Along with the red sequins and cowboy hats, something just as ubiquitous is on display at this year’s Republican National Convention: confidence.

For the first time in decades, Republicans are in the unfamiliar position of holding a clear lead as they head into the fall general election campaign. There’s a sense of jubilation in the air, bordering on giddiness. Some are even daring to invoke the “L” word – as in “landslide.” 

The GOP hasn’t won the U.S. popular vote in two decades. Its last winning presidential candidate – former President Donald Trump – eked out a 2016 Electoral College victory that surprised even his own team, since he’d trailed in the polls all year. In 2020, President Joe Biden held a steady polling lead from Super Tuesday to Election Day. In fact, it’s been 20 years since Republicans have gone into their nominating convention ahead in the polls.

As recently as 2022, many strategists were writing Mr. Trump’s political obituary, blaming him for the party’s underperformance in the midterm elections and fretting about his criminal indictments and spiraling legal woes.

But now, not only is Mr. Trump ahead in nearly all national polling, but he also holds clear leads in the seven top swing states. His legal situation – despite a conviction in the New York hush money case – has taken a markedly favorable turn, with bigger cases delayed or dismissed. And following Mr. Biden’s dismal June debate performance, which led to frantic calls from many Democrats for a new candidate to nominate, and then Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Mr. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, GOP strategists are eyeing an even bigger map. At a breakfast Tuesday morning, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio suggested the blue states of Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey, and New Mexico are also now in play.

Paul Sancya/AP

Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump made an appearance Tuesday, July 16, 2024, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee wearing a bandage over his ear, which was pierced by a bullet in Saturday’s assassination attempt.

Some Republicans can hardly get their heads around it all. 

“It feels very different,” GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina tells the Monitor. “I’ve been to each of the last five conventions, and this is the first one where you really see a pep in everybody’s step.”

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump who has worked for the former president since 2016, says he’s felt confident in all of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns. Still, he acknowledges there’s something different this time around.

“You obviously have the standing in the polls. You have a united party for Republicans. You have a divided Democratic Party in pure chaos on their side. And also, you have the historical significance that we’re less than 96 hours removed from an assassination attempt,” says Mr. Miller. “It’s really something.” 

Of course, the electricity of potential is always in the air at conventions, no matter what the polls say. Every four years, thousands of delegates, party operatives, and elected officials descend on one city for a weeklong pump-up session. 

“In all conventions, you’re gonna feel like there’s always hope,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota tells the Monitor.

But this time, it feels more real. 

“With everything that’s going on both here at home and around the world, I think people are really looking for change,” Senator Thune says, adding that he can’t recall this degree of confidence at a convention since 2004. The vibes have been so good, he adds, that his main worry now is complacency. “We got to keep our heads down and do the work between now and Election Day. ... It seems like there’s a bit of a tail wind building, but we can’t let up.”

On the financial side, too, Republicans seem to be riding high. After trailing Democrats in fundraising for much of the cycle, the Trump campaign outraised Mr. Biden in this year’s second quarter by over 20%. This week, tech leaders donated millions to a Trump super PAC, and billionaire Elon Musk has reportedly committed to donating $45 million a month.

The convention opened Monday with a stunningly positive development for the former president – news that a Florida judge had dismissed the federal case against him for mishandling classified documents. Although the Justice Department’s special counsel Jack Smith has appealed, it’s now all but assured that Mr. Trump won’t see another courtroom before Election Day.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Former Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks Tuesday, July 16, 2024, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. She and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who were Donald Trump’s main primary opponents, both endorsed him.

At the heart of Republicans’ good mood is a rare sense of party unity – something the GOP hasn’t exhibited to this extent since the Bush presidency. After pointedly telling GOP delegates to “vote your conscience” in 2016, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas opened his remarks Tuesday night with “God bless Donald Trump.” And Mr. Trump’s main primary opponents this cycle, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, offered their own resoundingly supportive speeches. Ms. Haley, who had thus far declined to officially endorse Mr. Trump, did so Tuesday evening. 

“The Democrats couldn’t stop him. The media couldn’t stop him. The liberal judges couldn’t stop him,” said Sen. Rick Scott of Florida in his floor speech Tuesday evening. “A bullet from a madman couldn’t stop him. Can anything stop Donald Trump from becoming the next president and making America great again?” 

Leaning into this moment, Mr. Trump has entered the arena each evening to a standing ovation from the crowd. Wearing a bandage on his right ear where the bullet grazed his head, he appeared visibly emotional, his eyes seemingly welling with tears Monday evening at his first post-shooting appearance. 

