Before I begin, a personal note is necessary. I am somewhat distracted today so this may be a shorter and more disjointed column than the last two. I say this because somewhere between one-third and one-half of the county I live in is currently on fire. Ashes are raining down outside my window, and while I am not personally at risk yet, plenty of others I know are -- they've been evacuated and have no way of knowing if their homes have already burnt to the ground or not. Perhaps such an apocalyptic setting is fitting, as I watch and write about the most important election of my lifetime, who knows?

That "most important election" line is often used -- I've heard it for almost every election I've ever participated in, in fact. But this time the current magnitude of importance actually does live up to the dire billing. This is indeed the most important election for American democracy that I think I've ever seen. Donald Trump is not like any other Republican presidential candidate anyone has ever seen. Back in the 1980s, the election of Ronald Reagan gave rise to very real fears that World War III would soon be right around the corner. These fears were not unjustified (given his anti-communist history), and a bigger existential threat to the country is impossible to imagine. But the fears ultimately proved to be groundless. With Trump, however, the enemy is not without but within. Trump has destroyed so many of the norms of American politics that facing four more years of his misrule would put the future of the American experiment in democracy in real danger.

This message was echoed last night from many of the speakers, most notably from Trump's predecessor Barack Obama. Presidential historians are saying Obama's speech was unprecedented -- never has a former president directly attacked the president who replaced him in such direct language before. But I'm getting ahead of myself, here.

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POSSIBLE EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION:

As I write this, something like a third to half of my county is on fire. We had a lightning storm a few days back -- an incredibly rare event in California -- and it sparked off several wildfires, which have been burning and growing ever since. The fire is "zero percent contained" at the moment.

We are personally in a very safe zone, so we are in no danger at all (as of now). The fire is at least 10 miles away from us, and it would have to burn its way through an entire large town/small city before it got to us in any way. So while I have friends who have already evacuated (and possibly have already lost their homes), we are not in such danger yet, and most likely will not be at all.

However, I cannot guarantee that my ISP -- a local small business -- will not be affected in the next 48-72 hours. Or the wires they use to connect to the rest of the world, for that matter. So there is a chance that this site could suddenly go dark at any moment.

This is just to warn everyone of the possibility.

I will update the situation as it changes, but just wanted to give everyone a heads-up.

Stay safe everyone, and thank your local firefighters for the hard work they do.

-CW

The second night of the Democratic National Convention had an unexpected surprise, because the part that is usually the most boring to watch turned out to be the most interesting adaptation of the new technological mode we've all been forced into. Or, more simply: the roll call was phenomenal!

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I have to admit, I viewed the first night of the Democratic National Convention with some sadness. The sadness was personal, because this is the first time since Barack Obama's first election that I did not attend the convention in person. Seeing for myself how conventions are run in 2012 and 2016 was certainly a fantastic experience because being in the same room is a whole lot different than watching it on television. So I missed that aspect of it, as did everyone else who has ever had the chance to attend a national party convention.

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I realize that the last time I wrote one of these Electoral Math columns, I said I would only be doing them every three weeks for a while to come. However, I hadn't checked the political calendar closely enough, because doing so would have put the column right between the two parties' conventions, next Monday. Instead, I thought it would be more valuable to do one before both conventions, as a baseline, and then revisit the issue afterwards to see if either candidate (or both) got the traditional "convention bounce" in the polls. Because it's only been a couple of weeks, though, this is going to be a somewhat-abbreviated column, with quicker takes on the data.

Let's get right to the new charts, to begin with. As always, all of our polling data comes from the incomparable Electoral-Vote.com site, which we urge everyone to keep a close eye on for the next few months. As usual, our first chart shows the Electoral Vote (EV) percentage that we'd see if all the polls were correct and the election were held today. If the blue is above the 50 percent mark, Biden leads. If there's more red than blue (the red area goes below the 50 percent mark), then Trump is in the lead.

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

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The check is not in the mail; the mail is being placed in check. That's an amusing way to put a very serious and rather existential threat to American democracy which is now playing out before our very eyes. President Donald Trump is so scared that he's going to lose the upcoming election that he is exploring any possible way he can cheat, right out in front of the public where everyone can see it. Rarely has Republican voter suppression been this blatant and this shameless, in fact, and that's saying quite a lot.

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In the midst of political divisions deeper and wider than ever before, we just got an unexpected bit of bipartisanship from an extremely unexpected source -- former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In the same spirit, I would like to offer up my words of praise for her taking a far different tack from pretty much the entire Republican Party on the nomination of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate.

Rather than descend into name-calling (as the president immediately did, calling Harris "nasty," among other things) or into outright conspiracy theory (get ready for the return of the birther movement, even though Harris was born in Oakland, California), Palin instead took the high road, sincerely welcoming Harris into the very exclusive club of women vice-presidential candidates.

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Today's column is written in snap response to the introductory speeches just given by Joe Biden and his newly-named running mate Kamala Harris. I just finished watching them, and I wanted to share my initial reactions.

However, as I am sometimes wont to do, I am going to begin with a somewhat-related but entirely tangential discussion on grammar, before I get to my thoughts on the speeches. Partly, this is to let my first impressions percolate for a bit, but mostly this is because there are a few editorial nits I have been feeling the need to pick recently. If this sort of thing doesn't interest you, I would advise just skipping forward a few paragraphs and ignoring my pedantry. [I will even aid this by providing subheadings to allow for a quick jump to be more easily made.]

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The waiting game is over. Joe Biden announced today that Senator Kamala Harris will be his running mate. For better or for worse, the 2020 Democratic ticket is set. The Biden-Harris team will take on Trump-Pence (assuming Pence isn't replaced in some surprise last-minute move).

How will this affect the dynamics of the race? Well, at this point, that's really anyone's guess. The conventional wisdom says that vice presidential candidates rarely (if ever) move the needle all that much, although there have been exceptions to this rule of thumb. It can be argued that John McCain's "maverick" pick of Sarah Palin harmed his chances in the end, because many voters simply could not see her as presidential material (especially after Tina Fey's brutal portrayal of her on Saturday Night Live). But even that's debatable. For the most part, the effects of naming this person or that as running mate largely prove to be marginal, at best.

Biden's pick will be seen as historic, but he already pretty much guaranteed this by limiting his choices only to women. Senator Kamala Harris is now only the third woman ever named as a running mate in a presidential contest, after Geraldine Ferraro and the aforementioned Sarah Palin. Harris is now also the first African-American woman to be elevated to a national ticket, and only the second African-American to make it onto a national presidential ticket in American history. That is groundbreaking.

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I have to admit up front that I'm not a real big fan of the "veepstakes" guessing game. It all usually turns out to be pointless in the end, although it does give the pundits something to feverishly write about in the run-up to the conventions, I suppose. I am [checks thermometer] not currently feverish, but I suppose I'll write one article today about the subject that is consuming so many right now. I realize I should really be writing about the breakdown in the pandemic relief bill negotiations (while apologizing for being so optimistic last Wednesday, when I confidently predicted that we'd certainly have a deal by today... whoops!); but hey, it's Monday and I feel lazy, so as our president says: "it is what it is."

That was not exactly a rousing start to a column, I will freely admit. We'll see if it gets any better as we go along. I am going to limit myself (mostly for reasons of space) to only taking an extended look at the top three that others have identified as being the frontrunners for the job of sharing the ticket with Joe Biden: Kamala Harris, Susan Rice, and Elizabeth Warren. Let's take them one by one, in alphabetical order.

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