Trump’s Job Approval Hits New Lows
Trump's job approval numbers continue to sink.
As Donald Trump’s Presidency enters a new and precarious phase in the wake of the firing of F.B.I. Director James Comey, a new poll shows his job approval rating hitting new lows and a public that seems to be becoming largely dismissive of his Presidency:
President Trump’s approval rating has reached near-record lows, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.
The survey of registered voters found that 36 percent say they approve of Trump’s job performance, compared to 58 percent who disapprove. Trump’s approval has fallen from the 40 percent recorded in the same poll released in mid-April.
“There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “[These] are red flags that the administration simply can’t brush away.”
Trump’s favorability ratings slipped among some demographics that carried him to victory in the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton, including white voters without college degrees, white men and independent voters.
Trump’s approval rating is near its lowest mark since he took office, which was 35 points in early April, according to Quinnipiac.
Gallup said last month that Trump’s average approval rating was the lowest since it began presidential approval surveys in 1953. According to Gallup, the average approval of presidents is 61 percent.
According to Quinnipiac’s poll, Trump’s biggest drop in support this month was from white voters who didn’t go to college. Just 47 percent now approve of Trump’s administration, compared with 57 percent in April.
Among voters surveyed, 58 percent said Trump’s first 100 days in office have been “mainly a failure,” compared with just 38 percent who say it has been successful.
Other findings in the survey centered on Trump’s treatment of the media and vice versa. The poll found that 58 percent of the voters polled do not approve of the job the news media has done covering Trump’s White House. But a majority, 65 percent, also disapproved of Trump’s treatment of the press.
As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes on Twitter, the same poll also asked respondents to give the words that came to mind when they thought of Donald Trump. To say the least, the results were not good, with the first three words that got the most responses being “idiot,” “incompetent,” and a “liar”:
Quinnipiac asked people what word first came to mind when they thought about Trump. https://t.co/ks0UauOs9Opic.twitter.com/HQ3bYWhD16
— Philip Bump (@pbump) May 10, 2017
Bump’s colleague Aaron Blake notes that these numbers portend some potentially bad news for Trump:
Trump also has his worst numbers to date — across 10 Q polls since the 2016 election — on the following measures:
- Honesty: 33 percent say he is
- Good leadership skills: 56 percent say he doesn’t have them
- Caring about average people: 59 percent say he doesn’t
- Being levelheaded: Voters say 66-29 percent that he’s not (unlike the other numbers here, this is tied for all-time worst, not setting a new one)
- Being intelligent: Voters say 56-41 percent that he is
- Sharing your values: Voters say 64-32 percent that he doesn’t
- How he has treated the news media: Voters disapprove 65-31 percent
- Whether people trust him or the media more for the truth: 57 percent media, 31 percent Trump (even 17 percent of Republicans pick the media over their president)
Interestingly, the reason the numbers have ticked down appears to be the group that elected Trump in the first place: white, working-class voters. Whites without college degrees approved of Trump 57 percent to 38 percent in the mid-April Q poll and 51-39 percent in late March/early May; today they are split, with 47 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving.
Looking at the poll averages, we can see that while these bad numbers from Quinnipiac are among the worst we’ve seen for Trump since he took office, they are consistent with where things have gone over the past 111 days that he has been in office. In the RealClearPolitics average, Trump’s job approval stands at an average of 42.1% and his disapproval at 52.9% while his personal favorability stands at 41.8% favorable and 54.2% unfavorable. At Pollster, his overall job approval stands at 42.2% and disapproval is at 52.6% while his personal favorability stands at 43.5% and 51.2% unfavorable. Breaking that down by party affiliation, we find that Trump’s job approval remains overwhelmingly high among Republicans and overwhelmingly negative among Democrats. Among Independents, his job approval number stands at 37.1% and his disapproval number stands at 52.2%. As the RealClearPolitics chart shows us, the trend over Trump’s three months in office show his numbers getting worse rather than better:
All of these numbers are from surveys taken within the past two weeks or so and include a sufficient amount of time for things such as the vote on the American Health Care Act last week and the testimony of former F.B.I. Director James Comey regarding an investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Obviously, yesterday’s news regarding Comey’s firing will have some impact on the numbers as well but it will be at least a week before we know for sure what that impact might be. In any case, these numbers are quite obviously not good news for the Administration. As I’ve said before, historically it’s been the case that an incoming President enjoys at least some kind of a honeymoon period during which the public gives him the benefit of the doubt and has a generally positive view of his performance on the job. How long that lasts has varied from President to President, of course, and depends many times on factors outside of a President’s control. President Obama’s job approval, for example, stayed positive for roughly a year and a half before it started to turn negative headed into the 2010 midterm elections. President Bush’s job approval, on the other hand, remained positive for the majority of his first term thanks in no small part to the September 11th attacks and the extent to which the country rallied behind him in the wake of those attacks. Trump is getting no such honeymoon, and the current trend indicates that things are only likely to get worse as we head deeper into his first year in office. This could have important national implications for the 2018 midterms, and the interesting question will be whether Republicans running for re-election in battleground districts and states end up deciding to distance themselves from the President in order to save themselves. If that happens, it could have big implications both for the fate of Trump’s agenda on issues such as tax reform, the budget, immigration reform, and other issues as well as for the support for an investigation or independent counsel in connection with the allegations regarding Russian interference in the election and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Of course, by that time it may be too late for them.
Just wait until the polls start to reflect the Comey thing.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: We are the stupidest country on the planet for having elected this fool as POTUS.
The day after the election I proposed a shaky and self-reassuring notion that the broader culture would reject Trump like a bad kidney transplant.
Idiot, incompetent and liar.
Over half of Americans simply cannot stand having this foul thing in the White House. That’s not coastal ‘elites,’ it’s the American people, and a growing number. Soon the visceral rejection will spread throughout the body. He’ll keep the third or so who are just racists or haters. But I don’t think he has any capacity to expand his base.
Any notion that Trump might prove a great president were of course laughable from the start. Any notion that he might be good, is gone. Any notion that he might be adequate is gone. We are down to ‘bad,’ ‘worst’ and ‘disastrous’ as possible outcomes.
Those still clinging to Trump should by now have noticed that Trump is the Gympie-Gympie tree of politicians.
When history is written it will treat those who backed Trump as morally depraved, as examples of mass psychosis, or as more evidence of the banality of evil. Touch Trump, and you come away permanently harmed. He is poison.
Mangolini’s going to end up supported only by those who believed (and probably still do) that the primary qualification for the presidency is being a boob, a boor, and an oaf–because those are the hallmarks of a real American.
@michael reynolds:
The broader public had already rejected Trump by the time of the election, and I don’t mean simply that he received only a minority of the vote. Even as he was elected, he had the lowest favorability numbers ever recorded for a major-party nominee, lower even than that of the candidate he vanquished. And the fact is that a substantial number of those who claim to disapprove of Trump voted for him anyway, under the belief that however bad he was, Hillary was worse. Which might well be the most ludicrous rationalization of them all.
That’s why I have no particular temptation to gloat every time a new poll comes out showing how unpopular he is. The fact is that if the election were held again today, the vast majority of his supporters would vote for him again in a heartbeat. And not just his starry-eyed fans, but also the ones who try to have it both ways–the “Yes, Trump is awful, but…” contingent.
We do not live in a parliamentary system where the national leader can get ousted anytime if the legislature gets tired of him. Whoever wins the electoral college gets pretty much a four-year pass, no matter how much of the populace hates his guts. And that seems to be where we are now.
@Kylopod:
I think if the election were re-staged today we’d destroy him. The enthusiasm gap is all in our favor, and we already got 3 million more votes.
It’s hard for people to admit they’ve made a mistake. I think a substantial number of people are aware that this is a hopeless mess and are just looking for an off ramp. The Comey thing I think will peel some of those people off.
@michael reynolds:
While I wouldn’t put much stock in this, for what it’s worth there’s a recent poll suggesting the opposite:
In any case, I’m pretty much done with attempting to predict the behavior of voters. Trump was supposed to never have been nominated, and then when he was nominated, he was supposed to have been crushed in the general election. In both instances, one of the biggest mistakes people made was in assuming voters had more rationality and common sense than was the case.
If anything, given the extent to which people kept saying he’d never win, I’d fully expect those who voted for him to dig in their heels. They’re even less likely to admit they made a mistake, because all the people who insisted they were doing just that have, in their minds, been exposed as fools due to their faulty predictions of electoral doom. From the moment he entered the presidential race in mid-2015 to the present, we’ve been continually sounding like versions of Vizzini shouting “Inconceivable!” every time Trump fails to be destroyed.
@Kylopod:
1. Trump might get most of his supporters, but he wouldn’t get all of them.
2. There is virtually no one who didn’t vote for Trump before who would vote for him now.
3. There are people who didn’t vote who would come out just to vote against him.
I think he would get destroyed if a vote were held today. People might be realizing that he president has to be at least semi-competent . And not surround himself with corrupt know-nothings (the Trump crime family).
@Kylopod:
Be fair. How many of us were willing to believe that a stupid malevolent boor would be elected precisely because he’s a stupid malevolent boor?
@Senyordave:
That’s a perfect example of what I’ve been talking about–assuming you know what voters are thinking. The poll I linked to indicated that there are more Hillary voters with buyers’ remorse than Trump voters! You may find that impossible to believe, but that’s just the problem here. The simple fact is that part of the reason we got to where we are now is that a lot of us simply couldn’t fathom that voters would behave the way they did. Now that they did, the way we rationalize this inconceivable event is by assuming that the 46% he did receive represents the absolute ceiling on the support he ever could get. But that’s as much an assumption as the one that preceded it.
And if you still can’t imagine Trump gaining any new voters since Election Day, consider this: how many Republicans do you suppose stayed home or voted third-party under the assumption that Trump was a certain loser and therefore wasn’t worth the vote? Don’t you think there’s at least the possibility his victory may have changed their minds? How many voters do you think dislike Hillary even more now that she’s become “the candidate who lost to Donald Trump”?
We may be at a tipping point. We will know more if this recent decline in popularity sticks. One point I would like to make is that now that the election is over, the Trump supporters have no one to hate except maybe some broad groups like liberals or Democrats. But Hillary is gone. We’ll see if that opposition to her is different from positive support for Trump.
I mentioned it in another thread but it appears that the likes for Trump tweets are on a slow decline. People are either getting bored with his tweeting or there are fewer who like him.
@Scott:
Well, as Trump himself might say: “I Tweet so much that the American people are going to get bored with my Tweeting.”
@michael reynolds: Upvoted you for the “Gympie-Gympie tree of politicians” comment. A twofer: I learned something I didn’t know before and then laughed because it was so perfect…
The most important number from that poll was the +16 in terms of who do you want in charge of Congress, Democrats or Republicans.
It is early, but this is starting to feel like 2006 all over again.
@MarkedMan:
My advice: do not plant a Gympie-Gympie in your garden.
@Kylopod:
While I wouldn’t put much stock in this, for what it’s worth there’s a recent poll suggesting the opposite:
Well, for once, Trump losing 4 percent of his voters would mean him getting about 43% of popular vote- a historically low number, and that’s even without accounting for collapse of 3rd party support, and better D turnout..
@panda:
First of all, it’s just a poll. Polls tend to underestimate the support a candidate gets, since there are always “undecideds” who don’t commit to anyone until they get into the ballot box. Given the historic unpopularity of both candidates this time, the amount of undecideds was very high, and even after the election I think this poll still reflects that fact. If there somehow were a re-vote done tomorrow, I’d expect both candidates to receive a higher share of the vote than this poll indicates (which is more or less what happened in the actual election–both Trump and Clinton outperformed their poll numbers, Trump just outperformed by more than she did).
All that said, 43% is not in any way “historically low.” Bill Clinton got that exact percentage in his first election, Nixon even less. In the 19th century, there were even lower numbers than those: Lincoln won with just 39% of the vote, John Quincy Adams with 30% (coming in second place in both popular and electoral votes and being basically appointed president by Congress).
My only response is that I still remember where I was the first time I got the tip of my little seven year old dick caught in my pants zipper. Alone in the men’s room at Red Wing Stadium in Rochester NY. I couldn’t wait till between innings to go and my dad wanted to watch the game.
The memory of that pain is just compounded by the fact that I instantly realized the only way to release my rocket was to pull the zipper down and pinch it again.
@Kylopod:
I tend to see little, if any, value in reenacting the past. Once the lessons to be gleaned have been collected, it goes into round file.
Broader point: it doesn’t matter who would have won in some hypothetical do over. It’s pointless to even discuss it.
What DOES matter is this: how do we use the situation on the ground – now, here, in the present – to our advantage?
We’ve just been handed a virulent tool. The bumbler in chief has just willingly opened himself up to the implication that he obstructed justice. That implication becomes stronger every time he tries to deflect (which is all that his administration has been doing since the utterly predictable blowback ramped up). It creates a presidency under siege, cripples its ability to pursue its agenda and creates a bunker mentality. It also allows us to tar his congressional supporters with the same brush.
In short – it doesn’t matter who would win the do over. What matters is how we can use this gift from heaven to undermine Republicans in 2018 and Trump in general.
The first act in that play? Relentless and unending calls for a special prosecutor. When they refuse, the narrative (also repeated unendingly) then becomes “what are you trying to hide, Donald?”
And even more useful: “what are you Republicans in Congress trying to help Mangolini keep hidden – and why?”
It doesn’t even matter if there is no “there” there to find. The stink of a cover-up is all that we need, and we’ve just been handed that – on a silver platter. I suggest that we make use of it.
I agree with HarvardLaw92 but would also like to remind people that Trump benefited from the belief that he couldn’t win, that if you said he might win you were actually insulting the American voters by indirectly slighting their intelligence.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Agreed. That line of messaging – that his supporters must be uneducable morons – while true to some degree, goes nowhere. There was, inexplicably, a segment of the electorate that was still supportive of – indeed which said that it would still vote for – Nixon
AFTER he has resigned.
You get nowhere by trying to reach those people. They’re unreachable. Beyond either help or hope. You also accomplish nothing by trying to use them as a harbinger for other, more persuadable voters.
Our job now is to magnify that stink until it can be smelled on the Moon. It will peel away those persuadable voters, who will also reach the same conclusion – that his hard core supporters are abject morons, abject bigots, or worse – on their own entirely without our help or involvement.
Since we seem to be reliving Watergate, our next step should be doing anything – and using every odorous thing this administration does – to help us relive the 1974 congressional elections.
2018 is right around the corner. Get busy 🙂
@michael reynolds: But with what candidate? Hillary Clinton’s approval numbers have fallen along with Trump’s since the election; in fact, as of mid-March the below poll shows her favorability ratings well below Trump’s.
http://www.suffolk.edu/documents/SUPRC/3_7_2017_tables.pdf
The man is completely delusional…anyone who voted for this man should be committed…
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
He’s probably telling the truth so far as he’s able. He likely heard the term in a conversation with someone and it was the only thing he retained.
@Ben Wolf: Trump’s down to 36% favorable this week (Quinnipiac, I think).
Anyway, not surprising Clinton’s numbers aren’t good, she lost.
But your basic question–“with which candidate?”–raises a very bad issue for Democrats: we can’t answer it. At this point there’s nobody emerging from the amorphous mass to claim the title of “potential candidate.” Or even “maybe this man/woman could be a good choice.”
Maybe it’s just too early to tell, but I have to remember Obama elevated into prominence more than four years before his election and it’s less than that to 2020. Someone’s going to have to start moving now.
@Mikey:
FWIW – Martin is still running around talking to anybody who’ll listen and trying to rally support for Dem candidates. It’s pretty clear that he intends to run again. He’s not the worst candidate in the world.
@michael reynolds:
Moreover, a portion of independent voters have no emotional attachment to voting (they’re part of the bell curve that has 40% of the population not even caring enough to vote in the first place). They’re not going to have more problem changing their mind than they would about ordering a different flavor of ice cream next time. If this sounds like an exaggeration, it is – most of them probably put more thought and emotional investment into what they order at the restaurant.
People who are interested in politics tend to wildly overestimate how attached most people are to their votes, or how much effort they put into the process in the first place. As you say, right now Trump would lose, because he only won on a statistical fluke to begin with, and the opposition is highly motivated.
@Mikey:
1) That’s why I prefaced my comment by referring to the latest available poll that included both Trump and Clinton. What her current favorables are I don’t know.
2) There are plenty of candidates, from Sanders to Warren to Booker and twenty more beside. As it stands Sanders is the front-runner, thought that can easily change in the next two years.
