Welcome to The Lid, your afternoon dose of the 2016 ethos… Tim Kaine played harmonica while his wife clog danced (sans clogs) during a campaign stop at a brewery on Monday, giving parents across the country fresh and devastatingly effective new ideas for how to embarrass their teenage children during their next family outing.
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‘16 from 30,000:
It’s a day in August, which means a new poll has come out showing Donald Trump behind in a battleground state. That’s just how things seem to be going for the GOP nominee. Today’s polls come courtesy of the Washington Post, which shows Clinton with a 14-point lead among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup with Trump, and Monmouth, which found Trump trailing by nine in Florida among likely voters (seven percent said they would vote for third-party candidates). Our own NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll released Tuesday morning showed Clinton with a nine-point advantage nationally, virtually unchanged from last week.
And while all these deficits should be concerning for the Trump campaign, they should be equally alarmed by how little time there is before early voting begins in some states. As the New York Times notes, early voting starts as soon as Sept. 23 in Minnesota and South Dakota. A number of states follow suit soon after that, with the heavily prized Iowa expecting to begin casting ballots at the end of September and Ohio beginning Oct. 12. So the notion that Trump has nearly three months to turn things around is misnomer. And on top of that, Trump told a Wisconsin television station on Tuesday he has no plans to change. “I don’t want to pivot. I mean, you have to be you,” he said.
POPPING ON NBC POLITICS
- The latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll shows Clinton with a nine point advantage over Trump.
- Hillary Clinton keeps using the Olympics to slam Trump.
- The Trump campaign is refuting a New York Times report that former Fox News head Roger Ailes is advising the campaign.
- Trump will receive a classified intelligence briefing in New York tomorrow.
- And from First Read: Hillary Clinton has owned the airwaves for two-straight months.
FOR THE RECORD…
"Everyone talks about, ‘Oh, well you’re going to pivot, you’re going to’—I don’t want to pivot. I mean, you have to be you.”
-- Donald Trump to LaCrosse, Wisconsin station WKBT.
TOMORROW’S SKED
Tim Kaine is in Iowa while Hillary Clinton is in Cleveland.
Mike Pence is in Nevada.
