Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

We’re inching closer to Election Night in America, and the race has entered a state of limbo, where everything feels like a coin toss, the vice presidential debate was a wash, polling is (at best!) a Rorschach test, and both sides claim they are winning. Will Kamala pull off a victory in North Carolina? Does Trump have a chance in Nevada? Will the battleground map be à la carte rather than all walls and belts? Trust me, no one really knows. More on that below—and specifically, how the Trump brain trust is preparing for the final push to November.

But first…

🎧 Somebody’s Gotta Win: On the latest episode of my podcast, I chatted with V Spehar, one of the top political influencer on TikTok, about how both presidential campaigns are side-stepping legacy media and beta testing social-driven strategies. Listen here or here.

Now, here’s Abby Livingston on the latest from the Hill…

• The G.O.P. cash crunch: Republicans know they have a money problem, not just because they lost McCarthy’s fundraising operation when they kicked him to the curb. Democratic candidates and incumbents have been announcing banner quarterly fundraising numbers in recent days—eight-figure hauls for Senate candidates, seven figures for House Dems. Meanwhile, this is the fourth cycle where Republicans have scrambled to keep up with Democrats in the candidate money race—ever since Trump’s ascendance undammed a river of Democratic cash directly to candidates, who can use the money to buy TV ads at lower rates than big donor-supported outside groups. (ActBlue, in particular, has become the conduit for Democrats to rain money on down-ballot targets.)

  Earlier this summer, it wasn’t uncommon to hear Republican operatives voicing concern about Democrats’ candidate fundraising advantage. Now they’re venting genuine frustration. Party strategists consistently see their strongest House incumbents turn in what they believe to be solid quarterly numbers, only to learn they’ve been outraised again by a Democratic challenger, sometimes by many multiples.

  Much of this money is coming from donations of less than $200—the threshold for a donor’s public disclosure—which means that Republicans have no idea where it’s coming from, and it’s driving them nuts. ActBlue does have to disclose small-dollar donations, but these Democratic hauls are likely to turbocharge the Republican appetite to investigate the platform regardless, even as their allegations are highly speculative at this point. It’s all somewhat ironic, since it was Republican innovations in dark money, post-Citizens United, that have made it so much more difficult and time-consuming to determine the source of big donations. Anyway, given a hypothetical House Republican majority this fall, it wouldn’t surprise me to see serious consideration given to lowering the disclosure limit—even though that notion is antithetical to the traditional Republican posture against campaign finance transparency.

• The October non-surprise: Every time there’s major international or economic news, the political class holds its breath, wondering if this is the big one—i.e., the October surprise that will alter the campaign trajectory. The latest source of anxiety was the International Longshoreman’s Association, whose threat to go on an economy-crippling strike across East Coast and Gulf ports was widely viewed on the Hill as union leader Harold Daggett trying to tip the scales toward Trump.

  Operatives I pinged earlier today predicted that any supply chain consequences wouldn’t be felt until after November 5. But it looks like all the hand-wringing was for naught. While a port strike could have affected a number of important states, including Texas, North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York, it appears chaos has been averted: The I.L.A. announced Thursday evening that the union had reached a deal to return to work on Friday, with further negotiations bumped to January 15—long after the election.

Trump, after all, suggested last month that he won’t run again in 2028—heightening interest, if only slightly, in this week’s otherwise soporific V.P. debate. Not long ago, of course, J.D. Vance was widely considered a drag on the ticket (cat-ladygate, that interminable convention stemwinder, the whole “America’s Hitler” thing) with a bionic billionaire sugar daddy. (It’s hard to imagine Vance’s political rise without Peter Thiel’s checkbook and Tucker Carlson’s lobbying.) But whether or not his nimble debate performance has any impact in the polls, it certainly restored his standing in the premature but inevitable 2028 conversation. “It was a moment for him to come out of Trump’s shadow,” said one Vance ally.

Tuesday night was clearly a reset for Vance. He proved that he’s capable of turning on the folksy charm that eluded him on the campaign trail, and that he could appeal to middle America as a potential leading man against future primary adversaries like Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin. CNN’s snap poll showed his likability shooting up 19 points, from negative 22 points to negative 3—still underwater, but a sign of palatability. “He did himself a lot of good beyond that one night,” said a Republican consultant. “If he can pull off the MAGA banner in a non-offensive style that sells, then he could be the natural heir apparent, and that’s what you’re seeing start to gel here.” Another Republican operative noted the electoral value of Vance’s hybrid, country-club friendly MAGA approach that was once considered DeSantis’ lane. “This is the party. Get on board, or get the fuck out of the way,” this person said. “They think we’re all knuckle draggers and Neanderthals. J.D. Vance can debate any part of the establishment and can whip their ass.”

