AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
We're joined now by NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So we just heard about the increasing tensions and fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. How would the U.S., if it got dragged into a larger regional conflict in the Middle East - how would that affect the elections?
LIASSON: What we know from the past is that any chaos, anywhere in the world, even conflicts that don't involve U.S. boots on the ground can hurt the incumbent. Donald Trump's message is everything would be fine if I were the president. October 7 never would have happened. This war in the Middle East wouldn't happen. And he's saying to voters, if you think the world is too chaotic, it's the Biden-Harris administration's fault. So I don't think this is good for Vice President Harris' chances in the election. But exactly what's going to happen, how it plays out, is unclear. We know that President Biden has been working tirelessly and to no avail to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas and now Israel and Hezbollah. And some of his critics on the left are saying if he really wanted a cease-fire, he'd stop sending weapons to Israel. If he did that, his critics on the right would say, you would be abandoning - he would be abandoning Israel. So this is a no-win situation politically for the incumbent.
RASCOE: I mean, we know that the war in Gaza is an issue for some voters, and it is a real problem for Democrats in swing states like Michigan and Georgia. What are the other issues playing out in key states right now where the candidates are really neck and neck?
LIASSON: The biggest issue - and we don't know what the effects will be yet - of course, is the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. And that's affecting two important battleground states - Georgia and North Carolina. Donald Trump has made it a political issue. He has falsely accused the Biden-Harris administration of spending so much money on illegal immigrants that they have none leftover to help the victims of the hurricane. He said falsely that they directed resources away from Republican areas. Local Republican officials debunked that claim. He's also claimed falsely that Biden was unwilling to take a phone call from George's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, a claim that's been debunked by Kemp himself. But natural disasters have always been both a risk and an opportunity for presidents running for reelection, or in this case, his vice president. If you're seen as competent, helping people, like President Obama was after Hurricane Sandy, it can help you. If you're seen as asleep at the wheel, like President George H.W. Bush was with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, it can hurt you.
The other big thing that we don't know is exactly how hurricane damage will affect the mechanics of voting. Like, will it disrupt polling places? How will it affect turnout? What about absentee ballot submission? And it could be that voters are going to be more interested in cleaning out their homes than looking for a polling station. And many of the areas that are hardest hit are rural counties, and they are filled with Trump supporters, so that could affect him.
RASCOE: So a lot of this sounds like it could be bad news for Vice President Harris's campaign, right?
LIASSON: Potentially. There are two other things that happened this week that are good for Harris, good for the incumbent. The first was the dockworker strike being settled with help from President Biden. A long strike that could have disrupted supply chains and raised prices would have been bad for her. Then there was the jobs report on Friday, which was very good. It was further evidence that the economy is not in a recession, as Trump has been claiming. It's actually getting stronger. Now, whether voters feel that is another question entirely because polls have shown that Trump is still seen as a better leader on the economy than Harris, even though his lead on this particular issue has been shrinking. But this is a race that's extremely tight. We've never had a race that's been this tight for this long since the start of modern polling, so every little thing can make a difference.
RASCOE: That's NPR's senior national political correspondent, Mara Liasson. Thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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