What a week it has been....

Last Thursday night, America watched Donald Trump accept his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. Republicans had owned the news cycle all week long as they put on their quadrennial extravaganza, topped off with a full hour and a half of Trump rambling on about this, that, and the other. Traditionally, presidential candidates get a "convention bump" from all the free media, so perhaps Team Trump was looking forward to skating for the upcoming week, and just riding out the wave that the convention brought.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. She clinched this status yesterday, only a little more than 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced he would be ending his re-election bid. Convention delegates in state after state quickly met and then proudly announced they were unanimously behind Harris. This completely precluded the idea of a "mini-primary" (which many pundits had been hoping for), since no other viable Democrat even came forward to challenge Harris. So with remarkable speed, the Democratic Party has now unified behind Harris as their standard-bearer. Within the same 24-hour period, a jaw-dropping $81 million was donated to her campaign (the total is now well over $100 million). People are already volunteering to work for the campaign by the tens of thousands. Numbers aside, though, Harris has already achieved a remarkable feat -- she has excited voters.

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Back in the early 1980s (before he was in his early 80s), the punk band The Clash put out a song asking what has now become Joe Biden's new existential question:

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I cleared the decks for this column, preferring to spend today reviewing the first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle instead of writing a standard "Friday Talking Points" column. But if I had gone with my weekly format, President Joe Biden would easily have won my Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, hands down. His debate performance last night was not just disappointing, it was downright abysmal.

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The biggest political news of the week by far was Hunter Biden being convicted in record time on all three felony gun charges lodged against him. The jury spent only about three hours before returning these verdicts, which completely undercut the narrative Donald Trump has been spouting about how the justice system is "two-tiered" -- by which he means: "weaponized against Republicans while Democrats get a free pass." Kind of hard to make that argument when the president's own son just got convicted of felonies and is facing up to ten years in prison.

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There was significant news today on reproductive rights, from two separate directions. The Supreme Court unanimously (!) overturned a case that challenged the F.D.A.'s approval of mifepristone, one of the two most commonly used abortion pills in the country. The unanimity was possible because the high court essentially punted on the legal question and instead ruled that the plaintiffs had no legal standing to bring their case. Meanwhile, in the Senate, a bill to create a federal right to in-vitro fertilization failed, mostly on party lines. Last week a bill that would have given federal protections to contraceptives also failed. Both will be used in campaign advertising by Democrats to paint Republicans as being against both contraception rights and I.V.F.

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It is supposed to be a metaphor, of course. It's supposed to be said when a person or company is about to try out a new idea or product: "Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes." In other words: "Let's try it out and see how it goes -- it might wind up being popular." But this week the saying sprang to mind in a much more literal fashion, since Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito already knew who was going to salute the two very real insurrectionist-themed flags that got run up the flagpoles in front of both his house and his vacation home. Flying them after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol signified support for those who had besieged the building, plain and simple. It was a rather treasonous thing to do, when you get right down to it. Which Alito fully knew (or should have, at any rate).

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With most of the "must-pass" legislation already out of the way for this year, both the House and the Senate are now planning a series of what are commonly called "messaging bills." These are bills that have one main intent -- not to pass the other house of Congress and become law, but instead to "send a message" to the voters. It's a polite way of saying "generating partisan talking points to use on the campaign trial."

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Presidential debate announcements, Michael Cohen testifying, and The Jerry Springer Show breaking out in a House committee -- it's been an eventful political week all around, folks!

But we have to begin today with a very sobering piece of data, just to put everything in some perspective. We (rather obviously) personally live and breathe the political scene, and it is a fair assumption that anyone who regularly reads this column all the way to the end (a weekly marathon, 'tis true...) is also pretty plugged in to the follies of the everyday political landscape as well. We all pay attention, in other words. Not just to the large and meaningful events, but also to the small and amusing. But it cannot be repeated enough: this is not exactly normal. Most Americans just don't pay all that much attention to politics. Like, at all.

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Today my eyes have turned towards Maryland, and not just to watch the video clips of the explosive demolition of part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge (which was indeed fascinating to see). The plans to fully reopen the port seem to be moving forward on schedule, which is doubtlessly some very welcome news for both the city and the whole state. But tonight I'll be watching Maryland for a different reason, since they are holding their primary election today.

The big race worth watching here is who will win the Democratic primary for an open Senate seat. The Republican primary became a foregone conclusion with the entry of the state's former governor, Larry Hogan. Which Democrat will face him could be crucial to control of the Senate this November, though.

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