"New swing-state polls released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University show Trump leading Clinton in Florida and Pennsylvania — and tied in the critical battleground state of Ohio."

Politico reports.

Trump leads by three points in Florida — the closest state in the 2012 election — 42 percent to 39 percent. In Ohio, the race is tied, 41 percent to 41 percent. And in Pennsylvania — which hasn't voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988 — Trump leads, 43 percent to 41 percent...

While the Quinnipiac results are eye-popping, they don’t represent any significant movement — except in Florida. In three rounds of polling over the past two months, the race has moved from a four-point Trump lead in Ohio in the first survey, then tied in the next two polls. In Pennsylvania, Clinton led by one point in the first two polls and now trails by two.

But in Florida, the race has bounced around. Clinton led by one point in the first poll two months ago, but she opened up an eight-point lead in June — a lead that has been erased and more in the new Quinnipiac survey....

[T]he Quinnipiac polls are imperfect measures of a post-email investigation race. That’s because, like many of the school’s other polls, they were conducted over an unusually lengthy, 12-day time period: June 30 through July 11.

Here's Quinnipiac's press release:

By wide margins, voters in each state agree with the statement, "The old way of doing things no longer works and we need radical change." Voters also agree by wide margins that trade agreements with other countries have hurt them and their families' financial situation.

Voters still say Clinton is more intelligent than Trump and that she is better prepared to be president. But Clinton has lost her wide lead over Trump for having "higher moral standards." And Trump widens his lead over Clinton for being more honest and trustworthy....

And look at this 15 point spread on the jobs issue in each of the 3 states:

Florida voters say 54 - 39 percent that Trump would be better creating jobs.... Trump would be better creating jobs, Ohio voters say 54 - 39 percent.... Trump would be better creating jobs, Pennsylvania voters say 54 - 39 percent....

I'm shocked by the numbers who say "the old ways don't work and it's time for radical change": Florida, 71 - 25; Ohio, 73 - 24; Pennsylvania, 72 - 26.

A weird comparison is the difference between asking about "higher moral standards" and "more honest and trustworthy." In Florida, the 2 candidates are tied — 42 - 42 — on moral standards, but Trump beats Clinton — 50 - 37 percent — on "honest and trustworthy." In Ohio, it's close to a tie on moral standards — Clinton 43, Trump 42 — but Trump is 10 points ahead — 47 - 37 — on "honest and trustworthy." In Pennsylvania, Clinton edges out Trump — 43 - 41 — on moral standards, and Trump crushes her — 49 - 34 — on "honest and trustworthy."

Why do those 2 concepts diverge (consistently)? Higher moral standards could lead a person into  secretiveness. Being less caught up in morality could liberate a person to speak in an open and unfiltered way. There is shame and there is shamelessness.

"I’m here to say that we must reject such despair... I’m here to insist that we are not so divided as we seem."

"I say that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life.”

Said Barack Obama, speaking at the memorial service for the 5 police officers shot to death in Dallas.

"Mr. Sanders... was in a bittersweet but resolute mood on Tuesday, according to his advisers, as he took the stage with Mrs. Clinton...."

"[H]e came around grudgingly to supporting her, the advisers said. But he was also determined to make a strong case against Mr. Trump and, in doing so, champion Mrs. Clinton as the only chance to defeat him.... One person close to Mr. Sanders said that the senator and his wife, Jane, were 'putting on a good face' on Tuesday, but that they were disappointed that his campaign had not been more successful after he gave it so much of his energy and rallied millions of people around his ideas.... Still, Mr. Sanders uttered the words that Mrs. Clinton needed him to say — 'I am endorsing Hillary Clinton.'"

From the NYT report "Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton, Hoping to Unify Democrats," by Amy Chozick, Patrick Healy, and Yamiche Alcindor. They include Trump's cutting reaction: “Bernie is now officially a part of a rigged system" for "endorsing one of the most pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and pro-offshoring candidates in the history of the Democratic Party."

"Normally Supreme Court justices should refrain from commenting on partisan politics. But these are not normal times."

Writes Paul Butler, one of 3 lawprofs addressing the questions "Can a Supreme Court Justice Denounce a Candidate? Is it ever appropriate or ethical for a justice to announce his or her preference in a presidential election?" — asked by the NYT on the occasion of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's indicating she's horrified at the idea of a Trump presidency.

I addressed the question myself last night, here, and my answer is closest to what Erwin Chemerinsky writes in the NYT. The third essay, by Stephen Gillers, rests heavily on the Code of Judicial Conduct, which doesn't apply to the Supreme Court, but, in Gillers's view, should. He cites the provision that judges should not "make speeches for a political candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office" or "engage in any other political activity." I wouldn't interpret those provisions too broadly. Judging would collapse if we took "any other political activity" too seriously, since deciding cases is political, depending on what you mean by political. All Ginsburg did was answer a question in an interview. She didn't stage or appear at a political event. And her answer was a modest display of feeling: "I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president... For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that." It's almost a refusal to respond, an oh, my.

But back to Professor Butler with his "normalness" template. I'm watching that. Click my "normal" tag to follow my interest in the idea of normal. These are not normal times, so suspend the normal rules. Who's being not normal? A. The person adjudged non-normal, thus unleashing others from the obligation to be normal or B. the person claiming things are now already non-normal and thus non-normal measures can be used?

And by the way, who's more like Hitler? A or B? I don't like bringing up Hitler, but those other people started it.

Donald Trump may think Pence is a safe choice...

... but Rich Lowry thinks Pence won't be much good at defending Trump.

Lowry thinks Christie — "comfortable at defending anything" — and Newt — "one of the most glib politicians of the last 30 years" — would be much better at defending Trump, but conservatives aren't "excited by Christie" and "Newt is famously ill-disciplined."

I'd say the problem with Christie and Newt is that they don't help normalize Trump. They don't envelop him in conventional politics. That could be okay if Trump's idea is — to steal an old Austin, Texas slogan — KEEP TRUMP WEIRD.

Pence seems to have a boring normalness about him, but the media will do all it can to deprive him of that. The gift he could bestow — assuming Trump wants it (normalness) — could explode in Trump's face. I'm picturing endless talk about Pence's dealings with gay people. Pence won't look like the steady, substantial statesman Trump needs to get to palatable normalization.  Pence will supply a new element of bigotry to the media's Trump template.

Trump is tempted to appease those who think he's too weird, but whatever he chooses will be portrayed as a new dimension of weirdness. There's no getting to the illusion of normal. The trick, I think, is to be weird in the right way, the way that doesn't make us think: Why would we want a weird President?

"So now we have a situation in which Team Clinton has scared citizens into thinking the threat to their lives is mostly domestic, coming from Trump, Trump supporters, and anyone who looks like them."

"People who are scared will act. And we see those actions now in terms of violence against police, violence against Trump supporters, and death threats to bloggers such as me. And we already have one attempted Trump assassination."

Writes Scott Adams.

ADDED, after reading a few of the comments: How should a smart person read Adams? You shouldn't take the statements at face value. He's talking about the art of persuasion, so he's performing the art even as he talks about it. You need to get to the next level and see what he's trying to persuade you to think. It might be something as simple as: He's the master of persuasion. If you want to train yourself, look at this cute video of Adams supposedly hypnotizing his dog Snickers. Think one more step forward and you'll see that Adams is also persuading you of his power to hypnotize the dog. Overtly, Adams is saying that the dog believes the food coming from his hand is better than the same food when it's sitting in the dish, because the dog could just eat all the food it wants right out of the dish, but nevertheless waits for him to pick up the food and feed it from the hand. If you believed that, you were tricked, however. Adams told you what you should believe, but if you believed it, you were failing to develop alternate theories of why the dog waited for the food, such as the dog's enjoyment of hand-feeding. Maybe the dog was the master persuader, intent on causing his man to pick up food and hand it to him and pleased to see it happen one more time. I'm not eating out of that bowl. You pick it up and hand it to me.

And now, you commenters, have caused me to hand feed you again.

