So the first night of the Democratic National Convention has come and gone. It was a night featuring two memorable swansong speeches. The first came from Hillary Clinton, who in an alternate universe would be finishing up her second term as president right about now. The second came from Joe Biden, who is currently finishing up his first (and only) term as president right now. It was a night for passing torches, in other words.

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Today is the first day of the Democratic National Convention, but I've decided I'm going to report on each day's events the day after they happen, rather than typing furiously into the night with my snap reactions. So today's convention round-up will run tomorrow, and we will likely have to pre-empt the Friday Talking Points column for the final day's review (which of course will be the biggest night, when Kamala Harris gives her acceptance speech).

Instead, I have a few random comments about the news media and how they are currently exhibiting a massive double standard towards Harris and her campaign, in more ways than one.

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For the past few weeks, JD Vance has been mightily trying to paint Tim Walz as having somehow claimed some "stolen valor" for his 24 years of honorable service in the National Guard. This required him to completely ignore the fact that Donald Trump got a deferment for non-existent "bone spurs" to avoid going to Vietnam, as well as Trump's naked contempt for those who do serve in the military. But hey, all that was a long time ago, and people have mostly forgotten how Trump denigrated an authentic war hero (John McCain) in 2015, so Vance just kept trying.

Today, this all comes back into focus after Donald Trump again heaped derision upon not just soldiers, not just war heroes, but the highest military decoration there is. Not only did Trump flub the name of it (it's just the "Medal of Honor") but he once again showed his contempt for those who serve. Here he is speaking about a Republican megadonor, complimenting her on a civilian honor that he himself awarded her (two months after she donated an enormous pile of money):

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Well, that was an hour and a half of my life that I surely would have enjoyed doing just about anything else during... sigh.... Chalk it up as another instance of: "I watch these things so you don't have to," I guess.

Donald Trump gave a marathon press conference today, but didn't actually take a single question until more than 45 minutes into it. He then answered questions for roughly 40 minutes before walking off camera to give someone an autograph.

The presser was held at Trump's New Jersey golf resort, and his aides had set up two long tables on either side of the podium, which were packed with lots of props, mostly food. Two items of things like milk, eggs, and Cheerios (more on that in a moment) were set up, assumably with a price tag on each for what they cost under Trump versus what they cost now. This is all a concerted effort to get Trump to talk about the issues (the economy, today) more, and stop all the whining about the unfairness of the universe quite so much.

Trump didn't even notice the prop tables until 45 minutes in, right before he started taking questions. He seemed astonished at the box of Cheerios, saying he hadn't seen them "in a long time" -- and that he might just take them back to his cottage to "have some fun with them." [Editorial Note: I am not 100 percent sure of the wording of that quote, but he definitely used the term "have fun with" in there somewhere.] Personally, I can't wait to see what the late-night comedians do with that line, but perhaps the presser was so late in the day that the jokes might have to wait until Monday.

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A program note is necessary, to begin with here. I almost wasn't going to even bother with the whole "Electoral Math" series this year, because it would have been so depressing to try to cheer President Joe Biden's chances on while watching Trump flip state after state. So up until very recently, I hadn't even started collecting the data or doing the charts or anything.

Of course, that all changed three weeks ago.

So welcome back to our Electoral Math column series again! This marks the fifth presidential election we will have provided this service, I should mention. This year, for obvious reasons, we are only going to track the data from late July onwards. Our charts will begin two days after Joe Biden exited the race, or Tuesday, July 23rd. This was the point where Donald Trump hit his maximum in state-level polling and things looked the grimmest for the Democrats. But, of course, that would all soon begin to turn around....

Because now the race is Vice President Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump, and everything has changed as a result.

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Two more states -- Missouri and Arizona -- have now certified the signatures required to place abortion rights on their ballots in November. This brings the total for this election cycle up to eight states, although the possibility of the ballot measures having a meaningful impact on the other races on the ballot realistically only exists in three of them. So far, abortion rights have an unbroken 7-0 record of winning, even in some very red states, so it will be interesting to see if that continues or not. But beyond electoral geekiness, if any of them win it will be a victory for women's rights and freedom over government interference in the most personal of medical decisions.

