The III Percent Solution

Meanwhile, back in Second Amendment Remedy territory, we're seeing Trump supporters like Jimmy Arno and his wife, Dani of Lawrenceburg, Georgia all but promise armed insurrection if Clinton voters don't shut up and let The Donald win.

“If you go to a movie theater, you’re liable to get shot, you go to a mall, you’re liable to get shot,” Jimmy Arno said. “If you go to Atlanta or a major city, you’re liable to be shot or attacked.” 

Dani Arno expressed concern about a Black Lives Matter protest at the local high school, and Jimmy Arno expressed dismay at the demonstration against the display of Confederate flags. 

The Arnos used to fly a Confederate flag but took it down out of courtesy after some of their daughter’s friends said it made them uncomfortable, although they still hang a framed portrait of Robert E. Lee over their living room couch. 

Jimmy Arno blames President Barack Obama for the increase in racial tensions that worry him 

“I know that we were a whole lot further along racially eight years ago than we are today,” he said. 

The couple both plan to vote for Donald Trump, saying Hillary Clinton would just be a continuation of the Obama administration, and they dismissed stories about the real estate developer cheating contractors and other “ordinary people.” 

“Hillary wants to be elected and Donald Trump wants to be elected,” Jimmy Arno said. “They’re going to talk bad about everything that they can about the other candidate so that you vote for them. I discount the whole thing, because I want to know what your plan is to help the country, that’s what I want to know. Donald Trump, if I understand him correctly, and I hope I do, he wants to stop the flow of illegal people in this country. Stop the flow. Well, by stopping the flow, more Americans have an opportunity to go to work because they’re not losing their jobs to illegal immigrants.” 

And of course Jimmy is considering watering the Tree of Liberty if he needs to.

Jimmy Arno told NPR he was considering joining a local militia group, because he wants to be prepared in case his darkest fears become a reality. 

“Should martial law, civil war — whatever — break out in this country, they will uphold the Constitution and rebuild our loss,” he said. “The war that’s going to break out if Hillary Clinton’s elected, if that happens. Your patriots are going to overthrow the government.”

Pretty sure the Arnos are going to vote.  And here's a guy publicly saying he's considering joining an armed militia group to overthrow a rightfully-elected Clinton administration.

But both sides are corrupt, right, so why bother?

The Maine Event

It looks like for the first time since legislation was passed to allow Maine's electoral votes to be divided by its two congressional districts, the Pine Tree State will almost certainly split its four electoral votes. How that will affect the overall race is anyone's guess, but it goes to show just how divided voters are this year in states, and apparently there are still quite a few undecided Mainers even this late in the election season.

Republican Donald Trump has a commanding 15-point lead in the state’s northern and more rural 2nd District, while his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has an even bigger 21-point lead in the state’s more urban and southern 1st District, according to a new Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram poll.

Clinton leads Trump statewide by four points, with 40 percent of those surveyed saying they will vote for her while 36 percent said they favor Trump. Another 12 percent said they will vote for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and 3 percent favor the Green Party’s Jill Stein. The remainder said they will vote for someone else or are undecided.

With only seven weeks remaining before the election, only 59 percent of voters said they definitely know who they’ll vote for, up only eight points from the newspaper’s poll in June, when 51 percent of voters said they had made up their minds.

Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducted the poll, said voter indecision is high for mid-September, when about 70 percent of voters normally say they’ve made up their minds. Smith said the low commitment level reflects the unpopularity of both of the top candidates.

The poll found that only 37 percent of likely voters view Clinton favorably, compared to 36 percent in June, while only 32 percent view Trump favorably, compared to 28 percent in June.

“You’ve got two very unpopular candidates and people are voting against candidates rather than supporting people,” Smith said. “Voters truly are unsure about who they are going to support.”

Forty percent undecided is a lot...and they may not decide at all in the end, if the state's stubborn streak has anything to say about it.  But we're looking at a massive divide between urban and rural America this year, even within the same state.

Comparing the two major parties, 77 percent of registered Democrats said they had made their decision, while only 61 percent of the state’s registered Republicans have, the poll found.

The newspaper data showed that in June, Clinton had a slightly larger lead over Trump, with 42 percent supporting her compared to Trump’s 35 percent – statewide.

Some poll respondents, such as Peggy Coolong of Houlton, say they are so dissatisfied with their choices for president that they will leave that part of the ballot blank in November.

“I just can’t vote for them,” said Coolong, a 76-year-old widow who calls herself “a pure independent.”

“I do not think that Hillary is trustworthy and I feel very strongly that Mr. Trump probably is going to lose his temper, understandably, but at the wrong time and get us into trouble,” Coolong said.

She said the entire presidential campaign cycle has been so disappointing to her that she’s tuned it out entirely.

“I just got fed up and stopped watching, it’s just too frustrating,” Coolong said. “The political climate is so polluted it’s like a tsunami going across the United States and it’s inhabited by a clown puffer fish and a piranha who are followed around by meatheads – half-conscious people who can’t stop talking about it.”

Of course, that's exactly what Donald Trump's camp wants to see: large numbers of voters who say they just don't give a damn and want the "half-conscious meatheads" to stop talking about the election so they can get back to their TV shows.

The only necessary thing for the triumph of Trump is for good people to not vote, to paraphrase Edmund Burke.  In fact, Trump is counting on it, and frankly, it's working.

Last Call For The Keys To The Keystone State

NY Times Upshot columnist Toni Monkovic talks to PredictWise prognosticator David Rothschild about the state this year that will decide the presidential election, and it's looking more and more like that state will not be Ohio or Florida, but Pennsylvania Rothschild argues.  We get into the weeds here on electoral tipping points and probabilities, but the bottom line is if Clinton wins the state, she's nearly guaranteed the White House...but the same goes for Trump.

Q. Based on the PredictWise state polling probabilities, the entire election could boil down to Pennsylvania. If Hillary Clinton wins the state, she’ll probably be president. If Donald J. Trump wins there, he’ll probably be president — because such a victory would suggest he’d also win Ohio, Florida, North Carolina. Today, PredictWise gives Clinton a 78 percent chance to win the state. This is close to The Upshot forecast(85 percent). Can you give some more insight into what makes Pennsylvania so important and what signs you’ll be looking for in the state in the next few weeks?