@Mikey: The Harvard-Harris poll is more recent (April 18th) and includes both Clinton and Trump:
So not much change relative to each other, at least in this poll.
http://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Harvard-CAPS-Harris-Poll-April-Wave-Topline-Favorability-04.18.2017.pdf
Trump has hired a law firm in D.C. to prepare and send a certified letter to Lindsey Graham stating that he has no Russian financial or business interests.
Will the investigating body ask Donny Jr. and Eric to come in and explain all those on-the-record remarks about the money from Russia flowing into the Trump Organization?
@Mr. Bluster:
Hey! I used to hawk beer at Red Wimg Stadium! That was 1981 or so though…
@Mikey:
What do you guys think of Al Franken?
@michael reynolds:
Which has me worried again that he’s going to do something even stupider than everything else he’s done thus far. Specifically, he’ll manage to start a war to get a popularity boost. Probably during his re-election campaign, but possibly as soon as midterms.
@Ben Wolf:
Christ, Berners … 🙄
Sanders will be 79 in 2020. He couldn’t even convince a majority of Democrats to support him and he’s a dream come true for Republicans in terms of opposition material.
In short – Bernie Sanders is a non-starter.
I’m thinking Warren, Booker, Cuomo, Patrick and O’Malley in that order.
@MarkedMan: I like the guy, and he’s definitely “smart enough”. But despite his lengthy run as Senator now, he’s always going to be that comedian. Are we going to elect a comedian after a reality TV star with these disastrous results?
@Ben Wolf: Trump claims to have invented the term “prime the pump”. I wonder if anyone will ask him what the phrase means. Where the hey would Donald Trump, child of privilege in New York City, have ever primed a pump, or even heard of priming a pump?
@CSK:
Depends on the format of the letter. A letter from a law firm, in and of itself, is wallpaper. “Certified” signifies nothing beyond presumption of receipt.
If it takes the form of an affidavit, everything changes. He may be dumb, but his lawyers aren’t. They’ll not allow him to send one of those.
@MarkedMan:
Likeable as a person. Funny as a comedian. Well suited to eternal election by a quirky electorate like Minnesota. Disastrous as a presidential candidate.
@Mikey:
> But your basic question–“with which candidate?”–raises a very bad issue for Democrats: we can’t answer it. At this point there’s nobody emerging from the amorphous mass to claim the title of “potential candidate.” Or even “maybe this man/woman could be a good choice.”
To be fair, the same could be said of Republicans going into 2016 and look what they managed to do…
BTW, what the heck is it with all the Rochester related folks on OTB? Heck, even Eric F is from our neck of the woods.
@MarkedMan: It depends entirely on how Franken positions himself within the Democratic Party, which is very much divided between the centrists and what I’ve come to call the neo-progressive wing.
Rather than dissipating since the primary (as movements tend to do) the neo-progressives appear to have become increasingly well-organized, emboldened and greater in number. They’re also very young and therefore compose the future of the Democratic Party. They can’t be dismissed or taken for granted, so much will depend on how Franken appeals to them. From my personal experience I would categorize their opinion of him as skeptical, so he’s got a lot of work to do.
He could probably get there, if he wants to.
@HarvardLaw92:
What interests me is that he has a number of lawyers on retainer who could have handled this matter–one assumes. Why did he hire outside help for this letter?
The Trump people were careful to note that this is a “certified” letter. Do they think that most of us don’t know what that means? Is it supposed to sound somehow portentous?
Oh, by the way: This “certified letter” biz is turning into comedy gold on Twitter.
@MarkedMan: I commented a couple days ago that I coud really get behind Klobuchar/Franken. Shame the Constitution says they can’t be from the same state, but that didn’t stop Bush/Cheney.
I could equally get behind Franken to lead the ticket. As to his having been a comedian, it seems to me the man who could say this is the man for our times.
@Matthew Bernius:
Interesting. I wonder if it’s because of Rochester’s history as a liberal Republican bastion? “Liberal” in the Rockerfeller Republican way. I know I originally started coming to OTB during the build up to the Iraq war because I wanted to see what the reasonable pro-war side had to say. There are very few voices today that you could call “fact based Republican” but that was my impression of the Flower (Flour) City when I lived there from 78-88 (RIT/Xerox). So OTB might have a natural attraction.
@gVOR08: I assume “priming the pump” came about in some oral conversation about economics (I don’t think Trump reads), in relation to what used to be called “Keynesian pump-priming.” Whether someone directed it to Trump or he heard others talking about it I don’t know.
@HarvardLaw92: it may be worth checking this out. He’s come a long, long way from SNL, and even from “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”. He seems to be deliberately positioning himself as the thoughtful, frumpy, careful but slowly devastating voice of authority.
@HarvardLaw92: I had originally considered Sanders’ age a liability but later concluded that I was engaging in ageist thinking. Insofar as it might impact voter choice, I believe it could be addressed successfully.
@Ben Wolf: He’s going to release his tax returns any day now. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. Sometimes I just crack me up
@Ben Wolf: Of course that’s where it came from. And he claims to have invented it.
@Matthew Bernius:
Hey, maybe this is the dawn of the “Clown Car Theory of Presidential Campaigns.” Or maybe just “Sink or Swim to the Presidency,” where we throw as many potential candidates into the pool as possible and nominate the survivor.
@Ben Wolf: I’ll just chime in here with my usual. Sanders is absolutely a loner. He did nothing to help any other Democratic candidate when he was running. In all his long career, he has never built a coalition to support any significant piece of legislation he proposed. He finds fault, a useful function, but he has never been able to lead any organization to accomplish a goal (except for running political campaigns). He brings a good perspective as a legislator, but is not executive material in any conceivable way.
Trump will be signing today an executive order creating a presidential commission on election integrity, which will review elections for incidences of voter fraud and voter suppression.
