So Harris was leading in the polls by about 2 on a nationwide basis this morning, then she went and chose a Democrat the base really likes for her VP candidate. He's especially liked out in flyover country (unless you live there, in which case it's the heartland). And even Trump's pollster has her tied in Pennsylvania, while Trump is busy alienating Republicans in Georgia. She has all kinds of choices about what strategy to pursue now, in terms of states in play.

And to add to the sense of mortal terror in Trump: the next few weeks are going to be just this side of a Democratic infomercial in the press (barring WW III). Several days about the VP pick, then the convention; all the potential to attract voters that the Republicans pissed away, and without anyone needing to be shot at by a Republican.

This is not the race we were looking at three weeks ago.

I suspect the internal polling of the various campaigns has been saying this for a while, but Harris is beating Trump fairly solidly. Within the margin of error, she's ahead in enough states to win the election; outside the margin of error no one has enough for that, though she's ahead by five electoral votes. And with Biden out, Democratic dead enders are coming home; Kennedy is now a reliable 1-3 point drain on Trump in all of the polls (though getting on ballots is very far from certain for him).

Adding to Trump's grief is that Haley Republicans are organizing to support Harris. They've got some demands about her supporting Israel and Capitalism; but if they're this far along then even if they don't finally support her, they'll probably refuse to vote for Trump.

On the other side, we've got some pro-Palestinian groups who are apparently looking to get the Palestinians back home ethnically cleansed and/or killed by supporting Trump and Netanyahu. Granted that this isn't actually written out on their mission statements; but like the Anti-war Democrats ('68), the Naderites ('00), and the Berners ('16); they want to get that traitorous criminal Republican elected come hell or high water if every single one of their politically untenable demands aren't met. That'll show those Democrats. They've got the full (if quiet) backing of the GOP, of course; so they won't run out of funds too early. Eh, maybe this time someone will talk them down before they get their own kin destroyed by Israel; or Trump can keep doing such a miserable job that they won't matter at all. We'll see.

I still don't quite understand it, the sudden enthusiasm for Harris who a month ago was basically a political blank slate shows that about 99% of the dislike for Biden was personal to Biden. I don't quite grok the level of disdain for him, he's been more than competent as president. Besides the fact that he's old (so is Trump) and the fantastical "Biden Crime Family" smears against him, what exactly was the problem? It's not like he differs significantly from Harris on political positions. And Harris was there the entire time. If you really didn't like the way the country was going under Biden, shouldn't Harris share the blame? It's like the perfect natural experiment proving that everything was about image.

Trump's meltdown has been hilarious, though.

Re: the pro-Palestine protesters, from their point of view there's no real difference between their relatives getting killed under Biden/Harris and getting killed under Trump, they're just as dead either way. I suspect they know deep down that there isn't much the US could do to stop Netanyahu doing ethnic cleansing short of shooting him in the head, at best he'd just do it slower and uglier without American bombs. So now everybody has to live with their nihilism.

I give those who are losing family and friends a bit more leeway than the usual purist lefties who keep letting perfect be the enemy of good. That kind of behaviour makes me want to scream. When the fascists throw you all in prison together, are you going to fight over whose fault it was for not being a good enough ally?

I think it's a bit more of an obvious choice for the Palestinian protesters than that. Biden has little effective power over Netanyahu right now, and doesn't do a good job of reigning him in. Fine. At least he's trying. Trump has a known economic incentive to push Netanyahu to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, and would never dream of not promoting that specific policy. The two are not the same.

I've heard a couple pro-Palestine protesters argue that because Trump is so corrupt and self-serving, they could bribe him to stop Netanyahu from levelling Gaza. This is next level wishful thinking that is probably borne of desperation.

The ones who aren't this detached from reality are playing chicken with the Democratic Party.

Ok, the protestors basically played nice. No story for anyone but the garbage media, no one cared, move on. The convention was a big hit, as such things go; and there's a noticeable bounce (she's almost 4 points up nationwide, which is standup win territory for the Democrats despite the Republican College). And Trump has completely pissed away his opportunity to define her before she could do it, and define him to boot.

So on we go. Trump is melting down, looks like crap, is reading from exactly the wrong script of lies, has no ground game, is behind in donations and cash on hand, and throwing campaign money away hand over fist to stay out of prison. The campaign may right itself sooner or later, but now it's got a vastly harder task ahead of it to put Trump within overt criminal election fraud range of stealing power.

And yes, there's plan A: keep the votes from being certified so the election gets thrown to the majority Republican House. But that's not as easy as it might look. Because for all that his little minions are infesting some vote counting offices in swing states to subvert the count; the state governors can simply ignore them and sign the attestation of the vote anyway. Funny thing; the way the law was written after Trump's first coup, Governors don't have to care if all the statewide votes are officially certified to do that. And the states he needs to corrupt to have a prayer are not generally in the hands of MAGAt governors.

The Washington Post's polls have all the swing states tied within the margin of error (+/- 3), have you got aggregate numbers you can share? I'm feeling more optimistic now, but it still looks close. I've just sent in a request for my Massachusetts absentee ballot, super early, given the vagaries of the postal system. I last lived in the US 20 years ago, and my district is so reliably blue that there aren't even any competitive down-ballot races. (I'll leave the primaries to the people who actually live there, they don't need me weighing in on their local issues.) All I'm doing is adding to Harris's popular vote count, but this is the only meaningful election I get to vote in anymore, so I'm doing it.

Is there any chance that Trump's merry band of cheaters can ninja the ballot certification over the governors and into the hands of the Supreme Court?

To be fair, that's what make a state a swing state to begin with.

This isn't a bad aggregator site. And while it's hard to find from the first page, the have an amusing 'run the election 1000 times and see how often each candidate won' page here.

And of course we can't forget the grand old site: electoral-vote.com. One of the first sites I look at ever day; currently left leaning, but it took the Republicans a long time to push them there.

And just for funsies: this site does some interesting news and media analysis. They lean left by inclination, though not so far that they fall over or corrupt their analysis pieces.

Wouldn't it be nice if Trump and his entire campaign pissing on America's war dead, with malice aforethought, was likely to hurt him more than his saying that wind power is killing bacon consumption?

So Trump won't be in prison on election day. It's theoretically possible that his case in New York could be thrown out based on the lawless corruption of his Supreme Court appointees; though it's equally theoretically possible that on the day of the hearing, he'll be cut almost in half by a broken helicopter blade and bleed out on the street outside (making it the 2nd time that would have happened in Manhattan). Either way, that decision will be rendered November 12. The sentencing is now scheduled for Tuesday, November 26.

Best guess? Judge Merchan intends to drop the boom on him, but is worried this would help him during the election; so he'll do it after it's over. Again, either way we will see.

Nate Silver, who was once an independent political pundit that specialized in polls but now works for a pro-Trump platform, has announced that Trump is winning. Indeed, Silver gives Trump the same odds of winning now that he's down three points nationwide that he did when he was up three points nationwide.

Which is everything worth saying about that the methodology of that announcement.

Ok, my views are what they are: but as painful as it is to watch, Trump is very simply getting his ass kicked tonight by Harris. He's taking every bait, looking very weak, whining like a baby; heck, he's citing Victor Orban as a character witness. Covering that up and spinning it different is going to be a very tall order for the corporate media in the tank for him.

Probably the biggest tell: the Trump campaign shut down all communications with the press except for the official press release claiming that he won. This was probably what most of the folks in that campaign were dreading. But it's done, and it's pretty safe to bet it won't be repeated.

Oh, and shortly after the debate Taylor Swift said she's voting for Harris/Walz (and praised both); while referencing the debate and denouncing Trumps previous AI generated lie that she had endorsed him. So yeah, not Trump's bestest night ever.

I only saw clips, but it looked like he melted down like Chernobyl. Immigrants eating cats?? Only way he could look crazier is by throwing out a bunch of n-words.