Tonight we saw the NBC pre-debate. The non-debate debate. Officially a "candidate forum," both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appeared on the same stage -- but not at the same time. The stage was an impressive one, or at least the exterior shots were, since it was held on an aircraft carrier in New York City. This was to highlight the subject of the event: foreign policy and the military.

For some unfathomable reason, Matt Lauer moderated the event. Lauer is not exactly the first person on the NBC bench I would pick to host the kickoff political event of the campaign season's homestretch, to put it mildly. There are plenty of others with much wider and deeper experience, on both the military and on politics in general. I wasn't expecting much from Lauer, but in the end he did a better job than other moderators I've seen this election cycle, so perhaps I'm being too unfair to him. He was competent, if not exactly noteworthy.

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There will be no column today, as I will instead be playing hooky. I posted another Electoral Math column yesterday, while everyone else was on vacation (I like to post them on Mondays), so I'm taking today off as compensation.

I will try to get to answering some comments tonight -- I've been rather busy with offline life stuff for the past few weeks, and while I have been able to continue writing columns I haven't had any time for comments, so I'll try to rectify that this evening.

Tomorrow, unless a more-pressing subject suggests itself, I will wait until after the non-debate debate airs on NBC, and then post the usual snap reactions, so it'll be a fairly late column, just to warn everyone in advance.

In any case, apologies for the interruption in columns, but everyone's entitled to a day off once in a while, right?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

It's time to take a look at the presidential horserace once again, using the smartest metric available: Electoral Votes (EV) charted over time. The last of these columns ran two weeks ago, and we've had lots of movement to cover since then, as 14 states shifted around on the map.

In contrast to last time around, the past two weeks have been mostly bad news for Hillary Clinton. Not terrible news, but certainly not good, as she's seen several states weaken considerably and has lost two over to the Trump column, at least for now.

Let's start with the big picture. You'll note that while Clinton's total has gone down, Donald Trump's hasn't really improved that much. This was due to two big states moving only into the "tied" column (white on this graph). As always, Clinton starts from the bottom and Trump starts from the top, and whichever color crosses the halfway mark is ahead in the race for Electoral College votes.

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

As things stand, Clinton still has a healthy 58 percent of the total, while Trump has 37 percent. In two weeks, Clinton has lost eight points while Trump gained three points. The extra five points is now in the tied category.

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Donald Trump going to Mexico could have had a certain "Nixon goes to China" flavor about it, and he actually was getting some good reviews for crossing the very low bar of "not totally embarrassing himself or his country" -- at least for the first few hours. Then he went to Phoenix, and Mr. Hyde came back out.

Trump gave what was billed as a major speech on immigration, which turned out to be exactly what he'd been saying all along on the subject. The big difference? It was in (gasp!) a numbered list read off a TelePrompTer. As for the policies, there wasn't much difference at all from what he's been saying throughout the campaign so far.

Deportation force? Check! [Trump called it a "deportation task force" which was about the only real change.] Big, beautiful wall? Check! [It will now have magic tunnel sensors!] Mexico pays for the wall? Yep! ["They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for it."] Deportation for all? Oh, you bet! [Only change seems to be that some will have to wait a little longer to be deported.] Dreamer kids? Deport 'em all! Two million "criminal aliens" deported in the first hour he's in office? Count on it! Softening? Pivot? Nope! [Fooled ya again, suckers!]

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Obama Gets Big Convention Bounce

President Barack Obama's job approval polling numbers went sharply up in August, after falling slightly in July for the first time this year. Obama has now seen gains in seven of the eight months of 2016, and August was the third-biggest of these jumps. Obama's job approval is now higher than every other month in his second term except the first one (January, 2013), putting his legacy in pretty good position with the public. The bounce upward can clearly be seen even in the large-scale chart.

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

August, 2016

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Earlier today, Donald Trump traveled to Mexico City to meet with the Mexican president. This meeting was pretty spontaneous, as it was only announced yesterday, and it took many observers by surprise. It was a risky move for Trump, with plenty of opportunities for it to turn out badly. But Trump exceeded expectations, as he appeared afterwards and read a prepared statement, then took a few questions from the press.

