Joe's Subliminal Message At The DNC

I keep saying that the election cycle this year is closest to 1972, and another parallel is Joe's big farewell speech, which was pushed back almost to midnight Eastern time, reminiscent of McGovern in 1972:

The convention, which has been described as "a disastrous start to the general election campaign", . . . with sessions beginning in the early evening and lasting until sunrise the next morning. . . . A protracted vice presidential nominating process delayed McGovern's acceptance speech (which he considered "the best speech of his life") until 2:48 a.m.—after most television viewers had gone to bed.

Last night,

As the speakers leading up to Biden on the schedule began dragging on and on, speculation swirled about how and why the president had been shoved aside to speak when many Americans would already be asleep.

“This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them — do they have to cut him out of prime time?” one longtime Biden aide texted Axios reporter Alex Thompson.

But I would dispute the claim that Joe "literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them". As things have shaken out, 2024 has had two entirely separate general election campaigns, the first one being Joe's up to his withdrawal from the race on July 21, the second with the designation of Kamala as the new candidate in the following days. One thing the conventional commentators have gotten wrong is that Kamala's campaign wil be "short" and a "sprint".

No, it will be the traditional general election presidential campaign that extends from the summer nominating conventions to early November. So what was all that business that began a year ago with the Trump indictments and trials and ended with Joe's brain freezes, the debate debacle, and Trump surviving an assassination attempt?

That was a reprise, a do-over of the 2020 election, and in fact a de facto demonstration that the 2020 election was "stolen". Sometime around late spring, the conventional commentators began to pronounce that the electorate had decided they'd been better off under Trump than under Biden, although the polls hadn't changed much, with Trump leading within the margin of error, for many months. Over the month of June, there was rising public concern over Joe's mental state, driven by his public performance in Europe and brain freezes back home, culminating in the June 27 debate.

However, again, there was no change in the polls, except that there seems to have been a growing subliminal recognition among the elites that any success they'd had in 2020 and afterward in concealing Joe's actual condition had come to an end. In effect, they acknowledged that Trump had won the 2020 election, and in fact the business of January 6, 2021 wasn't all that far fetched.

Again, with no change in the polls, Obama and Pelosi made a final push for Joe to withdraw, and Pelosi, 84 years old, has been taking credit over the last few weeks for the outcome. Her age alone should put her judgment in this matter in question, but there's more to be said about this in a separate post. On one hand, though, this amounted to a much-belated concession of the 2020 election, a tacit acknolwedgement that it had been rigged by Joe's basement campaign, which had successfully concealed his actual condition -- but that doesn't fix the Democrat decisions that led up to either the 2020 or 2024 election.

Nevertheless, the circumstances of Joe's speech last night, a de facto 2020 concession speech as well as a not-so-tacit humiliation at the hands of Democrat stalwarts, were an indication that Joe was never in control; Pelosi had created him, and Pelosi at long last destroyed him, which is closer to the real problem.

But Joe's de facto concession speech sinply kicks off the second 2024 presidential campaign, under a Democrat party that, as it's periodically done, has reverted to the party of 1972, which the Wikipedia entry linked above characterizwd as

Previously excluded political activists gained influence at the expense of elected officials and traditional core Democratic constituencies such as organized labor.

Joe's concession speech is the start of a second, entirely separate presidential campaign.

Kamala Hammered?

As I noted yesterday, although the Trump campaign focused attention early Sunday on the possibility that Kamala is impaired at many of her public events, the suggestion isn't new. I did a web search on "Kamala drunk" this morning, and I came up with the image above on Amazon, which was advertising this as just the tote bag you might want for this past July 4th. In fact, this could maybe make the right ladies look hip on the beach out in the Hamptons.

The story hasn't hit all the alt aggregtators yet, but this one at Hot Air draws a reasonble inference:

Is Kamala drunk most of the time? If you watch her talk with that possibility in mind, so much makes sense all of a sudden. All those word salads, the occasional slurring, the inappropriate laughs... These are all tells that her brain is fogged by something, and it may not be stupidity.

Newsweek is already on the case:

As Donald Trump grapples to combat the surge of support for Kamala Harris with a barrage of personal attacks against her, his campaign team appear to be rolling out a new line this week—by alleging that his Democratic rival has a "drinking problem."

No evidence has been offered up to support the allegations, which are being pushed by Trump's allies across social media. Trump campaign insider James Blair is thought to be the first person who made the unsubstantiated claims, with a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, and other pro-Trump accounts subsequently repeated the allegations. Newsweek has contacted representatives for both Trump and Harris by email seeking a response to Blair's comments.

I pointed out yesterday that James Blair and others embedded tweets from July and earlier this month that pointed out the potential problem, and the Kamala Hammered tote has apparently been on Amazon for a couple of months, so the rumors didn't originate with the Trump campaign. I discovered a new version that's apparently been put out just since this weekendL

The pitch that accompanies it says,

The Kamala Harris Hammered Shirt is not merely a piece of clothing; it is an embodiment of the challenges and triumphs that have shaped the life and career of this remarkable woman. The intricate hammering detail, reminiscent of a blacksmith’s work, conveys the relentless effort and resilience she has displayed in the face of adversity.

Well, shacking up with Willie Brown might well qualify as a challenge. So it's not a bug, it's a feature, at least if you're going for the day drinker vote. But the Hot Air story makes the point,

[S]he didn't exactly rise to where she is by being especially good at politics. She was carried there by others who were pushing her up the mountain, not hiking up it by herself. Since it didn't take skill to get there, maybe even sobriety wasn't required.

Reports that Kamala has been impaired in public date back to her brief campaign for the presidency in 2019. USA Today fact checked one such at the time:

A viral image purporting to show Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris intoxicated gained traction this week after she made a campaign visit to Ohio.

"Throwing up in the bushes & staggering aimlessly at the #Cleveland airport was the last straw before staffers put #KamalaHarris back in the plane and took off for #Oshkosh," reads an Oct. 25 Facebook post that has been shared over 1,000 times. "Onlookers claim the clearly intoxicated Harris was confrontational but too weak to put up much of a fight."

The fact check established that the photo was taken in Iowa and apparently misleadingly captioned to suggest Kamala was leaning to throw up, when she was greeting a child -- but the separate possibility that she'd nevertheless actually been drunk in Cleveland wasn't addressed.

But here's yet another video, posted July 12 before the current controversy broke out, that suggested there's a problem:

Throwback to that time Kamala was obviously high or drunk or both. pic.twitter.com/vN7RfDMqJW

— Coco 🇺🇸 (@CoClarified) July 12, 2024

Blair and the Trump campaign are simply picking up a topic that's been in the background for some time. For now, the story has been slow to develop, but it dates back as far as 2019, and as a few have pointed out, there must be insiders, including disgruntled former staff, who can provide corroboration.

Uh-Oh, Now It's Starting

Kamala is an alcoholic? pic.twitter.com/Lwc0suHgZW

— JKash 🍊MAGA Queen (@JKash000) August 15, 2024

Yesterday I noted that Kamala's scripted public appearances were nevertheless nasal and hyperactive, with a lot of over-the-top excitement. I embedded a longer video that included ther brief vignette above, which has bothered me from the first time I saw it.

On August 7, Megyn Kelly said in an interview that

there could be additional “negative reporting” about US Vice President Kamala Harris’ history which the public has yet to see.

“She’s never been vetted, why would anybody vet her – she was put on the ticket by Joe Biden just to check a box,” she told Sky News host Paul Murray.

“Done. It was over. Nobody had any interest in vetting her, and they knew she wasn’t a serious pick.

“I think there’s going to be more coming out about her.”

But over a week later, no more has come out, and Megyn herself has had nothing else to say. Just yesterday, it was being teased that Bob Woodward's new book, scheduled for publication Octobrr 15, would contain some sort of October surprise about Kamala:

Per RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry: OCTOBER SURPRISE: A source close to Bob Woodward says his forthcoming book, “War,” about the Biden-Harris administration’s inner workings will “not be kind to Biden or Kamala” and will drop several bombshells on Oct. 15 when Simon & Schuster releases the tome … developing

This strongly suggests that information is out there, and insiders have long known about it. My own view, which I've expressed here, has been that the baggie of coke found in the cubby outside the White House Situation Room wasn't Hunter's; he had nothing to do with the Sit Room, but the vice president goes there a lot, and she isn't frisked when she goes in. My initial interpretation of the over-the-top intro of Joe at the Maryland rally was that it was fueled by cocaine.