The suddenly extremely popular phone game Pokémon Go can "see and modify nearly all information in your Google account."

"[I]f you played the game on an iPhone and signed in with your Google account, you also just handed the keys to your entire Google account to Niantic, the developer behind the game," and "nothing in the sign up process indicates that you're giving the app full access to your account."

But the company says it didn't mean to request all this access and is working to fix it. (I feel like I should make some snarky Hillary joke before you do.)

On the popularity of the game, here's a NYT article:

[One player's mother] especially loves one of the rules of the game. It requires users to walk around to achieve certain rewards and uses a pedometer to ensure compliance.

“She doesn’t realize she’s getting so much exercise,” Mr. Cann said. “She’s just playing Pokémon.”

Whether exercising or gaming, players need to know where they are. When a trainer opens the Pokémon Go app a warning appears: “Remember to be alert at all times. Stay aware of your surroundings.”

It's getting indoorsy people out of the house, apparently, but there's a danger that they may get hit by a truck. Everyone's out and about but inside a game and looking in part at the real world but focused on chasing illusions. But then, aren't we all?

"The story of how Theresa May, the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, became the presumptive Prime Minister is one of tragi-farcical, politico-comic self-destruction."

Writes Amy Davidson in The New Yorker. Read the whole thing. I just want to excerpt the part about how one of May's rivals, the Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, flamed out after the Times of London published an interview with the headline: "BEING A MOTHER GIVES ME EDGE ON MAY—LEADSOM" that began "Tory minister says she will be better leader because childless home secretary lacks ‘stake in future.'"

It went on to quote Leadsom, who often included the phrase “as a mum” in her pro-Leave statements, as saying that May “possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people. But I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next.” This, she said, set her apart from May as a potential leader. She added, “I am sure Theresa will be really sad she doesn’t have children, so I don’t want this to be ‘Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t,’ because I think that would be really horrible.” But, she went on, “genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.” In other words, Andrea has children; Theresa hasn’t....

As a matter of logic, this disparagement of childless leaders is ludicrous... And, as a matter of politics, Leadsom’s comments were a wreck. She insulted the childless, and she seemed personally cruel to May, who has quietly said in the past that she is, indeed, sad about having never had children. (May, who is fifty-nine, has been married to her husband, a banker she met when they were both students at Oxford, for thirty-five years.)

... [Leadsom]  responded... by attacking the Times, tweeting that the story was “truly appalling and the exact opposite of what I said. I am disgusted.” Leadsom demanded that the paper release the transcript, which it did, along with the audio, and which not only confirmed the story but made Leadsom look worse. When the Times asked, “What is the main difference between you and Theresa May?,” her children and her “huge” family were practically the first things that Leadsom mentioned, after a passing reference to her knowledge of the economy and her “optimism.”

It's nice to get mentioned in Best of the Web.

Here.

That won't work without a subscription, but it's mostly a quote from my post "What's missing from 'Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Struggle to Be Unifying Voice for Nation' by Patrick Healy in the NYT."

James Taranto says I'm "right that the omission is glaring."

ADDED: I was wrong to say "it's mostly a quote from my post." I was only looking at the top of a column that (I didn't realize) really did go on to try to answer my question (How can we think about what Trump or Hillary could do about racial divisions unless we understand why Obama has not done more?). Taranto ends with:

The election of a black president was indeed—and still is—a sign of how far America has progressed since the 1960s, never mind the 1860s. Perhaps a nimbler politician could have dealt more effectively with the clamor of the past couple of years. But Obama is uniquely constrained by the unreasonable hopes that so many Americans placed in him.

Did Justice Ginsburg express so much contempt for Donald Trump that she'll have to recuse herself, if he becomes President, in all the cases involving the President?

This Washington Post column entertains that proposition.

Imagine a Bush v. Gore type election this year, with the outcome subject to a Supreme Court vote. There will only be 8 Justices on the Court. If Ginsburg has to recuse, it produces a 4-to-3/conservative-liberal balance on the Court.

The irony! Ginsburg's horror at the idea Donald Trump winning the presidency could cause Donald Trump to win the presidency.

