Donald Trump seems to be getting a little nervous. He has had to watch, for the past three weeks, while the political media paid a whole lot more attention to Kamala Harris (and now Tim Walz) than they were paying to him and his rather unimpressive running mate, JD Vance. And it wasn't just that his opponents were getting all the press, it was that they were getting good press. Trump, meanwhile, had planned on coasting and taking it easy for a few weeks after the Republican National Convention.

Instead, Trump is now faced with Harris and Walz barnstorming the battleground states all week long, while Trump has a single rally scheduled in... Montana? No wonder the Democrats are getting better press! And it's beginning to get under Trump's skin. Today, he hastily threw together a press conference, because he knew that would at least get his campaign some media coverage. The only truly newsworthy thing that emerged from it (Trump lying his face off about this, that, and the other doesn't count) was when he announced that he will, after all, be showing up for the scheduled presidential candidate debate on ABC next month. Earlier, he had backed out of the debate, perhaps confident that he wouldn't even need to bother. Now, he's proposing two more debates, in addition to the ABC event. He now knows he needs the free television coverage, after watching the debut of Harris and Walz for the past few weeks. And right around the corner is the weeklong coverage the Democratic National Convention will generate.

Trump measures things with two basic yardsticks: how big the crowds are, and how good the television ratings are. On both, Harris has already eclipsed him. They've been appearing in the same event halls of late (at different times, of course!) and Harris packs them up to the rafters while Trump sees upper decks that are mostly empty at his rallies. And the enthusiasm gap just seems to be growing too -- Harris rallies are fun and exciting. Trump rallies are an endless list of his own personal grievances, and how he's going to get his revenge for all the perceived slights against him. For flavor, he tosses in dark warnings about the post-apocalyptic hellscape America will become if the Democrats win. Harris has been winning the media game as well, seeing as how she's out there campaigning while Trump plays golf (or whatever he does to fill his days up at his Florida resort). It's easy to see which is more newsworthy (not to mention more fun to cover).

As mentioned, it's already getting under Trump's skin. He was directly asked today why he wasn't campaigning more and what he thought of Harris drawing larger crowds than him. He answered the first by saying he would be taking it easy until after the Democratic National Convention is over (two weeks from now, in other words), and he answered the second by refusing to admit reality. He claimed Harris only had "1,000... 1,500... 2,000" people at her rallies, while his crowds were "10 times... 20 times... 30 times" the size of hers. Neither is remotely true. He also claimed, for good measure, that his January 6th rally had a bigger crowd than Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have A Dream" speech. That wasn't remotely true either.

What really must worry Trump is that all the enthusiasm for Harris and Walz is starting to show up in the polling. Harris is now regularly polling three or four points ahead of Trump nationally, although there still are a few polls showing Trump leading too (to be fair). The battleground states seem to be shifting towards the Democrats as well, but not as dramatically (at least, not yet). Harris seems to have essentially won back the falloff caused by President Joe Biden's disastrous debate, but she's not the clear frontrunner yet. But all the momentum has been towards her and away from Trump. That's got to be causing Trump some angst (assuming that bad poll numbers are even being accurately reported to him by his team, which is questionable).

It's a whole new race, and Donald Trump hasn't managed to shift gears to deal with it yet. If the Democrats get a polling bump from their convention, Harris will take the lead from him. What Trump assumed was going to be a cakewalk of a campaign will turn into sheer desperation. Trump will, if the past is any prologue, refuse to admit the new reality and continue to insist that he's "leading -- by a lot." But if Harris starts posting substantial leads in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, then Trump is going to start truly freaking out.

The more desperate Trump gets, the more he plays to his base, in increasingly apocalyptic language. He's going to double down, once again, on his fearmongering schtick. By the time Harris and Trump do debate, he may be in complete meltdown mode (he sure seemed pretty close to it, in today's press conference). And if the debate rules are the same as the first one (no audience, microphones cut when the other person speaks), then we are all going to finally see Trump have to face some truth and some hard, cold reality. Harris isn't going to let him get away with his blatant and laughable lies -- she is going to call him out on them and contrast them with the truth. Trump isn't used to being challenged like this, especially when he can't just yell over the questioner and fill the air with nonsensical words and playground insults. Harris is fully capable of upsetting Trump's applecart, as anyone who has ever seen her in a Senate hearing can attest to. She's also fully capable of just laughing at him, and there's nothing a bully fears more than being laughed at.

So far, for Harris and now Walz, the honeymoon period hasn't ended. They are something new and interesting and upbeat on the political scene, which draws a stark contrast to the dour Trump and his sidekick Vance. If the Democrats can keep the momentum up for another week, then they'll head to their national convention riding a huge wave of enthusiasm. Trump already had his convention, so there's nothing comparable on the horizon for him. And the more Harris and Walz generate good press and excitement, the more desperate Trump will get to find some way of snatching the media spotlight away from them. The more the media yawns and refuses to take his bait, the worse this is going to get.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant