Aspiring members of Donald Trump’s potential second administration gathered Thursday at Washington’s Royal Sands Social Club — a bar designed to resemble the state of Florida — for a fundraiser that felt like a victory party.

Chris LaCivita, the campaign’s top strategist, told the crowd of lobbyists and former administration officials that the former president would collect at least 289 electoral college votes in November — enough to secure the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, had plateaued in internal data, according to multiple attendees.

“Everyone in the room told me we were going to win,” said one person, who described the mood as “jubilant” and who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private events.

Less than 24 hours later, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon convened a Friday all-staff Zoom meeting to also predict victory — but with a much more sobering message. Nothing was certain, she told the roughly 3,000 staffers who joined the call.

“This is not going to be a race where one day we wake up and the sun shines and the clouds part and we’ve won by five points,” O’Malley Dillon told the team, according to someone who was on the call. “It’s just not that kind of race. It is tight, and we are going to just keep driving. Our data is telling us that we are winning and we are going to stay ahead, but it is by the skin of our teeth.”

The opposing messages were delivered as both campaigns have independently come to what is actually a shared understanding of the state of the race. Internal polls on both sides roughly match the public numbers that show the race in the seven battleground states within the statistical margin of error and mostly unchanged in recent weeks. Both campaigns calculate victory based on their own turnout models.

But the two camps are treating that information in divergent ways. Trump’s team has embraced bravado as it tries to keep its candidate on message and encourage him to avoid the sort of high-profile national audiences that might motivate Harris’s supporters.

Trump declined Fox News’s invitation to another presidential debate within hours of the offer this week, giving up a potential audience of about 75 million Americans. He announced rallies in California and New York — uncompetitive states where no Republican has won an electoral vote in 35 years. He authorized the leak of internal polling that showed a statistically tied battleground race with the cheerful conclusion: “Trump holds an edge.”

“You communicate and you push and you demonstrate that you are ahead,” LaCivita said in an interview Friday. “But you run like you are behind.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’s team has, by contrast, embraced the “underdog” spirit of her July launch, hoping to motivate more action from her supporters and grab the attention of those sitting on the sidelines.

Top aides spent last week warning that the $1 billion they raised in 80 days was not enough — never mind the roughly 3-to-1 spending advantage over the Trump campaign in August. The Harris campaign deployed former president Barack Obama to admonish Black men for their somewhat soft support of the vice president, as she called for another debate and hustled between mainstream television programs that Trump has avoided.

In the face of Trump’s cockiness, the Democratic mood has dipped to a mix of desperation and determination. Several people close to Harris conceded they had lost some momentum — and needed something to stir the race up. Harris advisers say they need more ad spending, more paid canvassing, more volunteer energy, more media placements, more surrogates and more activity from their candidates on bigger platforms. Even as they dominate most advertising mediums, they have begun to fret about Trump’s advantage in direct mail, shifting funds to deal with what the tracking firm Mintt says is a 4-to-1 Republican advantage.

“It’s going to take all of us together,” O’Malley Dillon told her team on the Friday Zoom call. “So feel confident in the plan.”

At the core of the calculations of both campaigns are separate research finding that many of the targeted voters in key states still do not have fully formed views of Harris, who only became a candidate for president in July. Views of Trump, by contrast, are nearly universally set. That has made it more important for Harris to make a splash in the final weeks.

“The more people see the real Kamala Harris and the real Tim Walz, the more that I believe they will do the comparison and vote for her,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said, referring to the nominee and her running mate, the Minnesota governor. “We’ve got to get people energized in this state because it’s coming down to voter turnout. We’ve got to see passion.”

The lack of definition around Harris has also shaped the advertising wars. Ads for the vice president mostly seek to provide contrast, mixing positive introductory messages about her and her plans with negative depictions of Trump.

The Trump campaign instead has focused its recent advertising on trying to define Harris as an extreme ideologue who is not on the side of regular Americans. The strategy echoes the approach of other incumbent presidents, like Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, who seek to define their newcomer opponents as out-of-touch before they can fully introduce themselves to the American people.

The Trump campaign has put the most money in October advertising behind ads about Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender-reassignment surgery for prisoners, according to AdImpact. The Harris campaign has called the ads “false,” pointing to federal court rulings that have upheld the right for inmates to get health care, but has not clarified her position on the issue.

The Trump ads run in both English and Spanish, often around sporting events with more male audiences. “Kamala is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you,” one of the spots concludes.

Trump has also chosen to focus on his rallies, which tend to be watched primarily by his supporters. In a sign of her desire to elevate the race, Harris has repeatedly urged more Americans to tune into Trump events, which are rarely covered by the major cable news networks, to see what he is offering.

Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement he would win “because he is out working Kamala Harris every day.” The Harris campaign declined to comment for this story.

Several Trump advisers said they did not see an upside to doing a second debate because they believe Harris needs a momentum moment more than they do. In the final weeks, the campaign is likely to focus advertisements on immigration, the economy and a clip on the television show “The View” where Harris initially said she wouldn’t do anything differently than Biden during his term before citing appointing a Republican to her Cabinet.

“People say, ‘Why aren’t we doing the debates?’ The question is, ‘Why do them?’” another Trump adviser said. “They could try to create a contrast with us. We’re going to starve her of that opportunity.”

Tony Fabrizio, the campaign’s pollster, has urged the campaign to talk about the economy. Campaign advisers have discussed limiting interviews and appearances outside of rallies.

Public polling averages have been so close for so long that divining their meaning has become a matter more akin to faith than science. Between Harris’s entrance in the race and early September, high-quality national public polls have shown the Democratic ticket move from a two-point deficit to a two-point advantage against Trump, with corresponding movements in most swing states. But that drift slowed or stopped in recent weeks — leaving a largely stable race that can be interpreted different ways depending on one’s assumptions of who will actually turn out to vote and how the polling sample is designed.

The differing vibes from the two campaigns also reflect the differing styles of the candidates. In each of his races for the White House, Trump has exaggerated his dominance, often citing polls that have no statistical significance. He frequently encourages those around him to shower him with praise. Before landing in Pennsylvania this month for a rally in Butler — the site of a July 13 assassination attempt on his life — he gathered with his advisers at the window of his plane to look at the crowd down below, which appeared similar in size to other events.

“It’s a monster,” one of his top advisers said, according to a video of the exchange posted on X by Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.). “It’s a lot of people. I don’t think I have ever seen that much before.” Trump agreed, as others praised him on the plane.

LaCivita kept up that same enthusiasm Thursday night when he told the fundraising crowd in Washington that Harris had to place more advertisements on TV because they didn’t have a good message. He described polling that he said showed Trump ahead in major states and crowed that Trump had a better message, according to people present. A second attendee said people were partially there to network for jobs in a second Trump administration.

Harris, by contrast, has less interest in such positive talk. Aides say she has become more comfortable in recent weeks accepting unscripted appearances on news shows, at town halls and on podcasts as it has become more clear to her campaign that she needs to communicate with more voters.

Former congressman Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) said Trump holds a slight edge over Harris in western Pennsylvania — though he said that in conversations with voters in recent days, Harris still has an opportunity to win over Trump-leaning voters. He said he recently spoke to someone who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, and was 60 percent likely to vote for Trump again, attributing his preference to Trump because he is a known quantity.

“That tells me though that if Trump hasn’t fully closed the deal, Harris still has an opportunity if people get a chance to know her,” he said. “Trump knows that people are not going to change their opinions on him very much regardless of what he says or does. Her strategy to be more active and visible makes sense.”

New majorities in Congress, particularly when the incoming party has a new leader, offer the rare chance for the institution to take a breath and consider what can be done to make the place function better.

The Senate seems poised for just that outcome, as Republicans get closer to locking up at least 51 seats for next year and with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stepping aside after 18 years atop the GOP conference.

Any major overhaul to the customs of the very tradition-bound Senate, where permanent rules changes are supposed to happen with a least a two-thirds majority vote, are not likely. For now at least, a majority of Senate Republicans have vowed to not do anything radical such as a party-line move to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster hurdle.

Neither of the top contenders to replace McConnell, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), have publicly embraced any vast reform-minded ideas, although Cornyn has voiced support for his party imposing a term limit for its Senate leader, as is imposed on other leadership positions.

Those two front-runners, along with a long-shot contender, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), are doing most of their talking about how they would operate differently than McConnell did during one-on-one huddles with other senators, according to GOP aides familiar with the talks.

But Senate experts believe that if there’s ever a time to truly consider some changes, this would be it. A survey of a half-dozen former senior Senate Republican aides — including advisers to party leaders, top staff for legislative committees and chiefs of staff to rank-and-file senators — produced several ideas that could shift the chamber’s behavior.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer any idea without potential blowback on their former or current employers, these veteran Senate staffers came up with a bounty of suggestions: some very worthy, some more aspirational, some probably impossible to enforce.

One former aide wants to see changes that would make it easier for legislation to be brought to the Senate floor for consideration, especially if there is demonstrated bipartisan support. This aide said amendments that are ruled germane to the debate should also get special protections.

Another wants to end the seniority system that results in Senate committee chairs being selected by whoever is next in line in terms of tenure on the panel, hoping to create more dynamic energy in the once powerful hearing rooms across the street from the Capitol.