“It’s a Trump we’ve never seen before,” says Linda Mowrey, who is attending the convention with her husband, Mark Mowrey, a delegate from Kansas. Between the two of them, they have been delegates or alternate delegates for the last four conventions. 

“There’s renewed enthusiasm this year,” she says. In the wake of the terrible shooting last Saturday, she notes, the whole party seemed to rapidly come together, making the energy in Milwaukee “a whole new thing.”

“The candidate on the other side seems to be really, really weak this time,” adds Mr. Mowrey. “Obviously Hillary Clinton had some issues with Republicans, but she was in good standing with Democrats. She seemed like a pretty formidable opponent. ... But this time, for all the world, it doesn’t seem like Joe Biden has the capability of being the president of the United States.” 

Mike Segar/Reuters

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks July 16, 2024, the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

Back in Washington, the drumbeat of frustration among Democrats has continued to build. On Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff, who will likely be the state’s next senator in November, called on Mr. Biden to drop out of the race. And a new Associated Press poll found that 65% of Democrats want Mr. Biden to withdraw. 

With Mr. Biden’s stumbles and Mr. Trump’s ascendance, Republicans are feeling optimistic about more than just the White House. Many are anticipating a full sweep in November. 

Mr. Tillis of North Carolina says he’s always felt that his party was in “great shape” to take back the Senate, where Democrats currently have a one-seat majority but are facing a difficult map this cycle. But after this convention, Mr. Tillis says he’s “feeling more optimistic about [holding on to] the House,” as well.

The convention will culminate with a highly anticipated speech from Mr. Trump. During an area walk-through to prepare him for his closing remarks the following evening, he stood behind the podium Wednesday afternoon, flanked by advisers. As he looked out onto the arena’s empty red carpet, with thousands of red, white, and blue balloons suspended on catwalks above, staffers pointed to the teleprompters where he will soon read his speech. 

As a placeholder, the first sentence of Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address glared back at the president in large white text. Mr. Trump has said he rewrote his convention speech following this past weekend’s shooting, although it’s still unclear what he plans to say. Mr. Miller declined to elaborate on the speech beyond saying the new version is “really powerful,” and that after the assassination attempt, which would “change anyone’s life,” he recognizes that “we need to come together in a time like this.”

While Mr. Trump’s speech may be a mystery, Americans have long memorized Lincoln’s famous speech – the second line of which lies hidden in the teleprompter feed: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Staff writer Cameron Joseph contributed reporting from Milwaukee.

Since last weekend, President Joe Biden’s path to reelection has gotten even rockier. 

In polls, the race against Republican nominee Donald Trump remains close. But Saturday’s assassination attempt on the former president has reshaped the race in ways large and small – and potentially consequential. 

Security is tighter. Conspiracy theories abound. And words matter more than ever, as President Biden and other Democratic leaders call for national unity, while also highlighting what many party members see as a threat to democracy posed by a second Trump term. 

A day after the shooting at a Trump rally July 13 in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden urged Americans from the Oval Office to “lower the temperature in our politics.” He has since said that his recent private comment to donors – made before the assassination attempt – about putting Mr. Trump “in the bull’s-eye” was a “mistake.” But President Biden’s sharp rhetoric has hardly abated. 

In speeches and interviews after the shooting, Mr. Biden still flags his rival’s rhetoric as highly problematic, including Mr. Trump’s 2023 comment that he’d “be a dictator” on Day 1, his denial of the 2020 election result, and his refusal to say he’ll “automatically” accept the outcome of the 2024 election.

Tom Brenner/Reuters

Members of the U.S. Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team stand guard near Air Force One, which landed at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, July 15, 2024, bringing President Joe Biden to Nevada for several speaking events.

The news late Wednesday that Mr. Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 only complicates his ability to communicate with the public. The president, on a trip in Las Vegas, will return to Delaware, “where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,” according to the White House, which described the symptoms as “mild.”

Biden critics see the president trying to have it both ways – denouncing Mr. Trump for inflammatory rhetoric while engaging in it himself. But some experts in political discourse say the two messages aren’t necessarily contradictory.

“You don’t have to say that Trump all of a sudden is a perfect candidate, and doesn’t pose a potential threat to the electoral system, in saying he also shouldn’t be a victim of a crime,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse University. 

Professor Gadarian also notes that the motive of the deceased shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, remains unknown, and it’s premature to say that he was driven to act by today’s inflamed public discourse. Even ubiquitous social media isn’t necessarily to blame, in a nation steeped in political violence since its founding.  

“Interpersonal conversation can both rile people up and also tamp things down,” Ms. Gadarian says. “That’s part of the importance of political leadership on both sides saying, ‘This is not how we do things.’”

