Campaign Spew-Drive-By

Not a great week in American politics as Hillary Clinton's poll numbers have dropped and too many Americans find Trump to be a viable choice. 

Just a few quick reactions rather than anything especially thoughtful as I am burned out by both the race and the need to enumerate my musical tastes.

• I love the Keeping It 1600 Podcast as they help talk me down and help me talk others down from panicking or bedwetting as they put it.  A key highlight today was an appearance by David Plouffe who explained a key dynamic in polls: that when the GOP candidate is doing well, people favoring that candidate are more likely to answer the pollster's phone call and those favoring the other will be less likely. And vice versa, so selection effects!  We political scientists love it when measurement problems appear in the real world.
• The Trump family had quite a day.  Ivanka Trump wants to be both a major campaign operative, admired for her smarts, and innocent waif who should not be asked tough questions by Cosmo.  Sorry, can't have it both ways.  But she looks good compared to Don Jr who made incredibly stupid remarks invoking holocaust imagery (gas chambers) and then was dumber still when he tried to explain it via "corporal punishment" when he meant capital punishment. The boy hangs to much with white supremacists/neo-nazis for gas chamber references to be a slip of the tongue.  
• The fundamentals are fundamental still.  Great census news--that median incomes are rising across every decline from poor to rich.  It may not be evenly spread across the country (battleground states? hmm).  We are unlikely to get bad economic news, except Ford moving its small car business to Mexico, anytime soon.  Oh, and other fundamentals--Obama hit the trail and kicked butt in Philly, Sanders & Warren are headed to Ohio. So, maybe I am a wee bit more nervous this week, but still mostly confident that things will turn out ok. 

I am pretty sure that this is the bottom of the campaign, that this will be Hillary Clinton's worst week.  Why?  Partly because the media is realizing that the false equivalence campaign is going too far.  Partly because the debates are ahead, and Hillary can make Trump look unpresidential just by standing next to him.  And partly because we are going to have more days like this than not:

via Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star @ddale8