He does like to live dangerously, doesn’t he?
John Kasich has been hitting all shows and podcasts the last couple of weeks. He’s governor until 2019. He denies it but he is taking a run at Trump in 2020.
@MarkedMan: Here’s the problem: what you’re claiming isn’t true.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-loyalists-are-taking-over-the-democratic-party-one-county-office-at-a-time-1487780384
https://robquist.org/bernie-sanders-backs-rob-quist-will-campaign-montana-next-month/
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/315040-sanders-backers-take-over-california-democratic-party
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-packs-schedule-with-campaign-stops-for-hillary-clinton-1475928002
@Ben Wolf:
and I’m not inclined to disagree. On the spectrum of reasons why Sanders as the actual candidate would be a flaming disaster for Democrats, his age is near the bottom of the list. It would have an effect, but that would be small – and drowned out by the barrage of cringe inducing TV ads with BernieVideo featured front and center.
At basis, the guy just has too much of a history of saying and writing things that could – and absolutely would – be used against him. He’d spend his entire campaign on defense trying to explain his past gaffes, probably make the fallout from them worse in the process, and the Republican candidate (possibly even Trump if he survives to run again) would wipe the floor with him.
@CSK:
I would imagine that the reason would be that his primary law firm(s) are on retainer to his company, not to him as an individual, and that engaging them would create yet another conflict of interest. Not that the concept seems to bother him much, but …
They’re also admitted in NY, probably not in VA/MD/DC, so you’d want a local firm for something involving his nexus as a government official.
Basically this whole “certified letter” thing is yet more meaningless theater aimed at his impressionable base. “Ooo, certified, that sounds official”. The rest of us see it for what it is.
Sorry to be OT, but…
Sen. Burr left the McCabe hearing early, citing an emergency meeting he couldn’t skip.
Politico is reporting that meeting was with Rosenstein, at Rosensteins request.
Rosensteins Twitter account has not been suspended…
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/11/rosenstein-seeks-meeting-with-senate-intelligence-leaders-238268
@HarvardLaw92: It doesn’t really matter what either of us thinks about Sanders as a candidate. Assuming one wants such decisions made democratically, his approval numbers, both among Democrats and independents, make him the de facto front runner.
If recent events has taught us anything, it’s that gaffes and questionable statements don’t matter any more when it comes to winning elections.
@Franklin:
I’ve always thought he would need a war. Given his irrationality and toddler-level impulsiveness we’d better hope to God that McMaster and Mattis can control him. Otherwise anyone from Iran to North Korea, from Germany to Canada, might suddenly see American missiles coming their way. The only safe country is Russia. Well, Russia and anywhere Trump owns property.
It takes time for buyer’s remorse to motivate change. Most people who make bad decisions are unwilling to acknowledge them quickly, as doing so places the blame on their own shoulders. (They should have known better, right?)
Patience is required. The dupes who can be turned will need time to convince themselves that they were fooled unfairly or just had a bit of bad luck so that they can avoid owning the failure.
It’s also wrong to presume that disliking a candidate necessarily means that one is unwilling to vote for that candidate. Given the choice between Trump and a Democrat, most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will choose Trump because he is a Republican and/or isn’t a Democrat. They’re voting based upon the party, not the person.
@Matthew Bernius:
The WNY Disapora is real. No matter where you go, you will run into someone who’s from there, has family there or went to school there. Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester, …. someone in your group *will* have a connection. Toss in CNY cities like Syracuse or Cornell and it gets even worse. My cousins joke its the true heartland of America.
As I said on another thread, I’d like to see McCaskill give Jason Kander a chance at the MO Senate seat. He’s impressive, has won statewide office in a deep red state, and would be a much younger and fresher face than some of the ones I’m seeing mentioned. Kander-Gillibrand, Kander-Booker, Booker-Kander…
@MarkedMan:..I was born in Rochester in 1948. Our family relocated to the midwest in1961. My dad was the sports editor for the Eastman Kodak company newspaper. He got two free tickets to every sporting event in town.
Attended many Red Wing games as well as Rochester Americans minor league hockey games.
The only NBA games I’ve ever attended were the Rochester Royals. First at the Edgerton Park Arena and later at the then new War Memorial.
My dad threw around names like Bobby Wanzer, George Mikan and Arnie Risen. I might have even seen them play.
Royals moved west with teams in Cincinnati then KC and today play as the Sacramento Kings.
I think their only NBA Championship Banner from 1951 hangs over the Kings home court today.
@KM:
A bit OT, but I so despise the term ‘heartland.’ Great Los Angeles metro has 13 million people, more than most of the so-called heartland states combined. The heart of this country is not in the rust belt or farm country. The average American is an overweight white woman with kids, some college, few savings, living in some place like New Haven, Connecticut. She is not a ruggedly independent farmer in North Dakota, or a coal worker in West Virginia.
@Ben Wolf:
Those numbers are based on lovable Uncle Bernie – the guy who essentially got a free pass with regard to being subjected to any serious level of attack during the Democratic primaries.
Clinton was too paralyzed with the fear of offending his crowd of supporters, and the Republicans didn’t bother acknowledging him at all (because doing so would have been a waste of ammunition they were saving for the general if he somehow managed to secure the nomination. As a result, he got to play out the Bernie show without any criticism.
Make no mistake – assuming Sanders even bothers to run in 2020, which I consider to be highly unlikely – the other Dems who will be running will afford him no such consideration. The knives would be out from day one. I’ve already spoken on here about the book of attack ads targeting Sanders put together by the Republicans which were never utilized – and which, as a result, remain in the vault, ready to go.
As I have said before – the approval numbers for the Bernie that would be left once Dems sliced him to pieces and Republicans served up a daily diet of things like him standing on a stage in Venezuela smiling while crowds chant “Death to America” would bear no resemblance to the ones you’re looking at.
Lovable, quirky Uncle Bernie might have a chance at getting elected. Unfortunately, that won’t be the guy who’ll be running.
@HarvardLaw92:
Not that it matters much, but Michael Cohen resigned his position in the Trump Organization to serve as Trump’s personal lawyer in the WH. He’s representing Trump in a defamation case, a suit filed against Trump by a former Apprentice contestant.
I don’t know if Cohen has a D.C. ticket. I do know that he founded an energy business in the Ukraine.
Now, where have we heard about Trump’s henchmen doing business in the Ukraine….
And note: that analysis doesn’t take into account the very real possibility that his wife may find herself in federal prison for bank fraud.
@CSK:
Cohen is neck deep in this Russian / Ukrainian / Flynn lifting sanctions garbage. He participated in it. This is one point on which I will agree with Trump: Cohen has no business being anywhere near a prepared statement like that.
The smart thing to do was to select a firm which has no prior nexus with Trump for a one off letter.
@HarvardLaw92: Given the proclivity for screw ups by Trump, we’ll find the letter will not be a certified letter but one sent by certified mail.
@HarvardLaw92:
I’ll be looking forward to reading it. Sadly, the content probably won’t be nearly as richly comic as that “written” by Trump’s personal physician, the one that said that not only was Trump in the best health of any presidential candidate evah but that all his test results were “positive.” But i can hope.
@Scott:
Oh, I’m sure it will be sent by certified mail, certified mail being, of course, an absolute guarantor of probity.
@HarvardLaw92:
The reason I’m continually bringing it up is because I sense that a lot of people here and elsewhere still haven’t fully absorbed the lessons of what happened last year. They’re in denial over his victory and trying to trivialize it, and I think that’s creating a blind spot in how they attempt to deal with him now.
I have repeatedly seen commenters here and on several other blogs stating confidently that they don’t believe Trump will finish his term. I do actually thinks that’s a real possibility. But that’s all it is: a possibility. It’s not inevitable, and when you get down to it and consider all the factors involved, it isn’t even likely.
Other commenters state confidently that the GOP will get slaughtered in the 2018 midterms, and that if Trump is still president by 2020 and runs for reelection, that he will lose.
Perhaps. On the other hand, the GOP may manage to hold back losses in 2018. And either way, Trump may indeed win a second term.
The problem I have is that people are constantly assuming his demise is right around the corner, and in many ways it’s the same mindset they had before the election–something which I believe was partly responsible for his victory because it made Dems complacent. And that’s important to recognize going forward, because before we go about trying to defeat him, we have to accept the possibility that he might not be defeated. And too many Dems, it seems to me, haven’t truly faced that possibility.
@Kylopod:
No argument. I’m just suggesting that we stop quibbling about what might have been and focus instead on what might be.
Sure, we might drop the ball – again – but the likelihood of that happening drops dramatically once we stop cowering in the corner saying “please don’t hurt me”.
This clown is serving up everything we need to destroy him in 2020, and congressional Republicans seem to be doing their level best to do the same with regard to 2018.
They didn’t learn the lesson of Watergate that they need to remember: the 49 Republican representatives who lost their seats in 1974 were, to a man, Nixon defenders.
They’re giving us the tools. We have to be prepared to, and willing to, use them. Will we? Who knows?
@Ben Wolf: Fair enough. Let me tackle these one by one:
Bernie’s supporters working at the county level. Fantastic! I’m not against a lot of Bernie’s ideas, and if he has inspired his supporters to go out and run for local office, well that is just what we need. The Tea Party crew, for all their faults, were willing to go out for every office down to dog catcher and that is why so many places have these crazy Tea Party policies at the state and local level. If Bernie supporters can beat them at their own came, so much the better, as their policies would have to more positive than the status quo.
Rob Quist – Good for Bernie for helping someone else out. But I’m pretty sure I’m correct in saying he didn’t help anyone else out in the 2016 election. The one person he really spoke out for was … (insert name of the opponent of the curly headed head of the DNC here) .. but in the end he didn’t do anything for them. On the other hand, it is the norm for leading candidates to help the grassroots, but I think (and this is only my own opinion) that Bernie’s suffers from the “no politician is pure enough” syndrome. Except him. It’s good that he’s out there supporting someone now. I hope that Quist, if elected, will be a realist who can work with others to get things done.
Sanders backers take over the California Dems. Again, that’s his people, not Bernie himself, and once again, it’s about getting elected. I hope these people don’t go on a purity purge and end up bringing the party down, to the advantage of the Republicans. After all, it was the escalating calls for purity and the inability to compromise that eventually drove the California Republicans to near irrelevancy at the state wide level. I hope these new Dems have more practical sense.
Bernie eventually campaigning for Hillary. Good for him. It was the right thing to do, but I know it was also very hard for him to do, so he gets credit from me for making a real effort.
Again, I don’t think Bernie is a bad guy. I don’t think that his ideas are bad. But he has never been able to parlay his popularity and his Senate seat into any legislative accomplishment, and I think a large part of that is that he lacks the practical give and take necessary to move the ball forward. He views everyone in politics other than himself as a sell out, and so can’t bring himself to cut a deal with them.
I had overlooked his experience as a mayor of Burlington and seems to have done a good job their, so I was wrong when I said he didn’t have executive experience. Burlington is a small town, however and that experience was a long, long time ago. Bernie is best when he is getting people stirred up and committed to a cause. He is incredibly good at it.
