Last night was the Harris-Trump debate, moderated by ABC News with no audience and with the candidates’ microphones generally muted when it wasn’t their turn to speak, conditions that had been negotiated by the Biden and Trump campaigns back in May.

The general consensus, at least outside MAGA world, is that Harris demolished Trump. Headlines today from relatively nonpartisan media outlets include “How Harris Roped a Dope” (David Frum for The Atlantic), “Kamala Harris Broke Donald Trump” (Peter Wehner for The Atlantic, including the line “I’ve never seen a candidate execute a debate strategy as well as Harris did”), “The Narcissist Lost the Debate” (Will Saletan for The Bulwark), “The Beginning of the End for Trump” (Bill Kristol for The Bulwark), “It Was Donald Trump’s Night–In the Worst Possible Way” (Jeff Greenfield for Politico), and “Harris Won the Debate–And It Wasn’t Close” (unbylined in Politico). At a minimum, this debate was as good for Harris as June’s debate was bad for Biden. Naturally Trump claims that he won (bigly, one presumes).

To their credit (but to the consternation of many right-wing pundits), the ABC moderators actually did some real-time fact-checking of Trump on a handful of occasions; not that Trump acknowledged his errors. The Washington Post fact-check of the debate is very lengthy, and predominantly indicts Trump rather than Harris. Many of the lies he told last night are golden oldies in the Trump lexicon, but among the newer and also most ludicrous things Trump said last night was to repeat a completely unfounded right-wing rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio have been eating neighborhood cats and dogs. Trump also accused Walz, without any support, of advocating ninth-month abortions and “execution after birth”. Gerald Ford must be turning in his grave about the things Trump gets away with saying at a debate.

What a difference two months has made, and it remains difficult to imagine how these two months could have gone any better for the Democrats: a selfless decision by Biden to fall on his sword; a painless transition to Harris; a surprise VP pick that appears to have been well-received; a decided uptick in the level of optimism and hope among Democratic supporters; an excellent convention and acceptance speech; very strong fundraising; a successful effort to rebrand an incumbent Vice-President as the change candidate; and now an excellent debate performance against the most experienced Presidential debater of all time. Even so, nobody is under any illusion that the election will be anything but close.

Oh – and maybe ten minutes after the end of the debate, Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Harris, responding to Trump having recently shared AI-generated images ostensibly showing that the pop singer was endorsing Trump. Hundreds of thousands of people have already clicked on Swift’s link to a national voter registration site in the wake of her endorsement.

Yesterday was also the last day of primary elections for this cycle, with three states finally selecting their Congressional candidates. One of yesterday’s Democratic primary victors, Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride, is expected to become the first openly transgender House member this fall, in a seat that is open because the incumbent Democrat is running to replace retiring Democratic Senator Tom Carper.

In other electoral news, this week there were State Supreme Court decisions in both Michigan and North Carolina in regards to RFK Jr.’s effort to remove his name from the ballot, now that he has ended his campaign and endorsed Trump. He will no longer be on the North Carolina ballot, but he will still be on it in Michigan.

Finally, DJT stock was down 17% in early trading today after last night’s debate, but only closed down 10% by day’s end, in the mid-$16s.

It’s been a moderately eventful week, as we are now only 2 days away from the (first? only?) Harris-Trump debate.

We’d heard little from excommunicated Republican Liz Cheney in recent months; whereas other Republicans, including her fellow Jan 6th Committee member Adam Kinzinger, had participated in the DNC, she did not but was apparently keeping her powder dry for later use. This week she gave a speech in North Carolina in which she stated she would be voting for Harris. Two days later her father, the now-83-year-old former Vice President, released a statement that he too would be voting for Harris. (I’d like to imagine 2008 Dick Cheney’s reaction to being told that, 16 years later, he would be endorsing for President a black woman Democrat who was currently serving as District Attorney of San Francisco.) Liz Cheney also endorsed Rep. Colin Allred in his Senate race in Texas against Ted Cruz.

Three judicial developments this week, which I’ll address in ascending order of importance.

First: Trump made an appearance in court at the 2nd Circuit oral arguments for his appeal of the Carroll II verdict from May 2023, the $5 million defamation judgment against Trump (as opposed to the more recent, and larger, Carroll I defamation judgment). The appellate ruling is not expected to occur before the election, and news reports suggest the hearing didn’t go particularly well for Trump.

Second: Judge Chutkan held a hearing to discuss next steps in U.S. vs. Trump (D.C. edition). She was unsympathetic to Trump’s lawyers’ arguments that the existence of the 2024 Presidential campaign was relevant to the timing of how things should proceed in this trial. At the same time, she observed that it would be futile to attempt to schedule a trial date, given that there will almost certainly be a second interlocutory appeal no matter how she were to rule regarding the impact of Trump vs. U.S. on this case. In the end she has set a deadline of September 26th for the filing of the government’s brief on the presidential immunity issue, with Trump’s reply brief due October 17th. However, some portions of those briefs may be filed under seal, so it is unclear whether the public portions of those briefs will contain anything newsworthy. Chutkan also noted that Judge Cannon’s ruling that Special Counsel Smith wasn’t properly appointed isn’t relevant to this case at this time, since there is binding precedent in the D.C. Circuit that is contrary to Cannon’s ruling down in the 11th Circuit.