Still, the stark reality is that Mr. Trump was almost assassinated. And with less than four months until Election Day, Mr. Biden and fellow Democrats face the challenge of not overinflaming public sentiment while also making clear that, in their view, the stakes in November could not be higher. 

Susan Walsh/AP

President Joe Biden poses for a photo as he visits Mario's Westside Market in Las Vegas, July 16, 2024.

The octogenarian Mr. Biden, too, remains under a cloud of doubt about his ability to win the election, given persistent questions about his mental acuity. The Trump shooting briefly paused that discussion, but it has resumed. The list of congressional Democrats voicing concerns, privately if not publicly, about the wisdom of nominating Mr. Biden has grown in recent days. 

On Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff – a prominent Democrat favored to win a Senate seat in November – put out a statement calling on Mr. Biden to “pass the torch” and step aside from the race. And an Associated Press/NORC poll out Wednesday finds that nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Mr. Biden should withdraw from the race.

Many prominent Democrats are playing down the internal debate about Mr. Biden in favor of focusing on the perceived stakes of another Trump term. 

“Trump is the one saying he wants to be a dictator on Day 1,” says Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “He’s the one who called for the Constitution to be terminated.”

Mr. Wikler, whose state is hosting this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, is referring to a Trump social media post from 2022 that suggested the 2020 election results were “a massive fraud” that allowed for “termination” of the U.S. Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democratic chair also warns of a concept called Godwin’s law – the idea that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler nears certainty. Indeed, he says, comparisons of Mr. Trump to World War II dictators and atrocities are increasingly frequent – and unhelpful.

“For Democrats, avoiding a kind of online chat-room dynamic and focusing on what actually persuades your audience is the most effective strategy,” says Mr. Wikler, whose state is one of the three most important election battlegrounds, along with Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Tom Brenner/Reuters

Attorney Ben Crump and other attendees react to President Joe Biden at the 115th NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas, July 16, 2024.

Mr. Biden spent the opening days of the Republican National Convention in Las Vegas – in another battleground state, Nevada – doing outreach to Black and Latino voters and highlighting issues that matter to everyday Americans. In so doing, he has embraced left-leaning policies, including a proposal to cap annual rent increases to 5% and another to remove medical debt from credit reports.

One local Democratic official says that after the Trump assassination attempt, he thought, there’s “no way we’ll recover.” 

“He’ll get the sympathy vote,” Tick Segerblom, a member of the Clark County Commission, says of Mr. Trump. 

But after Mr. Trump picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, it was clear the former president was going all in on “Make America Great Again.” Mr. Segerblom says he realized, “We’re back 100% going for it.” 

“It will be like France,” he says, “when the left realized [hard-right leader Marine] Le Pen was going to win, and said, ‘We got to get going’” – and ended up blocking a far-right election victory.

Allen Shelton, a Las Vegas resident and real estate agent, calls Mr. Biden’s push for toned-down political rhetoric a “classy” move following the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump. 

“It shouldn’t be so divisive to where it comes to blows,” Mr. Shelton says at one of Mr. Biden’s campaign stops Tuesday in Las Vegas. “It doesn’t make sense.”

President Joe Biden is back in Nevada this week, and he’s talking about affordable housing – again. It’s high on the minds of voters, crucially in swing states like this one and next door in Arizona. Mr. Biden won both states in 2020; now they’re tilting toward former President Donald Trump.

“We’re going to make sure you own more and owe less,” Mr. Biden said in Las Vegas Tuesday, touting a plan that would impose a 5% cap on rent increases and eliminate student debt, among other initiatives.

Housing is a tricky one for presidents. Local officials tend to have much more sway than Washington does. And often, Congress needs to approve – as with the rent cap that the president mentioned. At the same time, affordable housing has been dubbed a “sleeper issue” in the presidential election. 

But that’s only if you haven’t been talking to voters, says David Byler, chief of research at the polling firm Noble Predictive Insights in Phoenix. “Housing affordability is a huge issue in Nevada – and it’s a huge issue across the nation.”

Housing woes, despite a strong economy

The problem is particularly acute here in the Silver State, where a growing population and shrinking housing inventory exacerbate the problem. The housing crunch may help answer the mystery of why voters still list “inflation” and “the economy” as top concerns, even though the inflation rate is about two-thirds lower than in 2022. The overall economy and jobs have also trended favorably, with both continuing to grow since their pandemic plunge.

But dive into the polls, and you hit a big rock of unaffordable housing. Inflation is a top response in almost every survey, says Mr. Byler, and “for a lot of people, inflation involved housing prices.”