Here's the NYT interview where Ginsburg displayed her political feelings. What she said was: "I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president... For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” And then, quoting her husband, she added, "Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand." We're told she was "smiling ruefully."

IN THE COMMENTS: HoodlumDoodlum said:

Professor: how do you feel about Ginsburg's statement and/or her decision to make it? 

I don't think she really said that much. She just said "I can't imagine...." You have to flesh it out with ideas of your own for it to mean anything. I would have ignored it. I ignored the interview when it appeared in the NYT, even though I always read the Times and the story was pushed heavily on the front page. I was annoyed at the NYT playing to its readers in the usual way — fawning over Ginsburg, eager to serve up more Trump hate in what must have seemed to be a delicious new form. But when The Washington Post took it so seriously and interviewed lawprofs about recusal, it got interesting. I would have left her alone to have a little freedom of speech about politics, and it's helpful to the people to get some information on how political the Justices might be. What Ginsburg most clearly expressed is that she wants Scalia's seat filled with someone who's on her side.

What does Black Lives Matter think about gun control?

In "After Dallas, the Future of Black Lives Matter," in The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb interviewing Alicia Garza, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, asks about guns: "Does Black Lives Matter have a position on that? Is that something that you all have thought about in the wake of those incidents?"

Garza says:

When it comes to gun control, I think it’s too simplistic of a conversation. Both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had guns on them, which is part of their Second Amendment right. It is a part of a culture that is largely protected by special-interest groups like the N.R.A., but the right to bear arms, it seems, only exists for white people. When black people have arms, legally, they can still also be killed at the hands of the police. That’s what we saw this past week.

At the same time, because it’s a question of police and vigilante violence is so prevalent at this particular moment in this country, it feels asinine to be calling for gun control when black people, in particular, are on the losing end of that conversation, so there’s that. But then there’s the reality that, in this country, we have more guns than people, and we put guns into the hands of more people than any other country on the planet, and so that dynamic needs to be shifted. I’ll be honest with you, I really struggle with the conversation around gun control.

It’s clear to me that this person who committed these acts was not well. And also was experiencing a level of emotional trauma, like the rest of this country, in particular like the rest of black people in this country, who watched two executions on television, so his stated motive was, “I’m really upset by what I’m seeing where police are killing black people.”

At that point, Cobb sees reason to remind Garza that most people say "they want better policing" and not "that they want to actually kill the police." Garza answers:

I don’t disagree, but the point that I’m trying to make is, I think it’s an error to look at the state of why this country is so violent and not understand the complexities that lie underneath the violence. The violence that was caused by that lone gunperson in Dallas was very complex. It wasn’t about him being an adherent to black-power ideologies, as the media tried to frame it. He may have been pro-black, but he was also probably a lot of other things, and similarly when we look at the underlying causes for police violence, it’s also not black-and-white. It’s not always only about racism, or it’s not always about “police just hate black people.”

By the way, when the Dallas shootings took place, there were many people in the protesting crowd who were exercising their right under Texas law to carry firearms openly:

The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown... said the event had attracted “20 or 30 people” who “showed up with AR-15 rifles slung across their shoulder... They were wearing gas masks... They were wearing bulletproof vests and camo fatigues, for effect, for whatever reason.”

When the shooting started, “they began to run,” he said. And because they ran in the middle of the shooting, he said, the police on the scene viewed them as suspects. “Someone is shooting at you from a perched position, and people are running with AR-15s and camo gear and gas masks and bulletproof vests, they are suspects, until we eliminate that.”...

"Once kids get hooked on e-cigarettes, they are more likely to go on to become cigarette smokers."

Said the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, quoted in "More Nonsmoking Teens Inhaling Flavored Nicotine Through Vaping," in the NYT.

Is nicotine alone really a problem? The article just says "Nicotine disrupts neurotransmitter activity and is highly addictive, particularly in a developing brain." If that's worse than caffeine — which the kids consume all the time — I'd expect the NYT to say so. Instead it goes on to mention the other ingredients — "solvents, formaldehyde" — in the e-cigarettes and this problem of e-cigarettes leading to real cigarettes.