@Scott:
I’m pretty sure that there is no such “certified letter” animal. I’ve certainly never heard of one, and I’ve been an attorney for a long time now. There is a letter sent via certified mail, but that is meaningless beyond the presumption of receipt.
It stems from delivery of service. Most jurisdictions require that service of process be hand delivered to the recipient in order to ensure receipt. The exception is certified mail, which in many jurisdictions serves as a presumptive proof of receipt at the point of tender to the postal service. That obviously isn’t germane in the slightest to sending Lindsey Graham a letter – unless he intends to sue him later (which seems unlikely, but this nimrod has done dumber things before).
I stated above that the use of the word was just theater for his idiot base. I still feel that way.
@KM:
I had to chuckle at calling Syracuse central NY. Not because I disagreed, but some years later I returned to NY state, living in Warwick. It’s so close to NYC I could make it to LaGuardia in an hour and fifteen minutes (if I left at 5am). But all of the NYC firefighters and policemen that lived in the area thought of themselves as far, far upstate…
@Mr. Bluster: FWIW, one of my introductions to the strange world we live in was when one Italian Catholic friend of mine showed me the tenets (?) that went with the house he had just bought in Kodak Park, the sub-division financed by Kodak whose houses were originally sold to employees. One of the by laws that was no longer enforceable was one that specifically barred selling to someone of Italian descent. There were others. Jews, for sure. Maybe Irish? I asked why they didn’t list Negroes. He gave me an eye roll and said there was no need to put that one in writing.
Likely just random chance.
However after spending 14 very long winters on the shores of Lake Ontario (2 miles as the seagulls fly from my house to Don and Bob’s and Vic and Irv’s Hot Dog Stands) I suspect that all right thinking former Rochesterians are grateful to be anywhere else in January.
As for politics one historical coincidence I like to exploit is that I was born in the same city where Susan B. Anthony is interred.
I am happy to report that most college students I meet actually know who she was when I mention it.
Somehow I am not surprised.
@HarvardLaw92:
Politicians are generally less likely to heed lessons from 43 years ago than ones from just the past 5-10 years. And in that period, the lesson they have overwhelmingly drawn is this: they have far more to fear from primary challenges within their own party than from losses in the general election.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong. But even if your prediction turns out 100% correct–that Dems successfully wipe out those Congressional Republicans who served as Trump’s biggest enablers and defenders–I doubt it is a danger that most of the GOP will recognize until the moment it actually happens.
@Kylopod: I just realized that in my last post I wasn’t clear that the fear of primary challenges is almost entirely a Republican phenomenon. (It has happened occasionally on the Democratic side–like Joe Lieberman in 2006–but it’s never been part of some broad nationwide strategy.) I didn’t mean to imply it was a “both sides do it” situation, because clearly it isn’t.
“…..On the spectrum of reasons why Sanders as the actual candidate would be a flaming disaster for Democrats….”
Its this type of warped, ossified, out of touch, modern Dem neo liberal thinking that has the party at death’s door electorally with a recent poll showing how out of touch Dem’s are with winning over the average elector.
Harvard law dropout’s comments are EXACTLY WHAT IS WRONG with you moderate Hillary slurping libs who, after being warned by us old pharts that she is poison, are still doubling down on the stupid. She lost to a moronic imbecilic narcissist and yet some of you just can’t bring yourself to face reality. Hillary was and is a disaster whose vanity and self aggrandizing brought down the party in 2016. What more proof do some of you close minded neanderthals need?
Its funny or ironic that some will cite recent polls above regarding Hillary’s winning a do-over, yet when polls showed conclusively last year that Bernie would beat Trump handily while HRC would struggle, some on here would question the legitimacy of polls and fatuously opine that “Bernie would lose cause he’s too old etc” only to watch the witch go down in flames.
I think myself and a few other non deluded old school liberals on here waxed you moderates by a long shot as we have a much clearer view of the issues that matter to the majority of the working class and witnessed in horror the clueless Clinton campaign that wandered off into the La La land of identity politics, sanctuary city side shows, BLM extremism and a complete neglect of working class worries. She wrongly concluded that anyone was better than Trump and the voters would realize that. How wrong can she be? Ask yourself, how many folks did you come across during the election that said “Gee, I just love me that Hillary.” Like zero?
This delusional thinking is again manifested in the pompous flatulence of Harvard Law (no ego in that moniker) who just can’t bring himself to admit just how off the charts wrong his opinions are regarding the election.
The path chosen in the 1990s by the Dem neo libs to lay off corporate power, cuddle up to the investment bankers and the Silicon Valley/Hollywood globalists protecting their IP at all costs has been a DISASTER for the party.
How could we lose to the tragedy which is Trump? Look no further than the glib vacuous opinions coming out of some of the self righteous deniers of reality on here.
I no doubt will get the thumbs down to have the temerity to speak out against the current neo libs because you sold out to the party moderates like the Clintons, Bayhs, Gephardt, From etc.
The proof of this neo lib success? Now, only 5 states are run by Democrats, while the house, the Senate, the Oval office and SCOTUS are run by the wingnut dipschitz. Never before have the GOP won so many seats and have so much power.
And you think running Bernie would make it worse? How phucking much worse can it be Harvard bombast?
Just goes to show that some of the dumbest people are Harvard grads. I know, I’ve employed many of them.
@HarvardLaw92: Well, that was my thought: where did he find a law firm that would be willing to attest that the statement was true simply because he said so?
@the Q: of Bernie couldn’t win among Dems over horrible horrible Hillary Clinton, why would he have beaten Trump?
@CSK:
IANAL (and I don’t portray one on TV either), but I would have to guess that they can’t help him with this because they know that the statement isn’t true.
