(Although given Swift is from PA the art potential is...interesting, to say the least. Which Dragon Ball girl fits her best I gotta do some Biden Blast art)

Harris basically spent the first 15 minutes trying to break Trump's concentration and get him to start lashing out emotionally. Trump had a brief edge there. Once she got him that was it though, by the time other areas he was strong at or points Harris was sidestepping came up it was too late, Trump was thinking with his mashed potatoes instead of his notes.

That's basically the game here. Get Trump to act stupid and let him hang his own noose, side step the controversial positions or stuff Harris changed her mind on. Trump needed to keep his cool and play to his strengths, sidestep his faults(he did this ok for Abortion, but after that it crumbled) and tear into economy issues and Harris's flipflops, which he did initially (I will say he never sounded 'Old' in the way Biden did), but once that was gone he went full Weird and lost it, just could not get back on track.

It's inherently a bit of a gamble especially since Trump's handlers know the game and he'll know it today once he's sobered up and calmed down. If Trump held on long enough Harris could have been in trouble with a couple issues, Harris is inherently on the backfoot due to such a short campaign season and stuff like having to change her policies to appeal nationally can't be done gradually the way Hillary did it. There's an inherent vulnerability there that someone like Niki Haley or another democrat would utterly maul her on. Trump can too, if, if he keeps his cool. He didn't.

Walz doesn't have the same weaknesses either. Neither does JD, but that's just mostly going to come down to competency and normalness so Walz is walking in with an edge. (If it was Vance vs Harris and Trump vs Walz there might be a problem for the democrats, that configuration doesn't play to their strengths)

(Oh and Harris didn't score a buzzword on the level of "I'm Speaking" or "Will you Shut up Man?". Best we've got for a Dean Scream type Anti-Line is Trump's "I have a concept of a plan", which while dumb isn't 'We beat Medicare' tier. Sad media world, but that's an important thing to note)

General consensus seems to be(among what's left of the Swing Voters and Moderates, not a large group) is that Harris won the debate, showed she was professional and a capable speaker, and Trump made a fool of himself in the back half and lied chronically in the middle. Harris won, that was what people hoped for.

However, Harris staggered a bit the first 15 minutes before Trump got knocked off balance, and she didn't really do a great job of explaining policy on her more controversial issues or directly addressing the flip flopping allegations(which could have been a problem, but by that point Trump was ticked off and lashed out emotionally instead of going in for the kill). Trump lost, but both the moderates and the betting markets suggest it's not a Biden June level loss. The market loss was 4 points instead of 5 and it's recovering quicker, there isn't the same mass panic you saw after that on the Republican side, it's more subdued panic.

Trump lost, but not campaign endingly so. Harris won, but she didn't do the best job of explaining her policies which is the number 1 concern of swing voters. But also Trump didn't capitalize on this, Harris knocked him off his game early and got him panicking so he couldn't counter attack on those points when they came up.

I have my doubts Trump is going to go again, Harris knows how to push his buttons and get him off course before any of her more constroversial opinions come up. Trump can't afford another debate loss. Harris probably wants to avoid dealing with Vance directly though, I think he could bite his tongue long enough to go at it more directly. Leave him to Walz, Walz doesn't have that baggage.

Also it'll shore up polling a bit, added to by the Swift thing. Probably a good idea for them as the Honeymoon period(which a lot of people were starting to write off as non-existent or a conservative lie or something to that extent) did seemingly end in the week leading up to the debate. Harris slumped and her lead shrunk.

It's sort of a game of chicken at this point. Harris doesn't have time to fully pace a slow burn campaign or bury policy flips deep enough back in the past to commit to a classical strategy. Trump's been in the campaign longer and COULD sit out and try to let Harris slump. but her higher baseline and long honeymoon made that too risky. Harris won last night, she knocked Trump off his game before he had to chance to sink his teeth into the flipflopping. Does Trump risk a second run and hope he can hold his cool until she exposes herself or dodges a question or does he sit it out again and wait for this polling spike to fade by October? A loss in an October debate could be disasterous as it's right before the election and there's no time for a bump to cool down. A minor Trump win could shore up numbers at the last second. Sitting it out depends on what Harris does, which has been a mixed bag, but it puts the ball fully in her court to go on the offensive.

