FDD is an Israel lobby, ardent opponent of the JCPOA, and advocate of economic sanctions and even war with Iran

Ghasseminejad is now a senior fellow at FDD. He has championed “cleansing the streets of Islamist beasts” and frets about an impending Iran-fueled “Shiite apocalypse.” But more important than this title is Ghasseminejad’s work on behalf of Iran’s “fake opposition,” a loose assortment of reactionary activists who support economic sanctions and military pressure against Iran, but whose politics stand in stark contrast to “true opposition” groups within Iran and their supporters in the diaspora, which is comprised of a broad coalition of labor and teachers’ unions, human rights groups, women’s rights and social activists, radical reformists, nationalists, secular leftists, and religious-nationalists.

Ghasseminejad was a civil engineering student at the University of Tehran, which – with the exception of the short-lived government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951-1953 – has always been a hotbed of anti-government activities. In 2002 Ghasseminejad and Etemadi published a student newsletter called Farda [“tomorrow”] in which they espoused “liberalism,” by which they meant military adventures of the kind envisioned by neoconservative supporters of “liberal intervention” in order to spread “democracy” by force. Ghasseminejad supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in an article entitled “Why U.S. will attack Iran,” he implicitly advocated military attacks against his native country.

In June 2003, after sporadic demonstrations against the government in Tehran, Ghasseminejad was detained briefly. In a press conference after his release, he apologized to Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised to be “a good citizen,” and stopped his political activities. Two years later, in the spring of 2005 Ghasseminejad and a small group of other students began publishing another newsletter called Talangar [roughly, “wake-up call”], which focused on criticizing leftist students and the newsletters that they were publishing.

Despite expressing his “love” for democracy and human rights, presenting himself as a “classic liberal,” and working for a foundation that “defends,” democracies Ghasseminejad has repeatedly embraced authoritarianism. In an article, entitled “What do we learn from Lenin,” published in Talangar, he expressed admiration for Vladimir Lenin and his concept of “democratic centralism.” He once referred to Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, as “the departed dear [leader] who saved Chile… and was much better than Salvador Allende,” the Chilean Socialist President who, similar to Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup in 1973.

Ghasseminejad also spoke out in favor of the slaughter of Egyptians during protests after the coup by Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2013, writing in his Facebook page, “I just thought I should come to Facebook and express my appreciation for the Egyptian Army cleansing the streets of the criminal Islamic fundamentalists.” He added, “As a matter of fact, the right question is not why the Egyptian Army cleans Egypt of Islamist beasts, rather why the Iranian army allowed the Islamists to take control of our country” during the Iranian Revolution, this is while at least 3,000 people were murdered by the Shah’s army during the 1979 Revolution.

I have written about Ghasseminejad extensively. In his younger age, he was against monarchy in Iran, calling Mohammad Reza Shah “a senseless dictator,” but, like all monarchist opportunists, he, Etemadi, Taheri, and Farashgard all support Reza Pahlavi and return of monarchical dictatorship to Iran, as well as Israel. Taheri is such an ardent monarchist that at one point he wished he had licked Mohammad Reza Shah’s boots.

The most important point about these aspiring Chalabis is that they and their supporters have no significant social base of support within Iran. Reza Pahlavi has never dared to call on Iranian people to show their support for him in Iran through open demonstration, and when in December 2018 and January 2019 the monarchist Farashgard called for such demonstrations, no one showed up. Even in the diaspora, a large majority of Iranians, while opposing the clerics in Iran, despise economic sanctions, military threats, and the monarchists’ support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran. Within Iran, the hostility of Netanyahu and Iranian monarchists has transformed the generally pro-West Iranians into strong opponents of Israel.

The monarchists know that lack of a significant social based of support in Iran implies that they will never return to power through a social movement or revolution within the country. Thus, their only hope is foreign intervention in Iran, which is why they always advocate war and economic sanctions, and support Israel. Therefore, after the large-scale demonstrations in Iran in 2022, Etemadi and Ghasseminejad convinced Reza Pahlavi that he should publicize his alliance with Israel and urged him to visit there. Accompanied by two men, in June 2023 Pahlavi travelled to Israel and met with Netanyahu and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog. While there, Pahlavi met with all sorts of social and religious groups, except Palestinians and Muslims.

After Iran attacked Israel last week, speculations about possible Israel’s response to the attack have been rampant. Here, too, the monarchist Chalabis are not only allies of Israel, but some of them are also active participants in the planning for bombing of Iran by Israel. When asked how Israel is deciding where to bomb in Iran in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, , Lt. Col. (Re.) Jonathan Conricus, former spokesman for Israel’s IDF and currently a senior fellow at the FDD, responded that the potential sites are being studied and analyzed by FDD experts, including Ghasseminejad, Behnam Ben Taleblu – another Iranian “senior fellow” – and Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at FDD, a nuclear proliferation expert, and anti-Iran fellow. In other words, the Iranian Chalabis are taking the same route as the original Iraqi one.

But, unlike Iraq where nationalism under Saddam Hussein regime was weak, as he always advocated Pan-Arabism, Iranians are fiercely nationalists, and will never forgive turncoats such as these aspiring Ahmad Chalabis. The Iranian Chalabis must also recall the fate of the Iraqi one: Once the United States achieved its goal of invading and occupying Iraq with the help of Chalabi’s lies and exaggerations, he was unceremoniously disposed of like a piece of dirty napkin; he never rose to power and died in infam

Author: Muhammad Sahimi

Muhammad Sahimi, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and the NIOC Chair in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California, is co-founder and editor of the website, Iran News & Middle East Reports. View all posts by Muhammad Sahimi

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Commemorating Trotskyist Resistance Fighters in Brest

On Saturday, 100 people gathered in the French city of Brest to remember five Trotskyist resistance fighters. Their internationalist legacy is relevant for anti-war struggles today.

Nathaniel Flakin

October 7, 2024
LE4FT VIEW

Nathaniel Flakin

On Saturday, around 100 people gathered in the French city of Brest to commemorate five Trotskyist resistance fighters: Georges Berthomé, Yves Bodénez, Robert Cruau, André Floch, and Albert Goavec. During the Second World War, they fought against the Nazi occupation, as did many thousands of people across France. But these activists of the Internationalist Workers Party (POI) launched a daring operation against the Nazis: They began fraternization work with German soldiers in this city. Using a German-language newspaper, Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier), they were able to organize a revolutionary cell inside the Wehrmacht, the Nazi army.

After they were betrayed by an informant, the Gestapo arrested them on October 6, 1943. Now, 81 years later, a plaque at 87 Rue de Richelieu marks their last meeting place, which became a trap. (The whole city of Brest was razed by fighting in 1944, so it was a different building.) The leader, Robert Cruau, was immediately shot by the Gestapo; the others were murdered later in concentration camps.

At a ceremony to unveil the plaque, the historian Jean-Yves Guengant gave a speech, as did François Preneau of the historical association “Amis d’Arbeiter und Soldat.” The mayor of Brest, François Cuillandre of the Socialist Party, praised the activists’ struggle for peace and solidarity: “They make us proud to be Bresters.” Pierre-Yves Cadalen, a member of the National Assembly from La France Insoumise, was also there for a minute of silence. Flags of both the Fourth International (the Trotskyist world party) and the French Resistance were waving, as local press reported.

A bus then took people to a second ceremony several kilometers away, next to the massive concrete U-Boot Bunker that the Nazis had built. This is where the fraternization work began: Trotskyist activists working at the construction site were able to connect with German “workers in uniform.” Despite the extreme repression in Nazi Germany, plenty of soldiers had parents who had been in the Communist Party. Now, a bilingual plaque recalls the internationalist network around Arbeiter und Soldat.

Claudius Naumann, a trade unionist from Berlin, unveiled the plaque and then gave a speech in French, recalling the ideas defended by the resistance fighters: “The enemy is not some other nation — the real enemies are the warmongers of all nations.” This is sadly relevant in our days, as the drums of war beat ever louder.

After the two ceremonies and a big lunch, a conference looked at new research on this Trotskyist cell. Exactly 124 people from different parts of France, and a few from Germany, gathered at Brest’s trade union hall for the discussion. Different political tendencies were present, including the Parti des Travailleurs (PT, Workers Party, with the biggest contingent), the former Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, Révolution Permanente, and even the Socialist Party.

The historians Preneau and Guengant presented their latest investigations, showing how Brest played an important role in the work of the POI, the underground Trotskyist party in France during World War II. I gave a speech about Martin Monath, the Jewish-German exile who edited Arbeiter und Soldat, and especially about the relevance of his break from left Zionism to join the Fourth International.1 Naumann spoke about the Trotskyists who continued to organize in the concentration camps, and produced the famous declaration of the International Communists of Buchenwald. Finally, Olivier Doriane connected the legacy of the Brest Trotskyists to today’s anti-war struggles. Against all the militarist propaganda, working people must understand: “This is not our war.”

The association “Amis d’Arbeiter und Soldat” has produced two issues of a bilingual (French-German) bulletin, and a future publication will include all the contributions to the conference.

I began researching Arbeiter und Soldat seven or eight years ago. It was supposed to be a short project, but I eventually discovered the name of the paper’s secretive editor, Martin Monath, and I ended up writing an entire book about his life. This felt like an isolated obsession of mine — so it has been both strange and inspiring to meet dozens of comrades digging into the same history. This internationalist example of French workers and German “workers in uniform” during World War II joined in struggle is extremely relevant to our struggles against imperialist war today.

Notes

Notes↑1 I will publish an English translation of this speech soon.

Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

U.S. election: Why there is still much to do to ensure a Kamala Harris victory over Donald Trump

I share a message of cautious optimism as well as a plea for continued support – money and volunteers

Left Foot Forward
Opinion

Mark Bergman

8 October, 2024

What’s the latest with the race to become the next President of the United States of America?

I share what I am picking up across various conversations, and in doing so, I share a message of cautious optimism as well as a plea for continued support – money and volunteers, in what will be a crucial election. We all have heard what a close race this was going to be – that was overstated prior to the time President Biden decided to step aside. The Vice President’s trajectory is unprecedented in the annals of elections (having erased the President’s deficits and avoided being dragged down by his low popularity, even though she is a joint incumbent), and while she is polling slightly ahead in national polls and state polls, those polls are merely snapshots in time – they are most useful as a directional tool to allocate campaign resources.

It is important to note how far we all have come in ten weeks. Before the President announced he was passing the torch, the only president with a favorability rating at this point in an election that was lower than Joe Biden’s was Jimmy Carter in 1980. The tipping point state (the state at which Harris tips into 270) had Biden -7. He was decidedly underwater in VA, NH, N-2, CO and MN, as well as battleground states, yielding odds of a Republican trifecta of 60%. Among the undecided, many did not like Trump, but had no confidence in the President’s ability to win the election and continue as president. Perhaps the worst image that could be projected was of the President’s gait. For too many Biden reminded voters of elderly relatives.

While the Harris trajectory is impressive, the electorate has barely moved since August in the battleground states. This, despite the millions in ad spend, Trump’s poor debate performance, Trump-Vance’s pet-eating digressions, and a second assassination attempt against Trump.

Here is a snapshot of polling:

FiveThirtyEight

Harris favorable/unfavorable is 47.5/46.2% – 1.2 favorable [Cook Political Report 50/48]
Trump unfavorable/favorable is 52.6%/42.9% – 9.7 unfavorable [Cook Political 47/52]
National polls: Harris 48.5% – Trump 45.9%; Harris +2.6. Harris started at 44.9% at launch. Since May, Trump has not moved outside of a 47-48% band.
States:

	Delta	KH	DT
AZ	-1.5	46.8	48.3
GA	-1.3	47.1	48.4
MI	+1.9	48.2	46.3
NC	-0.7	47.5	48.2
NV	+1.0	47.9	46.9
PA	+0.6	48.0	47.4
WI	+1.6	48.6	46.9

270toWin: National polls: Harris 49.5% – Trump 45.7%; Harris +3.8

Cook Political Report’s Swing State Project Survey (Amy Walter and Jessica Taylor) shows Harris leading (AZ +2, MI+3, NV +1, PA +1 and WI +2) or tied (NC) with Trump in all but one (GA -2) of the seven battleground states and with an overall lead of 49%-48% nationally (2-way) and 49%-47% (3-way). Walter and Taylor point out that below the headline numbers, there have been shifts since August. Trump’s lead in his two strongest issues, inflation and immigration, has shrunk. Since August, Harris’ lead has: shrunk among independents (men: +7-point swing to Trump, now 44%-47%, and women: +2-point swing to Trump, now 48%-37%, but made significant gains among Black men (+21 points, now 71%-22%) and Latinos (+17 points, now 56%-38%).

Trump still holds a 5-point lead on the question on who voters trust to “deal with the economy” (50%-45%). However, on the specific issue of “getting inflation under control,” Trump’s 6-point August lead is gone. Trump led Harris on inflation and cost of living 48% to 42% in August; now voters are evenly divided (47%) on whom they trust more to handle an issue that 60% of swing state voters say is the aspect of the economy that “concerns them the most.”

On the border and immigration, Trump leads 51% to 42%, but that is a 5-point drop from his 53% to 39% lead in August.

Walter and Taylor return to the dominant polling question – whether Trump can break through his ceiling. Like 2016 and 2020, Trump has not broken through 49% in any of the key battleground states.

Harris’ challenge among the low propensity/low information undecided voters (unprecedently low) who will determine the outcome of the election is to tell her story – ad spend and message mix are key. Swing state undecideds per Walter and Taylor have shrunk from 10% in August to 5%. (I have seen other polling showing the pool as low as 4%).

There will not likely be an Obama-like breakaway moment for Harris. The good news for Harris is that she has room to grow; Trump does not. She must win back some of the +65 white Biden voters leaning Trump, and then make inroads among under 40 men. As to the under 40 male vote, here Walz could make a difference (despite conventional wisdom that running-mates do not move the needle). This is now a battle person-by-person, state-by-state. This election, for example, could be determined by 5,000 – 10,000 votes in PA or WI, and less than 5,000 in NV.

Harris’ approval rating is slightly ahead of Trump’s, but only slightly. Undecided voters are undecided because they hate Trump, but perceive that their lives were far better when Trump was president. And he has the benefit of appearing strong. As for Harris, they like her story and her values, and she appears to be ready for the job, but they do not really know her, and worry that she is radical, extreme and not really middle class. An increasing number now know she is the Vice President, but there remains a knowledge gap.

This is why ads explaining who the Vice President is are more important than ever before. This is why the cumulative GoTV effort – canvassing, phone banking, postcards and letters — could determine the outcome of the election. If you live in PA, Harris is all over your TV feed (one-third is going to TV ads in the state).

Not only are the margins razor sharp, but as cited before, the gender gap is unprecedented, but in terms of the absolute deltas, but also the impact across every demographic imaginable. The gaps have two component movements – more women moving to Harris, and more men (particularly under 40) moving to Trump. While women moving to Harris will vote, an unknown is whether men who have trouble voting for a woman will stay home, rather than vote for Trump. The battle for men under 40 is largely an online one – with ads being deployed in the manosphere focused on both policy (with foreign policy taking on a more important role) and appearance (showing Harris with the trappings of the Office of the President – descending from Marine One, for example). To add to the fraught mix, Trump may do better in states such as WI, MI and PA if turnout is high, as each of these battleground states has a staggeringly high percentage of white and white non-college voters.

On the economy, there is now a 2-point gap, and how it breaks among the undecided is unknown. The kitchen table issues are not so straight-forward, and here the intangibles of leadership, such as strength, clarity of purpose, and values, are important. Recall Reagan reacting to the Challenger crash or George W. Bush after 9/11.

Focus groups have identified another imperative for pulling the undecideds across. She needs to distinguish herself from Biden. The debate and DNC speech dials both dropped for her when she referenced Biden. And the less Trump is in the news the less well he performs – Trump’s ratings increased each time he was indicted (and particularly the third and fourth time) and after the first assassination attempt.

One note of caution. Trump overperformed polling in both 2016 and 2020, and he currently is ahead of where he was in 2016 and 2020. Perhaps a countervailing trend – to what extent will we see “stealth” Kamala voters, particularly women, who feel uncomfortable admitting they will vote for her?

Mark S. Bergman

7Pillars Global Insights, LLC

Washington, D.C.

August 27, 2024

EXCLUSIVE: Nearly half of voters believe Nigel Farage does not care about the concerns of ordinary people, poll finds

The latest poll findings show that much of the public think Farage is only really in it for himself.

Basit Mahmood

Yesterday

Left Foot Forward

Almost half of voters (48%) believe that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage does not care about the concerns of ordinary voters, an exclusive poll for LFF has found.

The poll, carried out by Savanta, found that a majority of 18-24 year olds (53%) say that Farage does not care about the concerns of ordinary voters in the UK as do 50% of those aged 25-34.

The figure drops to 46% among those aged 55-64 as well as the 65+ age bracket.

When it comes to party affiliation, while only 38% of Conservative Party voters believe that Farage does not care about the concerns of ordinary voters, the figure rises to 67% among Labour Party and Lib Dem voters. Around 72% of Green Party voters also feel that Farage doesn’t care about ordinary voters.

The poll findings come after Farage has been accused by his own constituents of going missing since being elected Clacton’s MP in July, as he spent time raking in the cash for giving speeches and also visited the U.S. to attend the Republican National Convention to show solidarity with Donald Trump following an assassination attempt on the former U.S. President.

The latest poll findings show that much of the public think Farage is only really in it for himself.

The Reform UK leader found himself in the headlines once more yesterday, after being forced to backtrack on his claim that Parliamentary officials had advised him not to have in-person constituency surgeries for security reasons.

Speaking to LBC last month, Farage said that he had been advised not to hold the “old-style” physical meetings between MPs and constituents in his Clacton seat when asked if he was holding in-person surgeries.

However, neither the speaker’s office or the security team have any record of issuing such advice.

At a press conference on Monday, Farage was asked: “Which one of you is lying?”

He replied: “The speaker’s office is always right.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

THE GUARDIAN 2016

National minimum wage: Government set to name and shame employers more regularly for failures to pay

Tom Belger 10th October, 2024,

Angela Rayner and Jonathan Reynolds. Photo: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The government is set to name and shame employers more regularly who fail to pay staff the national minimum wage.

A document published today, setting out the Labour administration’s response to previous Low Pay Commission recommendations on tackling low pay, says it will have a “strong deterrence effect”.

Governments have been publishing the names of firms and other organisations breaching minimum wage law for years, but the current government notes no employers were exposed publicly in the 2022 to 2023 financial year under the Conservatives.

“The National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme remains a key deterrent to employers breaking minimum wage law. The Naming Scheme highlights non-compliant employers by publicly exposing their breaches and promoting their future compliance to deter other businesses from underpaying the minimum wage,” say Department for Business and Trade documents published online today.

“The naming scheme also aims to increase compliance by publishing an educational bulletin tailored to the areas of non-compliance for that particular round.”

Some 2,500 employers had been exposed over breaches affecting 231,000 workers as of late 2021.

The LPC, set up by the last Labour government, had urged the government to ensure more regular naming rounds to “create momentum and increase coverage”.

The LPC had also encouraged action to tackle “one-sided flexibility” favouring employers.

The government said on Thursday – as it publishes its landmark employment rights bill – that it is “taking forward a range of measures on the issue”.

“The government will end exploitative zero hours contracts by giving workers the right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, which we expect will be based on a 12-week reference period.

“The government will also introduce a new right to reasonable notice of shifts, with compensation for shifts cancelled or curtailed at short notice.”

Tom Belger is editor of LabourList.

UK Budget 2024: £25bn tax rises needed to avoid austerity, think tank warns

James Moules

10th October, 2024

Rachel Reeves could be forced to raise billions of pounds in additional tax revenue if she wishes to avoid public service cuts, a leading think tank has warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has claimed £25 billion of tax increases would be needed to keep spending rising with national income.

Both Reeves and Keir Starmer have said their government would not see a return to austerity, but the IFS’ statement suggests such large tax increases could be needed to avoid this.

The think tank’s director Paul Johnson said: “It is easy to think that we face a short-term challenge somewhat artificially created by a particular set of arbitrary fiscal rules. That would be a mistake.

“Pressures on health and pension spending will continue to increase, and revenues from fuel and tobacco duties will fall. That will make remaining on course for current budget balance harder over the course of this parliament. If Ms Reeves does not grasp the nettle on 30 October, it could come back to sting her again before the next election.”

Debates around the levels of taxation in Britain have long been fought in Labour circles, with many of the party’s activists and politicians arguing for higher taxes in order to fund public services.

But critics of this approach point to a record high tax burden faced by many working people in Britain today – and caution against deterring investment with too high taxes.

James Moules

James Moules is a freelance reporter for LabourList and other publications.

Budget 2024: FBU warns Tory austerity ‘needs to stop’ to rebuild fire services

Daniel Green

8th October, 2024

The Fire Brigades Union has called on the government to rebuild the nation’s fire service after more than a decade of austerity so fire crews can tackle future risks and build resilience.

Hundreds of firefighters packed the Emmanuel Church near Parliament for what was billed as “the first national trade union rally of its kind since the general election” to demand the new Labour government provide greater funding and provide national standards on training and equipment.

Addressing fire crews from across the country, FBU President Ian Murray said: “For the new Westminster government, it’s now time to deliver.

“The Tories got absolutely walloped – they absolutely deserved it. Everybody in this room knows what they’ve done to the fire and rescue service. The jobs that have been lost, the stations that have been closed. The pay and pensions that have been attacked.

“We now have a new government and whatever you may think of it, it presents to us an opportunity to get an improvement in our fire and rescue service.

“We’re here to demand investment so that those that work in the fire service can do their jobs to the best of their ability as safely as possible, and in doing so keep our communities safe.”

The Labour-affiliated union outlined ten demands for the Labour government including the creation of a new statutory advisory body, scrapping anti-union legislation, safeguarding collective bargaining and setting national standards to keep firefighters and communities safe.

Speaking to LabourList at of the event, general secretary Matt Wrack said: “You can see firefighters from across the country gathering here.

“They’re here because every single fire service for the past 14 years has faced devastating cuts to the numbers of jobs, fire stations and fire engines under austerity, but also the fire service is fragmented, with different standards applying in different parts of the country.

“We’re here to say to the new government that needs to stop and we need to invest in the fire service.”

Wrack said that the rally had “sent a firm message to the government that the fire service is in crisis”.

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