When he wasn’t on Truth Social, posting about the death of disgraced baseball legend Pete Rose, I’m told that Trump enjoyed the V.P. debate. While he might resent Vance for his strong performance, he was apparently overtaken with giddiness by Tim Walz’s general squirminess. (Even Democrats close to Kamala Harris admit that Walz was just “fine.”) For now, Trump sees Vance’s performance as affirmation that he chose wisely and Harris did not.

All that said, it’s not lost on those around Trump that they need to manage their glee over winning the news cycle, particularly since it was inelegantly displaced by the Jack Smith bombshell. “We understand that this debate doesn’t matter, but it was the much-needed win after the last debate,” said a campaign source, acknowledging the low morale. This being Trumpworld, of course, there’s an unspoken protocol regarding the appropriate amount of praise to heap on anyone besides the principal. “When you have so much staff radiating with glee, there’s a risk that it will irritate the old man,” the campaign insider continued. “No one is going around one-by-one praising J.D. to Trump.” (When I reached out for comment, a campaign spokesperson told me: “President Trump delivered a powerful debate performance where he dominated Kamala Harris on the issues that matter to Americans, in spite of the moderators doing everything in their power to cover for her.”)

Perhaps that’s why Trump has been hawking commemorative coins, his own branded Bible, and “Trump Victory Tourbillon Watches” for $100,000 a pop. Last night, in the latest sign of his cash crunch, Trump flew down to Houston for a series of $50,000 photo meet-and-greets. It’s reminiscent of the final days of the 2020 race, when a cash-strapped Trump raced to Southern California just two weeks before the election for a fundraiser at the Newport Beach home of Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, whose sister is married to Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Harris hasn’t released her September numbers, but she raised $47 million within 24 hours of her debate triumph. In August, her campaign and coordinated committees raised three times as much as Trump’s team. “There’s a lot of stress about money,” said the Trump campaign source. Indeed, Republican money is drying up across the board, with Democrats easily outraising their opponents in the majority of competitive House and Senate races, too. “Everyone’s running out of cash, there’s not enough cash,” said a Senate source. “That’s the one thing Dems have for them—there’s not enough money for us.”

The cash crunch appears to have presented an irresistible opportunity for Kevin McCarthy, one of the best fundraisers in the party. A year after resigning from the speakership, McCarthy has raised $50 million—though he squandered much of it on his failed revenge tour against the so-called “Gaetz Eight” Republicans who facilitated his defenestration. (Only Rep. Bob Good lost his seat, and that fate owed mainly to his politically unwise decision to support DeSantis over Trump.)

Anyway, still hungry for reciprocity and currently underemployed, McCarthy has swooped in with a $14 million cash infusion. NOTUS, the nonpartisan news outlet, reported yesterday that he donated $1 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, $6 million to the Senate, $3 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, and $4 million spread around a number of individual House races. Naturally, this beneficence has emerged in tandem with a rumor that McCarthy could be Trump’s chief of staff, an adult in the room to placate the anxieties of megadonors such as Paul Singer and Ken Griffin.

Despite the high likelihood of embarrassment, McCarthy isn’t the only one with designs on a West Wing corner office. Brooke Rollins, who is leading Trump’s transition team, is also considered to be angling for the chief of staff role. Campaign manager Susie Wiles, the most obvious contender, is not overtly lobbying for the job. But according to sources who know her well, she wouldn’t put herself out there. She would need to be asked.

The promotional tour has caused other distractions and headaches. In an interview with Fox last week, the former first lady threw out the conspiracy theory that the attempted assassination of her husband, in Pennsylvania, was an inside job. And today, she released passages from her memoir underlining her pro-choice position. (“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” Melania, or likely her ghostwriter, wrote in Melania.)

While some brush it off as a sideshow—“I said you have to write what you believe,” Trump told Fox—even small defections from the evangelicals’ preferred line could impact Trump. Some pro-life voices, including prominent anti-abortion activist Lila Rose, have said they would not vote for Trump after he softened his position on abortion in pursuit of the general election voter. Melania’s Friedanesque defense of Roe v. Wade can’t help.