Tonight is day 2 of the 4-day DNC, from the United Center in Chicago. I have quite a bit of business travel this week, so I’m not going to be able to watch as much of the convention as I might want to, left to my druthers. I was able to hear most of Biden’s “One Last Time” speech, which closed out yesterday’s opening day, while sitting on an airplane; both Obamas are scheduled for tonight, then Walz tomorrow, and Harris to wrap things up on the final night.

A couple of minor political developments this week apart from the DNC. First, as expected Senator Menendez resigned today in the wake of his fraud conviction, and also has dropped out of this fall’s election where he had threatened to run as an independent. New Jersey’s governor is appointing a former aide to fill the seat temporarily, keeping the Senate at 51-49, and has signaled his intention to immediately appoint the winner of November’s election so as to give that winner (presumably, Representative Kim) seniority over other members of the entering Senate class. Menendez’s sentencing is scheduled for late October. Second, former Representative Santos has pled guilty to felony charges, avoiding a trial that was set to start in a couple of weeks. His sentencing is scheduled for early February and he is expected to serve jail time; indeed, as part of his plea deal he agreed to not appeal any sentence that is less than 8 years.

I wanted to make a few further observations related to my most recent post about the state of the race, pre-DNC.

In that post I discussed a highly plausible scenario in which Harris wins 270-268. That scenario starts with the Biden-Trump map, but with the 3 “Sun Belt” states of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada flipping back to Trump, while Harris retains the 3 “Rust Belt” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If that scenario had happened in 2020, it would have been a 273-265 win for Biden. As such, in a sense population shifts between the 2010 and 2020 censuses have transferred 3 electoral votes to Trump, relative to four years ago.

That 3-vote transfer has elevated the potential importance of Nebraska-2, the electoral district containing Omaha, in the 2024 election. Four years ago, it was possible to imagine a 270-268 scenario in which NE-2 was decisive, namely if Trump had prevailed in both Georgia and Pennsylvania while everything else stayed as it was. In today’s map, that particular outcome (Trump winning Pennsylvania while losing Arizona and Nevada and Omaha) seems much less likely, but if it were to occur then it is Trump, not Harris, who would be a 270-268 winner.

Walz rallied in Omaha over the weekend, and today a new poll came out showing Harris ahead 50-42 in NE-2. On the strength of that new poll, Silver’s model now has Harris at 78% in NE-2, up from 67% last week. Without Omaha’s single electoral vote, losing the 3 Sun Belt states would put Harris into a 269-269 tie, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives where the Republicans currently have a majority of state delegations.

Indeed, prior to Biden’s departure from the ticket, this particular Omaha-driven 270-268 Biden victory was the most likely path to victory for Biden, with the 3 Sun Belt states seemingly having fallen out of reach. But with the Harris coalition running stronger than the Biden coalition in not only those 3 Sun Belt states but also North Carolina — which in today’s version of Silver’s model has moved ahead of Georgia on Harris’ list of targets, with Trump at 63% to retake Georgia but only 60% to keep North Carolina — the Democrats are now looking at multiple potential paths to electoral victory.

Nate Silver decided against trying to implement a formal Senate electoral model for the 2024 cycle, but the math appears difficult for the Democrats to hold on to the Senate. Today things sit at 51-49, but Manchin’s seat in West Virginia is a lost cause for the Democrats. Additionally, the Democrats have two vulnerable incumbents in red states: Brown in Ohio, and Tester in Montana. The good news is that with Harris on the top of the ticket, other Senate incumbents like Rosen (NV) and Baldwin (WI) no longer appear to be as vulnerable as it once seemed, and the open races in AZ and MI seem much more winnable for the Democrats. The bad news is that if either Brown or Tester loses, it is very unclear from where the Democrats could possibly pick up a 50th seat. The only two possibilities on the map, and they both feel like real longshots, are defeating Scott in Florida or Cruz in Texas. I think an interesting possibility would be whether either Murkowski of Alaska or Collins of Maine, both of whom seem increasingly detached from the modern Republican party (particularly on reproductive freedom), could be enticed to switch parties and provide a 50th vote.

It’s even harder to know what’s really going on in the House, but if you believe the Cook Political Report the most likely result is a 221-214 Republican edge. If the Democrats are to prevail in the House, they are going to need to find a way to pick up most if not all of 6 Republican-held swing districts in California and New York, as well as perhaps take the CO-3 district that Boebert almost lost last time and has now abandoned, and/or knock off moderate Republican Don Bacon in NE-2, who is still ahead 46-44 in the same new poll that had Harris leading 50-42.

As such, despite the wind at the Democrats’ backs over the past three weeks, it is still somewhat easier to imagine a Republican sweep in November than it is a Democratic sweep.

No surprises in either of the primary elections in which I voted yesterday: Senator Klobuchar won 94% of the vote, and Representative Craig (MN-2) won 91%. Elsewhere in Minnesota, Representative Omar (MN-5) managed to stave off Don Samuels for the second straight primary election, expanding her margin from 50-48 in 2022 to 56-43 in 2024. Interestingly, AIPAC appears to have sat the Omar-Samuels primary out.

