I thought it'd be a worthwhile thing to take a snapshot once again of the state of the presidential polling, right before tonight's debate happens. This is the first Electoral Math column in roughly a month, so there's been some movement, although it is debatable whether much of it is all that meaningful. Many of the battleground states are balanced so closely that minor movements back and forth aren't really all that significant, at this point. Overall, the picture seems to have improved slightly for Kamala Harris, but it is definitely going to be a very close race, if the polling can be believed.

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Kamala Harris is about to walk a tightrope, in front of the entire country. In tomorrow night's debate with Donald Trump, she's got to achieve two basic but somewhat contradictory goals: appear presidential and in control, but also rattle Trump and get under his skin. Both will be important, but she's really got to achieve both simultaneously, hence the tightrope metaphor.

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Traditionally, Labor Day is the kickoff to the "real campaign season." This implies that none of what has gone before really made much of a difference, and that the American people will now give each of the candidates a fresh look as people slowly turn their focus to politics after the summer season is done.

Maybe that was true once, but quite obviously we've been in the midst of the general-election campaign season for most of this year already. There was no drama or mystery about who would become the major parties' nominees -- Donald Trump and President Joe Biden had the primaries wrapped up before they even began. And then the most dramatic event of the general election campaign happened midsummer, as Biden decided to end his candidacy (after a disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump). In other words, plenty has already happened this election season, and so we've got to look at the remaining two months as nothing more than the homestretch.

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One week from today, the two major political parties' presidential candidates will debate each other. Although this will be the second general election campaign debate held, it is not technically accurate to use the word "again" in that previous sentence, since we won't see the same two candidates on stage that we did last time. This is unprecedented in modern American politics, and 2024 might very well be remembered in the future as "the year the debates mattered."

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This week, the mainstream media proved yet again how good they are at missing the forest for the trees, at least in the political world. The entire week, the chattering classes pushed their new Donald Trump scandal for all it was worth. Now look, we're no fans of Trump (far from it!), but it all just seemed like the attention and outrage were a wee bit misplaced.

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So the first night of the Democratic National Convention has come and gone. It was a night featuring two memorable swansong speeches. The first came from Hillary Clinton, who in an alternate universe would be finishing up her second term as president right about now. The second came from Joe Biden, who is currently finishing up his first (and only) term as president right now. It was a night for passing torches, in other words.

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Today is the first day of the Democratic National Convention, but I've decided I'm going to report on each day's events the day after they happen, rather than typing furiously into the night with my snap reactions. So today's convention round-up will run tomorrow, and we will likely have to pre-empt the Friday Talking Points column for the final day's review (which of course will be the biggest night, when Kamala Harris gives her acceptance speech).

Instead, I have a few random comments about the news media and how they are currently exhibiting a massive double standard towards Harris and her campaign, in more ways than one.

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For the past few weeks, JD Vance has been mightily trying to paint Tim Walz as having somehow claimed some "stolen valor" for his 24 years of honorable service in the National Guard. This required him to completely ignore the fact that Donald Trump got a deferment for non-existent "bone spurs" to avoid going to Vietnam, as well as Trump's naked contempt for those who do serve in the military. But hey, all that was a long time ago, and people have mostly forgotten how Trump denigrated an authentic war hero (John McCain) in 2015, so Vance just kept trying.

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Well, that was an hour and a half of my life that I surely would have enjoyed doing just about anything else during... sigh.... Chalk it up as another instance of: "I watch these things so you don't have to," I guess.

Donald Trump gave a marathon press conference today, but didn't actually take a single question until more than 45 minutes into it. He then answered questions for roughly 40 minutes before walking off camera to give someone an autograph.

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A program note is necessary, to begin with here. I almost wasn't going to even bother with the whole "Electoral Math" series this year, because it would have been so depressing to try to cheer President Joe Biden's chances on while watching Trump flip state after state. So up until very recently, I hadn't even started collecting the data or doing the charts or anything.

Of course, that all changed three weeks ago.

So welcome back to our Electoral Math column series again! This marks the fifth presidential election we will have provided this service, I should mention. This year, for obvious reasons, we are only going to track the data from late July onwards. Our charts will begin two days after Joe Biden exited the race, or Tuesday, July 23rd. This was the point where Donald Trump hit his maximum in state-level polling and things looked the grimmest for the Democrats. But, of course, that would all soon begin to turn around....

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