Donald Trump's campaign has released its second television commercial of the general election, expanding its ad buy to nine states -- including a few where his polling deficits have ballooned into the double digits. While Trump's first spot seemed geared toward his base, this one features an economic message that appeals to a much wider swath of the electorate. Watch:
This is a classic "contrast" ad, arguing that Hillary's economic plan will lead to "more of the same, but worse," while Trump will usher in a new era of prosperity and growth. Of particular note are a few of the citations in fine print at the bottom of the screen. When the ad pivots from dreary Hillary to upbeat Trump promises, the narrator says, "in Donald Trump's America, working families get tax relief. Millions of new jobs created, wages go up, small businesses thrive." To back up the first two assertions, the ad directs viewers to...Paul Ryan's "a better way" framework, and to the Tax Foundation's scoring of House Republicans' tax reform package. One of the strongest, but debatable, conservative arguments for Trump is that because he's not especially interested in policy details or the specifics of governance -- remember this? -- he's likely to outsource a large portion of "his" legislative agenda to GOP leaders on the hill. The fact that he's already touting Paul Ryan's fiscal plans as what would happen "in Donald Trump's America" is an indication that this assumption may be largely valid. Meanwhile, following up on yesterday's battleground polling post, here's the latest national survey:
Monmouth U poll, likely voters national:
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 29, 2016
Clinton 46%
Trump 39%
Johnson 7%
Stein 2%
Allahpundit rightly points out that Monmouth has a sterling A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight, which is why their Hillary (+13) bombshell a few weeks back touched off such intense Republican panic. Several bad news cycles later, she's back down to a solid but diminished seven-point lead. By a two-to-one margin in the survey, voters correctly believe that Clinton Foundation donors received preferential treatment by her State Department; Trump should keep on hammering her on that front (setting aside the fact that, sigh, he himself is a Clinton Foundation donor. Hillary's favorability rating also sits at an abysmal 34 percent, with a 51 percent negative number -- a catastrophe for someone who's been in the public eye for decades. Everyone knows who she is, but only about one-third like what they see. Trump's problem, per usual, is that his numbers are significantly worse, at (36/57). Still, taking those numbers side-by-side, one might expect to find a lot of dissatisfied voters floating around. Yup:
A plurality for "neither." #2016 pic.twitter.com/OnaUQ5VCaa
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 29, 2016
Bottom line: The best news for Trump is that Hillary's wide lead in the series has been eroded by five points over a short time period. The worst news is that he's been stuck in the 30's in 11 of the last 12 nationwide surveys in which all four "major" candidates are included. Parting thought: There's a sizable crowd of Trump supporters who insist that his clear favorability disadvantage doesn't matter because she's also unpopular. AP's post offers this historical tidbit:
That table dates back more than three decades, over which the candidate with the worse favorable rating has lost every single presidential election.
UPDATE - A new addition this morning:
Clinton 48, Trump 42 in new weekly online NBC/SurveyMonkey poll -- was Clinton +8 last week https://t.co/OQkTu6z0rm
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 30, 2016