CHAUTAUQUA–Let’s pick up where we left off last week.

When we look beyond our shores, challenges abound for the United States.

Yet they also abound at home.

If liberalism is what you want, you’ll like the Democrats’ 2024 ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. It’s Democrats’ most liberal ticket ever.

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Apart from that, Walz–whose name most Americans didn’t recognize shortly before Harris’s Aug. 6 recommendation of him for vice president–didn’t take full advantage of his chance to make a good first impression.

He would have done well to follow the extraordinary example of Vice President and fellow Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey. For example:

≤ Smile, be nice, and be engaging.

≤ Articulate ideas forcefully, yet pleasingly and respectfully.

≤ Show some humility.

≤ Indulge a little self-deprecating humor.

≤ Leave people with the impression that regardless of the extent to which they agree with you, they like you and would enjoy having you in their home.

≤ If you distinguish yourself from your opponents, do it good naturedly and without turning them, much less their supporters, into enemies, especially not right out of the gate. Whatever you do, skip the name calling.

Is anyone ever perfect? No, and that includes this columnist. Yet it wasn’t hard to see on that on Aug. 6, Walz missed an opportunity.

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However he comports himself, the 2024 presidential–and vice presidential–election won’t largely turn on him, Harris, or Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance.

Instead, this election will largely turn on Donald Trump.

Let’s take that one step further: Given the current state of affairs, and given the Democrats’ ticket, this election is almost entirely Trump’s to win and Trump’s to lose.

Trump, Vance, and the entire campaign should focus almost entirely on policy, policy, policy.

Does that–or do the bulleted items above–mean one should take every punch and never punch back? No.

Others will falsely hurl much of the usual baloney, including, this time, calling the Republican effort racist and sexist merely for opposing Harris. Yes, you know all of that will happen, just as Trump was called sexist in 2016 merely for opposing Hillary Clinton.

The response to any such baloney–in addition to refuting it when necessary–needs to be something like this: We’re here to stand on the side of all Americans. We won’t let false attacks distract us from our mission. Those who want to play in the mud can do it by themselves. The American people deserve better. They’ll get it from us. Period.

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On the subject of the election, meet Byron York, the Aug. 5 guest of Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC.

York, a Washington Examiner columnist and a Fox News contributor, calls ABC good, valuable, and necessary.

Since the departure of Joe Biden from the 2024 race, York rightly notes that “the fundamentals of the race have not changed.”

As one formula for a Trump victory, York cites victories in the states whose electoral votes Trump secured in 2020, plus Georgia, Arizona, and either Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin. For more, see https://www.270towin.com.

And York offers Trump this advice: “If he could just smooth off some of those rough edges.” After all, Harris “owns the whole Biden record,” and Trump needs to stick to the “it was better when I was president, make me president again” argument.

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Along that line: Late in the 2016 campaign, Trump publicly gave himself good advice. If he follows that advice through Election Day 2024, then barring something unforeseen, he–following the path of Cleveland 22 and Cleveland 24–will be Trump 45 and Trump 47.

Sometimes good advice is really quite simple. So it is with Trump’s 2016 advice to himself: “Stay on message, Donald. Stay on message.”

Meanwhile, it’s one thing to win beyond the margin of error. It’s another thing to win beyond the margin of theft. Without relitigating 2020, staying on message will serve both causes well.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

(c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF