Among the many conventional-wisdom notions that Donald J. Trump blew to smithereens while winning the presidency involves whether Hillary Clinton’s fortunes depended on President Obama’s poll standing.

The better the president’s approval rating stands, the better Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency … or so the theory went. Historians predicted as much. Political scientists, too. Pollsters said it as well.

Wrong!

Barack Obama is now enjoying the highest approval rating since the earliest days of his presidency. He stands at 53.9 percent of citizens approving of the job he’s doing, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. His percentage of approval-over-disapproval rating stands at 11 percent.

That’s a pretty strong standing, right? Right!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

It’s just a percentage point or so greater than where he stood on Election Day, meaning that Clinton was supposed to win the election.

Wrong again!

Trump insulted just about every voting bloc one can imagine, except perhaps white, rural voters who flocked to him by the millions.

African-Americans? Hispanics? Prisoners of war? Handicapped Americans? Muslims? Women? Gold Star families? They all got the treatment from the man who would become president-elect.

It didn’t matter. That was another supposed truth that Trump turned into a myth.

So it is, then, with this idea that Clinton’s fortunes rested with Barack Obama’s polling.

None of it mattered.

Go bleeping figure, will ya?