The bar for the Mexican meeting was set pretty low -- all Trump really had to do was get out of it without a major gaffe of any sort. He cleared this low bar, appearing as statesman-like as he's yet managed on the campaign trail. The Mexican president didn't insult Trump in his statement, Trump didn't insult Mexico and Mexicans in his statement, and the only real news from the meeting was that they didn't actually discuss Trump's outrageous proposal that Mexico is going to pay to build his wall. Well, according to Trump, at least. Within hours, the Mexican president insisted that he had indeed told Trump in no uncertain terms that Mexico wasn't going to pay for any wall. But whatever the reality of what was said in private, the public part of the event itself seemed downright chummy between the two.

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Senator John McCain is, as I type this, awaiting the results of today's Arizona primary election. The outcome will likely be that he will once again obtain the Republican Party's nomination for his Senate seat. But the results will probably be a lot closer than any of McCain's other primary races, because he is facing a Tea Party (or perhaps "Trumpesque") challenger who actually has a chance to unseat McCain. Discontent with McCain (and Establishment Republicans in general) from the Republican base voters is palpable -- so much so that McCain has been forced to support Donald Trump's campaign, even after Trump personally insulted him (and all American prisoners of war, for good measure) in a very public manner. But even if McCain, as expected, wins tonight, he'll then go on to face a Democratic challenger in what could also be a very tight race for him.

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Republicans have now, by my count, missed two rather large opportunities to improve their general standing with Latino voters. Donald Trump's speech Wednesday (unless it is further postponed or even cancelled outright, of course) might just become the third big missed opportunity. This is a problem entirely of the Republicans' making, since they are caught in a spiral of trying to prove (to each other) how pure their opposition to immigration truly is. They keep redefining the ugly term they toss around (at each other) to describe apostates on the subject, and now will label anything short of deporting 11 million people as "amnesty." This is the trap Trump found himself in, all last week.

Again, this problem is entirely constructed and contained within the Republican Party. Pretty much anything the Democrats propose or support will automatically be called "amnesty," which doesn't really faze Democrats at this point (when your opponent is digging his own political grave, sometimes you just politely offer to hold his coat while he's working). But Republican politicians are terrified of anyone on the right slapping the A-word on them, and not without cause. "Getting primaried" by a Tea Party stalwart is a very real threat.

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It's still only August, but already the predictions that this would be an exceedingly banal presidential election campaign look like they've already come true. This week's campaign news might be summed up as an elementary school playground shouting match: "You're a bigot!" "No, you're a bigot!" Sigh. We've still got over two months of this to get through, folks. And nobody sane expects things are going to get any better any time soon -- quite the opposite, in fact.

Now, normally August is the official "Silly Season" of politics, where reporters get so bored with the lack of actual political news (Congress having larked off on vacation for the entire month) that they write speculative pieces pondering ideas only one step removed from conspiracy theories. Like whether Donald Trump's real Machiavellian plan all along has been to start up his own alt-right media empire after he loses to Hillary Clinton. That's pretty much par for the August course. Over on the right, Rudy Giuliani is conspiracy-mongering the "Hillary is dangerously ill" storyline, which is also something you'd expect in August. Thankfully, we've only got less than a week to go until September, when pundits will all begin obsessing over the upcoming first presidential debate. So there's that to look forward to.

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Today, we wish a very happy 100th birthday to the National Park Service. A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation creating the National Park Service (although, as Ken Burns will readily tell you, some National Parks actually predate the federal department). But on this auspicious birthday, one sore subject must be addressed, because the National Park Service is currently considering an idea which would be abhorrent to millions of their visitors. Since they're seeking new ideas in this area, I thought I'd share a few of my own.

Personally, I love National Parks. I've been to over half of them, although I couldn't give you an accurate percentage since the last time I added them up was 2009 (and since then, several more have been created). Back then, I had been to 55 percent of the parks, from Acadia to Zion and all points in between. Each is spectacular in their own way -- some flashier than others, some more quiet and subdued. I don't think I've ever had a bad experience in a National Park, or at least not one of my own stupidity's making (I once locked my car keys in a car that was running in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park... long story short, got rescued by a ranger with a slim-jim). One of the first parks I ever visited was one of the smallest of all, Greenbelt National Park (a park so small most maps didn't even used to show it), in the D.C. suburb of the same name (a planned "green" community promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt). I've even routinely given my year-end "Best Governmental Dollar Spent" award to the National Park Service, because it is the thing I am perhaps the proudest to pay my tax money for.

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