Monday is my day to write my Salon column for Tuesday — which I highly recommend reading, natch — and I wasn’t going to post anything on Substack today until this came in from the Morning Consult poll:

"Tracking the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election

Harris maintains lead over Trump"

Vice President Harris is ahead of Trump 47 to 46, up a point from last week. Her support with voters 18-34 is 46-44 over Trump. But here is the number that bodes best for Harris’ standing only one week after Biden stepped aside. “Just 4% of voters say they’d vote for someone besides Trump and Harris if the election were held today, which is the smallest share we’ve tracked all cycle,” Morning Consult reported. Which means that after only seven days as a candidate, many people who previously told Morning Consult they were considering voting for RFK Jr. or — shudder, Vlad’s friend Jill Stein — have changed their minds and committed to voting for either Harris or Trump. The poll does not separate out how many of those third party voters changed over to Harris, but it seems clear from her sudden jump in the polls from where Biden stood before he dropped out that many have changed their minds and decided to vote for Harris.

It’s great, of course, that Vice President Harris’ numbers are way, way up over where Biden stood before last week, but I don’t think there could be better news than the declining numbers of those who were considering voting for a third party candidate.

Kamala Harris has the “Big Mo,” as momentum used to be called. Maintaining it as the calendar clicks its way to November will be up to us.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.