A. Pennsylvania has been the most likely tipping-point state since midsummer.

It has been the state to put Hillary Clinton over 270 electoral votes, should she win all of the other more likely states for her. Conversely, it’s also the state that would put Trump over the hump, if he wins all of the states that are more likely for him.

Every day, I run 100,000 simulations of the election. I use the probability of each state going for Clinton or Trump, then I mix that with a correlation matrix that defines the relationships between the states. And every day since late July, Pennsylvania has been the state that most frequently is won by the candidate who wins the election. Currently, there are just 6 percent of scenarios where Clinton wins Pennsylvania but loses the election, and just 3 percent of scenarios where Clinton loses Pennsylvania and wins the election.

Since Pennsylvania is more secure for the Clinton camp than other swing states, it’s unlikely that Clinton loses Pennsylvania and wins either Florida or Ohio or other states to make up for the necessary electoral votes. And Trump could take Florida and Ohio and North Carolina, and go over the top with some other combination of swing states. But Pennsylvania is his most likely route.

What I will be looking for in Pennsylvania over the next few weeks is simple: polls in Pennsylvania; polls in Ohio, which have similar demographics (and a lot of polling); and national polls that correlate heavily among the key swing states.

Furthermore, I will be paying special attention to the crosstabs of national polls that focus on key swing demographics for Pennsylvania, when available and reliable, including white women. Beyond the polling for the presidential election, the ups and downs of the Pennsylvania Senate race could be important. The Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty, currently enjoys a slight lead, and that get-out-the-vote campaign will heavily overlap with Clinton’s.

Further, we will learn more soon about ad buys and get-out-the-vote operations in the state. Currently Clinton enjoys a comfortable margin in both categories. If they make a difference — and if they ever make a difference it will be this year with a massive disparity in both advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts — it should give Clinton a slight advantage over the polling average.

In other words, while I've talked a lot about Ohio this year, the state that will decide the election seems to be the Keystone State.  Florida decided 2000, Ohio decided 2004, and most likely Pennsylvania will decide 2016.

The interview goes on to talk about swing voters (they don't exist at this late stage in the game other than the Johnson/Stein third party vote), the ground game (Clinton's advantage there may be worth as many as two percentage points nationally), and why Rothschild and his team failed so miserably on the Brexit vote...a sobering lesson that all the punditry in the world is essentially meaningless in the end.  People either will vote or will not, and we'll see who they vote for in November.

Enquiring Minds Choose Clinton

For the first time since Woodrow Wilson, the Cincinnati Enquirer has endorsed a Democrat for the White House in giving Hillary Clinton the editorial board's nod for November.

Presidential elections should be about who’s the best candidate, not who’s the least flawed. Unfortunately, that’s not the case this year. 

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the most unpopular pair of presidential candidates in American history, both have troubled relationships with truth and transparency. Trump, despite all of his bluster about wanting to “make America great again,” has exploited and expanded our internal divisions. Clinton’s arrogance and unwillingness to admit wrongdoing have made her a divisive and distrusted figure as well. 

The Enquirer has supported Republicans for president for almost a century – a tradition this editorial board doesn’t take lightly. But this is not a traditional race, and these are not traditional times. Our country needs calm, thoughtful leadership to deal with the challenges we face at home and abroad. We need a leader who will bring out the best in all Americans, not the worst. 

That’s why there is only one choice when we elect a president in November: Hillary Clinton. 

Clinton is a known commodity with a proven track record of governing. As senator of New York, she earned respect in Congress by working across the aisle and crafting bills with conservative lawmakers. She helped 9/11 first responders get the care they needed after suffering health effects from their time at Ground Zero, and helped expand health care and family leave for military families. Clinton has spent more than 40 years fighting for women's and children's rights. As first lady, she unsuccessfully fought for universal health care but helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program that provides health care to more than 8 million kids today. She has been a proponent of closing the gender wage gap and has stood up for LGBT rights domestically and internationally, including advocating for marriage equality. 

Trump is a clear and present danger to our country. He has no history of governance that should engender any confidence from voters. Trump has no foreign policy experience, and the fact that he doesn't recognize it – instead insisting that, "I know more about ISIS than the generals do" – is even more troubling. His wild threats to blow Iranian ships out of the water if they make rude gestures at U.S. ships is just the type of reckless, cowboy diplomacy Americans should fear from a Trump presidency. Clinton has been criticized for being overly cautious when it comes to sending our troops into battle, but there is a measured way to react to the world's problems. Do we really want someone in charge of our military and nuclear codes who has an impulse control problem? The fact that so many top military and national security officials are not supporting Trump speaks volumes. 

Clinton, meanwhile, was a competent secretary of state, with far stronger diplomatic skills than she gets credit for. Yes, mistakes were made in Benghazi, and it was tragic that four Americans lost their lives in the 2012 terror attacks on the U.S. consulate there. But the incident was never the diabolical conspiracy that Republicans wanted us to believe, and Clinton was absolved of blame after lengthy investigations. As the nation's top diplomat, Clinton was well-traveled, visiting numerous countries and restoring U.S. influence internationally. She was part of President Barack Obama's inner circle when the decision was made to go after and kill Osama bin Laden and negotiated U.N. sanctions that led to the Iran nuclear deal.

For the Enquirer to come out for Clinton is staggering, after all this newspaper thought re-electing George W. Bush was a good idea,  But as the endorsement says, "this is not a traditional race, and these are not traditional times."

Remember, as goes Cincinnati in November, goes Ohio, and as goes Ohio, goes the White House.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

If Hillary Clinton's team keeps hitting Donald Trump with his own words in powerful ads like this one out today, Trump may actually lose by double digits.

In the 30-second spot, which will air in several battleground states, young girls look self-consciously at their reflections in iPhone screens and mirrors. Trump’s offensive remarks, taken from radio and TV interviews, play in the background. 

“I’d look at her right in that fat ugly face of hers.”

“She’s a slob. She ate like a pig.” 

“A person who is flat-chested, it’s very hard to be a 10.” 

In the final quote, an interviewer asks if Trump treats women with respect and he responds, “I can’t say that either.” 

“Is this the president we want for our daughters?” the ad concludes.

Last Trumpista left, please scream at the lights until the bulb breaks.

Disarming An Improvised Election Device

Even I have to admit at this point that given the events this weekend that it will be very difficult to focus voter attention on anything other than Warren Terrah from now until November.  Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" rhetoric, while true, can now be dismissed by simply saying "the definition of deplorable is leaving a backpack of explosive devices near a New Jersey train station or stabbing multiple people in a Minnesota mall."

An explosion that injured 29 people when it rocked a crowded Manhattan neighborhood Saturday night has been determined to be an "intentional act," and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was clearly "an act of terrorism." 

The explosion, on West 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood, was reported around 8:30 p.m. Twenty-nine people were hospitalized with injuries, but they had all been released by Sunday afternoon, authorities said. 

"A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism," Cuomo said Sunday morning.

And that would be correct as well.

Less than three hours after the blast, an object police described as a "possible secondary device" was found just a few blocks away from the original explosion on 27th Street while officers were combing the area. Cuomo said the device was "similar in design" to the one that detonated just blocks away. 

Authorities studying surveillance video on Sunday from both areas may have identified the same man at each location, law enforcement sources told NBC New York.

Authorities are now looking for that man, Ahmad Khan Rahami  as a suspect.

As much as it would be morally correct to continue to pursue the angle that tens of millions of Trump supporters are enabling racism, homophobia, misogyny and especially Islamophobia today, the reality is that politically it's suicidal and Clinton will be flayed alive in the press if she continues to bring that up.

As many times as I have said the real issue in this election are the people willing to accept Trump's awful rhetoric in order to "Trump That Bitch!" the vagaries of politics dictate how a political campaign has to be run, and it's time to retire the Basket for now.

Because now, the FBI has a job to do.  Coming after the 15th anniversary of 9/11 and seven weeks before a presidential election, maybe this was inevitable.  What I do know is that the calculus of this election may have changed dramatically this weekend, and what a month ago was looking like a solid Clinton win is now looking like a perfect opportunity for America's darker impulses to elect an actual fascist to "protect" us.

We'll see how things shake out, but the debates just got a whole hell of a lot more important, the first of which is next week.  For now, the numbers still show Hillary Clinton will be our next president, and that Donald Trump is once again calling for national racial profiling and mass deportations this morning, proving that the best advocate for a Clinton presidency is Trump's own words.

We soldier on.

Last Call For The Deplorable Election

In Florida, the people keeping Donald Trump close in the most important swing state prize are white suburban voters like the folks of Pasco County north of Tampa.  Given years of a Republican governor and GOP supermajority in the state legislature in Jacksonville, they blame Obama for their considerable problems and will take Donald Trump in a heartbeat if it means destroying Hillary Clinton and a legacy of those people having real political power previously only reserved for a country of white, male presidents.

Southwest Pasco County looks tailor-made for Trump: 90 percent white, nearly 90 percent without college degrees, median household income of about $34,000. Also, widespread anxiety over crime and a deteriorating quality of life.

In the 1970s, this was a blue-collar retirement mecca that attracted Northeasterners who could buy a comfortable two-bedroom ranch with attached garage for $10,000. Many of these same homes sold for more than $140,000 during the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, only to see their values plummet to less than $50,000 today.

The numbers help explain how Trump is defying the conventional political wisdom that Florida's fast-changing demographics will make the state a steep climb for a Republican nominee so weak among minority voters.

That conventional wisdom also may underestimate Clinton's unpopularity based on conversations inside the VFW post, outside the Walmart and inside Jimmy's Restaurant.

"She should be in jail, and you or me would be if we did what she did with those emails," said Dorothy Jay of Holiday over lunch at Jimmy's with her husband. "At least Trump is not going to be taking payoffs from people wanting something."

"I don't trust her, and we don't need another four years of Obama," said Alan Jay, who moved with his wife to the area from Long Island in 1994. "Trump's problem is that he has diarrhea of the mouth. He speaks before he thinks, but what comes out of his mouth is honest."

Republican pollster Wes Anderson, who works for the Rebuilding America Now super PAC helping Trump, said Clinton has at least as much to do with Trump's strength in Florida as Trump.

"Everyone talks about Trump's negatives, and we kind of miss the point that Hillary Clinton has just as strong negatives as he does — and in some ways hers are more telling," Anderson said. "This is a change election, and she is anything but that. Whether she likes it or not, she wears the mantle of the political establishment. ... That is actually what's happening in Florida."

Even as Clinton dramatically outspends Trump on TV ads in Florida and builds a more robust voter-turnout operation, the candidates are virtually tied. The average of recent Florida polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com on Friday had Trump with 45.1 percent support and Clinton with 44.4 percent.

"The assumption is it's because Trump is running up the score in the markets where Republicans have to run up the score when they win Florida," said Anderson. "I think that's only half of the story. There are lots of places where she is underperforming, and I do think it's going to come down to Tampa and Orlando."

The I-4 corridor in the center of the state connecting Tampa to Orlando to Daytona Beach will most likely decide Florida, and Florida is by far the largest swing state up for grabs in November.  As Cincinnati is to Ohio, Tampa and Orlando are to Florida, the place where voters will decide the presidency.  Donald Trump is counting on Pasco County to turn out heavily for him.

The question is can Clinton mobilize her voters?  Barack Obama showed the way in 2008 and 2012.  Will Clinton do the same to counter the rage Trump voters have to punish and shatter the Obama coalition?

I hope so.

Unlikely Voter Models

The only thing more ridiculous than the LA Times and its "likely voter model" presidential tracking poll is the irresponsible reporting of the anti-Clinton NY Post about it.

Donald Trump is gaining support among African-American voters — whose enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is eroding, a tracking poll released Saturday revealed.

Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.

Clinton’s nearly 20-point crash began Sunday, said Dan Schnur of USC. Sunday was the day Clinton was recorded collapsing while entering a Secret Service van at a 9/11 event.

The survey, which spanned through Friday, included the days in which Trump reignited the divisive “birther” issue — which critics contend is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s first black president.

Late Wednesday, Trump had refused to acknowledge that President Obama was born in the United States, demurring on the topic in a Washington Post interview published the next day.

But at a bizarre press conference at Trump International, his new ­hotel in Washington, DC, on Friday, the tycoon conceded, “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.”

For the week, the poll found a 6-point rise for Trump. The Republican is now at 47.2 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 41.2 percent.

Nobody on earth believes Trump is up six points nationally, let alone that he's getting 20% of black voters.  Nobody.  The poll also shows Trump with an 8-point lead among millennials, 6 points among voters 35-64, and 6 points among seniors.

If you for a second think Donald Trump is doing better among voters under 35 than with voters over 65, I have some beachfront property on the moon to sell you.

On top of all that, Trump is doing better with Asian voters than Clinton by 7 points, according to the LA Times.

It's ludicrous, the poll is off by 8-12 points, and yet the NY Post is running with it as gospel.

Our media is broken.

Hillary Clinton's Not-So-Secret Weapon

One of the reasons I believe that Hillary Clinton will win in November is because of the efforts of the current head of the Democratic party, President Barack Obama.  He has grown increasingly popular as the economy has improved over the last year and as the rise of Trump has proven false the claims Republicans have made about being a serious alternative to the White House as a way forward for America.

As the final stretch of the 2016 campaign nears, President Obama is making the case that in order to continue his legacy and to protect the programs that have improved the lives of tens of millions of us, voters need to back Hillary Clinton, especially voters of color, and that message is starting to really hit home.

President Barack Obama said Saturday night he will take it as a "personal insult" if the African-American community fails to turn out for the presidential election and encouraged black voters to support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Obama delivered his final keynote address to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, symbolically passing the torch to the person he hopes will succeed him next year. Clinton, his former secretary of state, was honored for becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major party.

Obama said his name may not be on the ballot, but issues of importance to the black community were, including justice, good schools and ending mass incarceration.

"I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election," Obama said with a stern look and booming passion. "You want to give me a good send-off, go vote."

For the last two presidential election cycles, the pundits and the Republicans have badly underestimated voters of color and especially the black vote in this country, and record turnout among black voters has helped propel Democrats across the country.  2016 will be no different, and Barack Obama is a major reason why. We're going to be there for Hillary, if only to save the country from itself.  We turned out at a higher rate than white voters in 2012, but there's still much room for improvement.

In her own pitch to African-Americans at the same dinner, Clinton implored the crowd to help protect Obama's legacy, warning of a "dangerous and divisive vision" that could come from Republican opponent Donald Trump.

Obama joked about the "birther" issue long promoted and now dismissed by Trump, telling his audience that there's an extra spring in his step now that the "whole birther thing is over." But his main message was about voter turnout among blacks.

He turned quite serious when speaking about voting. He said Republicans have actively added barriers to voting by closing polling places mostly in minority communities, cutting early voting and imposing more voter ID requirements. He called the efforts a national scandal, but even if all restrictions on voting were eliminated, African-Americans would still have one of the lowest voting rates.

"That's not good. That is on us," Obama said. He then told the crowd if they wanted to give Michelle Obama and him a good send-off, "don't just watch us walk off into the sunset, now. Get people registered to vote."

Obama also sought to blunt Trump's recent efforts to reach out to black voters, saying Trump at one point in the race had said there's never been a worse time to be a black person.

"I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow, but we've got a museum for him to visit," Obama said, a reference to next week's opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "We will educate him."

You're damn right we will, Mr. President.

Count on it.

Nailing The 45-Yard Field Goal

As pollsters switch over to their likely voter models and away from registered voter models, we're now starting to see state polls showing a much tighter race across the board.  Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri are no longer considered anything close to competitive, and talk of the Av-Hill-Lanche is somewhat muted at this point.

Ed Kilgore reminds us that if the likely voter models at this point truly are correct, then the possibility of a Trump win is disturbingly real.

Sometimes you can get lulled into complacency by win-probability projections that sound immutable but really aren’t. Citigroup put out a warning about that today: 

A new note from Citigroup Inc. says that while the firm still puts the probability of Hillary Clinton securing the U.S. presidential election at 65 percent, investors are not taking the remaining chance of a win by Donald Trump very seriously. 

“A 35 percent probability for a Trump victory is more meaningful than investors may be appreciating,” the team, led by Chief Global Political Analyst Tina Fordham, writes in a note published on Tuesday. “Political probabilities are not like blackjack — there is only one roll of the dice, and 35 percent probability events happen frequently in real life.” 

The Upshot, which rates Clinton at an even higher 79 percent win probability, offers this sobering analogy: “Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an N.F.L. kicker misses a 45-yard field goal.” 

So, in the fourth quarter of a very close game, when that placekicker trots out onto the field with everything on the line, how confident are you that he will nail that “high-probability” field goal? Are you a tad nervous? 

Those who have laughed off Donald Trump’s chances while believing his election would represent a turn for the worse in their own lives should be nervous right now.

Once again, I don't think the Trump will win and I believe voters will turn out to stop him.  But Clinton does have to make that field goal in November.  That means being able to execute on the fundamentals, and that's where Clinton's campaign does have the advantage.

As Goes Ohio, So Goes The Nation

Despite Donald Trump having no ground game in the state, Bloomberg's latest poll of the Buckeye State finds the GOP candidate with a significant 5-point lead in both head-to-head and third-party inclusive matchups against Hillary Clinton, but there's a catch: the likely voter model they are using matches the state's 2004 electoral makeup.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points in a Bloomberg Politics poll of Ohio, a gap that underscores the Democrat’s challenges in critical Rust Belt states after one of the roughest stretches of her campaign.

The Republican nominee leads Clinton 48 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in a two-way contest and 44 percent to 39 percent when third-party candidates are included.

The poll was taken Friday through Monday, as Clinton faced backlash for saying half of Trump supporters were a “basket of deplorables” and amid renewed concerns about her health after a video showed her stumbling as she left a Sept. 11 ceremony with what her campaign later said was a bout of pneumonia.

Trump’s performance in the poll—including strength among men, independents, and union households—is better than inother recent surveys of the state. It deals a blow to Clinton after she enjoyed polling advantages nationally and in most battleground states in August before the race tightened in September as more Republican voters unified around Trump.

The poll also finds Sen. Rob Portman with a massive 17-point lead over former GOP Gov. Ted Strickland, 53-36%, as fully 20% of Clinton voters support Portman's re-election, and a whopping 51-38 generic congressional ballot lead for the GOP in the state.  Bloomberg admits their model is unlike anyone else's.

“Our party breakdown differs from other polls, but resembles what happened in Ohio in 2004,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose Iowa-based firm Selzer & Co. oversaw the survey. “It is very difficult to say today who will and who will not show up to vote on Election Day. Our poll suggests more Republicans than Democrats would do that in an Ohio election held today, as they did in 2004 when George W. Bush carried the state by a narrow margin. In 2012, more Democrats showed up.”

A higher proportion of men and older voters—groups that tilt Republican—passed the survey's likely-voter screen than typical in past election cycles, Selzer said, boosting Trump's numbers.

Party breakdown for the poll was 33 percent Republican, 29 percent Democrats, and 34 percent independents. Exit polling shows that Ohio's electorate in the 2012 presidential election was 38 percent Democratic, 31 percent Republican, and 31 percent independent, while in 2004 it was 40 percent Republican, 35 percent Democratic, and 25 percent independent.

That's...a gigantic swing in just four years.  If it's true, it's no longer right to call Ohio a swing state, but a red one.  The poll also finds that nearly a quarter of voters under 35 are supporting Gary Johnson, and the rest split evenly among Clinton and Trump, which I find interesting to say the least.

But among the likely voters Bloomberg is basing this poll off of, 46% approve of President Obama and 45% approve of Donald Trump.  Considering President Obama's numbers nationally are pushing 60%, I find this likely voter model to be less reflective of the truth than most.

In other words, Bloomberg's likely voter model is crap. They get points for showing exactly why their likely voter model is crap, but it's still greatly inaccurate as far as I'm concerned.

Meanwhile, In President Land

Don't look now, but President Obama's approval ratings have only gotten better over the last few months, as the specter of "President Trump" has finally started to make people hum Joni Mitchell's "Don't Know What You've Got (Til It's Gone)."

The last time that President Obama's approval rating in Washington Post-ABC News polling was as high as it is in ournew survey was six months after he took office. At 58 percent, Obama's approval is 15 points higher than it was on the eve of the 2014 elections, where his party got blown out. Hillary Clinton's hope is that the reversal of opinions on Obama two years later will also lead to a reversal of fortunes for other Democrats — and there's reason to think that it will. 

We'll start by noting that Obama's approval rating in our survey is quite a bit higher than in other recent polls. Earlier this month, CNN-ORC had him at 51 percent. At the end of August, Fox had him at 54. But even in Gallup's weekly averages, Obama has been over 50 percent for most of this year. 

In the past, we've seen a good correlation between final vote share and Post-ABC approval polling — even when the approval rating was tested in August or September of the same year. The line on the graphs below shows that correlation for years that we have data: As presidential approval improves, so does the vote share of the president's party. At the low end are 1992, when Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush, and 1980, when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. At the high end are the reelections of Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. High approval, high results. Low approval, low results. 

It's a pretty solid correlation.  Nixon, JFK, and Ike got big numbers with big approval ratings, Carter and Poppy Bush did not. Dubya of course ran into the buzzsaw of the financial crisis and his numbers only got worse.

By this measure, Hillary Clinton should be able to win handily.

Healthy Skepticism Of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's diagnosis of pneumonia over the weekend, resulting in the cancellation of her latest West Coast swing this week, has Republicans salivating, assured that Trump will now easily win in November because of course it can't possibly be simple pneumonia, because Clinton lies about everything.  If you think that's stupid, it is, but that's exactly what the Clinton-hating press believes.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is coming under fire for failing to disclose that she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, and for saying she simply got “overheated” at the 9/11 memorial service in New York, when video showed her knees buckling as aides helped her into a waiting van.

It wasn’t until shortly after 11:00 a.m. ET Sunday that the campaign put out a terse statement saying that Clinton had “departed to go to her daughter's apartment, and is feeling much better.” There was no explicit acknowledgment that Clinton had left the ceremony earlier than planned, nor any mention of what looked to be a fainting spell.

Clinton herself sought to project that all was well, stepping outside of her Chelsea’s apartment some 45 minutes later. "I'm feeling great, it's a beautiful day in New York," she said, taking a moment to greet a small girl before piling back into the van to head home to Westchester County.

Not until 5:15 p.m. did the campaign revealed that she had in fact been diagnosed with pneumonia and put on antibiotics a day earlier, after what her doctor called a “follow-up evaluation of her prolonged cough.”

OK, she was sick, she's feeling good enough to attend events by teleconference, but of course because our media both despises and wants to destroy Hillary Clinton, this is now a Major Campaign Fumble.

Frustration with the Clinton campaign’s handling of the incident boiled over among political journalists on Twitter.

Jonathan Martin, national correspondent for the New York Times, tweeted, “Hillary camp now reveals that her doctor diagnosed her pneumonia on Friday & put her on antibiotics. Only disclosed after this am's episode.”

“I don't understand why Clinton aides weren't telling reporters at 10:30am: ‘pneumonia,’” CNN media reporter Brian Stelter wrote.

“Of course they should have disclosed this. This isn't a cold,” added Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Maybe because this is exactly the reaction she would have gotten if she had said something.  We expect our presidents to be super-human.  Dick Cheney had serious heart problems and nobody seemed to care, never mind that Clinton has been held to a higher standard of proving she's "as strong as a man" in every political aspect.

But Trump supporters are cackling to themselves that Clinton leaving Sunday's 9/11 memorial service in NYC to recover in daughter Chelsea's apartment is the end of the race and her political career, as it's proof of everything from cancer to Parkinson's disease to stroke.

The press seems to think "there's something there."  Or, they want there to be.  After all, they have to keep the race close to sell ads.

Meanwhile, Trump, older and in worse physical shape than Hillary, has been really, really quiet on this so far...

How odd.

A Deplorable Basket Case

The right-wing outrage du jour this weekend is Hillary Clinton daring to tell the truth about Trump supporters and the Village media is shocked, shocked to the point of needing multiple fainting couches.

Hillary Clinton told an audience of donors Friday night that half of Donald Trump's supporters fall into "the basket of deplorables," meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. 

In an effort to explain the support behind Trump, Clinton went on to describe the rest of Trump supporters as people who are looking for change in any form because of economic anxiety and urged her supporters to empathize with them. 

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said. "Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it." 

She added, "And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric." 

Clinton then said some of these people were "irredeemable" and "not America." 

