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.

The change is monumental, and it came from the top. Kamala Harris is going to run a completely different campaign than Joe Biden would have. Sure, they'll be almost identical on the actual issues, but the style and energy of her campaign is going to be off the charts. Here is just one example -- a press release sent out by Team Harris (emphasis in original) after Donald Trump recently appeared on a friendly news show to do his usual mix of rambling aimlessly and lying shamelessly:

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What a week it has been....

Last Thursday night, America watched Donald Trump accept his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. Republicans had owned the news cycle all week long as they put on their quadrennial extravaganza, topped off with a full hour and a half of Trump rambling on about this, that, and the other. Traditionally, presidential candidates get a "convention bump" from all the free media, so perhaps Team Trump was looking forward to skating for the upcoming week, and just riding out the wave that the convention brought.

To put it mildly, this is not what happened. Instead, President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and handing the reins over to his vice president, Kamala Harris. This launched an absolute whirlwind of activity on the Democratic side, as the party eagerly leapt to fall in line behind Harris. No other plausible Democrat even challenged her for the party's nomination, and in a little more than 24 hours she had enough delegates behind her to sew up the nomination (Harris also raised an eye-popping $100 million in donations during the same period). Since then, it has been Harris who has gotten a ton of free (and mostly positive) media attention. Last night, Biden (recovered from his bout with COVID-19) gave a primetime address from the Oval Office to pass the torch to Harris.

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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.

By selflessly choosing to step aside in favor of his much-younger vice president, Joe Biden made history. His legacy is now secure. Had he continued his run against Donald Trump and lost, many angry Democrats would have blamed Biden for the hubris of assuming that only he could beat Trump. That is no longer the case. Kamala Harris will either sink or swim on her own, and nobody can say Biden selfishly failed to make way for someone else to prosecute the case against Trump.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. She clinched this status yesterday, only a little more than 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced he would be ending his re-election bid. Convention delegates in state after state quickly met and then proudly announced they were unanimously behind Harris. This completely precluded the idea of a "mini-primary" (which many pundits had been hoping for), since no other viable Democrat even came forward to challenge Harris. So with remarkable speed, the Democratic Party has now unified behind Harris as their standard-bearer. Within the same 24-hour period, a jaw-dropping $81 million was donated to her campaign (the total is now well over $100 million). People are already volunteering to work for the campaign by the tens of thousands. Numbers aside, though, Harris has already achieved a remarkable feat -- she has excited voters.

After three weeks of angsty Democratic nail-biting, all of a sudden it is a whole new race. No longer will voters be faced with the same two old men as last time. Now they have someone younger, someone historic, and someone with plenty of energy to make her case to the people. Today Harris held her first rally as the presumptive nominee in Wisconsin. By all accounts it was an exuberant event. The campaign said Harris pulled a bigger audience than they've had for any previous events in the entire campaign (for either Biden or Harris) -- which is a very good sign indeed. Democrats are now energized in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible with Biden still at the top of the ticket. They see hope and possibilities with Harris -- the chance to completely redefine the race as one now filled with enthusiasm (instead of dread).

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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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Thank you, Mister President.

You did the right thing.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

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.

[Note: while writing this column, two more Democrats joined the call for Biden to step down, including a fourth Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown. This puts the total at 37, as we write this.]

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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.]

After diligently watching three nights of the Republican National Convention, I guess it is time to write a full column about it all. Because last night served as a buildup to the introduction of Senator J.D. Vance, Donald Trump's selection for his running mate.

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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.

Across the aisle, Democrats are making news once again, but not in any kind of good way. Representative Adam Schiff -- who is almost certainly going to be California's next senator -- today added his voice to the chorus calling for President Joe Biden to drop his re-election campaign. This brings the total number of congressional Democrats who have done so up to 23 (22 in the House, plus one senator). These are not exactly overwhelming numbers, but Schiff's announcement today was the first one since Trump's attempted assassination on Saturday, which might be a green light for others to now speak up as well.

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So the Republican National Convention got underway yesterday, capped by a cameo appearance by Donald Trump, with bandaged ear. The biggest news from the convention was the announcement that Senator J.D. Vance would be Trump's running mate, but Trump's surprise appearance was definitely the most memorable moment of the night. The other big surprise last night was hearing from a Union boss (Teamsters), which is not exactly a usual thing at a Republican convention (to put it mildly). Is Trump (and now Vance) truly shifting the Republican Party to a more populist outlook, or was it more of a "let's make the Democrats scared" type of stunt? It's impossible to say, really. The Union boss did get the key speaking slot (he was the last big speech of the night) and was allowed to speak for at least 15 minutes (which is a long speech for a convention). The applause was pretty tepid, though, as plenty of GOP delegates are not exactly friendly to Unions in general.

But instead of a play-by-play of yesterday's convention I am going to write primarily about Democrats today. Because there was big news from the other side of the aisle as well.

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