| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Items from the campaign trail: - Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar removed herself from consideration for the vice presidency. Earlier, Klobuchar had successfully leaked that she was being vetted for the job, getting a big story out of something that everyone knew anyway. Now, once again, she got the timing and spin of a story just about perfectly. Not only was Klobuchar very unlikely to win at the veepstakes — her background as a prosecutor isn't a good fit for Democrats in 2020 — but there's no harm in dropping out, given that she's already gone through the vetting process and would still be available if former Vice President Joe Biden decided a few weeks from now that she's the right one after all.
- President Donald Trump returns to the rally circuit. Boris Heersink and Jordan Carr Peterson at the Monkey Cage have researched Trump's 2016 rallies, and found that, at least when it comes to campaign donations, they "do indeed mobilize his supporters." However, the rallies "also counter-mobilize support for his opponent. Crucially, this counter-effect is bigger." Whether that applies to turning out voters, and whether the 2016 results will hold up in 2020, is anyone's guess. On the plus side, Trump's campaign is certainly collecting a lot of information from strong supporters. On the down side, the odds of an unfortunate headline are pretty good for a politician who doesn't stick to a script.
- Cook Political Report Senate maven Jessica Taylor has moved Montana to a toss-up. I called this wrong: I thought Iowa would move to a toss-up this week. Either way, it means Democrats are a bit farther away from needing to draw an inside straight to get to a Senate majority. If all the leaning or safer seats go as expected, Democrats now only have to win four of the five toss-ups — plus the presidency — to be able to organize the Senate with a 50-50 tie.
- Like clockwork: The candidate behind in the polls wants more debates. This time it's Trump, whose camp is now asking for four debates beginning soon after Labor Day. Remember, debates rarely make any difference in presidential election outcomes. It's possible that Team Trump is buying its own spin here — Biden did just fine in the Democratic debates, including his final one-on-one with Bernie Sanders, while Trump himself was hardly a dominating debater in 2016.
- Speaking of Biden's lead, Nate Silver has new polling averages up for the general election, both nationally and in several key states. My advice is the same as always: For now, pay attention mainly to the national polling average. Yes, Republicans had a solid Electoral College advantage last time, with Trump winning narrowly despite Hillary Clinton winning the national vote by a bit more than 2 percentage points. That advantage didn't exist before 2016, and it could remain, disappear, reverse, or even widen this time around. So until Labor Day, if you want to know what's happening, just keep your eye on the national average while bearing in mind that in a close race it's the Electoral College that will matter.
- And if you ask me, the most important news from the campaign trail this week was the still-record level of new unemployment filings, plus the frightening increases in coronavirus cases in a number of states. Events matter more than campaigning.
1. Brian Arbour on inexperienced congressional candidates. Interesting, but I'm skeptical about his conclusion that parties aren't involved. Even if recent findings about the parties' ability to steer donations to House candidates no longer hold, there's still the question of how to characterize money coming in through partisan portals. Are the donors a (perhaps new) kind of party actor? Are they being steered by party actors? I suspect what we're seeing is more likely change within the parties, rather than the weakening of those organizations. So far at least, the candidates elected through this form of nomination appear to have a lot less independence than the self-starters from the weak-party era of the 1960s and 1970s, which suggests that there may be more party influence here than meets the eye. 2. Kimberly Cowell-Meyers and Carolyn Gallaher at the Monkey Cage on what police reform accomplished in Northern Ireland. 3. Elliot Wailoo and Chris Megerian on what Black Lives Matter activists want. 4. Louis Jacobson and Amy Sherman about the long election count ahead. One new wrinkle everyone should know about: Republicans have been pushing hard against mail-in voting, which may have the effect of widening the gap between when and how people vote, with more Republicans voting in-person on Election Day and more Democrats doing absentee votes. To the extent that happens, the late count will be even more heavily Democratic than usual, since mail-in ballots take longer to tally. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith on what actually damaged the economy this year. 6. And Adam Serwer talks with Lonnie Bunch about black protest. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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