CHANGE: LA Times tracking poll has Trump out to his biggest lead of the year. Six and a half points. “That’s up from a dead heat on the last day of the GOP convention. Safe to say that Trump got a bounce from Cleveland, no? If you’re unconvinced, here’s what the last seven polls that RCP is following look like: Five of the seven lean red, amounting to a narrow but seemingly reliable lead of 1.1 points for Trump. To put that in perspective, over the past 12 months he had led Clinton for exactly three days, in late May of this year — and that was a lead of just 0.2 points, fueled by the fact that he’d already become presumptive nominee at that point while Hillary was still busy trying to tamp down Berniemania. Maybe the polls revert to form next week when Hillary gets a convention bounce of her own. Or maybe not: I’m all-in on predicting that she won’t get a bounce. For some Americans, last week was their first real introduction to Trump the politician. There’s no new introduction to a pol as familiar as Clinton, no matter how hard the DNC strains to manufacture one.”

Plus: “What happened smack dab in the middle of mid-June and mid-July? Right, Jim Comey’s press conference on July 5th accusing her of ‘extreme carelessness’ in how she handled classified information. Even now, with her ratings in the toilet, she’s no more unpopular than Trump is, but that’s a bad place for a well-worn political commodity like Clinton to be in a populist climate. Voters might be willing to back an establishmentarian whom they personally like much more than the ‘change agent’ from the other party. When they dislike her as much as they dislike him, though, why not roll the dice on something different?”