In January, for instance, Pew Research Center reported that 72% of Americans are very concerned about the price of food and consumer goods; 64% said the same thing about housing – by far the largest expense in American household budgets.

Particularly illustrative is recent polling of Latino voters in Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

New town homes rise in the Inspirada development in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, June 1, 2024.

While voters in all three states list the cost of living and inflation as the most important issue for the United States that elected officials should address, those in Nevada and California cite housing and rents as the biggest burden or financial hardship for them personally, according to an April poll by the Latino Community Foundation in San Francisco.

Latinos are an influential voting group, courted by both parties. In Nevada, they make up 22% of registered voters; in Arizona, it’s 25%; and in blue California – where they could decide some highly contested congressional districts – it’s 33%, according to Pew.

“This issue around housing, whether it’s affordable housing or rental housing, is very top of mind for the Latino electorate,” says Christian Arana, vice president at Latino Community Foundation. Candidates at all levels need to address it, he says.

On the ground in Las Vegas, state Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong describes housing as part of a Venn diagram of overlapping issues. The Democrat is now running for City Council, and when she knocks on doors in her diverse ward, wealthy white voters tend to voice concerns about crime, she says. Black and Latino voters are squarely focused on the economy, with other issues mixed in.

“When you begin to pull the string, that comes to housing,” she says. Voters are wondering, “‘Is my money stretching enough for me to have housing that I feel safe in? If I can’t buy a house, because I don’t make enough money and am renting, at what point is my rent going to go so high that my income is not going to be able to allow me to live in a safe and clean neighborhood?’”

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Democrat Shondra Summers-Armstrong, a Nevada assemblywoman, engages with a rallygoer at a Biden-Harris Black-vote block party in Doolittle Park in Las Vegas, June 1, 2024.

Economics 101: not enough supply

A three-bedroom, two-bath Spanish style house in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson offers a lesson in economics – and, ultimately, politics.

At an open house in early June, it’s listed for $375,000 – well below the Las Vegas median listing of $460,000. But that’s still more than 2 1/2 times the price this same house sold for a decade ago.

A grandmother, daughter, and grandchild stop by to take a look around. It’s not very big for the price, the grandmother comments, though she has friends in the gated subdivision and loves the community. The one-story layout is spare, with an even smaller yard. The daughter says she can’t afford it anyway.

“Next week, it will be gone,” real estate agent Randall Bell predicts. In fact, it takes an additional week for a middle-aged couple with no children to scoop up the property. Mr. Bell and others say the problem here is simple: too much demand, not enough supply. 

On the supply side, the housing shortage has been decades in the making. Much of it started with the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which put the brakes on homebuilding in states across the country, including in Nevada. 

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Real estate agent Randall Bell stands at the entrance to a three-bedroom, two-bath house in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson that was listed at $375,000, June 1, 2024.

“We stopped building houses,” says Aaron Sheets, CEO of HopeLink of Southern Nevada, a nonprofit that works to prevent homelessness. “They were building 500 and 600 a year when we needed 5,000 a year.” Housing construction still has not caught up.

During this time, real estate investment firms also began gobbling up attractively priced housing nationwide, further distorting the market for would-be homeowners. In Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, about 15% of single-family homes are now owned by investors, according to the Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Politicians complain that corporate investors have jacked up rents. The rent cap proposed by the president this week would apply to corporate landlords and require congressional approval.

Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen wants the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate and crack down on predatory practices by investors.

“Buying up entire neighborhoods enables bad actor corporate investors to unreasonably raise rents without facing competition,” she wrote in a June letter to the department. The senator is running for reelection this November and has made affordable housing a key issue.

Nevada is also facing another squeeze. “We’re running out of land,” explains Mr. Bell, the real estate agent.

The federal government owns and manages 85% of land in Nevada. Although builders such as KB Home and Toll Brothers are marching new single-family homes and townhouses across the scrub desert on the outskirts of Las Vegas, they’ll eventually hit a limit. In as little as eight years, builders could run out of available land in the Las Vegas Valley, according to Tina Frias, CEO of the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Aaron Sheets, CEO of HopeLink of Southern Nevada, a nonprofit that works to prevent people from falling into homelessness, finds a shady spot in Las Vegas, May 31, 2024.

Demand soars – as do prices

On the demand side, Sun Belt states like Nevada have seen a huge influx of new residents pour into the state.

Some of these newcomers represent the fruits of a concerted effort to diversify the economy here, which has long been centered around gambling. Massive tax breaks around Reno in the north have lured companies like Tesla, Google, and Apple to the area, which boasts the nation’s largest industrial park. The state now has four professional sports teams – football, basketball, hockey, and baseball – and this year Las Vegas hosted the Super Bowl. The metro area’s population has more than doubled since 2000.