Trump and Republicans quickly pounced on the remarks, which drew comparisons to President Barack Obama's comments about clinging to "guns and religion" at a 2008 campaign fundraiser and Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remark in 2012. 

"Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!" Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

And the false outrage from this will last for some time, I figure.  People still identify as "bitter clingers" after then candidate Obama made that statement eight years ago, even though it was taken way out of context.

But there's no taking this out of context.  Clinton straight up told the truth here about the racism, xenophobia, misogyny and hatred fueling Trump, and his supporters are furious today.  The problem is a lot of Village pundits are furious too, scolding Clinton for "mocking the electorate" which makes you wonder why they're so eager to defend Trump.

This is a guy who has made sweeping generalizations about black folk, Latinos, women, immigrants, Muslims, and has done it time and time again, but we're all mad at Clinton.

I see.

Reaching The Point Of "Now, We Turn"

Earlier this week, commenter Prup predicted that Wednesday night's military issues presidential candidate forum with Matt Lauer may have been a turning point in the campaign.

I don't have a specific reason, but I expect this competing town hall event may be looked back as one of the most important events in the campaign, for any number of reasons.

It's starting to look like Prup was right on the money as now the Washington Post editorial board is weighing in on Lauer's downright silly performance.

JUDGING BY the amount of time NBC’s Matt Lauer spent pressing Hillary Clinton on her emails during Wednesday’s national security presidential forum, one would think that her homebrew server was one of the most important issues facing the country this election. It is not. There are a thousand other substantive issues — from China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea to National Security Agency intelligence-gathering to military spending — that would have revealed more about what the candidates know and how they would govern. Instead, these did not even get mentioned in the first of 5½ precious prime-time hours the two candidates will share before Election Day, while emails took up a third of Ms. Clinton’s time.

Sadly, Mr. Lauer’s widely panned handling of the candidate forum was not an aberration. Judging by polls showing that voters trust Mr. Trump more than Ms. Clinton, as well as other evidence, it reflects a common shorthand for this election articulated by NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick last week: “You have Donald Trump, who’s openly racist,” he said. Then, of Ms. Clinton: “I mean, we have a presidential candidate who’s deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me, because if that was any other person, you’d be in prison.”

In fact, Ms. Clinton’s emails have endured much more scrutiny than an ordinary person’s would have, and the criminal case against her was so thin that charging her would have been to treat her very differently. Ironically, even as the email issue consumed so much precious airtime, several pieces of news reported Wednesday should have taken some steam out of the story. First is a memo FBI Director James B. Comey sent to his staff explaining that the decision not to recommend charging Ms. Clinton was “not a cliff-hanger” and that people “chest-beating” and second-guessing the FBI do not know what they are talking about. Anyone who claims that Ms. Clinton should be in prison accuses, without evidence, the FBI of corruption or flagrant incompetence.

For the Washington Post to come in using an editorial position to say that the coverage of Hillary Clinton's e-mails is too much ado about nothing is what should have been said months ago, but at least the Post is finally making noise about it now.

And yes, that seems like something of a turning point to me.

The Coming Av-Hill-Lanche, Con't

Hillary Clinton is going to win, and the main reason is because Donald Trump will bring unprecedented turnout for voters of color, and college-educated white women...unprecedented turnout, that is, for Hillary Clinton.  The suburbs of Philadelphia, like Blue Bell, PA, are exactly the kind of place where Clinton will make the largest Democratic gains in swing states across the nation, and that will total up to a thrashing come November.

Trump is badly lagging every previous Republican nominee with educated white women. Among white women with a college degree, Romney earned 52 per cent to Obama’s 46 per cent in 2012. Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party, is trouncing Trump 58 per cent to 38 per cent, ABC/Washington Post polling suggests.

No Republican has won Pennsylvania since 1988. Trump, behind in more diverse states, needs it desperately. He is trailing by seven percentage points. The four “collar counties” around Philadelphia — Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware — are a large part of the reason why.

“They’re hugely important. You had 1.2 of 5.5 million votes cast in 2012 cast in four counties,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. “It’s virtually impossible for either party to carry the state if they don’t do well there. In fact, you usually have to win.”

The counties have been trending toward the Democrats for 25 years. Republican voters there, Madonna said, tend to mix fiscal conservatism with liberal positions on issues like gun control, abortion rights and climate change. Trump has staked out right-wing stances on all three.

Blue Bell went narrowly for Obama in the last election. An unscientific sample on Monday was notably lopsided: of 37 women, 22 preferred Clinton versus only eight who said they would vote for Trump or were likely to do so.

Their chief concern about Trump was not policy. They objected most strongly to his behaviour, to his attitudes toward women, and to his disparagement of Muslims, Hispanics and African-Americans.

“I think Trump is disgusting and awful and everything about him makes me sick,” said Stefani Bohm, 43, a psychotherapist.

“Clinton, because Trump’s a lunatic,” said Miranda Sarwer, 44, who works in the pharmaceutical industry. “He’s a bigot, he’s a racist.”

And Republican women can't bring themselves to vote for Trump.  Again, Romney won this group in 2012 and still lost the election.  What happens when Clinton increases her lead with voters of color, and then makes a 26-point turnaround with white women with degrees on top of that? 

We're going to find out.

The Black Millennial Blame Game

Whenever the polls get close as they have recently with the switch from registered voters to likely voter models, the media starts looking for "answers" other than the obvious like "switch from registered voters to likely voter models".  That doesn't sell copy, so there's been a lot of effort to find instead someone to pin the blame on in case Clinton loses.  Jonathan Martin of the NYT confirms that group is black Millennials in 2016.

When a handful of liberal advocacy organizations convened a series of focus groups with young black voters last month, the assessments of Donald J. Trump were predictably unsparing.

But when the participants were asked about Hillary Clinton, their appraisals were just as blunt and nearly as biting.

“What am I supposed to do if I don’t like him and I don’t trust her?” a millennial black woman in Ohio asked. “Choose between being stabbed and being shot? No way!”

“She was part of the whole problem that started sending blacks to jail,” a young black man, also from Ohio, observed about Mrs. Clinton.

“He’s a racist, and she is a liar, so really what’s the difference in choosing both or choosing neither?” another young black woman from Ohio said.

