The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and numerous buildings “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.”

“Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Washington Post. The mayor added that national leaders should provide that help and not “hurt a community like, unfortunately, we have seen over the last couple of days.”

The Ohio city recently gained national attention as it became the subject of dehumanizing and xenophobic conspiracy theories amplified by former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who claimed Haitian immigrants there were killing and eating people’s pets. Police officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence to support the claim, which Trump repeated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said at the ABC News debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris that 67 million people watched. “And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

When moderator David Muir pushed back, saying that the city manager of Springfield has said there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.

“I’ve seen people on television. … The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”

Earlier this week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby called the unsubstantiated reports Vance had pushed “dangerous” misinformation.

“Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation, and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt, so it needs to stop,” Kirby said Tuesday, ahead of the debate.

Representatives for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott confirmed that Thursday’s threat targeted City Hall and other buildings in the city, including an elementary school. Elliott, who did not take questions at a brief afternoon news conference, also said officials cleared and checked several additional buildings in the surrounding area out of an abundance of caution. She told reporters that local law enforcement is working with the FBI’s Dayton, Ohio, office to identify the source of the threat.

Trump seemingly continued to push the false claims about the Ohio city by posting cat-themed memes to social media Thursday afternoon. One digital illustration shared by Trump on Truth Social shows a litter of nearly identical kittens holding a sign that says, “Don’t let them eat us, vote for Trump!” Another shows an orange cat with a furrowed brow holding a sign that says, “Kamala hates me.” The images have telltale signs of being created with AI, such as design flaws, anatomical oversights and grammatical errors.

In a video posted to the city’s Facebook page a day before the bomb threats, Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck disputed the narrative involving the city and attributed the criticism from those outside the state to “misinformation circulating on social media and further amplified by the political rhetoric in the current, highly charged presidential election cycle.”

Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) recently laid out a potential Trump administration’s approach to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying former president Donald Trump’s handling of the conflict could include establishing a “demilitarized zone” in Ukrainian territory now occupied by Russia.

The approach would mark a dramatic change from the Biden administration’s policy — which is focused on providing military and other assistance, along with Europe and other allies — to help Ukraine repel and reverse Russian aggression.

“I think what this looks like is Trump sits down, he says to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans: You guys need to figure out. What does a peaceful settlement look like? And what it probably looks like is the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone,” Vance said Wednesday on “The Shawn Ryan Show.”

The proposed demilitarized zone, Vance added, would be “heavily fortified so the Russians don’t invade again.” As part of the peace plan, Vance said, Ukraine would maintain its independence in exchange for a guarantee of neutrality — meaning Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO or other “allied institutions.”

Vance’s comments are the most explicit and recent plan for the war proposed to date by the Republican ticket.

Trump has claimed that if elected, he would end the war. This week, during the presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, he said that if elected in November, he would “get it done before even becoming president.” However, he’s stopped short of explicitly laying out his plan, suggesting that publicizing his strategy would weaken his hand in negotiations.

“I have a very exacting plan on how to stop Ukraine and Russia. And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China,” Trump said last week in a podcast interview with Lex Fridman, later adding, “But I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them. They’ll be unsuccessful. Part of it’s surprise.”

Vance, in his interview with Ryan, said it was “fake” and “wrong” to consider the conflict “the great humanitarian mission of our time,” adding that it’s a “fairy-tale mindset” to consider the war a battle between “good versus evil.” During the interview, he also said that Russia “should not have invaded” Ukraine, but that “Ukrainians have got a lot of corruption problems, too.”

Since launching an invasion in February 2022, Russia now controls roughly 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory — including Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014 along with parts of the eastern Donbas region — and significant additional area stretching from north to south in the east.

Although some Republican lawmakers are among the strongest supporters of Ukraine, others have been increasingly reluctant to continue providing federal funding toward the war, arguing that the money is better spent on domestic issues such as securing the southern U.S. border.

