Debate night

Plus: Indiana right track/wrong track numbers + Pence's home state polling

Good evening ahead of the first GOP presidential debate. For POLITICO, I wrote about what former Vice President Mike Pence needs to do tonight and who his biggest antagonist might be (aside from another fly landing on his silver-coiffed dome.)

His best-case scenario?

As a former vice president, Pence has by far the most relevant experience on stage. A best-case scenario allows Pence to contrast with candidates polling better than him: Ron DeSantis on social security policy and on national security with Vivek Ramaswamy, with whom he has tangled on what really happened on 9/11. All in all, he comes off as the adult in the room.

But first, an exclusive look at some Indiana polling Hoosier Democrats on the State Central Committee reviewed this weekend in French Lick at their annual IDEA confab. Conducted by Change Research by dynamic online sampling among 1,902 likely 2024 voters between Aug. 2 and Aug. 7, it shows that 63 percent of Hoosiers think Indiana is on the wrong track.