How Kamala Harris might still lose

Polling precedent and economic data suggest the Democrats should not get ahead of themselves as the election nears.

- Janan Ganesh

A month has passed since the near-assassination of the 45th and, who knows, 47th US president. When did you last think or talk about it? When did you last see the photo of Donald Trump's raised and defiant hand, which promised at the time to be one of those icons that cross so deep into mass culture that a Warholian silkscreen might be made of it? I don't mean to suggest that the world's most famous outpatient has been somehow short-changed for his brush with death. The point is rather this: the transience and tenuousness of almost all political moments.

Few excitements outlast the next batch of news stories. It is a warning the Democrats should hold on to in what is becoming, for them, a glorious but perhaps over-celebrated summer.

How might their moment in the sun go wrong? First, consider the polls. In August 2016, Mrs Hillary Clinton led Trump by a much larger margin than Ms Kamala Harris does now.