This election is about more than two very different ideologies. It's about two very different moods: joy vs. rage.

• Why it matters: The conflicting rhetoric reflects the conflicting calculations of how to win in 2024 — and how Americans are really feeling about the state of the nation, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

Former President Trump sees fear as the primary motivator — fear of illegal immigration, crime, inflation, a declining America. He believes swing voters will embrace his darker view and demand protection, even if they don't love his style.

• Vice President Harris sees hope (or conflict exhaustion) as the primary motivator — hope to move beyond Trump and fighting, hope in a rising/rebounding America. She believes voters are tired of doom-and-gloom.

🖼️ The big picture: Both strategies have proven effective in elections over the past two decades. But misreading the national mood can kill a campaign.

• Harris' strategy smacks of Barack Obama's election theory. Obama is privately advising Harris and his top political mind, David Plouffe, was brought aboard to expand her team beyond Biden holdovers.
• Obama famously wrapped his campaigns around hope and change. It worked. This helps explain why Harris has dropped President Biden's central obsession with threats to democracy for more hopeful, future-focused messaging — including a new rallying cry: "We're not going back."

The backstory: Trump's strategy — and his vision of a dystopian future under Democratic rule — has been consistent since he rode a wave of populist anger to the White House in 2016.

• In 2020, voters grew tired of the daily chaos wrought by Trump's presidency and COVID, and bet on Biden to guide the country back to normalcy.
• Four years later, Gallup's tracking poll shows just 18% of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the country — offering fertile ground for Trump to revive and refine his politics of grievance.
• "The world has gone to sh*t in the last 2 weeks," the Trump campaign blared in a fundraising email this week. "The stock market is CRASHING Unemployment is RISING! Wars in the Middle East are spiraling OUT OF CONTROL!"

💬 "There's a large segment of America that does acknowledge things are tough out there," veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz told Axios. "But they're tired of getting yelled at, and they're tired of gloom and doom. And they want hope rather than blame."

• "Trump is not a good news bear candidate — he's a bad news bear candidate," Luntz added. "He's going to be negative no matter what. But you have to be credible in your attacks."

🎤 Split screen: Watch Harris' early events with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and you'll see — and hear — their shared obsession with seeming and sounding joyous, bullish, fun-loving.

• "The one thing I will not forgive [Republicans] for is they try to steal the joy from this country," Walz declared at a rally in Detroit. "But you know what? Our next president brings the joy. She emanates the joy."

The other side: Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running-mate, captured the GOP's frustrations with the "joyful warrior" narrative when asked this week: "What makes you happy?"

• "I smile at a lot of things — including bogus questions from the media, man," Vance responded to a reporter in Michigan. "I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes and enjoy things sometimes — and turn on the news and recognize what's going on in this country is a disgrace."

🔎 Between the lines: Harris is benefiting from being a fresh face that many voters don't blame for perceived failures of the Biden administration.

• "She has been able to remake herself in a way that I've never seen in American politics before," Luntz marveled.
• "People think the system is broken, they think the government is broken, they think the border is broken, they think the economy is broken. That all works in [Trump's] favor. But what they don't think is that Harris is responsible for that."

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Former President Trump has been in a foul mood the past few weeks and has repeatedly called Vice President Harris a "bitch" in private, the N.Y. Times' Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report.

• Why it matters: Axios has written extensively about this as the girls vs. boys election, with Democrats crushing the women's vote. Trump advisers privately concede his misogynistic language is deeply problematic, and something they worry he will unload in a public debate to his detriment.

Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, told The Times: "That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala, and it's not how the campaign would characterize her."

Trump said about Harris on Wednesday in a phone interview with "Fox & Friends": "I heard she's sort of a nasty person."

• At his Mar-a-Lago news conference on Thursday, he asserted Harris is "not smart enough to do a news conference."