I'm not buying into the great vaping scare.

One answer to that question I asked yesterday is: Barack Obama has not been trying to bring racial harmony.

Instapundit linked to my post, in which I had said that before we can analyze whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump might succeed in healing racial divisions, we need to examine why Barack Obama has failed.

I don't give an answer in my post, but I fully expected to hear the answer: Barack Obama never intended to bring racial harmony. That is, he's only failed to achieve a goal the question assumed he had. That's not failure, that's success.

As Instapundit puts it, Obama was sold as a new hope for racial healing, but "it's not how he ruled" and: "President Chaos Umpire has no interest in racial healing."

I expected that. But I don't personally agree with it. It's a neat answer, a red-meat answer, but I think the situation is much more complex. I don't know who — if anyone — completely believed that Hope-poster Obama would magically solve all the racial problems in this country. Perhaps some people who didn't vote for Obama thought that now that we've elected a black President, everyone should stop talking about racial problems.

The problems are complicated, drawing them out makes them look worse, but some people think that looking at them is part of whatever progress could be made in solving them. And some people think those who are trying to expose problems are making them worse, and it would be better to stop talking about race altogether.

Trump "has boasted of his friendships with many gay people, saying 'I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay.'"

"He has supported AIDS charities for years, and welcomed gay couples at his Palm Beach club when doing so was considered remarkable. And he has recently started insisting that he would be a better friend to the gay community than Mrs. Clinton, even though he opposes legal rights like marriage. But as he tries to convince social conservatives that he is not acting as a moderate, Mr. Trump has been largely hands-off with the platform.... The Republican platform committee has long been dominated by some of the party’s most stalwart activists. And some of them have hardly been shy about their views. There is Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia, who has compared the gay rights movement to Nazism. Hardy Billington, a committee member from Missouri, placed an ad in a local paper asserting that homosexuality kills people at two to three times the rate of smoking. And Mary Frances Forrester of North Carolina has claimed that the 'homosexual agenda is trying to change the course of Western civilization.'"

From "Donald Trump Keeps Distance in G.O.P. Platform Fight on Gay Rights," by Jeremy W. Peters in the NYT.

It's usually Donald Trump who's portrayed as weird and out of the mainstream and, for this reason, does not really belong in the Republican Party. With this issue, he's the one who's normal and mainstream, and it's the party that looks embarrassingly out of it.

"We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others."

"They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button. The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations."

The last few lines of Maureen Dowd's new column.

What's missing from "Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Struggle to Be Unifying Voice for Nation" by Patrick Healy in the NYT.

It begins:

No moment in the 2016 presidential campaign has cried out more for a unifying candidate than the police shootings of two black men last week and the ensuing national uproar, followed by the shocking sniper ambush that killed five police officers in Dallas.

And no other moment has revealed more starkly how hard it is for Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton to become that candidate....

Neither Trump nor Clinton, it seems, has what it takes to do what, it seems, America needs now. Clinton "lacks the public emotion, oratorical skills and reputation for honesty to persuade large numbers of Americans to see things her way." And Trump is "sowing division and hatred" and "electrif[ying]crowds... through provocations."

What's missing? Why is racial discord the problem of the summer of 2016? If anyone has what it takes to unify the country over race it is Barack Obama, who is President right now and who has been President for 7 1/2 years. If it makes any sense to be deciding the current presidential election on this issue, if this longed-for capacity is something that can possibly exist, then Barack Obama would be doing it now and would have been doing it for years.

Before you push us to judge whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would do better in bringing us together in racial harmony, Mr. Healy, please say a few words about why President Obama has failed. Of course, neither Clinton nor Trump inspires hope for a new opportunity at racial harmony. That's what Obama did in 2008. He was ideal for that issue and we voted for the hope. Now, so many years later, things seem even worse. Can you analyze how that happened? Because that did happen. I don't see how we can begin to think about what more Trump or Clinton could do unless we understand why President Obama failed.