It's Monday, so Donald Trump just stood up in front of the cameras and read another speech off a TelePrompTer. For the second week in a row, this is supposed to present Trump as being a serious-minded candidate who can manage to "be presidential" when required. But if the past is any prologue, by the end of the week nobody's going to even remember this speech, because by then Trump will have had at least two or three blowups out on the campaign trail -- which will become the story, instead.

"TelePrompTer Monday" will fade into "Outrageous Statement Tuesday," and then into "Damage Control Wednesday," to be followed by "Just Being Sarcastic Thursday," in other words. Of course, I could be wrong about that, but at this point it's the smarter bet. Trump just can't help himself.

Continue Reading »

This column has always loved a good rant. Most of the time, we provide our own rant at the end of the column, on a subject too big to be contained in talking points. This week, we provide a number of rants from Republicans about their very own party's presidential nominee. Yes, it's only August and the Republican Party is coming apart at the seams. Which, of course, makes for great summertime reading for all!

Continue Reading »

The Drug Enforcement Agency finally just released its long-awaited decision, and it was a disappointing one for anyone hoping for a sane realignment of federal policy towards marijuana. Marijuana will remain a Schedule I dangerous controlled substance, although (the one silver lining) the federal monopoly on marijuana legally grown for scientific research purposes will end, and multiple sites will be allowed (only one now exists). This will help expand medical research on marijuana -- something that the federal government has been actively discouraging for decades, now. So at least there's that. But the D.E.A.'s refusal to recognize that (as Dylan once said) the times they are a-changing means that federal marijuana policy reform is likely to happen from one of two other possible routes.

Continue Reading »

It has been an extraordinary two weeks on the presidential campaign trail, but then again that statement could have been uttered pretty much at any point during the past year and still have been just as true. This time around, I'm referring to Donald Trump obviously starting to consider the possibility that he's going to lose the general election. He never used to talk about (or even acknowledge) this possibility before now, but all his dismal post-convention polling may have forced him to begin to think about it.

Continue Reading »

It's been a long few weeks covering the two national political conventions, and aside from last Friday, this is really the first day I have had with an open column -- one not predetermined by events or the calendar. And a whole lot has been going on in the meantime. I'm not even going to pretend to cover it all today, instead I'm going to offer up a few random vignettes in the form of brief and disconnected paragraphs. As always when I'm in this kind of mood, I will be doing so in homage to the late, great Herb Caen, master of "three-dot" journalism in San Francisco.

Continue Reading »

Welcome to the kickoff of my quadrennial "Electoral Math" column series. I've been writing these since 2008, because I've always been astonished that no other statistics guru out there seems to present the presidential race in the way that makes the most sense -- by Electoral College vote, charted over time.

National polls are almost useless in predicting the outcome of the presidential race. "Nationwide, Hillary Clinton is up by four points" tells you precisely nothing about her chances of actually winning the presidency, because (as Al Gore could certainly tell you) the popular vote is completely meaningless in how we actually choose our presidents. Instead, it's all about the Electoral College.

This requires more data and more analysis than most pundits are willing to do. Thankfully, there's a wonderful site that devotes itself to tracking state-level presidential polling, Electoral-Vote.com. They were the only ones around who bothered, eight years ago. While other websites have caught up with them, they still provide the most data possible in a very easy-to-read format, so I'm going to continue to use their data for the 2016 election cycle.

But while it's fun to check in with their site to see how the states are shifting around, all they provide is a daily snapshot in time -- the map for any particular day showing which candidates are ahead in which states. The Electoral Math columns take this one step further, and chart this data over time, so you can see in one chart how the race is changing.

As always (for those familiar with this column series from previous elections), we've first got to take a look at the updated charts, then I'll provide my own picks (applying some gut feeling to the raw polling numbers) before providing all the data at the end. So let's get started with the first graphs of the 2016 season.

The first chart is the "big picture" overview. If you assume all the state-level polling is correct (even the close ones), how close to a winning percentage of Electoral Votes (EV) is either candidate? Hillary Clinton, in blue, starts from the bottom of the chart. Donald Trump, in red, starts at the top of the chart. States which are tied are the white area in between. If the blue is above the halfway line, Hillary will win. If the red is below the line, Trump will win. Here's the initial chart for 2016:

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

Continue Reading »

Friday Talking Points is back! Woo hoo! Well, kind of....

We've spent the past two weeks travelling to and from the Democratic National Convention, but due to the three-week period we've got to cover, we're not even going to attempt to adequately revisit everything that's happened in the political world since our last column.

In fact, we're not even going to write our talking points this week, and we're only briefly going to touch on what's going on and quickly hand out the awards, before we get to a rather extraordinary (and extensive) essay at the end, by guest author Eric Varela.

While attending the Democratic National Convention, it was pretty plain to see that party unity has not quite yet been achieved. Oh, sure, the Republicans are divided as well, but the Democrats still have a lot of dissent and restlessness in their own ranks. Or perhaps "leaving their ranks" might be more accurate. To put this another way, Democrats shouldn't be complacent right now about how all the Bernie Sanders voters will eventually come around and vote for Hillary Clinton. Clinton's up in the polls, but turnout is still a very big question. Which is why Eric's essay is an important message the Clinton campaign needs to hear right now.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, so let's instead make an attempt to summarize the past few weeks. The best wrapup we've read, from Salon, started off:

Continue Reading »

Obama's Streak Ends

Last month, President Obama's longest winning streak in job approval polling ended. For the first six months of 2016, Obama improved his monthly average job approval number each and every month. That's a longer streak than he's ever managed, to put it into perspective. His job approval rose a whopping 6.5 points during this period, while his average monthly job disapproval number fell 5.4 points. In July, however, both numbers experienced a mild correction, ending this notable streak.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

July, 2016

Continue Reading »

This is definitely going to be my final report from Philadelphia. I realize I'm almost a week late with it, but it was a busy and sleep-deprived week all around. In case you missed it, I reviewed the primetime speeches Monday and then yesterday posted my photos from the trip. Today I'm going to cover Day Three and Day Four (outside of the primetime hour), as well as give a few closing thoughts and general impressions.

Day Three

After the first two days of the Democratic National Convention, Day Three seemed to be a turning point of sorts. The pro-Bernie crowd staged their last effective protest inside the arena (and also staged a smaller protest in the media tent), but by the end of the night Democrats had come closer to unity than they had yet managed during the convention to date.

The third night was the most star-studded of the entire convention, with the sitting vice-president, the sitting president, and the new vice-presidential nominee all slated for the closing speeches. Seating inside the arena was at a premium. The ushers at the doors stopped letting people in when their section was full, which left a whole lot of people watching on monitors in the hallways (and lining up at the doors, in the hopes that someone would exit). The place was packed to the roof hours before the main speeches began. Whereas the arena was mostly full on the first two nights, the last two nights it was beyond "standing room only."

Continue Reading »

Due to technical reasons (and not having a full-time staff to do this stuff the way big media organizations do), I wasn't able to post photos with all the stories from the Democratic National Convention. Instead, I'm just going to present them all together in this "album." A lot of these were mentioned in my previous coverage, but some of them are just random convention shots.

Without further ado, here's my look at the Democratic National Convention, starting (of course) with a stop to get a cheesesteak.

Sorry Pat's, but Geno's had a parking space right in front of it, which made up our minds for us (the two most famous cheesesteak joints in Philly are right across the street from each other).

Continue Reading »