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.