The COVID-19 pandemic only heightened the trend. Workers in high-cost, high-tax states like California and New York realized they could move somewhere cheaper and still work remotely, or retire and enjoy the benefits of the low-tax Silver State.

“A lot of my clients are from Los Angeles,” says Mr. Bell, the real estate agent. “They sell there, pay cash here, and put the rest in the bank. You can’t beat that.”

Mr. Bell himself is from the LA area, cashing out of a home he bought for $500,000 and sold for $1 million. He never would have been able to save that much, he explains, extolling the joys of Las Vegas living.

“It’s beautiful here. It’s quiet. There’s not as much traffic.” And, he insists, “it only gets hot three months of the year.”

But most Nevadans can’t afford what incoming Californians can. The average annual salary in California is $73,220; in Nevada, it’s $55,490. And with newcomers arriving and bidding up properties, prices for a single-family home in the Las Vegas Valley hit a record high in May. 

Meanwhile, rents are also rising, and the state is short more than 78,000 affordable rental units, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The figure is based on rentals available to people at or below the poverty guideline of 30% of median income for the area. A worker earning Nevada’s minimum wage of $12 an hour would have to put in 85 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment at $1,329 a month.

Homelessness in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, has more than doubled since the pandemic. Eviction filings are also up substantially. But the housing crisis in Nevada is “way broader” than homelessness, says Maurice Page, the executive director of the Nevada Housing Coalition.

“It’s really the working people,” he says, as he motors past the Strip and the cooks, room cleaners, and cashiers who work there. Las Vegas and the state are thriving, he says. But “there is going to come a point in time where businesses are not going to want to be with us because we don’t have enough housing.”

The politics of housing

None of this is going to get solved without political leadership. Mr. Page describes housing as a bipartisan issue that will require both parties to come together to address it.

Housing isn’t politically divisive in the way that other issues – like abortion or guns – can be. But while everyone may, in theory, agree that housing should be more widely accessible, there are sharply different ideas about the best policies to achieve this. And none of them are cost-free. 

Democrats tend to back renter support, while Republicans typically push growth with fewer regulations. But there are also tensions within both parties’ coalitions. For every “yes in my backyard” activist urging politicians to change zoning laws and build more affordable housing in high-density places, there are middle-class homeowners – many of them older, or families living in the suburbs – who have a personal stake in protecting the value of the biggest asset they have. 

In March, President Biden came to Las Vegas, devoting the core of his campaign speech to housing. He pointed out that the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 – which no Republicans in the current Congress backed – helped keep millions of Americans, including many Nevadans, in their homes by providing billions of dollars in emergency rental assistance, alongside eviction and foreclosure moratoriums. 

Funds from the Rescue Plan also helped a private company, the Ovation Development Corp., build a new complex of affordable apartments for older adults that opened in Las Vegas in December. Capriccio is a sparkling 195-unit building with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and communal amenities like a swimming pool and billiards. Now, resident Joy Walsh, an older adult who is disabled, says she can live in a safe, beautiful place and in the same building as her sister.

“Look at how I live!” she exclaims, and then announces that she wields a mean cue stick. “I’m the Capriccio pool champ!” Her only income is Social Security Disability Insurance.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Joy Walsh stands in front of her kitchen area in her ground-floor unit in the affordable housing apartments for older adults, Capriccio, built by Ovation Development Corporation, May 31, 2024.

As outlined in his State of the Union address, the president still wants Congress to pass a $258 billion housing plan. It would be the most consequential in 50 years, he told Nevadans. He’s proposing a $10,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and people who sell starter homes, expanded tax credits and incentives to build or renovate low-income and rental housing, and more rental assistance and rights.

The White House says the plan would help build or renovate more than 2 million homes at a time when the nation faces a shortfall of nearly 3 million housing units, as estimated by Moody’s Analytics’ chief economist, Mark Zandi.

“The bottom line to lower housing costs for good is to build, build, build,” the president said in Las Vegas in March.

Nevada Republicans are on board with the building part. But with space at a premium, they fault the White House for not moving fast enough to free up federal lands. 

“The federal process for privatizing land for development is too slow, too complex, and contributes to higher costs for Nevada families seeking home ownership,” Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo wrote the president in March. This week, Mr. Biden announced in Las Vegas that he’s freeing up federal lands to allow up to 15,000 affordable housing units to be built in the state.

