x "Until the federal ban is removed, we will never know exactly what is leading to mass shootings in this country." https://t.co/Zpm0kBZdZy — Sandy Hook Promise (@sandyhook) August 5, 2016

If you want to look at the polls, go here, there’s a ton of them. But here are some highlights.

Nate Cohn:

It’s a little hard to make sense of it all, in part because the timing is a little unusual. This ought to be the heart of Mrs. Clinton’s post-convention bounce, when polling analysts generally preach caution. On the other hand, Mr. Trump had a tough week of his own making — drawing condemnation from Republican leaders and even causing a few high-profile defections from donors and the conservative media. The prudent approach is to wait, and see whether Mrs. Clinton’s lead endures for another week or two — after convention bounces usually fade. In the interim, we can cautiously say that there is more reason than usual to think that Mrs. Clinton’s newfound lead represents a meaningful shift in the race, one that would make a comeback for Mr. Trump seem daunting if it holds. In general, it’s not worth overthinking post-convention bounces. They don’t necessarily even reflect real shifts in voter attitudes, just changes in how likely people are to respond to surveys. But strong conventions can speed up unification of divided parties and usher in a real shift.

x So interesting to see cable nets and print reporters using emails to try to create equivalence/"balance" between Trump and Clinton — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) August 5, 2016

Philip Bump/WaPo:

Heckuva bounce Two new polls put Donald Trump further back than Mitt Romney ever was The best polling news for Donald Trump on Thursday was that an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had him down only nine points to Hillary Clinton. That survey was released a little while after a poll from McClatchy/Marist that showed Trump down 15 points, pulling only 33 percent of the vote. Those numbers are, to put it bluntly, shocking. Mitt Romney was never down by that much to President Obama in 2012; his worst poll was a survey in June from Bloomberg that had him down 13, with 40 percent of the vote. In only one of the four major polls released this week is Trump over 40 percent, which is itself remarkable. Each of the four had Clinton gaining ground since the last time the same outlet released a poll, by an average of about five points. Three of the four showed Trump losing ground, by a little more than three points.

x Here's the thing: when ur losing presidential polls by a wider margin than any candidate has lost by in 32 years, some crosstabs = amazing. — (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 5, 2016

x let this sink in: 1st female WH nominee leads male rival by 11 pts on being Commander-in-Chief, 18 on handling crisis, 26 on foreign policy — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 5, 2016

x Obama won Southeast counties by 9 in '12. Here's Clinton/Trump in new Franklin & Marshall poll pic.twitter.com/ABBEuKXXOx — Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) August 4, 2016

x NBC/WSJ Poll by income: under $30K, Clinton +17; $30-50K, Clinton +9; $50-75K, Clinton +10; more than $75K, Clinton +6 — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 5, 2016

x Aug 5, 2004: Kerry +1.5

Aug 5, 2008: Obama +2.8

Aug 5, 2012: Obama +2.8

Aug 5, 2016: Clinton +6.7

(RCP) pic.twitter.com/0L2eZ7Tl4X — Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) August 5, 2016

x Trump running fourth behind Clinton, Johnson and Stein among 18-29 year-olds in the Marist poll (h/t @dznyc) pic.twitter.com/IHysoPKSzs — (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 4, 2016

For more serious issues, here’s three long reads. First, Alec MacGillis/The Atlantic:

The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and working in the wide-open spaces between the coasts—Sarah Palin’s “real America”—who were dubious of the effete, hifalutin types increasingly dominating the party that had once purported to represent the common man. The “white working class” connoted virtue and integrity. A party losing touch with it was a party unmoored. That flattering glow has faded away. Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 was published in 2012, and Robert D. Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis came out last year. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites. And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign. The question was suddenly no longer why Democrats struggled to appeal to regular Americans. It was why so many regular Americans were drawn to a man like Donald Trump.

Next, David Wasserman/FiveThirtyEight:

The Political Process Isn’t Rigged — It Has Much Bigger Problems Here’s the truth: Washington is rigged, but not in a literal sense and not in any of the nefarious ways those loud voices are contending. Instead, the blame may lie more with voters than politicians: Our legislative process is not designed to withstand the current levels of partisan polarization in the electorate. Voters’ vexation with standard-issue, do-nothing D.C. politicians and party elites helps explain the Trump and Sanders phenomena of 2016, and the “rigging” theories seem to arise out of that frustration and suspicion. Yet much of this anger with “insiders” is misdirected. If only our political problems were due to “rigging” elections, we could arrest someone and get on with it. But our problems are much more structural. In 2012, my colleague Nate Silver wrote: “Why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress. But the answer could be this instead: Individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives.” That’s truer than ever: When narrow primary bases dominate elections, everyone loses. And politicians as a whole get blamed. Sure, many politicians on both the right and left fan the flames of partisan hysteria and feed off their base’s fire — and they tend to get disproportionate attention. But in my experience, most candidates and officeholders don’t see the world as red versus blue: They genuinely run for office to solve problems, not to please special-interest groups or for self-glorification. Unfortunately, they increasingly find themselves trapped in a voter-driven vicious cycle that shows no sign of abating.

