Politics

What 7 political experts will be watching at Tuesday’s debate

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

What 7 political experts will be watching at Tuesday’s debate

The debate Tuesday between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will be one to watch: the first time the two personally meet and the first time they’ll face off.

But what should you watch for?

We asked seven BLN analysts to weigh in on what they’ll be looking for during the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump. Here’s what they said.

Follow live updates on the Trump-Harris debate.

Steve Benen

When Trump takes the stage, he won’t have one opponent; he’ll have two. The first, obviously, will be Harris. The second will be himself. What I’ll be watching is whether the Republican nominee — who’s long struggled to maintain his composure while targeting women, especially women of color — has the discipline, decency and common sense to strike a presidential tone, treat the Democratic nominee with a modicum of respect and avoid the temptation to throw a tantrum that could cost him dearly. If recent history is any guide, even his most optimistic supporters should probably keep expectations low.

Brendan Buck

Harris has worked hard to present herself as the challenger in this race, but Trump has figured out a retort that is difficult for the vice president to answer: “Why didn’t you do it?” She will need a good explanation for why she now will be able to solve problems that she hasn’t while in the White House.

Brian Tyler Cohen

Will Harris be able to bait Trump into descending into one of his unhinged tirades and, if so, what should that tell us about the ease with which Trump can be manipulated (and what are the national security implications that come with it)? Will Trump be able to control himself when challenged by not just a Black woman — but the one who replaced his dream opponent — Joe Biden — on which Trump’s entire campaign was built?

Susan Del Percio

Watch how Harris uses her time. With muted microphones, time management will be essential. Trump rambles, often unable to deliver a clear, coherent response to just about any question. Harris will watch the clock and make her point — although she may sound a little over-rehearsed — and still leave time to get under Trump’s skin. She wins.

Voters want to know more about Harris. She must share her biography, accomplishments and plans for her presidency.

Alicia Menendez

Persuadable voters are the key audience. They may not watch the debate in real time, but they will catch key moments in clips. For those voters,new informationis what will move their candidate preference. Voters want to know more about Harris. She must share her biography, accomplishments and plans for her presidency, specifically around her opportunity agenda. Moreover, she must not only remind voters what Trump did during his first term, but connect those actions tofutureactions.

Michael Steele

I wrote about this for the BLN Daily newsletter on Friday. I want to see if Harris can thread the needle between appearing prosecutorial and being presidential. When she’s on the stage with a pathological liar, her instinct will be to correct him and throw facts back. That might work to a degree and at specific times, but the trap is to remember she’s not running for California attorney general; she’s running for president of the United States.

Charlie Sykes

Because Biden’s debate performance was so historically disastrous, people forget how genuinely awful Trump was. He lied incessantly, blustered and got lost in his own gibberish. If anything, he’s gotten worse since then; and now he faces a far more formidable opponent in Harris. This is her challenge: she has to be the grown-up in the room while calling out his lies, his threats, and his insults — without being dragged down into the Trumpian muck. If she does, she will have turned the corner in the race.

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Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine, Bloomberg News and CQ Roll Call. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies.

Politics

‘I think Alaska’s turning blue’: Republicans fret Sullivan’s path to reelection

Published

21 hours ago

October 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.

But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.

Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.

“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”

Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.

“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.

What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.

The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.

Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.

“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.

Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.

“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”

Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.

Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.

Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.

Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.

“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”

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Politics

In private, top Republicans believe the House is a lost cause

Published

1 day ago

October 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.

Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.

One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.

“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”

A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.

Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”

Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.

Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.

The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.

Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.

“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.

White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”

As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.

“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.

Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.

“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.

In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.

NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”

Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.

The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”

Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.

“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”

Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.

Politics

Ossoff says he has ‘zero interest in running for president’

Published

2 days ago

October 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.

“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.

Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”

The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.

Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.

He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.