Harris would absolutely win in a full length campaign season, but there's too little time for that and that creates weak spots. Weak spots Trump can exploit, but due to his own weak spots going for it is risky and last night Harris won that gamble.

I think Trump's gains with young men are the main area patching him back up and are what's mostly being missed when people ask how it's this close.

While it's true that Younger Generations are getting more Liberal, that trend is only extremely strong among women. It's a weak trend among men(and it really only works if you compare them directly to like, Boomers). Gen X males have been gradually shifting right compared to the Obama years, and Gen Z is just broadly more right wing than Millennials. Gender may legitimately be the biggest divider right now, only rivaled by Urban Rural.

Rural Male Gen Z isn't as left as many people would think.

These gains(plus slow steady gains among Latino blocs, mostly Cubans and old blood Tejano types) are making up for the losses in women voters he suffered in 2022 and 2016 and the loss in black voters thanks to Harris.

That and the right wing is slowly clawing back control of portions of the media. In the Aftermath of Gamergate most of the mainstream internet platforms swung hard to the left and several became fully controlled like Twitter and Tumblr. Thanks in part to several tech bro defections and bot operations places like Facebook slipped in 2020 and now Twitter and CNN follow. That was keeping most of the bitter young men who weren't involved in GG or Republicans prior in line with the democrats. With that control erroding they're starting to slip. We've seen this playout in South Korea before, who's gender political divide is among the nastiest worldwide among democracies.

Canadian, not my fight. Our liberals ain't doing so good

Before anyone starts getting a bit too high off their own supply Harris's polling averages peaked on August 12th. They were stagnant or declining on the 13th and 14th, briefly spiked on the 15th, and that spike was completely undone on the 16th. Today is dropping again. Not big drops, like 1/10th of a point every other day(which day depends on which conglomerates you use), but the growth trend is over.

(Russian Region including both Kursk and Belgorod)

I just heard her speak for the first time today.

Better than Joe, but I don't think she's Obama tier. That man was king of the mic.

One thing worth noting about how much the devil is in the details.

Arizona and Nevada are still leaning pretty solidly R at the moment.(Trump's hispanic margins have steadily gone up since 2016, dropping the wall focus helped a lot). Wisconsin and Michigan are the closest to going D albeit Trump still leans ahead. PA is in the middle and is the most important of the set. (North Carolina is the strongest R of all 7, and Georgia is the Libertarian Ex-Democrat Chase Olivers homestate which combined with Cornell West's strong focus there and the election commission shenanigans means those two are out of play barring some good luck and Roy Cooper being picked. Trump would have won Georgia in 2020 with no third party vote and those have leaned left since. I don't consider them swing states unless Andy or Roy are on board).

In the Rust Belt Focus scenario(They pick Shapiro or Walz and make Pennsylvania the biggest focus as it's the most important state, and manage to finish ahead in all 3, at the cost of Arizona, Nevada, and the Southern States), the final score is 268-270. A win, but a damn tight one.

Except...Nebraska. Nebraska is putting a law up in September to change the way their state distributes to be Winner Take All. If it goes through it would be passed in October, taking away one D vote from Omaha and giving it to R. (Maine has threatened to do the same if Nebraska does, but they wouldn't have it done til after the election if they did, not enough time). That would change the above scenario to a 269-269 decided by the current House...which is Trump run and even if it wasn't it's state by state and more than 26 states are safe red even in a blue wave scenario. Though it would leave the VP pick to the Senate, which is democrat right now, and while it couldn't be Harris due to her current spot anyone else would be came. So there'd be a very real chance of a Trump/Shapiro ticket which would be a dysfunctional nightmare and would have a massive chance of one of the two getting murdered.(I can't find a source if it's the current senate or the newly elected one as they get inaugurated seperately from the president, but if the senate falls which looks likely the Republicans can pick the VP, and while the House is leaning democrat due to it being state by state it would be R regardless).