I thought this would be a good point in the campaign — long enough after the assassination attempt and the RNC and the Democrats’ change of candidate, but still before the DNC — to take stock of the state of the race on a state-by-state basis, using Nate Silver’s model as a guide.

Let’s start by counting the “very safe” electoral votes for both sides, which for this purpose I’ll define as a 95.5% or greater chance (i.e., two-sigma) of victory in Silver’s model:

Very Safe Democrat (170): California (99.6%), Connecticut (97.9%), District of Columbia (100.0%), Hawaii (95.6%), Maryland (99.7%), Illinois (98.7%), Maine-1 (97.7%), Massachusetts (99.3%), New Jersey (96.0%), New York (98.2%), Rhode Island (96.8%), Vermont (98.7%), Washington (98.4%)

Very Safe Republican (103): Alabama (99.1%), Arkansas (99.2%), Idaho (99.2%), Indiana (97.7%), Kansas (97.8%), Kentucky (99.4%), Louisiana (97.7%), Missouri (98.8%), Nebraska at large (99.0%), Nebraska-1 (97.4%), Nebraska-3 (99.7%), North Dakota (98.9%), Oklahoma (99.7%), South Dakota (98.3%), Tennessee (99.5%), Utah (96.2%), West Virginia (99.3%), Wyoming (99.6%)

All of those feel like sure things in practice, although I am a little surprised that Trump’s odds in Hawaii and New Jersey are as good as 25-to-1. I also have fantasies that Walz’s presence on the ticket can increase the Democratic chances in Nebraska’s 1st district, in which he was born.

Next, let’s look in descending order at the remaining states that each party expects to win, which for this purpose I’ll define as an 80% chance of victory in Silver’s model.

Expected Democrat (51): Delaware (94.0%), Oregon (92.7%), Minnesota (90.9%), Colorado (89.8%), New Mexico (85.3%), Virginia (81.7%), Maine at large (80.3%)

Expected Republican (82): Montana (94.9%), South Carolina (94.4%), Mississippi (92.9%), Ohio (89.6%), Iowa (86.3%), Texas (84.1%)

While some of the states in each column used to be swing states, given our current politics it would be surprising for any of these to defect to the other side, although both Virginia and Texas bear monitoring.

At this point, if everything were to have proceeded according to expectations then the Democrats would be ahead 221-185.

In descending order, here are the top Democratic targets to get from 221 to 270, per Silver’s model:

• New Hampshire (4) = 76.4%
• Nebraska-2 (1) = 67.1%
• Michigan (15) = 66.5%
• Wisconsin (10) = 63.8%
• Pennsylvania (19) = 59.1%

If Harris wins those and loses all the other swing states, she wins 270-268.

Conversely from the Trump perspective, in descending order here are the top Republican targets per Silver’s model to get beyond 185:

• Alaska (3) = 78.3%
• Florida (30) = 77.2%
• Maine-2 (1) = 74.0%
• North Carolina (16) = 60.7%
• Georgia (16) = 55.4%
• Arizona (11) = 51.6%
• Nevada (6) = 46.3%

Winning those states is how Trump gets to 268, which means he would need to add, say, Pennsylvania (40.9%) to get over the hump. Hence, the conventional wisdom that Pennsylvania is 2024’s tipping point state.

Three closing notes. First, as these probabilities suggest, right now you’d rather be in Harris’ shoes than Trump’s; today Silver’s model gives Harris a 56.7% chance of an electoral college victory, on an average nationwide popular vote advantage of 2.5%. Second, with increased swing-state polling in the past couple of weeks it no longer appears to be true that Trump’s “electoral college edge” in popular vote terms has widened from 2.0% to 2.5% with the replacement of Biden by Harris. Finally, it’s interesting to see Trump potentially needing to play defense in not only North Carolina, but perhaps also Florida, particularly in light of the abortion issue being on the ballot there.

We’re now 18 days since Biden’s announcement, and it is hard to imagine a better start for the Harris presidential campaign.

She assumed the nomination without any opposition to speak off, rapidly unifying the party; she moved rapidly through a vetting process that has produced a well-received running mate in Governor Walz; the last 48 hours have seen extremely well-attended Harris-Walz launch events in key markets like Philadelphia, Eau Claire WI, and Detroit; polling has turned the corner, to the point where right now she is a 2.4 point popular vote favorite and 53% electoral college favorite in Nate Silver’s model; the Republicans are struggling to find effective lines of attack; and, most importantly, there is a level of excitement in the Democratic party right now that hasn’t been seen in a long time, perhaps not since 2008.

One interesting note about Walz that I hadn’t completely appreciated before: He is the first person on the Democratic ticket who did not attend law school since Carter, way back in 1980. Obviously I knew that Harris, Obama, the Clintons, and Edwards were all lawyers; but I didn’t appreciate that Senators Biden, Bentsen, Kaine, Kerry, Lieberman, and Mondale were all lawyers first, nor did I remember that Ferraro and Dukakis were also lawyers. The closest we’ve had to a non-lawyer on the Democratic ticket since Carter was Gore, but even he attended law school (without graduating).