Some would like to see a cultural shift back to the days when newcomers served quietly, instituting a rule forbidding them from speaking on the Senate floor in their first year. That might limit the increasing practice of new senators grandstanding to catch the attention of prime time cable news hosts.

One tantalizing idea is almost certain to go nowhere in the modern, TV-driven Congress: banning cameras from the Senate floor so that debate would be between the senators looking across the chamber at others, rather than the current practice of staring straight into the camera as if they are speaking to America.

Cornyn tried to reignite the debate over shaking up the Senate when he announced his bid to succeed McConnell as GOP leader. “I believe the Senate is broken — that is not news to anyone,” he wrote almost eight months ago.

The reality is almost everyone who has served around the chamber over the last 10 years agrees with Cornyn’s assessment.

Senate Democrats quibble with his statement, noting that the House is also broken, possibly worse so given the GOP’s inability to do some of the most basic functions across the Capitol.

This 118th Congress is on track for a record low level of production, with just 106 public laws approved in the first 22 months of its two-year session. That’s on track to be the fewest laws approved by one Congress in more than 100 years.

To put it in perspective, the 116th Congress (2019-2020) also had a partisan split, with Democrats running the House and Republicans holding the Senate, but it produced 344 laws. The 113th Congress had the same partisan makeup as today — a Democratic president, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate — and that combo produced 296 public laws.

Later this month, we will explore a separate column on the possible rules changes that could come with Democrats winning the House — part of a potential historic “double flip” in which the two chambers swap majorities.

But let’s start with the Senate, which has always fashioned itself with such a grand superiority complex that its self-anointed nicknames are the “upper chamber” and “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

The Merriam-Webster definition of “deliberation” is “a discussion and consideration by a group” for and against something. In Senate parlance, that means a debate.

The mere act of debating has collapsed over the last decade, according to records monitored by C-SPAN’s Congress page. From early January 2023 through this month, the Senate has held 272 hours of debate, just 18 percent of the time it was in session.

That’s almost 175 fewer hours of debate than the Senate held through the same time frame of 2021-2022. It’s a small fraction compared to the more than 1,200 hours of Senate debate that came in this timespan of the 115th Congress (2015-2016), when the deliberating accounted for almost 60 percent of all the time in session.

The current Senate has spent twice as much time (551 hours) holding roll call votes than senators spent debating actual legislation.

But almost two-thirds of those votes have come on presidential confirmations, either a procedural vote or the actual confirmation vote, to fill the federal judiciary or executive agencies. Just 16 years ago nomination votes accounted for less than 10 percent of Senate roll calls.

Most of the confirmation votes have been for relatively low-level posts that most senators did not know existed when they first ran for office. Those include the Sept. 19 vote to advance a judicial nominee for the U.S. Tax Court or the Sept. 23 vote to formally confirm that tax judge to a 15-year term.

That first vote was the last of the week, “flyout day,” as it’s known, so nine senators did not bother to show up. The second vote came on a Monday evening, “fly-in day,” and 14 senators skipped that vote.

That confirmation took eight months to process, from President Joe Biden’s formal nomination on Feb. 1, to the June committee vote and late September final approval.

The Senate’s sharp shift into “personnel business” — as McConnell has called confirmation votes — began during his six years as majority leader. And it has continued under Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

One of the smartest ideas from former senior Republican aides would dramatically reduce the number of positions requiring the full Senate’s approval, especially those in key posts like U.S. attorneys who serve as the Justice Department’s regional prosecutors and nonpartisan ambassadors.

Take Biden’s Jan. 11 nominations of two career Foreign Service officers, with decades of experience, speaking a combined six foreign languages, to be ambassadors to Cambodia and Albania.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved their nominations more than six months ago, and today they still await a full confirmation vote.

Freeing the Senate from the endless wheel of confirmation votes would open up the chamber for more legislative debate.

Combine this with the idea, from another former Republican aide, that legislation with bipartisan support in the committee process would receive special fast-track privileges.

Current rules require a majority leader to follow a three- or four-day process to clear the procedural hurdles just to begin debate on legislation. If a bill is bipartisan, just eliminate all those hurdles and allow it to be easily considered for debate — at which point, it would still have to clear one 60-vote hurdle to get passed.

Forcing committee chairs to win their posts through a real internal vote, rather than the current seniority-driven, next-senator-up process, could also energize those roles. They would derive power from across their entire caucus, not just the party leader and Father Time.

These ideas might never come to see the light of day, regardless of who serves as majority leader next year. Each time there’s a new majority leader, pledges flow to improve the institution.

“The good news is that it can be fixed,” Cornyn wrote to his colleagues.

Most senators hope that will happen.