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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That headline is Hillary Clinton's biggest current problem. At this point, it has become akin to how Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign used to be described: "a noun, a verb, 9/11." Clinton has entered similar linguistic territory, because any headline using the word "Clinton" and the word "emails" now triggers a consistent reaction from the public. Details, even fresh new ones, don't even really matter all that much at this point -- all people are really hearing now is: "Clinton, a verb, emails."

The anti-Clinton forces consider it a victory to see yet another round of email stories written, of course. But in all the investigating and document dumps, they have never uncovered any sort of bonfire-sized scandal to inflame public passions -- it's all been pretty small-scale stuff. More on the order of a damp match being lit in a rainstorm than a bonfire, really. A brief burst of light and energy and then (...pffffft...) it fizzles out into nothingness. Because of the lack of truly scandalous revelations, it has instead become a campaign of attrition, with those opposed to Clinton hoping mightily that the sheer volume of "Clinton Emails" headlines will eventually wear her down in the public eye.

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That question might not be immediately apparent or totally accurate, so please allow me to explain. The literal answer will probably be "somewhere in between," if the yardstick used is total percentage of presidential votes cast. But what I'm really asking is whether this year will follow the model of third-party support collapsing in the voting booth or actually holding firm on Election Day.

Both Ralph Nader and H. Ross Perot influenced the elections they ran in -- Nader in 2000, and Perot in both 1992 and 1996. Nader won 2.7 percent of the national popular vote. Perot won a whopping 18.9 percent in 1992 and a respectable 8.4 percent in 1996. Without their candidacies, the races might have elected different presidents (George H. W. Bush's second term, Bob Dole, or Al Gore). Or perhaps Bill Clinton would have won with more than 50 percent of the vote both times. You can endlessly speculate about what might have been, but the fact is that in three successive elections, third-party candidates had a measurable impact (whether good, bad, or indifferent depends on your political outlook, really).

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Welcome back to the Electoral Math series, where we try to predict the outcome of the presidential race using the smartest metric: Electoral Votes (EV) charted over time. The first of this year's column series ran two weeks ago, and we've seen a lot of polling data since. A whopping 14 states moved around within the categories, but this much volatility is normal this early in the process.

Almost all of this movement was good news for Hillary Clinton, as states firmed up for her or even switched from Donald Trump's column over to hers. Clinton only saw bad news in one state, and Trump only saw good news in two states.

As always, we begin with an overview of how the election would turn out if it were held today (and if all the current polling is correct). As you can see, Clinton has considerably widened the lead she held two weeks ago. To read the chart, blue is Clinton and starts from the bottom; red is Trump and starts from the top. White are states which are tied, in the middle. Whichever color crosses the 50 percent line (from either direction) wins.

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

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Some weeks, it's tough coming up with a subtitle for these columns. Some weeks, not so much. This is one of the latter, because the juxtaposition of a colorful (to say the least) description of Donald Trump with a soap opera's title just naturally presented itself.

The quote comes in response to Trump's campaign shakeup, which we'll get to in a moment. One of the new people Trump hired comes from Breitbart News, and former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro was being interviewed by CNN's Brianna Keilar for his response to the shakeup. Here is the transcript, for everyone's edification:

SHAPIRO: I mean, as you probably know, I think Donald Trump's a turd tornado, but I also understand that he has no capacity whatsoever to control himself and be this staid politician that everyone wants him to be. Telling him to double down is not necessarily terrible strategy. If he's gonna go down, he's gonna go down being Trump.

KEILAR: A what tornado?

SHAPIRO: A turd tornado.

KEILAR: What is that?

SHAPIRO: Well, it's like a sharknado. Except with poop.

Thanks for clearing that up, Ben! We'll just add that to the images we never thought we'd have to think about in the world of politics (a list which has grown to epic proportions during this presidential race, it's worth pointing out). With such an auspicious metaphor to work with, let's see just how the turd tornado (turdnado?) turned last week.

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