Whatever the specifics are, some version of the big secret seems finally to be coming out. According to Gateway Pundit,

The Trump campaign went public Saturday night with an allegation of rumors about Kamala Harris having a serious drinking problem.

James Blair, political director for the Trump 2024 presidential campaign and the RNC posted on X Twitter, “A lot of rumors out there about Kamala having a serious drinking problem. . . apparently coming into focus as campaign heats up. ⏳Stay Tuned…”

Blair was retweeted by Trump campaign advisor Alex Bruesewitz, indicating campaign approval:

Gateway tracked down a number of earlier tweets from other users pointing to accounts and videos that sppear consistent with the Trump campaign's allegations, such as

How drunk was Kamala Harris when she was speaking at this town hall to Filipino youth? pic.twitter.com/NiTLtO8OfJ

— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) July 24, 2024

or

Kamala has the fun alcoholic day drinker at the pool type vibe. I’m all for it, it’s fun, you just typically don’t want those people also calling in air strikes. pic.twitter.com/nsBAv773Io

— Tobias Maximus (@tobyzapf) August 5, 2024

or

Apparently Kamala was told not to speak during this event because she was too intoxicated, but she did anyways. https://t.co/yN7vzILiE0 pic.twitter.com/yBEdkAw1BA

— Financelot (@FinanceLancelot) August 17, 2024

Whether it's alcohol, cocaine, something else, or all of the above, it seems like evidence of Kamala's impairment has been around for some time -- all the tweets embedded here were made before the Trump campaign's tweets last night. I've discussed the patterns of alcohol-impaired speech here, which include slurring, hypercorrection, and random pauses. Looking at Thursday's video of her rally with Joe and the videos posted on X above, I think there's a certain amount of slurring, but nothing as clear as Joe's own impaired speech, whatever its cause may be.

Althojgh I've never used cocaine, I've known people -- including at least one CIO -- who have, and I know a little about what it looks like. Drunks aren't hyperactive, alcohol is a depressant. Cokeheads are hyperactive. The cokehead CIO would literally run up eight flights of stairs and burst into a meeting just a bit late, sweating and and wild-eyed. That seems more like Kamala, but let's recall that Hunter had an all-of-the-above attitude. My working theory of Kamala is more along the Hunter line.

I suspect that Washington insiders know a lot more, and they've been covering up just as much as they covered for Joe, even though it was common knowledge that Joe's condition had deteriorated badly. This would inevitably reach Trump, So far, he hasn't directly mentioned the issue, but he's clearly working toward it:

As advisers and allies have called on Trump to tamp down on the personal attacks against Harris and instead focus on criticizing her policies, Trump demonstrated at Saturday’s rally [in Wilkes-Barre] he has no plans to back off. Trump said this week at a press conference at his private Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club he is “entitled to personal attacks.”

“People say don’t use bad language. They say please don’t call people stupid, but they are stupid people. How else do you describe it?” Trump said. “She’s a socialist lunatic. That’s the other thing, please sir, please don’t call her a lunatic, but that’s what she is, she’s a lunatic.”

Harris-Walz Is Comedy Gold

Over the past couple of weeks, we've begun to see public appearances from Kamala, however scripted and closely controlled, as well as joint events with Tampon Tim. What we still haven't seen is a good comedy impression of these performances, but I've got to think one is on the way -- in fact, Trump himself, whose standup talents are acknowledged, could well begin to imitate either one at his rallies, as he had been doing with Joe.

One thing that's become plain is that neither Kamala nor Tim is comfortable with a national campaign. Walz has been a state-and-local-level politician throughout his career, and the photo at the top of this post shows how stiff and uncomfortable he seems on a national stage. It's also plain that Harris, despite a campaign for vice president in 2020 and four years in office, has never actually had to compete -- she's been a California machine politician who checked the right boxes, and her electoral contests were just pro forma.

