Georgia again in the spotlight less than 100 days before election

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Saturday marked 100 days until the monumental general election that could decide whether Kamala Harris becomes the Oval Office’s first woman of color or if former President Donald Trump becomes only the second man ever elected to non-consecutive terms.

Harris will be in Atlanta on Tuesday, marking her sixth appearance in the Peach State this year. But this week’s visit will be her first as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee after President Joe Biden dropped a political bombshell last Sunday when he announced he is ending his 2024 reelection bid.

Harris has previously appearing at events focused on topics like gun safety and economic opportunity. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has endorsed Harris, as have all Georgia Democrats in the state House and Senate and much of Georgia’s congressional delegation.

Biden’s withdrawal quickly become the nation’s hottest political topic and, for the moment, eclipsed the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, along with a completely unified GOP after the Republican National Convention.

Trump, for his part, held a rally last week in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which he attacked Harris for the first time as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The rally was his first since Biden ended his reelection bid.

“I was supposed to be nice,” Trump said. “They say something happened to me when I got shot, I became nice. If you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that okay?” he continued, as the crowd roared.

Several polls came out last week that all show a potential Harris-Trump race to be virtual tossups. An NPR/PBS News Marist Poll conducted July 22, 2024, shows Trump leading Harris 46% to 45%, with 9% of voters undecided. Marist’s one-day survey of 1,309 adults was conducted July 22, 2024.

In a Reuters poll, Harris has opened a two-percentage-point lead over Trump, as she continues to consolidate the Democratic Party’s support after Biden’s stunning Sunday announcement he is ending his 2024 reelection bid.

Those polls were released after Monday’s national poll by Quinnipiac University that also showed the potential matchup – Harris has not been officially chosen as the Democratic Party’s White House nominee – a dead heat.

The Quinnipiac poll, conducted from Friday, July 19-21, showed Trump receiving 49% support and Harris receiving 47% support.

Had Biden faced Trump, it would have been the first time two presidential candidates would have faced each other in consecutive elections since 1956, when GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower again defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson in a repeat of the 1952 election.

The Democratic National Convention is set to convene in Chicago Aug. 19-22, 2024. Harris seems to have secured enough delegates to win the nomination; now, all eyes are focused on who she will choose as her vice presidential running mate.

Trump’s GOP White House nomination was already unprecedented:

• First time the GOP has nominated the same candidate for three consecutive years;
• First time the GOP has nominated a president who lost a reelection bid for another term;
• First time an impeached president has been nominated for another term;
• First time any major political party has nominated a convicted felon for president.

Since the Pennsylvania shooting, Trump is now a major political party’s first White House nominee to have survived an assassination attempt.

On Oct. 14, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt – already nominated by the independent Bull Moose Party – was shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (site of the recently ended 2024 GOP convention). Roosevelt not only survived but refused medical attention until he delivered his almost-90 minute speech.

Biden is the first sitting president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to end his reelection bid. He is also the first presidential candidate in modern political history to withdraw from the race after winning virtually all of his party’s delegates.

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Also, for the first time since 1976, a general election presidential ballot will be without the names “Biden,” “Bush” or “Clinton” appearing on the ticket:

• Bush – George H.W. was Ronald Reagan’s vice presidential running mate in 1980 and 1984; he ran for president in 1988 and reelection in 1992, when he was defeated by …
• William Jefferson Clinton – Clinton won the presidency in 1992 and won reelection in 1996. His wife, Hillary Clinton, was the Democratic White House nominee in 2016, when she was defeated by Trump.
• Joe Biden – Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate in 2008 and 2012. He ran for and won the presidency in 2020.

Trump’s selection of U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio is the first time a so-called millennial has appeared on a presidential ticket.

If Trump wins in November, he will become the second former President – the first being Grover Cleveland in the 19th century – to be elected to the White House after losing his reelection bid.

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