Michael Lind/Politico:

This Is What the Future of American Politics Looks Like This year, we’re seeing the end of a partisan realignment, and the beginning of a policy one — and U.S. politics is about to change big-time.

David Ignatius/WaPo:

How did Donald Trump win the Republican nomination, despite clear evidence that he had misrepresented or falsified key issues throughout the campaign? Social scientists have some intriguing explanations for why people persist in misjudgments despite strong contrary evidence. Trump is a vivid and, to his critics, a frightening present-day illustration of this perception problem. But it has been studied carefully by researchers for more than 30 years. Basically, the studies show that attempts to refute false information often backfire and lead people to hold on to their misperceptions even more strongly. This literature about misperception was lucidly summarized by Christopher Graves, the global chairman of Ogilvy Public Relations, in a February 2015 article in the Harvard Business Review, months before Trump surfaced as a candidate. Graves is now writing a book about his research at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy.

To Serve Man:

x Real sentence from a press release in my inbox: "Donald Trump lives, works, eats and employs people of all races and religions." — J.B. Wogan (@JBWogan) August 4, 2016

Oh. My God. IT’S A COOKBOOK!! And here I thought it’s liberals that eat our own. Pro tip: we taste better with hot sauce.

Robert Schlesinger/US News:

How secure is Hillary Clinton's campaign feeling these days? It just released a digital ad which references the controversy around her private server and the 30,000 emails she had deleted from it. ... The issue of the deleted emails and the security of the server more generally is a fraught one for Clinton, who has admitted the decision to use a private server was a mistake. Apoll lost month showed that most Americans disagreed with FBI Director James Comey's judgment that she should not be charged with a crime over her email use. And it's not only hard-core Trumpets but also non-Trump Republicans for whom the emails and server provoke a visceral, negative reaction. But Team Clinton apparently thinks that the larger frame of Trump being dangerous on foreign policy overmatches those concerns. You can also see it in the other ad the campaign announced Friday, which has a montage of conservative foreign policy experts and commentators arguing that Trump is "too dangerous," as the ad concludes, to be allowed access to the nuclear codes. It's not quite "Daisy"-level, but it certainly nods in that direction.

Did you get that? They think Trump’s nuclear incompetence — er — trumps the stupid overblown email controversy. Good. It does. So does the economy.

NY Times:

After months of conflicting signals and economic uncertainty, it became clear on Friday that the American jobs machine is continuing to perform at a high level. A report from the Labor Department that said employers added 255,000 jobs in July had been eagerly anticipated on Wall Street, on Main Street and in Washington, and the much-better-than-expected showing immediately rippled through all three arenas. Stocks surged, experts expressed more confidence that the Federal Reserve was likely to raise interest rates at least once this year, and it was evident that long-stagnant wages for ordinary workers were advancing at a healthy pace.

Neil Irwin/NY Times:

There’s not much to say about the July jobs numbers beyond this: They’re good news across the board. More Americans are working, and they’re getting paid more money for their efforts. People who weren’t even looking for jobs now are, and they’re finding them. A blockbuster job growth number for June wasn’t downgraded with further analysis, but rather revised higher. It’s an election year, which means these numbers will inevitably be viewed through the prism of how they affect the chances of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to seize the White House. And to the degree a good economy (and good economic headlines) benefits the incumbent party, there’s no question this helps Mrs. Clinton.

x Unemployment rate since POTUS took over Ã¢ÂÂ getting harder for GOP to attack his economic record: pic.twitter.com/I4d9yUVEt6 — Steven Rattner (@SteveRattner) August 5, 2016

x US businesses have added 15 mil. jobs since early '10. July continued longest streak of total job growth on record. pic.twitter.com/KqZaIOfMqX — Jason Furman (@CEAChair) August 5, 2016

x U.S. Unemployment Rate



July 2010: 9.5%

July 2011: 9.1%

July 2012: 8.3%

July 2013: 7.4%

July 2014: 6.2%

July 2015: 5.3%

July 2016: 4.9% — Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) August 5, 2016

Charlie Cook (possibly $$ at NJ:

Re­ports that Trump’s fun­drais­ing num­bers have sud­denly turned up and that his grass­roots sup­port­ers have be­gun to send in tons of small dona­tions—enough to, it is said, roughly equal Hil­lary Clin­ton’s take for the month—are nice for Trump, but he isn’t be­hind for a lack of money. Money was about No. 4 or 5 on his list of prob­lems. It is his own be­ha­vi­or, his own words that are mak­ing a tough race even tough­er. So is this race “over?” No it isn’t, but that is more a ques­tion of se­mantics or meta­phys­ics than it is about the ac­tu­al state of this cam­paign.

Courtesy of The Observer, with permission

Link to the cartoon can be found here.

x So interesting to see cable nets and print reporters using emails to try to create equivalence/"balance" between Trump and Clinton — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) August 5, 2016

x not one cable news channel is covering Trump. times have changed. — Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) August 5, 2016

WaPo: