BLUNDERING HILLARY – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:  As we noted below, conventional wisdom holds that Hillary Clinton has a lock on the election.  Indeed, a new CNN poll has her up 13 points over Trump:

Indianapolis (CNN) As Donald Trump captures the mantle of presumptive Republican nominee, a new poll finds he begins his general election campaign well behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

The new CNN/ORC Poll, completed ahead of Trump's victory last night, found Clinton leads 54% to 41%, a 13-point edge over the New York businessman, her largest lead since last July.

Clinton is also more trusted than Trump on many issues voters rank as critically important, with one big exception. By a 50% to 45% margin, voters say Trump would do a better job handling the economy than Clinton would.

Almost 9 out of 10 voters in the poll called the economy extremely or very important to their vote for president, outranking any other issue tested in the poll.

No doubt Clinton holds the lead now, but I wouldn't put too much stock in those numbers.   First of all, Trump is now past the primary contest and can campaign as a presidential candidate.  Second, Hillary is a god-awful campaigner.  Look what she did in West Virginia just a few days ago.  From the New York Post, via Powerline:

Figuring she has the Democratic nomination sewn up, Hillary Clinton this week headed to swing state West Virginia, aiming to “feel the pain” of coal country.

But then she ran into Bo Copley, a recently laid-off miner.

He hit her with her comments from last month, explaining her clean-energy program: “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she’d said.

Bo didn’t like that much: “I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of, out of jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend.”

Clinton’s eye-rolling answer: “What I was saying is that the way things are going now, we will continue to lose jobs.”

Not true: She was plainly promising her policy would put miners out of work.

More lies: “I didn’t mean that we were going to do it, what I said was, that is going to happen unless we take action to try to help and prevent it.”

COMMENT:  You'd think she would have come with specific ideas for saving the economy of West Virginia.  She didn't.  She just claimed that her comment about putting coal miners out of business had been misunderstood.   It's typical Hillary.  She doesn't care about these people, and isn't very good at hiding her indifference. 

True, the Clinton campaign will throw everything at Trump, and appropriately so.  His vulgarity is a matter of record, and there is plenty of audiotape to prove it.   But Trump is a relentless campaigner, and he reaches people.  Hillary makes an appointment with people.

May 4,  2016