Thus her stump style is nasal, syrupy, and oddly hyperactive. She shifts randomly in and out of a black accent. There's a lot of over-the-top excitement with wild and incongruous hand gestures. Part of the problem is that she's reading from bland text off the teleprompter but trying to add expression to make it sound like it's spontaneous, and it never quite comes off. For instance,

I won't say that comics and impersonators should be studying this, because I'm sure they are. This goes back to the point I've been making, that it wasn't the polls that made the lizard people force Joe out of the race, it was, after early June, weeks and weeks of near-nightly poopy-pants jokes from Gutfeld. The more I saw of those, the more I kept thinking this couldn't go on -- he'd turned Joe into a toidy joke that was reinforced every time Joe made a public appearance with his affectless persona as though he'd just pooped his pants once again.

And this goes to Hillary's performance in the 2016 election. One of the best insights -- and I can't remember who it was that gave it -- was that if Hillary didn't make public appearances for some number of days, she'd inch upward in the polls. As soon as she gave a big speech, she'd fall back. The more people saw of her, the less they liked her. And that was without standup comics doing imitations. Now, there's Gutfeld.

And this leaves out Tim Walz, who unfortunately is setting himself up as the submissive foil to Boss Girl Kamala. Look at his expression in the photo at the top of this post -- "I can't believe I'm here! I've made it!" And Kamala is egging him on. They've both made it! Joy! Except look at how his suit collar stands away from his neck -- it's a cheap suit that doesn't fit. The man is a bumpkin (Click on the photo for a larger view).

In effect, they've won the lottery, a form of unearned entitlement, which in the rough justice of Bugs Bunny cartoons is a setup for an ultimate fall. I think that this feeds the impression that Walz in particular is a dunce and ripe for comic takedown, but of course, the Boss Girl, even if she's temprarily able to order Dunceboy around, is set up to fall herself. The subliminal public imagination is waiting to see this. Neither has the self-awareness to understand what they're walking into. On the other hand, this is an aspect of the public imagination that Trump somehow instinctively grasps as an entertainer and now a politician.

I keep thinking of one of the classic scenes in cinema, the exchange between Dirty Harry Callahan and his lieutenant in Magnum Force:

“You’re a good man lieutenant. A good man always knows his limitations.”

I think the basic problem with both Kamala and now her comical sidekick Walz is that neither knows their limitations, and it simply shows.

Whose Idea Was Kamala?

Chris Queen asks at PJ Media this morning:

Is it just me, or is Kamala Harris acting like she doesn't want to win the presidential election? Nothing her campaign has done comes across as the tactics of a team that wants to get across the finish line.

He cites yesterday's case of the video she made with Walz that consists entirely of giggly small talk about white guy tacos and such, and he links to Matt Margolis:

As Vance has said, "Kamala Harris isn't running a presidential campaign, she's producing a movie."

But let's go to her choice of Walz as her running mate. What's peculiar is that one of Trump's senior campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita, who is a longtime Republican operative, in 2004 engineered the Bush campaign's use of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry, which proved to be highly effective. Walz, as it turned out, had misstated his military record much as Kerry had, and LaCivita was already in place to dust off the swift boat strategy. Matt Margoolis notes at PJ Media,

Tim Walz hasn't exactly had the best introduction to the nation. Despite the best efforts of the campaign and the mainstream media to brand him as a midwestern centrist and "America's dad," among other things, it's hard not to wonder if Walz will be the next candidate the campaign will force off the ticket to make for someone less controversial and with less baggage.

. . . We all know that the mainstream media is in the tank for the Democrats, but sometimes stories are so big that the press can't ignore them. Just like Joe Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan or his disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump, Walz's stolen valor, his past DUI arrest, and even his praise of an antisemitic Muslim cleric have seen coverage in the liberal media.

Walz may be the presumptive nominee, but if the Democratic Party was willing to throw an incumbent president under the bus, it would swap him out just as easily. Many on social media are speculating that it could happen.

In fact, he's letting himself be turned into a clown opposite Kamala. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Tim Walz has been accused of peddling racial stereotypes after telling Kamala Harris he cannot handle anything hotter than a 'white guy taco'.

