Speechwriter Jon Favreau explains how Barack Obama’s devastating mockery of Donald Trump’s penis made it into his final speech at the Democratic convention.

Nate Cohn: “The top of the list, however, is led by an entirely different group: those with a ‘somewhat’ unfavorable view of Mr. Trump. In an extraordinary measure of Mr. Biden’s weakness, Mr. Trump actually led voters who had a somewhat unfavorable view of him back in May. Now, Ms. Harris has a wide lead among this group — at least for the moment.”

“And there’s one group that reveals Ms. Harris’s distinctive mark on the race: women. She didn’t simply make gains among young and nonwhite voters; she made outsize gains among young women.”

“Overall, Ms. Harris gained 11 points compared with Mr. Biden among women while she improved just three points among men.”

“Donald Trump will hit the campaign trail in Glendale on Friday, holding a rally at the same venue where Kamala Harris drew a crowd of 15,000 people earlier this month,” the Arizona Republic reports.

“It’s the perfect opportunity for a crowd size comparison.”

“The Republican former president is under pressure to upstage Harris by packing Desert Diamond Arena with a huge crowd. It’s a comparison of his own making: Trump has been disputing the size of Harris’s fired-up campaign crowds lately, even falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence because her sea of supporters was so large at a recent event.”

Alan Abramowitz: “This year’s version of the model shows Kamala Harris as a narrow favorite in both the popular vote and Electoral College, but her predicted margins are so small that the safest prediction we can make about the 2024 presidential election is that it is likely to be very close.”

A source in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign told The Hill that his wife, Cheryl Hines, does not want Kennedy to endorse Donald Trump.

“Bill Clinton served as Barack Obama’s economics explainer-in-chief in a memorable speech a dozen years ago at the Democratic convention in Charlotte,” Politico reports.

“On Wednesday, the Big Dog, a little older and his bark more faint, sunk his teeth into another favorite topic and savaged Donald Trump as a narcissist obsessed with himself.”

“We don’t have it. We are a polarized nation in a challenging time and despite all the things that are happening in this country, Donald Trump still has more support than he has had at any other point… It is going to come down to every single vote.”

— Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, quoted by Politico, on whether she has identified a clear path to victory.

Dan Balz: “Nothing counts quite as much at political conventions as what the nominee says in the spotlight. Former president Donald Trump managed to undermine three good nights at his convention in Milwaukee with a rambling, unfocused 90-minute speech that ran counter to efforts by others to remake his image in the eyes of voters. His candidacy hasn’t been the same since then.”

“As effective as Harris has been over the month since President Joe Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign, Thursday’s speech provides her with the most significant opportunity yet to move voters, particularly those on the fence, in her direction. It will probably be the last time she will command such attention solely for herself.”

Playbook: “Aides have made it clear to the convention brass that they don’t want any hint of the timing issues that have plagued the party this week, with speeches from the most important figures pushed way past prime time (Walz, for instance, started at 11:22 p.m. Eastern). Snafus will not be tolerated. As one senior aide told us in the halls of the United Center, ‘they better not even think about cutting her damn video like they did President Biden’s.’”

John Harris: “The man who rose to power in Minnesota as a pleasant, sensible, stolid politician — emblematic of a state with a pleasant, sensible, stolid political culture — has emerged as an improbably effective performer and pugilist.”

“That’s my dad!”

— Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, shouting as his father accepted the Democratic party’s vice presidential nomination.

Wall Street Journal: “Democrats have a story to tell as they reintroduce Vice President Kamala Harris to a national audience: She was raised by a middle-class single parent and was once a college-age McDonald’s employee and a big-hearted prosecutor. Republicans tell a different story: She is an out-of-touch California liberal who is soft on crime and immigration.”

“Which story voters believe will be crucial to the outcome of the November election between her and former President Donald Trump, her GOP rival. Though Harris has been in political life for 20 years—including four years in the Senate and nearly four as the vice president—she is still a relatively new figure on the national stage.”

Politico: Harris has never had an Obama 2004 moment. Tonight’s speech is her chance.

New York Times: “The first time Kamala Harris ran for president, in 2019, one question dogged her and the handful of others running to be the first female president: Can a woman win?”

“Just three years earlier, Hillary Clinton had lost to Donald J. Trump after a campaign she and her defenders believed was dripping with misogyny and sexism. The question of whether Democrats wanted to try to break the gender barrier again was a running and fraught debate for months.”

“Those doubts have mostly been banished this time.”

For members: The Real Year of the Woman?

“Kamala Harris often leans on a favored phrase to focus her team before beginning an important project: ‘What business are we trying to accomplish here?,” the New York Times reports.

“In deciding what to say in the most important speech of her life on Thursday, the vice president’s answer has been threefold, aides said: tell her life story, frame her contest with Donald J. Trump as one pitting the future against the past and reclaim the banner of patriotism for the Democratic ticket.”

“Ms. Harris has been taking her convention address so seriously that she has held rehearsals complete with teleprompters in three different time zones.”

New York Times: “In slickly produced videos shown to delegates and in speech after speech, a host of attacks emerged. Ms. Harris is the future-oriented change agent, and Mr. Trump is the stale past. He’s been playing a long con on the American people that has outlived its expiration date.”

“The goal of Ms. Harris’s anti-Trump messaging is trying to shrink her opponent in order to rise above him, minimizing him and disengaging from him to avoid getting drawn into reacting to his every provocation. There is less engagement on highlighting Mr. Trump’s racist statements or casting him as a threat to democracy, than focusing on a portrait Democrats believe will resonate with voters: that of Mr. Trump as a meanspirited fraud who only cares about himself and his billionaire friends.”