The Run-Up

Tim Walz, a former high school football coach from a tiny town, has folksy sayings and a camo cap. JD Vance shot to fame with “Hillbilly Elegy,” aiming to speak for parts of rural America that felt left behind.

Both parties — especially with their vice-presidential candidates — are trying to convey to rural Americans that they are not forgotten.

This comes after Democrats have seen significant erosion of support in rural areas.

How ha...

At one point, he supported the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump, a fellow reality TV star and businessman.

But now Mark Cuban — perhaps best known for his longtime ownership of the Dallas Mavericks and his perch as a “Shark Tank” shark — has taken on a surprising new role.

He is a prolific and vocal supporter of Kamala Harris. Especially when it comes to his view of what a Harris administration would mean for the economy.

So, ...

This year, Democrats and Republicans are both fighting to convince voters that their party alone can fix what both parties say is a big problem: the Southern border.

And public sentiment on the issue is shifting. According to Gallup, 55 percent of Americans want to curb immigration, the highest recorded total since 2001.

With that in mind, we wanted to talk with people who actually live and work near the border. So we traveled to El ...

There’s a message that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are trying to send in these final weeks: The Democrats are patriots too.

It was all over the place at the Democratic National Convention, in the chants of “U.S.A.!” that broke out on the convention floor, in the vice president’s speech and in a speech by Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.

This effort to reclaim patriotism can be seen as a way to reclaim more white rural voters....

For the people still on the fence about 2024, Tuesday night’s debate was an important data point.

How would Vice President Kamala Harris differentiate herself from President Biden? How would former President Donald Trump come across when facing a new opponent? Would this matchup, the first time these candidates met, be enough to help these undecided voters make a decision?

On today’s “Run-Up,” we look at how they are thinking after t...

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off in Philadelphia on Tuesday night for the second presidential debate of 2024. It will be the first time the two candidates meet on a debate stage.

They enter the debate in a neck-and-neck race, with Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris, 48 percent to 47 percent, according to the latest national polling from The New York Times and Siena College.

That means the people ...

Former president Trump frequently takes credit for helping to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But in recent weeks, he has posted on Truth Social, his social media site, that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He suggested that he might vote for a Florida ballot measure allowing abortion up to around 24 weeks, before reversing his position. And he floated the idea that under a Trump administration, in ...

This election, like a lot of elections before it, may come down to which candidate voters think might help them with their grocery bills and housing costs — the essential stuff of everyday economics.

That’s what people around the country say — and what they tell pollsters too.

But the fact that life feels expensive right now is not just something voters are talking about.

Campaigns are too.

Kamala Harris just released an ad focused on ...

On the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage and formally accepted her party’s nomination.

After the balloons fell, Astead Herndon and his colleagues Maya King and Jennifer Medina broke down the moments that stood out to them from the night — from people touched by gun violence telling their stories to the way Ms. Harris talked about Israel and the war in Gaza to how she told ...

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Democratic National Convention tonight, formalizing her rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket and capping a very unusual path to the nomination.

No primary. No serious opposition. No real robust sense of what her legislative priorities might be.

On today’s show, a quest to answer this question: Is a Harris-led Democratic Party substantively different than the Democratic Party of J...

After two days of the Democratic National Convention, one thing is clear.

Democrats are united behind their new nominee.

And Kamala Harris has those in the Democratic Party, from the high-profile speakers to the delegates in the hall, thinking they can win.

In fact, the unity is such that after months of worrying about whether the convention would be upended by protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, so far, things feel quiet.

But does ang...

Last night, thousands of people gathered in Chicago for the first night of the Democratic National Convention. And the crowd at the United Center was ready for a party.

The evening featured a cameo from their candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and speeches from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, closing out the night, President Biden.

Before he could begin his speech, he rece...

The Democratic National Convention kicks off in Chicago today, less than a month after Democrats changed their nominee in a remarkable political shake-up. To get set for the week, “The Run-Up” talks with Leah Daughtry, an at-large member of the Democratic National Committee, the chief executive of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions and a co-chair of the convention rules committee, an incredibly significant role this ...

For much of the 2024 presidential election, it felt like there were pretty ideal conditions for a third-party candidate. Republicans and Democrats had both lined up behind broadly unpopular — and familiar — candidates. In the spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was polling at 10 percent in The New York Times/Siena College survey of battleground states, and sustained interest in his candidacy was enough to raise alarm among his major-part...

On Tuesday afternoon, just hours after Vice President Harris announced that Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, would be her running mate, Astead sat down with Senator Bernie Sanders in Burlington, Vt.

Mr. Sanders, the Vermont progressive who has twice run for president himself, supported the choice of Mr. Walz.

But a Harris-Walz ticket was not what he was envisioning for 2024. He was a staunch defender of President Biden remaining in t...

It has been less than two weeks since President Biden dropped his re-election bid and threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

Already, Ms. Harris has closed the gap with former President Donald J. Trump in some national polls. The Harris campaign said it had raised more than $200 million in a week. Ms. Harris’s supporters even broke attendance records on Zoom, with one group gathering more than 160,000 people on a sin...

Warning: this episode contains strong language and mentions of sexual abuse.

Since 2019, our host, Astead Herndon, has been reporting on Kamala Harris — from her campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination to her time as vice president. Over the years, the same questions have swirled around her.

What does she stand for? How does she make decisions? Was she only selected as President Biden’s running mate because of her race and gender...

When it finally happened, it felt both inevitable, and unfathomable.

President Biden was out of the 2024 presidential race.

Shortly after making that announcement, he threw his support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the next Democratic nominee.

Mr. Biden had finally fulfilled his promise to be a bridge to the next generation — albeit under enormous pressure.

Ms. Harris issued a statement later in the day, saying that s...

Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” has become former President Donald J. Trump’s unofficial theme music on the campaign trail. Here at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the song was performed live by none other than Mr. Greenwood himself, as Mr. Trump walked into the arena on Monday.

The anthem, released in 1984, is essentially a song about togetherness and the diversity of the United States. And it’s now become t...