All the attention is going to be on the Democratic Convention in Chicago this week but it's pretty clear that for the next few weeks, the center of gravity in American politics is going to be in Pennsylvania. All the strategists and political pundits tell us that both the Harris and the Trump campaigns see it as a must-win and according to the latest polls, it's a tight race there. Already both candidates and their running mates have held events in the Keystone State, with no doubt many more to come.

I recently spent some time in southern Pennsylvania, as I often do, visiting friends in the late summer and was struck by the fact that unlike 2016 and 2020 there were far fewer Trump signs out in the rural areas. For years they had kept their tattered big blue Trump flags flying even long after the elections but this year they seem to be few and far between. Sure there were some yards covered with signs and trucks festooned with bumper stickers but it's much rarer than it's been in the past. What that means, I can't say definitively but something has changed and it's fair to guess it has something to do with enthusiasm. It feels as though some of the air has gone out of the Trump balloon. ( I'm not the only one who sees that.)

Judging from his rally over the weekend in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., the hardcore cultists are still there for Trump but they're getting weirder by the day. Some even showed up carrying semen specimen cups with JD Vance's picture on them with the words "JD Vance family kit" apparently as some kind of mockery of Tim and Gwen Walz's IVF struggles. But that was only slightly weirder than Trump's rally speech which featured some of his most unhinged commentary yet.

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