Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign has officially announced that she will not attend the customary charity dinner for presidential candidates in New York City. This marks her first time not attending since Democrat Walter Mondale did not go in 1984.<\/p>\n
The New York Post reported<\/a> that Harris will not be attending the Al Smith dinner, where the two presidential contenders will be criticizing each other. The Archdiocese of New York is sponsoring this entertaining venue, which collects money for underprivileged women and children.<\/p>\n Donald Trump, the former president, has consented to go to the event on October 17. \u201cHarris\u2019s camp says she will instead campaign in key battleground states on the final stretch before election day,\u201d according to The Post.<\/p>\n It has been customary for both presidential contenders to attend the dinner together since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy did so in 1960. There, they alternately give remarks that disparage one another. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, informed The Post that Harris wouldn\u2019t be attending.<\/p>\n Kamala Harris\u2019 campaign just announced she is skipping the Al Smith Dinner \u2014 the fundraiser that every presidential nominee has attended since the 1960s.<\/p>\n She\u2019s probably afraid that President Trump will roast the shit out of her just like he did to Hillary in 2016. pic.twitter.com\/epylR69WtS<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 21, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n\n \u201cWe are disappointed that she will not be with us, as this is an evening of unity and putting aside political differences in support of a good cause of helping women and children in need regardless of race, creed, or background,\u201d Zwilling said. \u201cWe hope she reconsiders.\u201d<\/p>\n The Harris campaign said she would be willing to attend the dinner but only if she\u2019s elected president.<\/p>\n The Post noted that since its founding in 1946, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner has raised millions of dollars for New York City\u2019s impoverished citizens.<\/p>\n Even while it takes place every year, the meal is most noteworthy in election years when presidential candidates usually show up to trade lighthearted jabs for charitable causes. According to Zwilling, Harris will be the first vice president to turn down an offer since Walter Mondale, who was running a losing campaign against President Ronald Reagan in 1984, did not attend.<\/p>\n According to the Associated Press, the Archdiocese of New York declined to invite Republican contender Bob Dole and then-President Bill Clinton in 1996 because Clinton vetoed a law prohibiting late-term abortions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dinner is named after the former governor of New York, who was the first Roman Catholic ever nominated to run for president by a major party in 1928. This year\u2019s event will be held at the New York Hilton Midtown,\u201d The Post noted.<\/p>\n This comes as a leading pollster shared some critical insight into the 2024 election.<\/p>\n Nate Silver argued that despite all of Harris\u2019s favorable press, she and Trump are essentially tied.<\/p>\n \u201cWith all seven states polling so closely, I don\u2019t really have an intuition beyond what\u2019s in our forecast, which is 50-50, almost exactly,\u201d Silver told CNN on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cLook clearly, Harris has some kind of momentum post-debate. The thing that would worry me a little bit if I were Democrat is that she had the same momentum earlier on in the campaign and then had a very flat to negative period afterwards. So, can she sustain the good vibe, so to speak, that she had before? You know, to me, Trump seems pretty off-kilter recently. It\u2019s a bit more subjective,\u201d Silver continued.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re not going to wake up on November 5 with a lot of certainty about the outcome. We might not go to bed on November 5 with a lot of certainty, either. You could even have a recount 2020 style or 2000 style, rather, in one or more key swing states,\u201d he added<\/a>.<\/p>\n Other pollsters share Silver\u2019s uncertainty, though another top election forecaster sees Trump with a clear advantage heading into the home stretch as early voting began this week.<\/p>\n In an interview with Fox News\u2019 Laura Ingraham on Thursday, pollster Matt Towery discussed the latest data and proclaimed that Trump is ahead of where he was in 2016 and 2020 at the same time during those campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cExplain how these candidates could be tied nationally, but Kamala is up in Pennsylvania? What does that mean?\u201d Ingraham asked to begin the segment.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, you know, let me just say this. The polling gurus and predictors are going to start telling you over the next month and a half that Harris is gaining speed in these various battleground states,\u201d Towery responded. \u201cThey\u2019re somehow going to say that she\u2019s gaining speed in the national polls. I\u2019m just going to predict it. They\u2019re going to say that she\u2019s going to win and Trump will lose. It makes no sense.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have to understand. Trump is running way ahead of where he has in the last two cycles that he ran in the national average. I mean, she is much closer than either Biden or, before that, Hillary Clinton. And in these various states, now, you know, everybody has their different way of sampling things. I think all of these states are very tight,\u201d he continued<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any state where anyone has a four or five-point lead right now that\u2019s a battleground state. I just don\u2019t see it, and I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d Towery said.<\/p>\n WATCH:<\/p>\n Watch the latest video at foxnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n Towery, later in the interview, did say Trump was trailing with the senior citizen vote. \u201cHe\u2019s got to concentrate on senior voters, though. He\u2019s down in the polls with senior voters, and that\u2019s what it get him high enough so that he can get above any question about voter turnout, which Democrats are very good at,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, if he carries \u2014 Trump carries those three, he wins. Alternatively, if Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan go his way, he loses some of these other states, he wins,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The post Harris To Skip Al Smith Dinner, First Candidate To Do So Since 1984<\/a> appeared first on Conservative Brief<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign has officially announced that she will not attend the customary charity dinner for presidential candidates in New York City. This marks her first time not attending since Democrat Walter Mondale did not go in 1984. The New York Post reported that Harris will not be attending the Al Smith dinner,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/topproductsonly.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}