Individuals who have discussed Trump’s proposal to resolve the conflict, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, had told The Washington Post in April that his plan consisted of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia.

“There’s a lot of risks to us staying there and trying to encourage the Ukrainians to hold onto Crimea. The question is: How many American lives would it cost to do that? And if the answer is more than zero, then I’m out,” said Vance, a Marine veteran. Although the U.S. military has trained Ukrainian forces in parts of Europe, there have been no U.S. troops in Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion and Biden has pledged there will not be.

Responding to Vance’s recent comments, the Harris campaign pointed to the vice president’s speech in June at a peace summit.

Harris referenced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cease-fire proposal put forward that month, which would require Ukraine withdraw troops from four Russian-occupied territories, the West lift sanctions imposed on Russia and Ukraine drop its bid for NATO membership. In her speech, Harris said Putin was “not calling for negotiations. He is calling for surrender.”

Vance also said Europe has “underfunded this war while American taxpayers have been very generous,” a charge often made by Trump, who falsely said in Tuesday’s debate that the United States had spent $250-$275 billion on Ukraine — more than twice as much as Europe.

As of June 30, European nations with far smaller economies had collectively spent and allocated considerably more than the United States, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. As a percentage of its economy, the United States ranks lower than 21 other countries, according to the institute.

Vance continued to argue that the Biden administration’s policy is to “throw money at this problem [and] hope the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory that even the Ukrainians are saying [they] can’t achieve,” Vance added. “Donald Trump’s policy is yes, be strong, but also be smart. Negotiate.”

A number of Trump advisers have outlined similar plans, including one published during the summer by Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz — who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump’s National Security Council. Their proposal, which they said had been presented to the former president, also included telling Ukraine it would receive no more U.S. aid if it didn’t agree to a peace he negotiated.

Vance didn’t specify who would control the “demilitarized zone,” but he said the “current line of demarcation” would remain, meaning Ukraine would not reclaim its territory that Russia now occupies. Throughout the war, Ukraine — with backing from both the United States and NATO — has insisted that all of Ukraine’s sovereign territory be returned. NATO has pledged that Ukraine will be part of the alliance and has set it on a path to membership.

A 10-point peace plan presented to the United Nations in September 2022 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky included a complete Russian withdrawal and restoration to pre-2014 borders, and an international tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.

Putin, who claims historical ownership of Ukraine — a part of the former Soviet Union — has said he is willing to negotiate but made clear it must be on his terms. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said that any peace plan must recognize “the reality on the ground,” and Russian retention of territory it now occupies — crimes for which the International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Putin.

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.

About two in three Americans support imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices, but only three in 10 back expanding the size of the court — a proposal offered up by congressional Democrats and court transparency advocates as a way to dilute the power of the court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority.

The Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey also found that 69 percent of Americans believe there should be a mandatory retirement age for the justices.

President Joe Biden called this summer for 18-year term limits for the justices, with future presidents able to nominate a justice every two years. He also backed legislation that would create an enforceable ethics code for the justices, who published their own code last year but did not include a way to investigate potential violations or mete out sanctions.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has endorsed Biden’s proposals, which came in response to ethics scandals involving some of the justices and several rulings that overturned long-standing precedent.

GOP nominee Donald Trump and other Republicans dismiss the ideas as efforts to thwart the court’s right-leaning majority, which Trump cemented with the appointment of three very conservative justices. That majority has overturned Roe v. Wade, ended affirmative action in college admissions, greatly expanded presidential immunity for official acts and weakened the regulatory power of federal agencies.

Nearly half of Americans support allowing the public to vote to overturn Supreme Court decisions on controversial issues, according to the survey. Nearly eight in 10 support the creation of an enforceable ethics code for the high court, and 82 percent say Supreme Court justices should be barred from participating in cases in which they have “personal or financial interests.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced last fall that the court had agreed to follow an ethics code specific to the nine justices. But the ethics code does not include an enforcement mechanism or any outside oversight of the justices’ individual decisions about whether to recuse from certain cases because of perceived or potential conflicts of interest.

The court adopted its code after news reports revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted but did not disclose on his financial reports years of luxury gifts and trips from Dallas billionaire and Republican donor Harlan Crow, as well as real estate deals and other financial transactions. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. faced similar criticism for not reporting a 2008 luxury fishing trip arranged by conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo with private jet travel provided by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer.

Both Alito and Thomas have said disclosure rules at the time did not require reporting private jet travel or luxury accommodations provided by friends.

Confidence in the Supreme Court plunged 22 percentage points — from 68 percent to 46 percent — between 2019 and 2022, according to the Annenberg survey. And seven out of 10 Americans believe the justices are guided by their ideology and do not rule impartially, according to a June poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Alito also came fire under this year after reports of politically provocative flags flown outside his homes. The justice has said that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was responsible for flying both an upside-down American flag at their Virginia home in the weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their vacation home in New Jersey.

The justice declined calls for him to sit out two Jan. 6-related cases because those flags have been associated with some people who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen and that Trump had won. Alito said his wife flew the upside-down flag after a neighborhood dispute and the couple were unaware the “Appeal to Heaven” flag had associations with the “Stop the Steal” movement. Both flags had long histories and other meanings not associated with Jan. 6.

Congressional Democrats and court transparency advocates have pressed the justices to adopt a binding code of conduct to restore public confidence in the institution.

Justice Elena Kagan has said she would support the creation of a committee of judges to examine potential violations of the Supreme Court’s ethics code. Having an oversight committee composed of renowned lower-court judges “seems like a good idea to me in terms of ensuring that we comply with our code of conduct going forward in the future; it seems like a good idea in terms of ensuring that people have confidence that we’re doing exactly that,” Kagan said earlier this week during a conversation at New York University Law School with professor Melissa Murray, co-host of a liberal podcast about the court called “Strict Scrutiny.”

Any congressional effort to impose term limits or ethics legislation faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House and narrowly divided Senate. Both proposals would require 60 votes to pass the Senate, but Democrats only hold 51 seats there.

The survey is conducted annually by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center to mark Constitution Day, which falls on Sept. 17. It also probes Americans’ knowledge of First Amendment protections, the branches of government and party control of Congress, among other topics.

Freedom of speech was the most recognized right guaranteed under the First Amendment, with 74 percent identifying the protection. However, less than half could name most of the rights protected under the First Amendment, according to the survey.

The center’s analysis of the survey results found that the relationship between civics knowledge and support for Supreme Court reforms varies by political affiliation. While the most knowledgeable Democrats and independents are slightly more likely to want to reform the court, the most knowledgeable Republicans are considerably less likely to want to reform the court, according to the survey.

American presidential races, spectacles of democracy in action, can reach a conclusion that is anti-democratic.

Choosing presidents through the electoral college, a curious form of American exceptionalism, has resulted in presidential candidates who win the popular vote, only to lose the election because of often anonymous electors. Now, an alternative is gaining traction.

Before getting to the consequences of the current anti-majoritarian operation and a look at the alternative, here’s a quick reminder of the odd way Americans pick presidents.

The electoral college is “a process, not a place,” as described by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which coordinates electoral college functions. Political parties in each state select electors. The winner of the popular vote in each state gets all the electors’ votes in 48 states and the District. Only Maine and Nebraska award electoral votes proportionally. The number of electors in each state equals the number of senators and representatives in the state. The District has three electors, despite having no senators or voting representatives in the House.

Five times in U.S. history, and twice since 2000, popular vote losers won the White House. Most recently that was to the joy of Republicans, but their victories had fatal consequences. George W. Bush won in 2000, and the victory later enabled him to authorize the Iraqi invasion, based on bogus information, which led to the deaths of more than 4,400 Americans and 32,000 U.S. military injuries. Estimates of Iraqi deaths approach a half-million.

Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral college win, despite losing the popular vote, was followed by his 2020 popular vote and electoral college defeats. He inspired the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his insurrectionist supporters who sought to stop the process that made him a certified loser. Seven deaths were linked to the attack, according to a bipartisan Senate report.

“The current system presents a growing threat to the peaceful transition of power. It also strips us of our individual power,” said Robert Reich, a University of California at Berkeley public policy professor who was labor secretary during the Clinton administration. “If you’re a New York Republican or an Alabama Democrat, presidential candidates have little incentive to try and win your vote under the current system.”

He made those remarks in a video advocating the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Rather than engaging a long, cumbersome and difficult constitutional amendment process to eliminate the electoral college, the campaign seeks to significantly modify the process.

Unless blocked by the courts, the National Popular Vote would take effect when states with electoral votes totaling at least 270 — the number needed for victory — agree to participate. That’s just over half of all 538 votes. “Then, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC will get all the electoral votes from all of the enacting states,” according to the campaign, ensuring majority will rules.

So far, 17 states and the District, with a combined 209 electoral votes, have approved the National Popular Vote. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, signed legislation accepting the National Popular Vote for his state last year. The presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Trump did not respond to questions about the electoral college.

“I’m increasingly confident that we are watching the last election under the current system,” said Patrick Rosenstiel, a National Popular Vote senior consultant. “We can have a national popular vote election in 2028.” Maryland was the first state to join in 2007. The last was Maine in April.

Rosenstiel is optimistic about the 2028 timeline, because, he said, “the proposal has passed at least one legislative chamber in seven additional states with 74 electoral votes, more than the 61 electoral votes needed for the proposal to take effect.”

His optimism is bolstered by strong public support for a more democratic system that ensures the candidate with the most popular votes wins. Sixty-five percent of adults in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey favored that. Among the coming generation, 18 to 29 years old, that jumps to 70 percent. But there is a wide ideological and partisan split. Just 36 percent of conservatives and 47 percent of people identifying as Republican or GOP leaning want to change the current system. That compares with 88 percent of liberals and 82 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning people favoring changes.

The strong, overall favorable rating is driven by endemic problems with the electoral college. Its undemocratic conflict with majority rule has been demonstrated in the victories of John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888, who lost the popular vote before Bush and Trump followed.

Furthermore, the electoral college formula gives disproportional weight to some states and disadvantages others. That leads to presidential candidates concentrating heavily on the battleground states, while the rest get little attention.

As with so much in American, there also are historical and current racial implications. Noting the overwhelming 82.5 percent White population in sparsely populated Wyoming and the much more diverse 35.2 percent White population in heavily populated California, Reich said that “voters in Wyoming have four times more power than the typical voter in California.”

That phenomenon is not limited to those two states, said Wilfred U. Codrington III, a constitutional law professor and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. “What is clear,” he wrote in a Brennan Center for Justice article reprinted from the Atlantic, “is that more than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern whites, the Electoral College continues to do just that. The current system has a distinct, adverse impact on Black voters, diluting their political power. Because the concentration of Black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes.”

An e-book by the right-wing Heritage Foundation places those arguments in its “myths and misinformation” category. Electoral college benefits listed by the think tank include preserving federalism, encouraging broad coalitions and moderation, discouraging voter fraud and promoting election legitimacy, though Trump didn’t find this last point persuasive.

Through the “genius and foresight” of the Constitution’s framers, Heritage wrote, “they designed an electoral system that has the ability to adapt to modern-day America and work even better than they could have anticipated.”

The Pew poll shows a strong majority of America disagrees.

Yet despite the overwhelming support for change, Aaron Scherb, senior legislative affairs director at Common Cause, a national pro-democracy organization that supports the compact, wasn’t as optimistic as Rosenstiel is about a new system during a telephone interview.

