The media really, really wants Donald Trump to pivot. They want a new story to write. They want to have been right all along that he’d pivot eventually. They want the presidential race to tighten up so it feels more exciting. That means they’re very excited by Trump’s halfhearted efforts to tone down his hate, which means Trump is getting more credit than he deserves for having pivoted. The New York Times:

After months of flailing attempts, Donald J. Trump has begun to recast his political message in more structured terms and wrestle with his temptation to go off script, as his campaign seeks to revive his fading candidacy and turn the focus this fall to Hillary Clinton’s honesty and integrity. Working off a script from his reshuffled team of advisers, Mr. Trump is also drastically tempering his language about the signature issue of his campaign: immigration.

The bar for Trump to look like he’s shaping up is low. Very low:

The insults are almost all gone in his speeches – Trump all but did away with the “Crooked Hillary Clinton” line; it has not been included in his written remarks over the last week – and I only remember hearing him say it once on Tuesday and again on Wednesday night.

Oh, well, if he’s only saying “Crooked Hillary” once a night, he’s a whole new man. And sure, his response to misspeaking and saying “premedication” instead of “premeditation” was to go right to those far-right conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health, but he’s doing that sort of thing less, so … pivot! (Low, low, low bar. Possibly below the floor, it’s so low.)

Perhaps most crucially as far as Trump’s press coverage is concerned, Trump has toned down his attacks on the media:

Trump has changed his ways on the news media, barely criticizing the press in his stump speeches and dropping his familiar refrain that political reporters were “the world’s most dishonest people.” But Trump is still gouging media types on Twitter.

That’ll do it. “Please, Mr. Trump, attack us just a little less so we can wipe the slate clean on your months of appeals to racism and bigotry and treat you like a regular candidate.”