Brendan Nyhan

From my new Upshot column:

Why is Donald Trump leading the polls in the G.O.P. presidential race? One explanation is his celebrity and the media attention he attracts. But he has also exploited our vulnerability to pleasing fictions about presidential power.

We like to pretend that presidents exert vast control over the country, commanding not only the direction of American politics but also the laws and policies of the country and even the state of the economy.

When presidents fail to control events to our liking, critics often suggest that the problem is the chief executive’s failure to try hard enough or act tough enough. I’ve called this pattern the Green Lantern theory of the presidency after the comic book superheroes who wield special rings with powers that are limited only by the hero’s willpower.

Mr. Trump is the purest Green Lantern candidate we’ve seen in recent years.

From my new Upshot column:

Is Joe Biden running for president? Effectively yes, even though he is not yet a declared candidate.

Buzz has grown about a potential Biden candidacy this week after The Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that he was considering entering the race, in part because of urging from his son Beau, who died in May.

Media accounts have suggested that the decision will be made during a family vacation in September, but Mr. Biden is functionally already a candidate in the so-called invisible primary, which plays an enormous role in nomination contests. The question now is whether he will receive enough support to decide to make it official.

From my new Upshot column:

The onslaught of presidential polls has already begun. You may be tempted to avoid the polling deluge, but the results of these surveys do influence the campaign, including who will get invited to the first G.O.P. debate. That’s why we want to show you how to read (or ignore) the polls like a pro.

From my new Upshot column:

Is Hillary Rodham Clinton in trouble? You would think so from the coverage of recent polls showing that her unfavorable ratings have increased nationally and in key states.

Multiple media outlets and pundits have suggested that her personal unpopularity 20 months before the presidential election is a major problem for her. A Washington Post article described the poll numbers as “decidedly sobering for Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2016.”

The underlying theory is, as The Post piece put it, that “presidential politics tends to be dominated by personality” and that Mrs. Clinton “may be hard pressed to win a traditional presidential election in which likability matters most.” Likewise, a Los Angeles Times article approvingly cited the maxim that “it’s often said that elections can boil down to a contest of who would a voter rather have a beer with.”

None of these claims are supported by the data.

From my new Upshot column:

The Supreme Court continued a trend Thursday morning toward making seemingly more liberal decisions. In two important cases, the court’s conservative majority was again split, putting liberal justices in the majority on decisions upholding the legality of certain subsidies to help Americans purchase insurance under the Affordable Care Act and offering legal protection against housing discrimination.

Why are conservatives losing more often? While the justices may have changed their views in some instances, it’s also possible that the types of cases the court is deciding have shifted. What seem like liberal decisions may instead represent conservative overreach.

From my new Upshot column:

Is Hillary Rodham Clinton running a campaign focused on “secondary, base-ginning issues”?

That’s what Josh Kraushaar of The National Journal argued in a column on Tuesday. He stated that until recently she “has seemed content to energize small slices of the electorate” like blacks and Hispanics with “side issues” like early voting and immigration overhaul while ignoring “an overall message on the economy and national security.” According to Mr. Kraushaar, “she’s getting sidetracked from tackling the central issues that most Americans care about.”

But as John Harwood, a reporter for The New York Times and CNBC, pointed out on Twitter, the idea that Mrs. Clinton is running a “narrow” campaign is rooted in an outdated impression of the nation’s electorate as straight, middle-aged white couples with children (the demographic group of many political journalists).

From my new Upshot column:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign took a beating among some pundits this week for telling the truth: She’s going to employ a strategy focused on a narrow set of the most competitive states.

In other words, she’s running as a modern presidential candidate.

Mrs. Clinton’s statement is what’s called a Kinsley gaffe — taking its name from Michael Kinsley, a journalist who said a gaffe is something true that a politician isn’t supposed to say. By conceding the obvious, she revealed the disjunction between the politics we say we want and the kind we actually have.

From my new Upshot column:

What is keeping third-party and independent candidates from mounting credible campaigns for the presidency?

According to Level the Playing Field, a nonprofit that is attracting national media coverage, the problem is candidates’ access to televised debates. In a recent ad in The Wall Street Journal, the group blamed the requirement by the Commission on Presidential Debates that candidates have to reach 15 percent in the polls seven weeks before the election to participate: “To break the two-party stranglehold on who becomes president, all they have to do is change one rule, and put an end to the rigged game.”

In reality, changing the debate rules is unlikely to make a third-party or independent candidacy viable, let alone put it on a level playing field with the major party candidates.

From my new Upshot column:

The Pacific Rim trade deal making its way through Congress is the latest step in a decades-long trend toward liberalizing trade — a somewhat mysterious development given that many Americans are skeptical of freer trade.

But Americans with higher incomes are not so skeptical. They — along with businesses and interest groups that tend to be affiliated with them — are much more likely to support trade liberalization. Trade is thus one of the best examples of how public policy in the United States is often much more responsive to the preferences of the wealthy than to those of the general public.

From my new Upshot column:

For the first time in decades, a consensus is building behind reform of the criminal justice system. But will the 2016 election get in the way?

In February, a dizzyingly wide coalition encompassing the conservativeKoch Industries and the liberal Center for American Progress announced an effort to try to overhaul the system. Several Republican presidential contenders as well as numerous other politicians on both sides of the aisle have spoken of the need forreform. Now Hillary Rodham Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential contender, has joined the chorus, calling on the country to “end the era of mass incarceration.”

It is not clear how much longer this policy debate can continue without dividing along partisan and ideological lines, however.