Democrats, of course, are optimistic. Up until Roe was tossed out by the Supreme Court, abortion ballot measures were exclusively put on ballots by the forced-birth side of the issue. More and more onerous (and medically-unnecessary) hurdles were enacted to discourage women from exercising their rights, and "trigger bans" were voted on even with Roe in place, just to be ready for the moment it was overturned. That was then... but this is now. Now, abortion rights are being placed on the ballot mostly by groups who want to either enshrine the right into the state's constitution or overturn Draconian state laws that are now in place. And in the few cases where the forced-birth side has placed ballot measures before the voters that would remove abortion rights, they have lost (Kansas and Kentucky, most notably). The tide has turned, obviously.

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The past three weeks have been filled with optimism -- for obvious reasons -- so I thought I'd write a truly optimistic column today. Democrats are now feeling very enthusiastic about the chances for victory in November, and the polls are starting to back this feeling up. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are now leading by four points in each of three critical battleground states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) according to one prominent poll, and the national polling has also taken a turn for the better, with Harris beating Trump regularly (by a margin of around three points, give or take). So I'm just going to assume for the sake of argument here that Harris goes on to win the presidential election (yes, I realize this is an enormous assumption to make, but as I said I'm in a rather optimistic mood). My question is whether such a victory can not only defeat Donald Trump but also Trumpism itself.

If Harris does win, it will be a triumph of cheerful good feelings over gloom and doom. That's important, because even Joe Biden's win over Trump in 2020 didn't have this exact dynamic working for it. If Harris wins, it will represent a huge mood shift in the country at large, to put this another way. But will that be enough for the fever in the Republican Party to break?

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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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Donald Trump seems to be getting a little nervous. He has had to watch, for the past three weeks, while the political media paid a whole lot more attention to Kamala Harris (and now Tim Walz) than they were paying to him and his rather unimpressive running mate, JD Vance. And it wasn't just that his opponents were getting all the press, it was that they were getting good press. Trump, meanwhile, had planned on coasting and taking it easy for a few weeks after the Republican National Convention.

Instead, Trump is now faced with Harris and Walz barnstorming the battleground states all week long, while Trump has a single rally scheduled in... Montana? No wonder the Democrats are getting better press! And it's beginning to get under Trump's skin. Today, he hastily threw together a press conference, because he knew that would at least get his campaign some media coverage. The only truly newsworthy thing that emerged from it (Trump lying his face off about this, that, and the other doesn't count) was when he announced that he will, after all, be showing up for the scheduled presidential candidate debate on ABC next month. Earlier, he had backed out of the debate, perhaps confident that he wouldn't even need to bother. Now, he's proposing two more debates, in addition to the ABC event. He now knows he needs the free television coverage, after watching the debut of Harris and Walz for the past few weeks. And right around the corner is the weeklong coverage the Democratic National Convention will generate.

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You may not have seen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in action yet. This is understandable, since it was only yesterday that he was named to the Democratic ticket as the vice-presidential nominee. But even if you haven't seen any clips of him yet or watched that blowout Philadelphia rally yesterday, don't worry -- you already know him.

You've already seen him dozens (if not hundreds) of times. He is straight from "Central Casting," and he has been portrayed by many a character actor in many a show or movie, for many a decade. He is the dad in pretty much every sitcom ever set in the Midwest. He is Coach, urging the team on to victory but still championing sportsmanship. He is the kindly school principal. Or maybe the beloved mayor. Or maybe he sells appliances or shoes or used cars or tractor parts. Whatever actual profession is written into the script for him, he is always essentially the same guy: a decent, hardworking, upstanding American. A role model others look up to. A small-town gem. He's Richie Cunningham's dad, to put this another way.

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