This ALSO happens in the reverse scenario, where the Dems focus on the Southwestern States with Mark Kelly(taking Arizona and Nevada) AND manage to put on enough pressure to take Wisconsin and Michigan(which are the closest and Kelly while he isn't a winning deal there is still better than nothing), but are unable to win Pennsylvania(which is a lot more red leaning and without Shapiro or Walz is probably going red). 270 - 268 win for Democrats...unless Nebraska changes the law in which case it's a tie, House picks, see above.

The specific configuration of which states go where makes a tie super likely this year especially if Nebraska switches their rules(which isn't unconstitutional, they picked a weird unique system and they can unpick it, the other system is used by 48 states that's all above board. The scummy part is the timing as it would leave Maine without time to change their own system before the election and thus secure an extra R vote without an extra D vote from changing Maine). There are also tie scenarios in the event Nebraska doesn't change, namely the "Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia go blue, everything else goes Red" possibility if someone like Beshear or Cooper is picked ends in a 269-269 tie, as does a couple of scenarios where Maine-State swings Red(which it has come extremely close to more than once), turning narrow Blue wins into ties. And if those scenarios happened alongisde a Nebraska change they'd suddenly be 270-268 clean wins.

It's probably a trap...but beating him there would be a huge huge fucking deal. Trump took the last debate on Biden teams terms and despite that Biden still cocked it up and that made the burn worse(had that debate been on Fox the age issues would have been blamed on their audio mixing and editing and the room being too hot and crap). If Trump loses on his own turf on his rules with his followers watching?

Assuming the new candidate(probably Harris) avoid any major disasters as does Trump, we’ll be returning to the May 2024 status quo of things. Harris is more popular than post-debate Biden, was slightly behind pre-debate Biden, and will probably need a month to get back there(winning the nomination and undoing all the damage from 4 weeks of infighting.)

On the plus side, that’ll drop the hemorrhaging, New Mexico and New Jersey safe, Virginia and Minnesota probably safe. On the downside at this point Georgia and North Carolina are lost, there just isn’t time and the Republicans spent 4 years pouring resources into them.

This is back to the main 5. Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The important factor is that if they lose Pennsylvania, they lose. They can win the other 4 here, but it’s 268-270. Unless they snag something extra like Georgia(unlikely in this scenario), that’s it.

If they win Pennsylvania, they need at least two others in ideal circumstances(Michigan needs to be one of the two and Nevada can’t be one of the two, second one would have to be Wisconsin or Arizona), 3 others in unideal circumstances if Michigan isn’t there and they get Nevada. I should also note several of these scenarios are razor thin (270-268 with Pensylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and 271-267 with Arizona instead) and thus vulnerable to faithless electors. Or worse, if Maine’s statewide went red(which is more likely than Georgia going blue or Virginia going red at this point) the former would be a win and the latter would be a tie. In the tie scenario the House picks the president(so Trump) and the Senate picks the Vice President(so Vance would be ousted) which would be an absolute nightmare and gambling on Trump dying in that situation isn’t worth it.

I note this because even in the base line May scenario Pennsylvania was one of the worse polling one for democrats(Arizona and Wisconsin were the blue edging ones), and Pennsylvania is not a state where the stars are aligning. It was Biden’s home state, Scranton boy, him being off the ticket hurts things there probably more than they help. AND, while it’s true nationwide the post-shooting bump for Trump was relatively minor, Pennsylvania is where the shooting happened and has gotten the largest bump in the polls since, 3 or 4 points. Biden leaving demotivates the base there harder than anywhere else in the county and the Trump shooting re-motivated the base there harder than most.

My call? If they don’t pick Shapiro or Whitmer, it’s over 100%, and even with it’s iffy. Pennsylvania is perhaps the one state where any replacement is going to do worse than Biden even post-debate, and the one state the Trump shooting caused a notable bump. What are the odds it’s also the single most crucial state in this election?