“It’s challenging to find the next tranche of states” that might adopt the National Popular Vote, he said. To get there, it might take “a Republican presidential candidate to lose the electoral college, but win the popular vote.”

Vice President Kamala Harris is pitching herself as a forward-looking bridge to the future — but she’s doing so with a little help from the past.

Since emerging as President Joe Biden’s replacement at the top of the ticket following his disastrous debate performance in late June, Harris has brought on several high-profile veterans of former president Barack Obama’s two campaigns, as well as a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Now, with Harris seeking to become the first woman — and the first Black and Indian American woman — to win the White House, the question remains if the experienced Obama and Clinton hands can help recreate the Obama magic of 2008. Democrats are hoping they can help Harris harness her newfound enthusiasm and momentum into electoral success as they did with Obama in 2008, as well as deploy the lessons learned working for historic Black and female candidates to help Harris navigate her history-making bid.

“This is all-hands-on-deck, and it doesn’t matter what people did in the Obama campaign or the Clinton campaign or the Kerry campaign,” said John Anzalone, a Harris campaign adviser and pollster, who worked on both Obama campaigns and Clinton’s 2016 bid. “I don’t care where you learned your talents. Everyone who has done these things at a high level and understands what’s at stake…. I’ll carry Walz’s briefcase if it will help the mission.”

The group includes David Binder — who led Obama’s public opinion research operation — taking on an expanded role in the Harris campaign; Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager, taking on an expanded role as senior adviser for strategy messaging; David Plouffe — a top strategist on both Obama campaigns and senior White House adviser — joining as a senior adviser for strategy; and Mitch Stewart, the grassroots strategist on both Obama campaigns, joining as the senior adviser for battleground states. Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, also joined the Harris-Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) campaign last month as a senior adviser to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Some of the staffers on the original Biden-Harris campaign are sensitive about the new additions, in part because they view the Obama diaspora as having lead the charge to push Biden out — and there are still some private whispers from Obamaworld that the help is much-needed.

“There was a feeling that the B team was in control of the Biden campaign, and now there’s a lot more comfort that Kamala Harris is bringing in the A team and a lot of those people were people who were on Obama 2008 and 2012, and on Hillary,” said a former Obama campaign staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a candid criticism. “These are people who have had to navigate complex racial and gender dynamics in American politics and people who handled that deftly.”

But those joining the Harris-Walz campaign — as well as those who have been toiling away for months at headquarters in Wilmington, Del. — say that the new hires are additive and enhance the final sprint to Election Day. Many point to the fact that most of the new faces were specifically brought in by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who held top roles in both Obama campaigns and who Harris asked to stay on in her role as campaign chair.

Cutter was even more blunt: “I want to say first that there is an experienced campaign team in place and anybody being added now is simply that — additive,” she said. “The one thing that unites us is our determination to win, and there are no egos.”

The Obama hands bring years of experience navigating thorny and racial issues. Obama, after all, became the first Black person to win the presidency and did so, in part, by managing to talk about race in a way that felt inclusive and non-threatening. Strategically, Obama and his team also sought to not make race a cornerstone of his campaign, believing that voters understood the historic nature of his bid simply by looking at him, and dwelling on his race would have been counterproductive, several Obama advisers said.

Those who worked for Clinton also learned lessons of what does — and doesn’t — work when trying to lift a woman to the highest office.

“Obama understood that if the campaign just devolved into a race war and name-calling, it wouldn’t necessarily be good for him,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, adding: “It’s a reminder to Democrats in the post-2016 world, where it’s become very fashionable to always call Republicans sexists, homophobes, racists, xenophobes, that you don’t always need to take the bait on their attacks … Sometimes it’s just better to rebut them and say whatever they’re saying is offensive, and then go back to the issues people care about.”

Harris, for her part, has so far very deliberately steered clear of the historic nature of her bid. In her first sit-down television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee with CNN, she stressed wanting to be a president for “all Americans.”