In April, the governor wrote the president again, excoriating him over the $1,445 increase in monthly payments on a median-priced Nevada home since he took office and blaming “excessive federal spending” for feeding inflation and the interest-rate squeeze.

Governor Lombardo backs a bipartisan bill in Congress sponsored by Rep. Susie Lee, a Nevada Democrat, that aims to cut red tape to access federal lands. At the same time, he has also vetoed several bills passed by the Democratic state legislature to bolster tenant and eviction protections, and further regulate rental fees.

In a campaign video, former President Trump has proposed a national contest to build 10 new cities the size of Washington on undeveloped federal land. He lambasts inflation and the Federal Reserve’s high interest rates – which, he says, have added to building and mortgage costs. He’s also criticized environmental regulations and zoning for increasing the cost of construction.  

In another video, however, Mr. Trump criticizes President Biden and Democrats for supporting more flexible zoning laws to allow multifamily units in suburbs. “The woke left is waging full-scale war on the suburbs, and their Marxist crusade is coming for your neighborhood, your tax dollars, your public safety, and your home,” he warns. As president, Mr. Trump proposed deep cuts to affordable housing programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development – but Congress threw up roadblocks.

Candidates need to focus on housing

Whether housing can drive voters to the polls is hard to tease out. But Republicans and Democrats need to spend much more time talking about it, say strategists. “I think both sides should be addressing this more,” says a GOP consultant who asked not to be named. “It will be the deciding issue, especially in the presidential.”

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Jason stands behind the counter of the snack shop that he and his wife manage at the East Las Vegas Library, June 1, 2024. He says housing is his top issue.

As part of the overall economic picture, it affects a “massive amount of voters,” says Mr. Byler, the pollster, though he cautions that it’s too early to say for sure which party it will favor.

Despite Mr. Biden’s repeated efforts at assistance and his detailed plan, voters may ultimately decide to punish the incumbent president for housing’s high cost. 

“Most people agree, that if this election is decided on the economy, that it’s good for Republicans,” says the GOP consultant.

That seems to describe the voting intentions of Jason, a young man who runs a snack shop at the East Las Vegas Library, which doubles as a voting place. Unprompted, he says housing is his No. 1 issue. Every day, he sees the struggles of homeless individuals, who park themselves and their carts under the shade on the library plaza.  

As for himself, Jason, who asked to use only his first name, bought a single-family home seven years ago and had been looking for another one – this time as an investment. But forget it. Home prices have rapidly increased, as have mortgage rates: Loan denied. 

Disappointed, Jason says he’ll vote for Mr. Trump again. After all, he says, Mr. Trump is a businessman, like him. 

Monitor staff writer Jackie Valley contributed to this story from Las Vegas.

Li Guilan rises at dawn to travel three hours from her small, one-story farmhouse in Hebei province to sell fruit in Beijing, often not heading home until 8 p.m. For her trouble, she earns only about $14 a day, or $420 a month.

“My economic situation is no good. … I’m exhausted,” Ms. Li says, as she hustles to sell apples, cherries, and other fruit piled high in a wooden cart. “Buy another,” she urges. “It’s sweet. I picked it myself.”

As China’s Communist Party (CCP) leaders convene a highly anticipated party plenum this week to chart the country’s long-term economic policy, new national survey data shows that many Chinese, like Ms. Li, are far less optimistic than in past decades about their prospects for getting ahead.

The survey data, collected last year and published this month, reveals a growing perception that China’s economic system is unfair, and that opportunities are unequal – regardless of hard work. People’s confidence in their ability to advance economically through their own merits has also fallen.

This is a stark contrast from earlier surveys, carried out from 2004 to 2014, that found most Chinese feeling positive about economic opportunities and the rewards of hard work, says Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) at Stanford University, who helped lead the survey research.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Li Guilan operates her makeshift fruit stall in Beijing, China, April 18, 2024, where she makes about $14 a day. She says her family's economic situation has worsened this year.

“There’s a huge rise of pessimism,” he says.

The negative turn in public sentiment on the economy is significant because it underscores a key variable dampening China’s growth: the lack of consumer confidence. As China’s economy continues to slow – hurt in part by weak consumer spending and a prolonged property market downturn – pressure is mounting on the party to alleviate the pain.

A chance to course-correct

Leading up to this week’s Third Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, Chinese economists have urged Beijing to adopt fiscal and tax reforms to increase social welfare spending and spur consumption. 

“The entire government’s … orientation needs to be changed … from investment and project-oriented policies to policies that provide basic social welfare and help people increase disposable income to boost consumption,” said Li Daokui, finance professor at the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing. 