The Democrat's VP pick made the startling claim in a ten-minute chat between the pair posted to Harris's YouTube channel.

'Here's the deal,' the told [sic] Minnesota Governor told her. 'They said to be careful and let her know this, that black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota, you know?'

The Vice-President peeled away laughing from the exchange, but the deprecatory remarks left a nasty taste in some viewers' mouths.

'This isn't cute,' tweeted David Marcus of Fox News. 'Walz is being used as a clown to mock white people.'

. . . 'It's like a minstrel show lampooning white, Midwest stereotypes,' tweeted DC radio host Larry O'Connor.

. . . 'It's political theater,' sighed Danny Hellman. 'Tim Walz has to take a submissive role as the flavor-challenged boring White man next to Kamala Harris's spicy, pepper-growing multicultural girl boss.'

I've already said here that the subliminal image of Walz as a submissive clown isn't playing well, but this seems to be part of Kamala's campaign strategy. And this takes us back to why Walz was shortlisted as a vice presidential candidate:

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who was one of former President Barack Obama’s closest confidantes, led the vetting for Harris for her running mate selection process. Asked if Holder and other Democrats, like those who might want to seek the Democrat nomination for president such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and more, purposefully saddled Harris with a weak running mate in the hopes she loses this year thereby clearing the way for them in 2028 so they would have a shot at the nomination in four years, Trump said he did not know.

Indeed, as I've noted here, the whole vetting team were all Obama alumni, including Jen O'Malley Dillon and former White House Counsel Dana Remus. Somehow they either completely overlooked Walz's National Guard controversy, even though it had come up in his earlier campaigns, and his DUI, or they deliberately put him on the short list perhaps knowing that Kamala wouldn't want someone smarter or more alpha like Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro.

It's simply hard to avoid the conclusion that if Kamala really wanted to win the election, she would have chosen either Mark Kelly, who might have helped her carry Arizona, or Josh Shapiro, ditto for even more important Pennsylvania, as against Walz, who doesn't help her with anyone but submissive white dudes. A week ago, I quoted Mark Halperin, who provided about tne only possible explanation, "On deadline, one guy's easy, one guy's hard."

One guy's submissive and won't challenge her; the other choices are too smart and too alpha. Easy! But all this does is beg the question of why Obama and Pelosi, who were behind the coup, so quickly chose Kamala, when they could have chosen literally any natural-born US citizen over 35. Remember, they had already bypassed the primary process, and Joe's delegates at the convention would go to whomever they told Joe to support -- but they chose Kamala.

So far, I think J D Vance has the right of it: she's starring in her own movie. How much of this did Obama and Pelosi knowingly plan?

The Race Hasn't Changed

I've pointed out recently that, up to Kamala's replacing Joe on the ticket, the polls had been unchanged since last fall, with Trump's lead in the Real Clear Politics aggregate national vote fluctuating from about 0.5 point to 3 points, depending on the most recent poll they ran through their model. Trump's felony conviction in New York, for example, changed nothing. Joe's very public brain freezes in June changed nothing. His loss in the June 27 debate, the clearest and most indisputable loss in any presidential debate, ever, changed nothing.

The assassination attempt on Trump on July 13 changed nothing. All of a sudden, the emergence of Kamala as the new Democrat turned everything upside down, or at least this is the story. I've been deeply suspicious of the unchanging polls all year, especially when the consensus simply acknowledges that the poll aggregtes underestimated Trump's vote totals in both 2016 and 2020, but for some reason, nobody seems to want to explain this or do anything to make things more accurate.

But in any case, as of this morning, the Fox News poll, which is consistently anti-Trump, has the race precisely where it was before Kamala changed everything:

No matter how many major events intervene, and goodness knows there have been several, the state of this year’s presidential race doesn’t seem to change.

Vice President Kamala Harris trails former President Donald Trump by one percentage point in the latest Fox News national survey, 49-50%.

Last month, she was also behind Trump by one point, 48-49% -- as was President Joe Biden, with the same 48-49% result.

Between those two surveys, there was an assassination attempt on Trump, the Republican National Convention was held, Ohio Sen. JD Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate, Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, she was certified as the Democratic presidential nominee and selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, and they held several campaign events with record-breaking attendance.