Asked about an iconic photo of her grandniece, in braided pigtails, watching her officially accept her party’s nomination, Harris called the image “very humbling” and described herself as “deeply touched” but otherwise did not delve into the symbolism and emotion the photo conjured for so many.

When asked in the same interview about Trump’s July comments that Harris had only recently “happened to turn Black,” she offered a can-barely-be-bothered seven-word dismissal: “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”

At the presidential debate in Philadelphia Tuesday night, Harris again used a back-and-forth on race not to lean into the historic nature of her bid, but to speak in broader, almost Obama-like terms about unifying the nation rather than allowing race to be a divisive force.

“It’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president, who has consistently over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she said. “You know, I do believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us, and we don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us, and especially by race.”

The answers epitomized Harris’s playbook: to generally avoid Trump’s provocations and to respond, if at all, on her own terms. When Trump first made his comments about Harris turning Black, some Democrats urged her team to promptly hit back, to immediately go out and tell her personal story. But Harris’s team resisted, doubling down on their belief that Trump doesn’t get to dictate how she defines herself, or how and when she tells her own story, said someone familiar with the discussions.

“One of the lessons that Vice President Harris’s mother instilled in her is don’t let anybody tell you who you are,” Cutter said. “You show them who you are, and that’s exactly what she’s doing.”

Cutter, a senior adviser on Obama’s 2008 campaign, also served as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff then, helping Michelle Obama parry attacks from the far-right, which tried to paint her as an angry Black woman. Some of those lessons, Cutter said, also apply to Harris.

“The strategy in ‘08 was based on letting America meet Michelle Obama in an unfiltered way, because her authenticity and ability to relate to every American was extremely real, so we wanted to do that before any opposition forces — or, frankly, the media — did that in a tainted way,” Cutter said. “That’s exactly what’s happening with Vice President Harris right now, but in an expedited fashion because of the nature of the race. Letting her be who she is, without anybody else’s filter on it is the reason she is sparking such excitement.”

One concern about the new high-profile new additions, however, is that they are all White — a notable aberration for Harris, who has prioritized elevating women and people of color within her inner circle.

“The thing I’m most worried about with this crop of people is the one characteristic they share is they’re all White,” said an original 2008 Obama staffer, speaking anonymously to share a candid opinion. “I don’t think the conversation about race is the same in the post-George Floyd, 2024 world as it was in the 2008 Obama era.”

Palmieri, meanwhile, said she joined the campaign in the final months because “I feel like I learned really valuable lessons during the Clinton campaign and then in working through a lot of research in the eight years since about the kind of questions we have for women candidates and how you best support them. The notion of working for the male spouse of the first Black and female president was really appealing to me.”

Experts say that female candidates, for instance, often need to highlight their credentials more than male ones — and someone like Emhoff, Harris’s husband, can serve as a compelling validator.

The other aspect of Obama’s victory — especially in 2008 — that Democrats hope to replicate is harnessing the authentic, grassroots enthusiasm that exists within the party and then turning that into a movement of loyal foot soldiers.

“In order to win this election and to capitalize on the sort of enthusiasm and energy and everything that we’re seeing on the ground since the vice president got to the top of the ticket, you have to have an infrastructure that was built to sustain that,” said Quentin Fulks, the Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager. “We were on pace building out an infrastructure to do that, and that is why we have been successful capturing this energy and being able to maneuver from one candidate to another candidate, being on the top of the ticket.”

Sixteen years after Obama made history as the nation’s first Black president — and eight years after Clinton nearly made history as the nation’s first female president — the landscape Harris faces has changed, in part because of those who came before her.

“Obama and Clinton had to go and do it first, and I think there’s more and more people who are looking at Kamala Harris and what she brings to the table and the future of America more than race,” Anzalone said. “When people break barriers, like President Obama did, it clearly makes it different and easier for the next person to come along. So I think that in some ways, all the dynamic traits that Harris brings to it, people tend to see those with more clarity beyond her race or beyond her gender.”