Dr. Li, speaking at a Tsinghua forum in early July, called on the central government to ease the debt burdens of financially-strapped Chinese provinces, and incentivize them to expand services.

Yet it’s uncertain how far the Party leadership will go in reforming the economy to bolster growth and reduce China’s high economic inequality, which is similar to that of the United States. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has acknowledged China’s persistent inequality, promoting a slogan of “common prosperity” that could translate into improvements in the social safety net, experts say. 

But Mr. Xi’s clear priority remains an investment-heavy industrial policy aimed at making China a global leader in critical advanced technologies. Many Chinese lack the education and skills to compete for jobs in such industries. Indeed, millions of rural workers, jobless during the pandemic, have gravitated to the less secure, informal economy as delivery drivers, nannies, and food stall workers. 

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Ma Yifei charges the battery of his electric scooter on a noisy Beijing street, April 18, 2024. Mr. Ma, a migrant from the city of Shijiazhuang, three hours southwest of China's capital, has lacked steady employment for years.

“I lost my job some time ago,” says Ma Yifei, a burly, middle-aged delivery driver, taking a break while he charges the battery of his electric scooter on a noisy Beijing street. 

Since his hot pot restaurant in the city of Shijiazhuang went bankrupt during the pandemic, Mr. Ma has been bouncing from one gig to another. He sleeps in a dorm and earns about 300 yuan ($41) a day, making deliveries from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

“The income gap is getting greater,” he says. “It’s inevitable, you can’t change it. … But the question is: how big? There should be a standard. People at the bottom still have to make a living.”

Shifting attitudes on poverty

Sluggish growth has brought into sharper focus the inequities of China’s economic system, the new survey data suggests. Unequal opportunity was cited by respondents as the top reason people are poor. In the past, people attributed wealth or poverty to a person’s inherent abilities, effort, and education – now, they blame it on an unfair economic system, Dr. Rozelle says.

Higher-income people agree that the system is tilted in their favor, the survey shows, with many saying that their connections, rather than their talent, are a central factor in their success. People’s hopes for prosperity have also waned.

Vincent Thian/AP

A man passes the Central Business District in Beijing, July 15, 2024. Several chronic problems are dragging on China's economic growth, including a weak job market, massive local government debts, and a prolonged slump in the property market.

“The number of people who think they’re going to be better off five years from now has fallen significantly,” says Dr. Rozelle.

Dr. Rozelle and Martin Whyte, professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University, analyzed and guided the survey together with colleagues in China. Their findings were published by Big Data China, a collaboration between Stanford’s SCCEI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

For Ms. Li, a mother of three whose husband farms their small plot of land in Hebei province, inequality is built into China’s economic system. Rural pensions are tiny, and on the farm, “everything we produce is really cheap,” she says. Corn, for instance, sells for about 14 cents a pound. 

So Ms. Li, now in her 60s, feels she must keep working to make ends meet. In recent years, she was employed as a maid and later as a cook at a construction site, where she made steamed buns for 50 workers each day. But “this year, there’s no work,” she says.

All around her, relatively wealthy Beijingers fill the sidewalks, sometimes stopping to buy fruit. “When city people retire they get a pension – we only get a little over 1,000 yuan ($137) a year,” she says. “We get nothing.”

Amanda Rose

Author and musician Roxanne de Bastion re-recorded some of her grandfather’s music to complement her book "The Piano Player of Budapest," Pegasus Books, 288 pp.

After her father’s death, Roxanne de Bastion inherited a Blüthner baby grand piano that had been in her family for more than 100 years. She also found old cassette recordings of her grandfather recounting his life during World War II. In “The Piano Player of Budapest: A True Story of Hope, Survival, and Music,” she reconstructs the story of how her grandfather – and the piano he dearly loved – survived some of the darkest days in human history. 

The piano came into the family when the author’s great-grandfather Aladar gave it to his fiancée as an engagement present. He was a successful textile merchant in early 20th-century Hungary, and he and his family lived in a 17-room penthouse apartment on St. Stephen’s Square in central Budapest. 

The author’s grandfather Stephen was born in 1907 and quickly showed an aptitude for the piano. As a young man, he spent several years in Zurich and London before returning to Budapest as a piano player who made a good living performing in clubs, restaurants, and hotels.

Stephen, as de Bastion calls her grandfather throughout the book, finds it easy to ignore the war drums beating in the background in 1930s Europe. When Germany invades Poland in September 1939, he is in Italy and his mother begs him to flee to America while he can. But the pull of home and family leads him to return to Hungary. 

“Not for a second does Stephen think that Hungary would ever sell out its own people,” writes de Bastion. Her grandfather, who is Jewish, is badly mistaken.