Fox News is one of the prestigious polls RCP includes in its aggregates. For whatever reason, other polls in that group haven't been issuing recent results, but a few polls have been similar over the past week or so. For instance, the UK Daily Mail:

The latest Daily Mail survey shows Trump still edging out Harris nationally by two percentage points, garnering 43 percent support to Harris’s 41 percent support. However, that two-point gap is outside the ± 3.1 percent margin of error, setting up what the Daily Mail describes as a “nail-biter of an election in November.”

The outlet cites another survey, as well, which shows respondents largely viewing Trump as the more “strong” and “charismatic” candidate.

As of today, Rasmussen Repoerts continues to find that Trump has rebounded:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, in a two-way matchup, 49% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for Trump, while 45% would vote for Harris. Three percent (3%) say they’d vote for some other candidate and two percent (2%) are undecided. These findings are just slightly changed from a week ago, when Trump led by five points, with 49% to Harris’s 44%.

Rasmussen Reports suggests as well that pollsters, including those that make up the RCP aggregates, have been oddly reluctant to do as many polls since the beginning of August:

On @RCPolitics
# of state polls in the first 13 days of August - 28
# of state polls in the last 13 days of July - 73

Weird.

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 15, 2024

What this suggets to me is that legacy media has been mildly interested in stirring up interest by claiming the race has changed, but since these are the dog days of summer, nobody's working especially hard at it, and I don't think anybody, at least among the elites, seriously thinks Kamala has a chance. This, I'm pretty sure, is why Josh Shapiro came as close as he could to claiming he didn't actually want to be Kamala's running mate, because he didn't.

If he was as ambitious as Fettermsn claims, why wouldn't he want the job? After all, Fetterman's implication was that vice president would be a step up for him, or he wouldn't want it. I think the answer is that he's going to run for president in 2028, and he knows Kamala is going to lose in November.

For that matter, why did Kellyanne Conway register as a foreign agent for Ukraine? I think that one's fairly simple, too. Zelensky is assuming Trump will win in November, and he wants someone on his side who has Trump's ear. Remember that Trump's most recent characterization of Zelensky is "maybe the greatest salesman of any politician that’s ever lived". Zelensky is playing his cards in anticipation of Trump winning and looking for the best deal he can get.

I would be on the lookout for other such signals in coming weeks. The smart money -- which, I fear, isn't Nate Silver -- knows nothing's changed.

OK, Here's What Happened With Nate Silver

Over the past winter and spring, I linked pretty frequently to Nate Silver's Substacks, especially the February essay where he listed a series of tasks Joe Biden needed to undertake to turn his electoral prospects around. Back then, he was especially worried that Joe wasn't doing interviews:

This is bad, folks. Biden’s doing a lot fewer interviews than even the media-hostile Trump. And when he does them, his performance is still just mediocre. That’s why something like turning down a Super Bowl interview ought to be highly concerning.

His prescription:

Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with “non-friendly” sources. “Non-friendly” doesn't mean hostile: nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great. A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journalistic perspectives.

I've revisited this essay several times, especially in light of Joe's withdrawal from the race. What strikes me now is that Silver saw this at the time as a simple question of strategy: all his handlers needed to do was make a simple adjustment and set him up for some interviews. His reasoning was that yeah, there would be some gaffes, but statistically, they could be discounted, and the fact that he'd actually done some interviews would count in his favor. Or somethong like that.

In hindsight, it's become clear that Joe's condition was far worse than we'd been led to believe, and his handlers' main task was simply covering this up. The idea of having Joe do "four lengthy sit-down interviews" over the next several weeks was vain fancy, and by four months later, we saw the inevitable outcome. It's a little peculiar that anyone, certainly including me, ever saw this as a reasonable suggestion.

So in any case, it's maybe time to reassess Nate Silver as a reader of omens, even before we get to his more recent assessments of the race involving Kamala Harris. But as of June 26, he said, "The presidential election isn't a toss-up":

it was certainly a close race, but we’d reached the point where it would be dishonest to call it a toss-up.

. . . if we’re being honest, pundits who obsess over whether Biden is 1 point ahead or behind in national polls are kind of missing the point. Because national polls being tied don’t make for a toss-up race — but instead one where Trump has a material advantage in the Electoral College.

Except that as of August 1, with Kamala now in the formula, he'd changed his mind:

Now that the election is in kamala_mode, however, it’s far from clear whose position you’d rather be in, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to bet either on Harris or on Trump. At FiveThirtyEight, we actually had a formal definition of a “toss-up”, which is an election where each candidate had at least a 40 percent chance of winning. We’re now quite comfortably into that territory. As of this afternoon’s model run, Harris’s odds had improved to 44.6 percent, as compared to 54.9 percent for Trump and a 0.5 percent chance of an Electoral College deadlock. It’s not exactly 50/50, but close enough that a poker player would call it a “flip”: Democrats have ace-king suited, and Republicans have pocket jacks.

And two days later, he was esplaining Why she should pick Shapiro:

Why Shapiro? What’s the positive case? Well, Shapiro is the extremely popular governor of what is by far the most important swing state. He’s highly charismatic and he’s qualified. He seems to want the job. This is about as obvious as things get in politics. You need a good reason to not pick Shapiro[.]

Well, for good or ill, and for whatever reason, obvious or not, she didn't go with Shapiro. By August 5, the day before Kamala didn't pick Shapiro, Silver was even more bullish:

Harris rose again in our forecast today: in the span of a week, she’s gone from a 37 percent chance of winning the Electoral College to a 53 percent chance. The race is still a toss-up for all intents and purposes, but if you’re sweating the details, you’d rather have the 53 percent side of a bet than the 47 percent half.

But by August 10, his most recent take on the election, he's begun to back off again:

And yet there’s a part of me — just a part — . . . . That thinks it was probably a mistake for Harris to pick Tim Walz instead of Josh Shapiro, but that not wanting to disrupt the campaign’s favorable trajectory with a higher-risk pick was a valid consideration.

. . . The Harris campaign is going to need more cushion, because it could very, very easily lose the Electoral College in an election held today — outside of that NYT polling, the race still looks pretty close to a toss-up — and it still faces headwinds like economic volatility, immigration, and Biden’s baggage.

It's worth remembering that Silver sees himself as a statistical modeler, not a campaign consultant. His background is in playing professional poker, which boils down to passively predicting outcomes, not trying to influence them. Still, he's been giving advice. In February, he told Biden to do four sit-down interviews in the next several weeks. Two weeks ago, he told Kamala to pick Shapiro. The man is not clairvoyant -- if you want someone who's currently a lot luckier, go for Trump.

But at least for now, Silver seems to have dropped prognosticating the election, because he's on a book tour.

Today is publication day for On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, my new book about gambling and risk, and a lot of other things. And if we’re being honest, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. Traditional publishers like mine believe in a cluster marketing strategy — having their authors do a lot of media in short succession, which is carefully timed to the launch. So suddenly, you’re probably seeing a lot of Nate everywhere you look.

The last thing he's going to do is talk realistically about Kamala, because that would spoil all the puffery on the talking-head shows his publisher has him booked to pitch his book. What's a little strange is this all puts him right back where he says he doesn't want to be:

Three-and-a-half years ago, when I first conceived of On The Edge, I was feeling discontented — maybe even lost. . . . I wasn’t sure the whole Quasi-Celebrity Election Forecaster Guy thing was working. As I wrote in the book proposal, I felt like “Shamu on exhibit at SeaWorld”, performing tricks for people but not on my own terms.

So now he's on a book tour set up by his publisher saying things his publisher tells him to say, because he doesn't want to perform tricks for people on someone else's terms. And the very last thing he's ever going to do is depart from the media line on Kamala.

But how much insight does he really have into what's going on if he couldn't discern that there was no way Joe Biden could do four sit-down interviews, while at the same time Kamala is avoiding interviews just as much as Joe? What does he think is behind this, especially if the reason neither wants interviews is the same? What does he think the effect will be that Kamala didn't choose Shapiro -- or indeed, that maybe Shapiro, on reflection, didn't choose Kamala?

I doubt if he'd place a serious bet on Kamala winning the election now, but of course, he can't say that.