First Read: “There’s one little problem with this kind of strategy: There usually aren’t enough parachutes to go around for a party that loses a presidential contest, especially when it comes to Senate races. Since 2004, 80% of the Senate races that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report designated as a Toss Up before Election Day (20 out of 25) broke the same way the presidential race did in that particular state. So for every Dean Heller who won Nevada’s Senate race in 2012 despite Barack Obama’s victory in the state in the presidential election, there are four Norm Colemans (who lost his Senate seat in Minnesota in ’08) or Scott Browns (who lost in Massachusetts in ’12). And that history is particularly important this election season, when the Cook Report says there are five presidential battleground states — Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — also holding Toss Up Senate races.”

“But there is one notable exception to this trend, and it happened the last time a Clinton was on the presidential ballot in the general election. In 1996, despite Bill Clinton’s eight-point victory over Bob Dole, Republicans actually PICKED UP Senate seats. Of course, you could argue that the country today is much more polarized — and less likely to ticket-split — than it was 20 years ago.”

The Fix: “Before the conventions, the plurality of support each candidate received was thanks to people who wanted to vote against the alternative. In other words, most people who said they were backing Hillary Clinton were backing her because they wanted to see Trump lose, and vice versa.”

“After the conventions, though, that changed: A slight plurality of Clinton supporters now back her because they want her to be the president. Trump’s position improved slightly — but the percentage of support he gets from people who are doing so out of enthusiasm for his candidacy is still lower than the percent who said that about Clinton before the conventions began. Before the conventions, 57 percent of those who backed Trump did so because they opposed Clinton; after the conventions, that figure was 56 percent.”

“Donald Trump says he will release his tax returns when an IRS audit concludes, dangling the possibility of unveiling the documents before the election. The Republican presidential nominee omits one major point: He and his attorneys have substantial knowledge about when the audit will end and some ability to slow the process,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The existence of outstanding audits for years as far back as 2009 indicates Mr. Trump has given the Internal Revenue Service permission to extend its work beyond the three-year statute of limitations governing such inquiries… Mr. Trump’s lawyers know the IRS’s deadlines, and can take their time negotiating settlements and responding to document request.”

“Trump is likely to become the first major-party presidential candidate since 1976 to release no tax returns. He has cycled through reasons for his refusal, returning to the argument that he can’t release them during an audit.”

A must-read column from Maureen Dowd:

“Mr. Trump, it’s time for your impulse-control/delusion-reduction therapy.”

FiveThirtyEight: “Wait a couple more weeks to see where the dust settles. Our now-cast, for example, which projects what would happen in a hypothetical election held today, has Clinton winning the popular vote by 8 percentage points. My guess is that that will tick down a couple of points in the coming days. Our polls-plus model, which accounts for convention bounces and so discounts some of Clinton’s recent surge, projects her to win on Nov. 8 by 4 points. And our polls-only model, which basically takes the polls at face-value, projects her to win by 7.”

“But it’s also possible that Clinton’s strong numbers aren’t solely the result of a fleeting post-convention afterglow… Trump’s recent struggles — his attacks on the Khan family and feuds with Republican leadership, for instance — could be inflicting more durable damage to his chances. Trump is the least-liked major party nominee in modern history. Perhaps the conventions and their aftermath, when many voters presumably tuned into the 2016 race for the first time, established a new equilibrium. Perhaps this is 1988 all over again, with the parties reversed.”

Washington Post: “Advisers to the two major-party nominees agree that it will take several more weeks before it is clear where the race stands, as convention bounces generally dissipate over time. After that, the next big opportunity for a shift in the race probably will not come until late September, when the first of the three scheduled presidential debates takes place.”

Here are the latest state polls on the presidential race:

Virginia: Clinton 49%, Trump 37% (CBS News)

Arizona: Trump 42%, Clinton 40% (CBS News)

Nevada: Clinton 43%, Trump 41% (CBS News)

CBS News: “Donald Trump is striking hard at Hillary Clinton over her recent remarks that she ‘short-circuited’ when discussing her private email use in media interviews. The GOP presidential nominee implied that Clinton was “brainwashed” and unfit to occupy the Oval Office.”