I will admit that I’m being cynical, though…
@the Q: I think Tyrell has a better gig.
@the Q:
Christ, you ridiculous dinosaur of a fuckwit …
Listen closely:
Run ads with anybody – with Jesus mf’kn Christ – standing on a stage grinning while the crowd in front of him / her shouting “Death to America”, and that person is not going to be elected.
Hell, they’d be lucky not to be assassinated, but they definitely won’t get elected.
The best part? That wasn’t the worst of the ads I saw.
It wasn’t even close.
Toddle along to the dining room now, or you’ll miss Jello night at the home. 🙄
@the Q:
Christ, you ridiculous cut rate Trotsky wannabe dinosaur of a f’kwit …
Listen closely:
Run ads with anybody – with Jesus mf’kn Christ – standing on a stage grinning while the crowd in front of him / her shouts “Death to America”, and that person is not going to be elected.
Hell, they’d be lucky not to be assassinated, but they definitely won’t get elected.
The best part? That wasn’t the worst of the ads I saw.
It wasn’t even close.
Toddle along to the dining room now, or you’ll miss Jello night at the home. 🙄
@the Q:
The Dems amassed solid majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006 and 2008 in part by winning seats in red states and districts. When they got slaughtered in 2010 and 2014, a lot of the seats they lost were from those Republican-leaning areas. Are you seriously suggesting they’d have been less vulnerable if they’d nominated Bernie-like lefties in places like Arkansas or Tennessee? If not, I’d be curious to see you put forth a winning electoral map strictly using such candidates.
@HarvardLaw92: “I’m thinking Warren, Booker, Cuomo, Patrick and O’Malley in that order.”
Cuomo might be the only candidate who could be painted as more corrupt than Trump. Even if he’s clean — uh-huh — he will go down in history as the governor who appointed a special commission to investigate government corruption, then fired them when they started looking at his own friends. And that’s without oppo research. So far the press has decided to give him a pass on the Port Authority — but his people let Christie’s do whatever they wanted… why? And what was he getting out of it?
And in a primary, if I were working for his opponent, I’d run ad after ad explaining how he deliberately left the state legislature in Republican hands — and use all the footage of him explaining why that’s a good thing.
If Cuomo isn’t Italian for toast now, it would be within a month…
@wr: The California AG has stood above the shuffling crowd. Xavier Becerra. Former LosAngeles mayor. I have expected some of the west coasters that visit with us to mention him.
Wow, no wonder the current iteration of liberals are getting waxed by right wing kooks.
Look you modern neolib dipschitz (especially the “phuck twit” Harvard loser), the proof is in the electoral pudding. When the Dem party stood up for the working class we had hegemony over the wingnuts for 60 years.
Then the idiot boomers took the party to the right and we have been eating shite with the crowning insult of Trump as POTUS.
The Clinton machine clubbed Bernie over the head (and Biden) by rigging the system to favor her. Its so friggin obvious and the slurpers are like the Trump-ettes…in total denial of this reality. Then in Sarah Huckabee fashion, you blame Hillary’s screw-ups on myth.
Get your head out of your collective aholes….nominating the least liked, most polarizing and distrusted Democratic candidate in HISTORY has consequences. WHAT DON’T YOU GET?
Christ, the three words boomers can’t ever say is “I was wrong”….
@the Q:
Senile dementia is such a tragedy
@the Q:
Which 60 years are you referring to? The Dems did hold the House of Representatives continuously for 40 years (1954-1994), but it wasn’t in any way consistently a progressive majority. It included such working-class champions as Phil Gramm (who was a Democrat until the mid-’80s), cosponsor of Reagan’s first budget.
Once again, I challenge you to come up with a plausible electoral map for a sustainable Democratic majority made up entirely of Bernie-like progressives. It has never worked that way, anytime Dems have held majorities in Congress. They never maintained power through the kind of ideological purity you’re demanding.
You won’t get any argument from me that Hillary was a weak candidate. I’ve been saying that for years. But it has nothing to do with her being a “neolib,” as you put it. Obama’s political views are scarcely any different from hers, yet he won two solid popular and electoral majorities. On the other hand, one of the biggest electoral thrashings the Dems ever endured came from a hardcore lefty, George McGovern. (You want to talk about rigged primaries? McGovern won the 1972 nomination in part because he was one of the architects of the new primary system for choosing nominees. Moreover, one of the central aspects of what would become the Watergate scandal was the Nixon team’s attempts to make sure McGovern was the nominee, so they’d have an opponent who was easy to beat.)
You repeatedly confuse political ideology with electoral strategy. It’s striking that nobody in this thread so far has said anything in disagreement to Bernie’s actual positions. Some of us even voted for him in the primary. But of course we’re all “neolibs” because we believe the dumb boomer concept that acquiring and maintaining power requires building coalitions. Imagine that.
@JohnMcC: I’m a big Gavin Newsome fan, but I think he’s got to be California’s governor for a term or two first…
Meanwhile, I send up daily non-denominational prayers that DiFi will not run again, clearing the way for my former congressman and current king of the airwaves, Adam Schiff…
@Kylopod: Well you’re not going to get very far with Q by using facts. He believes that Hillary rigged the democratic primary. Which is stupid to believe for a variety of reasons. If you can believe that then you’re clearly not one that is grounded in facts.
@Matt:
I have no intention of trying to persuade “the Q,” who has made it more than clear that he simply isn’t open to persuasion. I have two main goals here: (1) Hone my own debating skills (2) Possibly have an impact on whoever may happen to be reading this discussion.
While “the Q” claims to be an old person who was alive when FDR was president, the fact is that a great deal of Berniecrats are millennials, and I think we have quite a decent chance of reaching people in that age range.