Young African-Americans, like all voters their age, are typically far harder to drive to the polls than middle-aged and older Americans. Yet with just over two months until Election Day, many Democrats are expressing alarm at the lack of enthusiasm, and in some cases outright resistance, some black millennials feel toward Mrs. Clinton.

Their skepticism is rooted in a deep discomfort with the political establishment that they believe the 68-year-old former first lady and secretary of state represents. They share a lingering mistrust of Mrs. Clinton and her husband over criminal justice issues. They are demanding more from politicians as part of a new, confrontational wave of black activism that has arisen in response to police killings of unarmed African-Americans.

“We’re in the midst of a movement with a real sense of urgency,” explained Brittany Packnett, 31, a St. Louis-based leader in the push for police accountability. Mrs. Clinton is not yet connecting, she said, “because the conversation that younger black voters are having is no longer one about settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative.”

The question of just how many young African-Americans will show up to vote carries profound implications for this election. Mrs. Clinton is sure to dominate Mr. Trump among black voters, but her overwhelming margin could ultimately matter less than the total number of blacks who show up to vote.

To replicate President Obama’s success in crucial states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she cannot afford to let the percentage of the electorate that is black slip far below what it was in 2012. And while a modest drop-off of black votes may not imperil Mrs. Clinton’s prospects, given Mr. Trump’s unpopularity among upscale white voters, it could undermine Democrats’ effort to capture control of the Senate and win other down-ballot elections.

Elon James White, in particular, has been taking this approach, that real criminal justice and mass incarceration issues are the main thing for black voters in this election.  That's fine, he lives in California, a state that Clinton is in precisely zero danger of losing, it's good to spread awareness.

But these are black Millennial voters in Ohio, North Carolina, Viginia and Missouri we're talking about here. And the thing is Hillary Clinton has put her plans for addressing these issues right on her website.

"People are crying out for criminal justice reform. Families are being torn apart by excessive incarceration. Young people are being threatened and humiliated by racial profiling. Children are growing up in homes shattered by prison and poverty. They’re trying to tell us. We need to listen." 

Hillary Clinton, July 8, 2016

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but almost 25 percent of the total prison population. A significant percentage of the more than 2 million Americans incarcerated today are nonviolent offenders. African American men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men found guilty of the same offenses.

To successfully reform our criminal justice system, we must work to strengthen the bonds of trust between our communities and our police, end the era of mass incarceration, and ensure a successful transition of individuals from prison to home. As president, Hillary will focus on a few key areas.

And then it lists exactly what she plans to do about improving conditions with reforming police, to use the kind of collaborative policing approach that has worked here in Cincinnati, and to end the era of mass incarceration.   That's been there since July, and it's one of the major reasons I'm voting for her, not "against Trump" but for Hillary Clinton.

But nowhere in the article does Jon Martin mention this.

In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, 70 percent of African-Americans under 35 said they were backing Mrs. Clinton, 8 percent indicated support for Mr. Trump and 18 percent said they were backing another candidate or did not know whom they would support. In 2012, Mr. Obama won 92 percent of black voters under 45 nationally, according to exit polling.

Over 25 percent of African-Americans are between 18 and 34, and 44 percent are older than 35, according to 2013 census data.

“There is no Democratic majority without these voters,” Mr. Belcher said. “The danger is that if you don’t get these voters out, you’ve got the 2004 John Kerry electorate again.”

In Ohio, for example, blacks were 10 percent of the electorate in the 2004 presidential race. But when Mr. Obama ran for re-election in 2012, that number jumped to 15 percent.

What frustrates many blacks under 40 is Mrs. Clinton’s overriding focus on Mr. Trump.

“We already know what the deal is with Trump,” said Nathan Baskerville, a 35-year-old North Carolina state representative. “Tell us what your plan is to make our life better.”

She has.

Nobody apparently has listened, and I'm actually pretty upset with this.

Such talk can be frustrating to Mrs. Clinton’s aides, who point out that her first speech of the campaign was on criminal justice and that she has laid out a series of proposals on the topic.

“It is on us to make sure that that’s known,” said Addisu Demissie, Mrs. Clinton’s voter outreach and mobilization director, adding of young black activists, “We share their goals, we share their values and we want to make sure that’s reflected through our campaign.”

The focus groups and interviews with young black activists suggest many of them are not aware of Mrs. Clinton’s plans regarding police conduct, mass incarceration and structural racism broadly.

Please note that this is being reported in a newspaper.  Perhaps the newspaper could do an article on Mrs. Clinton's plans regarding police conduct, mass incarceration, and structural racism broadly.

Just saying.

The Turnout Model Doesn't Always Turn Out Like That

With Labor Day weekend approaching, we're starting to see pollsters switch from registered voters to likely voters, that is raw numbers of voters to weighing those numbers based upon who pollsters think will actually turn out to vote in November.

Traditionally this switch greatly favors the Republican candidate, as polling outfits eliminate more of the younger, more liberal, Democratic-leaning voters from their likely voter models as they are less likely to actually vote than older, more conservative Republican voters.  In presidential election years, this switch usually happens around Labor Day, where the campaign season's home stretch begins.

But a lot of those turnout models haven't done so well recently.  Remember four years ago when Gallup was predicting a Romney win, and Obama won by 5 points instead?  Many likely voter models are heavily weighted against black and Latino turnout, and yet black voters came out in record numbers in 2008 and 2012.

It looks like the pollsters are making the same mistake this year as well.  Let's start with the latest IBD/TIPP poll, showing Trump now tied with Clinton at 39% in a 4-way race.

In a sharp turnaround in an already volatile election season, support for Hillary Clinton tumbled as Donald Trump made gains over the past month, leaving the race a virtual tie.

The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that Clinton is now ahead of Trump by just one percentage point, 44% to 43% among likely voters. Last month, Clinton had a seven-point lead over Trump — 46% to 39% -- among registered voters.

Clinton and Trump are tied at 39% each in a four-way matchup that includes Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who gets 12% support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who gets 3%.

As the election nears, IBD/TIPP is narrowing the horse-race results from registered to likely voters. This month's survey included a total of 934 respondents, 887 of whom were registered voters and 861 were deemed likely voters. The margin of error for the horse-race results is +/‐3.4 percentage points. The IBD/TIPP Poll has been cited as the most accurate in the past three presidential elections.