Back in Budapest, Stephen slips comfortably into a routine of composing and performing. But he soon gets called up for “military training.” Instead of a uniform, as he expects, he’s given a yellow Star of David. It turns out that he is part of a forced labor unit assigned to drain swamps and lay railroad tracks. Overworked, with never enough food, her grandfather is eventually granted leave and returns to Budapest and his music.

In October 1942, he is sent to the Russian front as part of a labor unit in support of the German invasion. Eventually, the Soviet army counterattacks and the Hungarian front collapses. Stephen and his fellow laborers flee, but he is slowed down by dysentery and typhoid fever. His companions abandon him. For months, he trudges alone across the snow-covered fields, avoiding starvation by eating scraps that he finds when he beds down in stables and pigsties. He eventually reaches a station in what was then known as Kiev, where he finds a train that takes him to Budapest. He slowly recovers his health, but of the 1,069 laborers who left Budapest with him the previous October, only eight ever return.

Even worse lies ahead. In March 1944, Germany invades and occupies Hungary, and the Arrow Cross, an ultranationalist fascist party, launches a reign of terror against Jews. Stephen’s family members are forced from their apartment into an overcrowded building in a Jewish ghetto. Stephen gets a safe passage document that will take him to Switzerland. But upon hearing that his parents will be sent to a concentration camp, he substitutes their names on the document and saves them instead. 

Before long, he becomes one of the nearly 440,000 Hungarian Jews who are deported to a ghetto on the Austrian border. As the Soviet army approaches, the prisoners are put on a forced march to the concentration camp at Mauthausen, where Stephen will spend the next year. Soon, the Russians close in, and he and his fellow inmates are evacuated once again and endure a death march to a small camp at Gunskirchen. While some 6,000 of his fellow prisoners die, Stephen survives and is liberated by American troops. He finally returns to Budapest.

This is not a book for the faint of heart. The long descriptions of violence, hatred, and inhumanity feel overwhelming. But it is also an amazing story of persistence, grace, and a will to live.

This is also a tale about the quest to understand one’s roots. De Bastion, herself a professional musician, tells us that she barely remembers her grandfather, but the more she listens to the recordings, the more she understands who he was. As a clearer picture emerges, she comes to better understand her family – and herself.

AP/Reuters

Vice presidential candidates Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance

Long before he became the Republican vice presidential candidate, James David Vance was a critic of Donald Trump. A graduate of Yale Law School, he was also seen as part of the very elite he finds as a cause of America’s problems. To explain these apparent contradictions, the first-term Ohio senator, popularly known by his initials J.D., turns to an unlikely source.

He cites a quote from the late liberal U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.”

The “culture” that Mr. Vance seeks to represent is a segment of Americans who feel overlooked, undervalued, and deeply misunderstood. His selection as Mr. Trump’s running mate is an echo of the Democratic Party’s nomination of Kamala Harris for vice president four years ago. That moment also marked a cultural milestone, but one for women of color and an acknowledgment of the unique weight they have borne through American history with quiet dignity.

Mr. Vance grew up in poverty in Ohio and the Appalachian hills of Kentucky. His mother struggled with addiction. His grandmother, who helped raised him, did not graduate from high school. His formative years unfolded in the social and cultural decay of successive economic crises – the decline of steel industries and then of coal. He has a visceral empathy for the grievances that course through the political movement that Mr. Trump has given vent to.

“To me, the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone,” he wrote in his 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy.” “We can easily create a welfare state that accepts the fact of a permanent American underclass, one where family dysfunction, childhood trauma, cultural segregation, and hopelessness coexist with some basic measure of subsistence. Or we can do something considerably more difficult: reject the notion of a permanent American underclass.”

His main concern – and what ultimately aligned him with Mr. Trump – involves creating economic opportunity and upward mobility that enable American workers who feel forgotten to rediscover their worth and dignity.

“You have to be humble, and realize that politics are essentially a temporal game,” he said in a 2019 interview with The American Conservative about his Christian convictions. “I hope my faith makes me more compassionate and to identify with people who are struggling.” He seeks a politics sensitive to the “struggle to find stability in your own life, but also to become a good person when you didn’t have an easy upbringing.”

Early in the Trump administration, when cities were wrestling with whether to remove symbols of the Confederacy, then-Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu spoke of the need to ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. “That is what really makes America great ... to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one,” he said.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Vance come from very different backgrounds and cultures. But acknowledging where there is overlap – in recognizing the crucial value and role of Americans who have often felt forgotten – may be a way for the politics of this presidential campaign to be different.