Pretty good! Smart, too, as the party in power can’t go wrong with “great economy” as its closing argument before a big vote. It’s just … not very Trumpy. It’s way too sunny and hopeful.

A Trumpy ad would have ended with a caravan of illegal-alien Antifa members storming the concert hall and murdering the daughter onstage, all because mom voted for a Democrat.

I think we would have gotten that ad if the economy were less than great. As it is, it might be great enough to hold the Senate and limit losses in the House. Might.

Trump's approval rating is current 42-43% (per 538). That's not *awful*, but it's *bad*. It comes despite an economy that voters feel very good about. It seems to go higher when Trump is relatively removed from the scene (e.g. during Kavanaugh), not when he's Trump Being Trump.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 29, 2018

Silver is right about the effect of the Kavanaugh wars on Trump’s job approval. Check the numbers and you’ll find that he took a nasty tumble in the first half of September, dropping nearly three full points on average from where he was in late August. Then the Christine Blasey Ford news broke big — and POTUS, uncharacteristically, held back. He wasn’t on TV as much; when he was, he was low-key and respectful of Ford. By October 1, not only had he recovered all the ground he’d lost in his job approval, he’d reached the highest mark he’d managed since early June. It’s tempting to say that’s because the right rallied to him during the Kavanaugh wars but righties were already all aboard the Trump train. What probably happened is that he picked up some support from independents who were sympathetic to Kavanaugh and got to spend two weeks without being reminded of Trump’s more irritating foibles.

Probably the best thing he could do for the GOP over the next 10 days is lie low, keep running ads like this, and not tweet out tone-deaf incendiary garbage:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1056879122348195841

Nine hours a day of “executive time” is nine too many. Exit question: Say, which news network is that that’s featured in the ad reporting on the excellent jobs numbers? It looks familiar but the onscreen logo is suspiciously missing.