Now IBD/TIPP has traditionally been pretty accurate when it comes to the final poll of the presidential campaign, they called 2008 right on the nose.  But the jump from registered to likely is always jarring and is almost always the likely voter model from four years previous, without any adjustments.  We're seeing that now.

Reuters/Ipsos too has made the jump to their first real likely voter model, and it now finds Trump leading.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit as he consolidated support among his party’s likely voters in recent weeks, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday.

The poll showed 40 percent of likely voters supporting Trump and 39 percent backing Clinton for the week of Aug. 26 to Sept. 1. Clinton's support has dropped steadily in the weekly tracking poll since Aug. 25, eliminating what had been a eight-point lead for her.

Trump's gains came as Republican support for their party’s candidate jumped by six percentage points over the past two weeks, to about 78 percent. That is still below the 85 percent support Republican nominee Mitt Romney enjoyed in the summer of 2012, but the improvement helps explain Trump’s rise in the poll.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English in all 50 states. The latest poll surveyed 1,804 likely voters over the course of the week; it had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of three percent.

Different polls have produced widely different results over the course of the campaign. In part that's because some, like Reuters/Ipsos, have attempted to measure the preferences of who's likely to vote, while others have surveyed the larger pool of all registered voters. And even those that survey likely voters have different ways of estimating who is likely to cast a ballot.

Again, a very, very similar outcome to IBD/TIPP.  Rasmussen too has made the jump to the likely voter model this week.

Hillary Clinton’s post-convention lead has disappeared, putting her behind Donald Trump for the first time nationally since mid-July.

The latest weekly Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump with 40% support to Clinton’s 39% among Likely U.S. Voters, after Clinton led 42% to 38% a week ago. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson now earns seven percent (7%) of the vote, down from nine percent (9%) the previous two weeks, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein picks up three percent (3%) support. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

Clinton's support has been trending down from a high of 44% in early August just after the Democratic National Convention. This is her lowest level of support since mid-July. Trump's support has been eroding, too, from his high of 44% at that time. A one-point lead is statistically insignificant in a survey with a +/- 3 percentage point of margin of error. It highlights, however, that this remains a very close race.

Again, a nearly identical outcome.  All three polls show Hillary Clinton at just 39% among likely voters in a 4-way race, tied with Trump, and frankly I don't believe that for a second. Once again these likely voter models almost always underestimate black and Latino voters, and those are the groups that Hillary is polling the best with.

So expect to see adjustments in these likely voter models that favor Clinton as we move ahead as these models start accounting for the changes in the electorate from four years ago (some will do this better than others, which is why Gallup was so badly off four years ago in late October, having Romney up by 7 two weeks before the election.)

Shorter article: relax.  Then go vote.

Jobapalooza, Con't

Another pretty decent month for job growth in the US as President Obama's unprecedented streak of job creation approaches six and a half years.

U.S. employment growth slowed more than expected in August after two straight months of robust gains and wage gains moderated, which could effectively rule out an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve this month. 

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 151,000 jobs last month after an upwardly revised 275,000 increase in July, with hiring in manufacturing and construction sectors declining, the Labor Department said on Friday. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9 percent as more people entered the labor market. 

The report comes on the heels of news on Thursday that the manufacturing sector contracted in August, which had already cast doubts on an interest rate hike at the Fed's Sept. 20-21 policy meeting. 

"This mixed jobs report puts the Fed in a tricky situation. It's not all around strong enough to assure a September interest rate hike. But it's solid enough to engender a heated policy discussion," said Mohamed el-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, in Newport Beach, California.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate slipping one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.8 percent.

A rate hike this month may be on pause because of the miss, but at this point I would think that a rate hike before the election would probably make people crabby anyway, so it's probably a good thing short term.  Still, 77 straight months of job growth, a mark that will probably never be equaled in my lifetime.  I'm hoping very much that it will continue into a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Split Decision, Con't

If you want to know why Democrats aren't running away with significantly more GOP Senate seats at this point, it's because there are somewhat more people who will vote for Clinton, but will still consider Republicans down ballot.

In what could be good news for endangered Republican senators up for re-election this fall, a majority of Hillary Clinton supporters say they are likely to split the ticket — that is, vote for the Democratic presidential candidate but then support some GOP candidates for the Senate or other offices down the ballot.

In a nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, a third of Clinton's supporters, 32%, say they are "very likely" to split their votes, and another 20% say they are "somewhat" likely. Twenty percent say they are "not very likely" to split the ticket, and 23% say they'll vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

In contrast, a majority of Donald Trump supporters say they probably or definitely will vote only for Republicans. A third, 33%, say they plan to vote a straight GOP ticket up and down the ballot, and another 20% say they are "not very likely" to vote for Democratic candidates for other offices.

So yes, the good news is Clinton is peeling off a lot of GOP support, but that's not translating into coattails down the ballot.  Why?  The fear factor seems to be a pretty good explanation.

Driving the election is antipathy toward the competition: 80% of Trump supporters and 62% of Clinton supporters say if the other candidate wins in November, they would feel "scared," the most negative of four possible choices.

Those are stronger feelings than they express about a victory by their own candidate. Just 27% of Clinton supporters and 29% of Trump supporters would feel "excited," the most positive choice. A majority of both sides — 62% for Clinton and 52% for Trump — predict a more temperate "satisfied" feeling instead.

"I honestly think she'll be a good president, as flawed as she is," says Carol Fisher, 56, a Clinton supporter and registered nurse from Teaneck, N.J., who was among those surveyed. "And I believe the alternative of a Trump presidency would be disastrous, not just for our country but for the whole world." While she usually votes for Democratic candidates, she says, "I've never been so afraid of a Republican before."

Noel Hartman, 64, of Humboldt, Ariz., feels the same way about Clinton.

"The one word that really stands out is 'above the law,' " the retired farmer and rancher said in a follow-up phone interview. "I mean, anything that she ever did has never been accounted for, and she gets by with just laughing it off." He's supporting Trump. "I know he doesn't say stuff right, but I'm so tired of being lied to," Hartman says. "I'm hoping for change."

Republicans are well versed in fear driving everything they do, fear of an America that embraces new ideas, other cultures, and other people.  But voters aren't pegging that fear of Trump to other Republicans, at least not yet.

That will probably change as Trump grows more and more desperate, if this week is any indication.