Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* If you missed Friday night's show, note that the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls show Hillary Clinton with sizable leads over Donald Trump in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado.
* At a campaign event in Connecticut over the weekend, Trump said he's not running against Hillary Clinton, but rather, "I’m running against the crooked media."
* Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort told the AP, in reference to Trump, "For the last week or so, he’s been very focused and very much on his game.” Manafort did not appear to be kidding.
* An unflattering New York Times piece over the weekend reported that Trump's advisers are, with increasing frequency, conceding that the Republican candidate "may be beyond coaching." The piece added, "In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change."
* A new USA Today/Rock the Vote Poll found Clinton leading Trump, 56% to 20%, among voters under the age of 35.
* Trump had previously indicated his intention to compete in his home state of New York, but a new Siena Research Institute poll shows Clinton crushing the GOP nominee in the Empire State, 57% to 27%.
* Carlos Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce in the Bush/Cheney administration, endorsed Clinton yesterday, and not just because of his distaste for Trump. “I actually think Hillary Clinton has the experience, she’s been around, she knows how the system works. I think she’d make a darn good president,” Gutierrez told CNN's Jake Tapper.
* As things stand, NBC News and Cook Political Report both show Clinton winning the presidential election even without many key battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, and Iowa.