We will admit, right here up front, that we did not think up today's headline ourselves. It came from an extra-snarky press release from the Harris/Walz team. Following Donald Trump's bizarre appearance before the news cameras yesterday, the Harris camp put out a press release titled: "Donald Trump's Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference." The subtitle was: "Split Screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was."

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In a little over two weeks, the Democratic Party has gone from "Biden/Harris" to "Harris/Walz," as their ticket has now been completed with Vice President Kamala Harris's selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. But what's more astonishing than the lightning-fast schedule for all this unfolding is how utterly seamless it has all been. The party quickly unified behind Harris after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his campaign, and from all indications today it looks like the party will further unify around the choice of Walz to round the ticket out. There are no simmering "Hillary Clinton supporters versus Bernie Bros" bad feelings tearing the party apart; instead, all the various factions seem content with the way things have worked out. That is an incredible accomplishment, for Democrats. Both progressives and centrists lined up to endorse Walz after this morning's announcement, with no hesitation.

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It certainly already feels like a lot longer, but we aren't even done with the second week of Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. She hit the ground running in a big way and is already doing a fine job of drawing the distinction between her and the bizarreness of the other side. Meanwhile, Republicans are out there insulting "a bunch of childless cat ladies" as well as pretty much every minority group they can think of. Two weeks in, the race is now being defined between the childless cat ladies on one side and the total weirdos on the other. In other words, Silly Season has begun in a big way.

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Democrats, rather astonishingly, seem to have JD Vance on the ropes already. He's been getting horrible coverage for over a week now, mostly about his rather unique ideas on how childless Americans should be treated as second-class citizens. What seems to be in order right now is a knockout punch. And I've got a doozy of an idea to suggest.

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Last week, we wrote our third Friday Talking Points column in a row that dispensed with our usual format and was solely devoted to angst and calling on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race. This week, we are happy to say, things have changed for the better. And that's putting it mildly!

Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. Joe Biden is now officially (through his own decision) a lame duck. And Democrats by the millions have been astounded that they are now feeling genuine hope and actual enthusiasm about an election that was shaping up to be pretty grim indeed.

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That headline is not technically accurate, since President Joe Biden will doubtlessly deliver some sort of farewell address at the end of his term next January. But history will mark tonight as the one that counted -- the one where Biden informed the American public that he will no longer seek a second term in office and will thus be a lame-duck president for the next six months. Which, again, is not even strictly accurate, since Biden made his initial bombshell announcement last Sunday. But he was sidelined with a case of COVID-19 and wanted to wait until his voice had recovered, so tonight was chosen for Biden's true swansong speech.

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Members of the Republican Party, from Donald Trump on downward, were all caught pretty flat-footed by the announcement yesterday that President Joe Biden was bowing out of the presidential race. The only thing they could agree upon, at least in the initial hours after it happened, was a knee-jerk reaction that is just a monumentally stupid position for them to take (politically-speaking). Because if they got their wish -- if Joe Biden immediately resigned the presidency -- then Donald Trump's chances of winning the race in November would go down even further. But not many of them seem to have realized how self-defeating their calls on Biden to resign truly are.

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The political message of this week was that Republicans are unified behind their presidential nominee Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats are increasingly fractured, unsure of who they even want at the top of their ticket.

The Democratic dam didn't exactly break today, but it is getting a whole lot weaker as time goes by. A third sitting Democratic senator called for President Joe Biden to step aside and make way for someone else to run, in addition to nine more Democratic House members -- the largest one-day total yet. To date, a full 35 congressional Democrats have now done so. Biden is currently quarantining at his home in Delaware (suffering from his third case of COVID-19), and so far shows no signs of heeding the call to turn the reins of the campaign over to anyone else.

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[Program Note: This column was, pretty obviously, written in two segments. I was all set to solely write about the Republican National Convention today, but while I was busy doing that the Washington Post dropped a bombshell report under the headline: "Pelosi Has Told House Democrats That Biden May Soon Be Persuaded To Exit Race." So once again, the GOP convention news has been completely overshadowed by the Biden-on-the-brink news from the Democratic side of politics. Due to this stunning development, I abandoned my plans halfway through the column, but left in what I had written so far.]

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The second night of the Republican National Convention is now over, and once again I am finding it hard to provide any sort of comprehensive review. Ted Cruz spoke. Do you really want to read a rundown of all the odious things he said? Yeah, me neither. I will sum the experience up with a description by one of the New York Times journalists, who notably called him: "The human oil slick Ted Cruz...." That seems about right. Last night seemed to be the "night of the also-rans," with Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley all swallowing their pride and bowing down to the man who beat them in the primaries. Haley has now completed a full flip-flop-flip, since she started out by swearing she wouldn't run if Donald Trump did, then turned around and ran anyway, and now she is back on his side again. Pretty much par for her course, really, as she has always been somewhat of a weather vane, twisting and spinning in the prevailing Republican winds. What else happened? The governor of West Virginia brought his bulldog on stage, to the delight of the crowd, and Trump showed up in person again to watch the show. Some delegates have taken to wearing mock ear bandages, which could be a new MAGA fashion trend. The whole "kinder, gentler convention" idea went straight out the window, as speaker after speaker tossed red Republican meat to the crowd. That's about it for my reactions, really.

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