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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Two more states -- Missouri and Arizona -- have now certified the signatures required to place abortion rights on their ballots in November. This brings the total for this election cycle up to eight states, although the possibility of the ballot measures having a meaningful impact on the other races on the ballot realistically only exists in three of them. So far, abortion rights have an unbroken 7-0 record of winning, even in some very red states, so it will be interesting to see if that continues or not. But beyond electoral geekiness, if any of them win it will be a victory for women's rights and freedom over government interference in the most personal of medical decisions.

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The past three weeks have been filled with optimism -- for obvious reasons -- so I thought I'd write a truly optimistic column today. Democrats are now feeling very enthusiastic about the chances for victory in November, and the polls are starting to back this feeling up. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are now leading by four points in each of three critical battleground states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) according to one prominent poll, and the national polling has also taken a turn for the better, with Harris beating Trump regularly (by a margin of around three points, give or take). So I'm just going to assume for the sake of argument here that Harris goes on to win the presidential election (yes, I realize this is an enormous assumption to make, but as I said I'm in a rather optimistic mood). My question is whether such a victory can not only defeat Donald Trump but also Trumpism itself.

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We will admit, right here up front, that we did not think up today's headline ourselves. It came from an extra-snarky press release from the Harris/Walz team. Following Donald Trump's bizarre appearance before the news cameras yesterday, the Harris camp put out a press release titled: "Donald Trump's Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference." The subtitle was: "Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was."

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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.

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You may not have seen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in action yet. This is understandable, since it was only yesterday that he was named to the Democratic ticket as the vice-presidential nominee. But even if you haven't seen any clips of him yet or watched that blowout Philadelphia rally yesterday, don't worry -- you already know him.

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In a little over two weeks, the Democratic Party has gone from "Biden/Harris" to "Harris/Walz," as their ticket has now been completed with Vice President Kamala Harris's selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. But what's more astonishing than the lightning-fast schedule for all this unfolding is how utterly seamless it has all been. The party quickly unified behind Harris after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his campaign, and from all indications today it looks like the party will further unify around the choice of Walz to round the ticket out. There are no simmering "Hillary Clinton supporters versus Bernie Bros" bad feelings tearing the party apart; instead, all the various factions seem content with the way things have worked out. That is an incredible accomplishment, for Democrats. Both progressives and centrists lined up to endorse Walz after this morning's announcement, with no hesitation.

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We are now in the homestretch of the frantic and foreshortened race that's underway to become Kamala Harris's running mate. By tomorrow morning, the announcement will be made and then we can all avoid using the word "veepstakes" for another four years (I'm not a huge fan of the word, even though I do have to begrudgingly admit that it is pretty catchy...).

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It certainly already feels like a lot longer, but we aren't even done with the second week of Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. She hit the ground running in a big way and is already doing a fine job of drawing the distinction between her and the bizarreness of the other side. Meanwhile, Republicans are out there insulting "a bunch of childless cat ladies" as well as pretty much every minority group they can think of. Two weeks in, the race is now being defined between the childless cat ladies on one side and the total weirdos on the other. In other words, Silly Season has begun in a big way.

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