There's only 65 days until election day. Both candidates are working hard to win votes in key swing states this Labor Day weekend. Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Michigan tomorrow before joining President Joe Biden in Pittsburgh for an event celebrating the working class. Former President Donald Trump is responding. His Michigan campaign is hosting a video call with some United Auto Workers, although the union is already supporting Harris. Joining us now, Democratic strategist and co founder of Lift Our Voices, Julie Roginski, and Republican strategist and former White House spokesperson for President George W Bush, Pete Cee. Good to have both of you here. Thanks so much. Julie, let's start first with you. We have that new ABC news poll out today, and it shows Vice President Harris with that slight lead over former President Trump, 50 % to 46 %. This is still a really tight race, though, when you boil it down to the electoral map, to these battleground states. And we're talking about just a small group of people that are persuadable at this point. How does each campaign do that between now and election day?

You know, this is a turnout election. It's not necessarily much of a persuasion election anymore, to the extent that even Joe Biden, after his disastrous debate performance, the same ABC news poll showed not much movement after the debate performance. So it's pretty much baked in, right? People know what they think about Donald Trump. They may not know as much about Kamala Harris, but they certainly know whether they love Donald Trump or hate him. And so So the job for both sides is to churn out their voters at this point. It is not the typical persuasion election that we've seen in previous campaigns because of Donald Trump. And so ultimately, that's why you're seeing Kamala Harris go on this tour on reproductive rights. That's why you're seeing former President doubling down on all the MAGA talking points that don't necessarily do anything to expand his own base, but make sure that his own base turns out, because they both understand that this is an election that will come down to who gets their vote out.

And Pete, Harris's top campaign adviser saying today, She remains the clear underdog. It's a way she's described herself as well. There are advantages to being the underdog, to framing yourself as the underdog. To Julie's point, it can makes you know, you can convince maybe more people that you must vote. You can't just leave this one up to chance. Do you think that that is, though, the correct assessment of this situation?

Well, a campaign calling their candidate, the underdog, is a tried and true tactic of campaigns because you don't want to get overconfident and you don't want to get complacent. And there's been a lot of reasons for the Kamala Harris campaign to be overconfident. There is a burst of enthusiasm behind her candidacy after the switcheroo with Joe Biden. So I think they see it the same way Julie and I see this race, which is it actually is about persuasion, but it's persuading voters to vote, not necessarily to change who they're going to vote for, but it's about persuading them to show up to the ballot box. And that's why you're going to hear more and more rhetoric from both sides that is appealing to their respective bases. That's what they're doing in all these battleground states. They know who their voters are. They've got to turn them out to win.

And so, Julie, we have this debate. We're coming up on it, September 10th. How impactful might that be if we continue with this through line that we have in this conversation that you need to convince your voters to get out and vote? What role does it play in that?

Well, the stakes are pretty high for Kamala Harris. Again, it continues to allow her to introduce herself, not just to people who are undecided, although that cohort is incredibly small, but really to the Democratic base to ensure that they turn out. As I said before, it's pretty much baked in for Trump. We know what he is and who he is. You either love him or you hate him. There's really nothing he can do at this point to change your mind one way or the other. And whether the mics are muted or not may be more helpful to Harris to underscore to her own base, to the Democratic base, exactly how toxic he can be when he's allowed to speak without his mic being muted. But at the same time, it's not going to suddenly persuade a whole swath of Trump supporters to say, Oh my God, this is not a man that we're not familiar with. And again, as I said earlier, ironically, the polls did not shift all that much despite Biden's debate performance a few months ago. And so I go back to what I said earlier. It's important in the sense that it allows her to reintroduce herself or to introduce herself for the first time to people who may not be that familiar with her, but really more to gin up enthusiasm among low propensity voters on the Democratic side, and to bring some of them home who may not be 100% in the Democratic camp yet, but who typically should be voting Democratic because of their history demographically.

And, Pete, I just want to get your thoughts on the debate as well.

Yeah, it's baked in on both sides. Go back to the ABC poll that you referenced. If we dig deeper, 96 % of voters who say they are not supporting Kamala Harris today say they're not going to. They're not going to go her way. 97 % who are not supporting Donald Trump today are not going to support him when election day rolls around. So I think for Kamala Harris, this debate is about platitudes. She doesn't want to get into the policy weeds. She's going to be as vague as possible because she's trying to rekindle the Obama magic. And the more platitudes, the more hope and change, the more likely she is to get her voters out and not turn someone away and get them to stay home. Donald Trump, on the other hand, it's really about body language for him. Yeah, he needs to remind the American people that they were better off economically when he was president. But he has to be careful about how he debates against Kamala not Hillary Clinton. She doesn't come into this with sky high disapproval ratings. And so he has to be very, very careful about his words and his body language.

It's going to be interesting to see. All right, Julie Roginski and Pete Seat. Our thanks to both of you.