Clinton up by nine, but down 5 since mid-June (post-Orlando)

I mentioned last week that we should take note of polling in the wake of the Pulse massacre, and today's Reuters/Ipsos results do indeed reveal that the American sheep are nervous.

Hillary Clinton’s lead over Republican rival Donald Trump has slipped by about five percentage points since mid-June, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, bringing the race for the White House to within nine points.

The poll showed that 44.5 percent of likely voters supported former secretary of state Clinton while 35.5 percent backed businessman Trump. That compares with 46.6 percent support for Clinton and 32.3 percent for Trump on June 12, a date that marked her widest lead for the month.

Trump has focused much of his energy in recent days on the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, by a U.S.-born gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State militant group. Trump vowed to ban people from entering the United States from countries with links to terrorism against America or its allies.

Raw Story does not link to the poll nor does it reveal the third-party results, so I tracked that down and found them lumped into the "other/wouldn't vote/refused" category, totaling 20%.

So as a two-horse race national survey, it's just not worth anything beyond the spin for Trump and Clinton and the various media outlets who think it is worth something.  What's more telling is this poll from Quinnipiac for the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, via NYT.

Donald J. Trump’s recent rough patch has taken a toll on his standing in three crucial swing states, according to a new poll that shows voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania viewing Hillary Clinton as being better prepared to be president.

A survey from Quinnipiac University found Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by a margin of 47 percent to 39 percent in Florida, where they were essentially tied in May. Mrs. Clinton also erased Mr. Trump’s narrow lead in Ohio, where the candidates are now deadlocked at 40 percent. In Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton leads by a single percentage point.

The polls had margins of error of plus or minus three percentage points, rendering Ohio and Pennsylvania very much up for grabs a month before Republicans hold their nominating convention July 18-21 in Cleveland.

Update: Raw Story does better with this republish of NJ.com's Jonathan Salant and five takeaways from Q's swing state polls.

Polls this early blahblahblah and other cautionaries aside, if Florida is moving out of contention then Clinton is a shoe-in.  If she picks a Latino (and Julian Castro is being rumored as a finalist -- I like Tom Perez and Xavier Becerra better now that I have scrutinized them) then a swath of states move closer to purple -- not Texas, but a Castro selection forces the GOP to play defense on turf that they should have easily been able to hold.  Rice's Mark Jones got this one right.

Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones put some parameters on what "better" could look like for (Texas) Democrats.

"'Better' is keeping Trump's victory in the single digits, and taking back somewhere around a half-dozen state House seats, taking back Congressional District 23 and turning Harris County blue," Jones said.

Let's also note for the record that among the vice-presidential contenders, Elizabeth Warren and Perez have drawn the most objections, from Wall Street to Big Business.  That may actually mean something in Hillary's thought process about her pick.

In other news, Jonanthan Chait screwed the "Nader/Gore/Bush/2000" pooch for all to see and take selfies of.  There's a cottage industry that thrives on this guy's foibles, so I'll only repeat the truth  for those that still don't get it.  And if you don't believe me, you really should believe Jim Hightower.

And starring Sonya Sotomayor as The Voice

The voice of freedom, of conscience ... the liberal lion on the SCOTUS roared yesterday.

"It is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny," she wrote. "For generations, black and brown parents have given their children 'the talk' -- instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger -- all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them. 

"By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time," she added. "It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged."

Co-starring the Five as The Police State.

In a 5-3 decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police have the right to detain anyone without cause and then arrest them on the spot if that person has an outstanding warrant.

For you budding constitutionalists out there, that is the direct opposite of what the Fourth Amendment guarantees.  Is this a conservative court or a fascist one?

In Monday’s ruling on the Utah vs. Strieff case, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Chief Justice John Roberts, argued that a police officer who randomly detains someone on the street without cause is not violating the rights of that detainee if they run their identification, find an outstanding warrant for a past offense, arrest them, and proceed to charge them with additional crimes based on what they find in a search. Any evidence found as part of such a search is now admissible in court.

So even if police violate the Constitution by stopping someone without suspicion, an arrest warrant entitles them to conduct a search.  In that circumstance, five justices said there is no "flagrant police misconduct."  Nina Totenberg at NPR:

The decision came in the case of Edward Strieff who was stopped after leaving a house that was under police observation because of an anonymous tip that it was being used for drug dealing. Though narcotics detective Douglas Fackrell later admitted he had no reason to believe Strieff had done anything wrong, he stopped him demanded that he identify himself and detained him while radioing in to see if there were any outstanding warrants against Strieff.

As it turned out, there was one for a minor traffic offense, so the detective searched Strieff and found a small amount of methamphetamines. The Utah Supreme Court later threw out the drug conviction because it stemmed from an illegal stop. Today, however, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. Writing for the five-justice majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that officer Fackrell's discovery of the outstanding warrant broke the connection to the unconstitutional stop. And that therefore the evidence found in the search could be used to prosecute Strieff. The generally liberal Justice Stephen Breyer provided the fifth vote to make a majority. 

I have to say that I'm stunned.  Not so much by Kennedy Breyer's fifth vote (thanks for the correction, Gadfly), but by all of the rest of the Supreme conservatives.  There's no life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to be found in this decision.  And it's not law and order, it's extending your local po-po a few more liberties as judge, jury, and executioner.

The decision was controversial because in some cities thousands of people have arrest warrants pending against them, mostly for traffic violations as insignificant as unpaid parking tickets.

There were 16,000 outstanding arrest warrants in Ferguson, Mo., as of 2015 — a figure that amounts to roughly 75% of the city’s population — the Justice Department found during its investigation into the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old African-American man. Cincinnati recently had more than 100,000 warrants pending for failure to appear in court. New York City has 1.2 million outstanding warrants.

If you have a traffic ticket that you haven't paid, you have created probable cause to be arrested for something else.  Do you feel safer now?

With four major decisions due in the next week, including cases on affirmative action, abortion and immigration, Sotomayor's anger signals that what has been a quiet term since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia could get increasingly contentious.  

And three of the eight remaining decisions due are Texas cases.  Summer is about to get a lot hotter.  If some of you people living in swing states feel like the whole Supreme Court argument suddenly works for you, here's your hall pass.  And along that note, Quinnipiac's fresh polling suggests that Ohio and Pennsylvania still are, bur Florida may not be.

A lot of food for thought this morning.