Vladimir Lenin once said that there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. Never has that felt more true during my lifetime than the last week or so in American politics. On July 13th, a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. While the Republican candidate sustained only minor injuries, it sent an immediate wave of panic through Democratic circles and a similar wave of enthusiasm among Republicans over the potential political ramifications of this act of violence. Ultimately, the shooter proved to be little more than the standard depressed and mad at the world school shooter profile that we have come to know far too well in America, rather than any sort of political ideologue, but it is still likely the case that the shooting provided additional unity to the Republican party. Eight days later, on July 21st, President Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign under pressure from Congressional Democrats due to concerns that he was no longer going to be able to win back undecided voters who had come to believe that he was too old to serve another term as president - an impression that had clearly become hardened in the wake of his catastrophic performance in the June presidential debate. In what must count as a needed bit of good news for the Democrats, the party has nearly unanimously rallied around Vice President Harris as the new presumptive Democratic nominee in shockingly rapid time, and Democratic fundraising has gone through the roof in the day-plus since Biden's announcement. While ultimately it will be impossible to know if Biden's withdrawal in favor of Harris was the best move here, or whether Biden would have instead have been better off running a William Jennings Bryan-esque populist "me against the rich donors and the system" campaign - a scenario I was attempting to game out yesterday morning - I do feel certain in saying that some form of major reset of the Democratic campaign was absolutely necessary, and that Harris as the Democratic nominee is at least better than a scenario where Biden had stayed in and kept with the same messaging and strategy that had gotten him so far behind in the race. There is obviously very little polling of our new Harris-Trump election to go on at this point, and I am going to be cautious for the next few weeks while voters continue to process all of these events, but I do feel comfortable moving a number of states back into the Democratic column for the moment, while I will also be keeping a larger than usual number of states categorized as Tossups until things have settled in. I'm not, however, willing to project a Harris victory until we see more polling and also until we see her in action on the campaign trail so that we can have an idea of what her election message to the voters will be going forward. With that in mind, the next update will be in two weeks, returning to the schedule I had been following before this emergency update.