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Good Thursday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing.

And I'm Anna Palmer. President Donald Trump's decision to replace Brad Parseckel as campaign manager is at once probably the most meaningful and meaningless movie can make. It's meaningful because

Pascal was like the back of a shoe that keeps rubbing your ankle the wrong way. It just needs to be

changed. He had won a single race, Trump's 2016 presidential. Bill Stepion, the new campaign

manager, is a seasoned hand who understands politics from more than just one

experience. Why is it meaningless? Pascal isn't really the problem. Trump doesn't listen to political

advisors. He's acting like he's still in the lead. The people around him tell him that polls will

turn around once they define Joe Biden, who's been in public life for five decades, and Trump refuses

to accept the reality that this campaign will not be waged like the last. He's running against a much more popular figure than Hillary

Clinton and will have to adapt to the limitations of running in the era of COVID. In short,

this was the least surprising news of the week, yet its full impact depends on whether the president

wants to accept the realities around him. Jared Kushner runs

this campaign and above him there's Trump, so the person running the campaign is but a figurehead.

Alex Eisenzat noted in his coverage that Trump began informing advisors of the shakeup Wednesday

before making the announcement. The Times got a brief interview with Jared Kushner, where Kushner

describes Pascal and Stepion as key to the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The post notes that

Stepion may also face difficulties given Trump regularly disregards campaign advisors' recommendations.

And the Wall Street Journal is reporting that less than four months before the election,

51% of voters said they would vote for Joe Biden if the election were held today, with 40%

backing Trump. Two nuggets illustrative of the political climate. We got our hands on an internal

GOP poll of Pennsylvania's first congressional district, the suburban

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