There was a third primary scalp in a safe Congressional district this week as one of the left-most Representatives, Cori Bush, lost 46-51 in St. Louis to a more moderate Black Democrat, Wesley Bell. Like the Bowman primary earlier, this primary was very expensive due in part to a large inflow of money from AIPAC aimed at defeating one of the more pro-Palestinian members of Congress. Something similar could happen next week here in Minnesota, where Ilhan Omar faces a rematch of a primary race against Don Samuels that she only won 50-48 in 2022.

Reporting has broken within the past hour that, later today, Harris will name Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

I’m ecstatic about this. Having spent most of the pandemic in Minnesota, I saw Walz’s crisis leadership firsthand and I was very impressed. Additionally, as I noted previously I think that his personal story and background is an important counterbalance to Harris, in a way that having a 50-something T14-educated attorney would not have been. I had also been concerned that having Shapiro on the ticket could threaten the Democrats’ ability to win Michigan, with its significant Arab-American vote.

On a more personal level, way back on July 3rd on my Facebook page a friend asked me who I thought Harris should select as her VP if it were to come to that, and while I also mentioned Buttigieg and Shapiro I did end my note with “I also think Gov. Walz of MN would be a great choice.” At that point in time, I had heard exactly nobody suggest Walz as a possibility. What a month he has had.

And honestly, I think going with Walz is good for the future of the Democratic party, because it doesn’t tip the scales. If Harris loses in 2024, nobody is going to think of a 64-year-old Walz as the frontrunner for the 2028 nomination, just as by 2020 we’d already forgotten about TIm Kaine; and if Harris wins in 2024, I don’t think a 68-year-old Walz is going to want to run for the top job in 2032. As such, the shadow competition between Buttigieg, Jeffries, Newsom, Shapiro, Whitmer, and persons unknown to be the future leader of the Democratic party can continue.

In other news, yesterday SCOTUS predictably tossed Missouri’s effort to file an original action against New York to prevent Judge Merchan from sentencing Trump in September. As was true in December 2020 when Texas played a similarly silly political game with the original docket, two of the conservative justices appear to believe that procedurally SCOTUS was obligated to accept the case, but all nine justices appear to agree that Missouri was not entitled to the relief it sought.

From this fan’s perspective, the Paris Olympics are starting to slow down – women’s gymnastics ended this morning, the men’s 100m sprint was yesterday, swimming and men’s golf both ended yesterday – and as such I can start to make a little time for blog updates again.

It’s Monday morning and the stock market is poised to have its third straight significant down day; right now the S&P 500 is down 6.5% since the market opened Thursday. I have been expecting a stock market downturn for some time now, and from a political standpoint have been nervous about the downturn hitting during the heat of the Presidential election campaign; perhaps that particular chicken is indeed coming home to roost now.

Over the weekend, the mandate in U.S. v. Trump (D.C. edition), the federal Jan 6th case, finally returned to Judge Chutkan in the aftermath of the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. U.S. She has asked both sides to submit a proposal this week on future scheduling in the case, with a hearing to be held on August 16th to discuss.

To my knowledge Special Counsel Smith has yet to file his appeal with 11th Circuit in U.S. v. Trump (Florida edition); he must do so by August 27th but he doesn’t have to wait that long. I wanted to highlight an excellent but lengthy article by a member of the SCOTUS appellate bar, Adam Unikowsky, which engages seriously with Cannon’s opinion dismissing the case. His conclusion is that her view of the relevant law is intellectually defensible, but in order for her view to be the correct one then you would have to conclude that vast numbers of other lawmakers and lawyers have made a number of different types of mistakes going back over the past century-and-a-half, all the way back to 1870.

The first two weeks of the Harris campaign continue to have gone about as well as one could imagine. By now she is officially the nominee, thanks to a virtual roll call. She was the only qualified candidate; three other people, none of whom I’ve ever heard of, filed the necessary paperwork but none were able to demonstrate the requisite level of delegate support. Yesterday afternoon Harris pulled ahead of Trump in Nate Silver’s model for the first time, moving up from 38% to 51% over the course of the past week on the strength of recent swing-state polling.

Everyone is expecting that Harris will announce her vice-presidential pick in the next 36 hours. She reportedly had final in-person meetings yesterday with each of Kelly, Shapiro, and Walz. There has also been reporting that one name I hadn’t mentioned previously, Governor Pritzker of Illinois, was part of the official vetting process; personally I think adding a blue-state billionaire to the ticket would be a bad look.

Finally, Trump has announced he is pulling out of the previously announced presidential debate on ABC on September 10th, and challenged Harris to appear on a debate on Fox News in an arena setting on September 4th. Nobody is expecting her to take that bait; she responded that she’ll be showing up on the 10th as originally planned.