Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we recap last night’s presidential debate, report on Maggie Goodlander’s win last night in yesterday’s Democratic congressional primary in New Hampshire, talk to Rep. Seth Magaziner about the origin of the letter signed by Jewish Democrats in the House condemning Tucker Carlson for his recent platforming of a Holocaust denier and cover Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor speech about extremism on campus. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Joe Wilson, Golan Vach and Angelo Roefaro.
What We’re Watching
- Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Memorial ceremonies will be held this morning in New York City, Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon.
- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Stephanie Hallett, the Biden administration’s nominee to be ambassador to Bahrain. Hallett, a career diplomat, is the current chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
- American Friends of Chabad Lubavitch is holding its annual Lamplighter Awards in Washington. This year’s honorees include House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Real Estate Roundtable President and CEO Jeffrey DeBoer, Suffolk Chairman and CEO John Fish and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck founder and Chairman Norm Brownstein.
What You Should Know
Vice President Kamala Harris last night showcased one of the strongest debate performances of her political career, lobbing well-crafted hits at former President Donald Trump as extreme and temperamentally unfit to again be president, all while praising a long list of Republicans from Dick Cheney to Mitt Romney to John McCain.
All told, she did as well as could be expected in what’s likely to be the only presidential debate of the campaign, even as the race is unlikely to shift dramatically given the country’s polarized electorate, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
Harris came well-armed with prepared attacks that served as scathing indictments of the former president’s record. She said he left office with the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, the worst public health epidemic in a century and the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. She mocked his references to Hannibal Lecter and windmills at his rallies. And she warned he would weaponize the government for his own personal benefit, if elected again – calling on “the American people to stop him.”
And by going after Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes at the outset, she rattled the former president in a way that kept him off his game during the rest of the nearly two-hour debate.
On foreign policy, she said to his face that foreign leaders laugh at him, while warning that he would abandon Ukraine if elected president. Harris offered support for Israel while expressing sympathy for the Palestinian plight, in comments that closely echoed her remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
Trump suggested that Harris “hates Israel” and that the Jewish state “will not exist two years from now” in a Harris administration. “At the same time in her own way, she hates the Arab population, because the whole place is going to get blown up: Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone,” Trump added. “It would’ve never happened. Iran was broke under Donald Trump… Iran had no money for Hamas, or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different spheres of terror… horrible terror… they were broke.”
Trump had a lot of opportunities to raise questions about Harris’ progressive history and lack of clear positions, but he failed to make a sustained argument on that front. He had a few golden opportunities to hit her on the Biden administration’s economic record, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and disillusionment over unchecked immigration — but he never landed sustained punches on any of those issues.
The post-debate consensus from Republicans was that the ABC News moderators were too tough on Trump, and mainly asked their follow-up questions of the former president, not Harris. But complaining about the referees — no matter how legitimate the argument — is a loser’s game and a sign that Trump took a political hit from tonight’s proceedings.
And in another sign the debate went well for Harris, her campaign chair was already calling for a second debate minutes after the debate was over. “Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump,” said top advisor Jen O’Malley Dillon in a statement.
In our polarized times, even the best debate performance isn’t going to change the fundamental reality of a deeply divided electorate. All evidence points to a very competitive presidential campaign. But Harris, who has already made strides in consolidating the base behind her campaign, can feel optimistic that her performance reassured skeptical independents that she’s up to the job.
granite state race
Maggie Goodlander wins New Hampshire Democratic congressional primary

Maggie Goodlander, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Biden administration, won the heated Democratic primary contest in the race for the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH), Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Comfortable win: Goodlander, the wife of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, was declared the winner over Colin Van Ostern, a former member of the state’s Executive Council and Democrats’ 2016 gubernatorial nominee, less than an hour after polls closed in New Hampshire on Tuesday. With most precincts reporting, Goodlander was comfortably beating Van Ostern with 63% of the vote. Van Ostern conceded as results were being tabulated.