Third: Somewhat surprisingly, Judge Merchan decided to take the temperature down a notch during the election campaign. His ruling on Trump’s post-trial motion to vacate the guilty verdicts in New York vs. Trump in light of Trump v. U.S., previously scheduled for this week, has now been delayed until November 12th. If Trump still needs to be sentenced after Merchan issues that ruling, the sentencing has been rescheduled to November 26th.

Turning back to politics… This week there were two particularly interesting Senate polls, with mixed results. Bad news for the Democrats came from Montana, where a poll shows three-term Senator Tester trailing Tim Sheehy 45-51 (with the same poll showing Trump comfortably ahead of Harris 56-41). On the other hand there was a glimmer of hope for Democrats from a poll in Florida, where Debbie Mucarsel-Powell only trails Senator Scott 45-46 (with Trump ahead 50-45).

The latest Senate poll in Texas was less hopeful for the Democrats, showing Allred behind Cruz 44-48 (with Trump ahead 50-45), while one in Ohio showed Senator Brown holding on at 46-44 over Bernie Moreno (with Trump ahead 53-43). There was however an intriguing poll from Nebraska last week, which once again showed Harris ahead of Trump in the 2nd district, 47-42. This poll also showed 2nd district Representative Bacon significantly behind his Democratic challenger, Tony Vargas, 46-40. It also showed a surprisingly strong statewide performance by Independent candidate Dan Osborn in his race against incumbent Republican Senator Fischer (a race the Democrats are sitting out), with Fischer only ahead 39-38. Osborn, a veteran and union leader in his late 40s who was a registered Democrat until 2016, has no prior political experience.

Turning back to the campaign itself: Many observers have noted this week that Trump’s stump speeches are becoming increasingly unhinged, even by his standards. In addition to routinely talking about non-existent “post-birth abortions”, Trump has now started claiming inaccurately that schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries on trans youths. He also attracted a lot of ire this week for responding to a question about how he would address voters’ concerns about the high cost of child care with a rambling response that focused on his tariff plans. I don’t quite understand why this man is taken seriously as a candidate for President.

Finally, with Trump’s lock-up period for his DJT stock due to expire later this month, it is worth noting that DJT’s stock price has been steadily declining over the last several weeks. After briefly spiking over $40 in the immediate wake of the assassination attempt, the stock closed this week at a new post-merger low of around $17.

It’s Labor Day today.

The DNC ended a week and a half ago now, and things have been fairly quiet in recent days on the political front. It is hard to imagine that the DNC could have gone better for Harris than it did, but yet she does not appear to have benefited from a post-convention polling bump. Perhaps that reflects the fact that there are fewer swayable voters now than in past generations. As a consequence, Silver’s model currently has Harris’ chances down to 44%, but I think to some extent that reflects a methodological belief that there ought to be a post-convention bump, and hence the absence of such a bump is interpreted as a bearish sign for Harris.

The first, and as of yet only, Harris-Trump debate is now 8 days away. Trump seemingly flirted with dropping out of the debate before recommitting to it. We shall see what happens on the debate stage. Notably, Harris will be meeting Trump in person for the first time at the debate.

On the day after the DNC ended, mercurial independent candidate RFK Jr. dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. While at times earlier this year he was polling in the low to mid teens, that was largely seen as a “pox on both your houses” vote; after Biden’s replacement by Harris, RFK’s support had dwindled down to the low to mid single digits. And with his support having been ideologically diffuse, most observers feel like his withdrawal from the race is unlikely to matter much. There may be some states where his name remains on the ballot, in fact, given the lateness of his decision to leave.

Developments on the legal front have been somewhat more interesting in recent days, although we appear to be rapidly reaching the end of the “Trump’s legal jeopardy” phase of the 2024 election.

First, Special Counsel Smith had secretly empaneled a new grand jury which has now returned a superseding indictment in U.S. v. Trump (D.C. edition). Contrary to the guess of some pundits, the superseding indictment has not been expanded to include other potential defendants. Instead, the new version of the indictment removes all references to conduct that clearly represents “official acts” under the SCOTUS decision in Trump v. U.S., such as Trump’s efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as Acting Attorney General in December 2020; indeed, Clark is no longer an unindicted co-conspirator in the revised indictment. The new version still charges Trump with the same four felonies, but does so in a way that Smith believes ought to survive judicial scrutiny in light of Trump v. U.S. Judge Chutkan will hold a hearing in three days’ time, but it is conceivable that said hearing will be the last pre-election activity in this case.

Second, Smith has also recently filed his appeal with the 11th Circuit in U.S. vs. Trump (Florida edition), arguing that Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the case (on the grounds that Smith was improperly appointed) was contrary to binding SCOTUS precedent in U.S. v. Nixon, in addition to being an incorrect reading of existing law. Trump’s reply brief will be due later in September.

Finally, we are now two weeks away from when Judge Merchan had previously indicated he would rule on Trump’s post-trial motion to set aside the verdict in New York v. Trump in light of the SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. U.S., with sentencing to follow two days later if it remains necessary. There is a wide consensus that even if Merchan does sentence Trump to jail time, that sentence will be stayed pending appeal.

With the Georgia case on hold due to interlocutory appeal, it now appears that between September 18th and the election there may be no further developments of any sort in Trump’s legal woes, thus clarifying that one of the many issues on the ballot this fall is whether or not Trump’s actions around the 2020 election and his transition away from the White House will continue to be the subject of legal scrutiny.