Democrats are also starting to confront something uncomfortable: Those ads highlighting Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded transgender prison surgeries? They were a killer. For proof, just look at the 538 chart tracking Harris’s favorable ratings, which were rising until October 1, when she was high on vibes, and then started to sink the very week Trump and his MAGA allies started putting serious money behind those trans ads, which were absolutely inescapable on TV and streaming in the closing weeks. “I talked to so many people in the barbershop who asked about that ad,” [Richmond Democrat Mayor Levar] Stoney told me. “I get that it can be difficult to talk about those issues, but there was room for the campaign to respond to them. Why didn’t they? Because once you don’t respond, people start to believe it’s true.”

The ad was true though, as we documented back in mid-September after the Trump/Harris debate, where Trump was widely mocked on Twitter by journos and Democrat movers and shakers alike who were incredulous over the claim and thought it made him look like a fruitcake. Amazingly, it was CNN of all places that first broke that story - just two days before the debate.