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A parade of top Biden administration officials is heading to the Middle East for a dramatic week of high-stakes diplomacy to try to prevent war in the region and secure a hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: The results of the coming week will indicate whether the region is going to sink even deeper into crisis and a widening perpetual war, — or if, for the first time since Oct. 7, there'll be a significant change of course. The outcome could shape President Biden's legacy.

U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators and officials are spending the next few days trying to close the gaps between Israel and Hamas ahead of a final round of negotiations between the parties, set for Aug. 15.

• Israeli officials said the talks on Thursday are "a now-or-never" moment for a deal to release hostages being held by Hamas, in exchange for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.

The U.S. and allies are pressing Iran and Hezbollah not to retaliate against Israel for the assassinations of Hamas' political leader in Tehran and a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut.

• The U.S. and Israel don't have a clear idea about when such an attack could happen. But the general assessment is that Hezbollah is likely to attack first, possibly this weekend, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

Behind the scenes: White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan held a Zoom meeting yesterday with families of eight U.S. hostages in Gaza, and briefed them on the decisive round of negotiations that will take place on Thursday in Cairo or Doha.

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Paramount Global took a $6 billion write-down on its cable TV business on Thursday, the day after Warner Bros. Discovery did the same for $9 billion.

• Why it matters: Both companies are struggling to convince Wall Street that their streaming bets will make up for those losses, Axios media trends expert Sara Fischer reports.

📉 By the numbers: Paramount Global's stock tanked 12% in after-hours trading Thursday despite posting a streaming profit for the first time.

• Warner Bros. Discovery's fell 9% to an all-time low after its earnings release.

The bottom line: Both companies were created by megamergers — yet neither is considered big enough to compete with Big Tech for streaming dominance.

• Go deeper ... Get Axios Media Trends.

Axios readers across the U.S. say the worst part of moving into separate beds is the judgment from others, but they're not losing sleep over it, Axios' Brianna Crane writes.

• Why it matters: Sleep divorce isn't new, but it's becoming more normalized.

Case in point: Bonnie Seals and her husband have been married for 47 years and have slept in separate bedrooms for three decades. He snores and sleeps in. She's an early bird. When they share a room on vacation, it's stressful.

• But Valerie Hanson and her husband have slept separately for years. Now, sharing a bed on a vacation is a treat.

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PARIS — Algerian boxer Imane Khelif defeated China's Yang Liu in a unanimous decision to win the gold medal in women's welterweight boxing (under 66kg), Axios' Ina Fried reports.

• Why it matters: Khelif has found herself at the center of a gender controversy that has included a barrage of online hate fueled by mis- and disinformation.

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Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's former CEO and a longtime Google executive, died yesterday at 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer.

• "It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing," Dennis Troper, Wojcicki's husband, said in a Facebook post. "My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post: "Over the last two years, even as she dealt with great personal difficulties, Susan devoted herself to making the world better through her philanthropy, including supporting research for the disease that ultimately took her life."

Wojcicki, one of the most prominent women in tech, joined Google in 1999 to become one of the first few employees, years before Google bought YouTube, Reuters reports.

• "Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey," Wojcicki wrote in a blog post last year when she left YouTube, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
• "Today, after nearly 25 years here, I've decided to ... start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I'm passionate about."

Read Sundar's post.

Twenty years after his debut album, John Legend on Aug. 30 will release his first-ever children's album, "My Favorite Dream," with the lead single "L-O-V-E."

• Why it matters: The record centers on universal themes — love, safety, family, dreams — across nine original tracks, two covers, a solo piano track and three bonus covers of Fisher-Price songs, AP reports.

The 45-year-old R&B pop singer is a father of four with wife Chrissy Teigen — Luna is 8, Miles is 6, Esti and Wren are both toddlers. He says he made it a point to write songs that worked for adults, too.

• Some will even resonate with those who might not have children. These are soulful, capital-J John Legend songs with poignant messaging.

"I wanted the parents to like it," he told AP over the phone. "I wanted the same standard of ... quality and musicianship."

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