Trump’s Job Approval Hits Record Low In New Poll
As he nears the one-year anniversary of his Inauguration, President Trump is getting increasingly bad reviews from the public.
A new poll from Monmouth shows President Trump’s job approval hitting yet another low as his Administration deals with blowback from the Senate race in Alabama, the Russia investigation, and a renewed focus on the women who have accused President Trump of sexual harassment in the past:
President Trump’s job approval rating has sunk to a record-low 32 percent in the latest Monmouth University poll released Wednesday.
It’s the lowest approval rating for Trump in the Monmouth poll since he took office in January.
Thirty-two percent of respondents approve of the job Trump is doing as president, and 56 percent disapprove.
Over the past year, his approval rating in the Monmouth poll has ranged from 39-43 percent. The biggest drop came among women. Twenty-four percent of women said they approved of Trump’s job performance, compared to 36 percent who approved in September.
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said the president’s low approval rating coupled with Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore’s loss in Alabama could be a problem for the GOP in the midterm elections. Trump backed Moore in the Senate race.
“This result is not good for the president, especially coming off the loss of his endorsed candidate in the Alabama Senate race,” Murray said in a release. “Republicans have to be worried about being dragged down by the weight of Trump’s negatives in 2018 if this trend continues.”The Monmouth approval rating is one of the lowest Trump has seen in office. A recent Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that, after three months of decline, 41 percent approved of the job Trump is doing.
This latest poll comes in the wake of a number of other polls that show Trump’s approval numbers at or near their lowest points since he entered office in January, data that is also reflected in the poll averages. Over at RealClearPolitics, for example, Trump stands at an average of 37.3% approve and 57.9% disapprove, making for a -20.6 spread, which is among the highest points that number has been at over the past year. Even on the economy, where Trump’s numbers had been moderately positive for much of the year, the numbers are taking a downturn with 44.4% approving of the job he’s doing in that area and 47.3% disapproving. The numbers are worse when it comes to foreign policy, with 38.3% approving of his job performance in this area and 56.3% disapproving. At Pollster, meanwhile, the President stands at 37.4% approve and 56.8% disapprove. Looking deeper into those numbers, we find that Democrats remain overwhelmingly negative on the President’s job performance, while Republicans are overwhelmingly positive. Among Independents, Trump’s numbers remain slightly worse than they are among the general population as a whole, with just 34.5% approving of the job the President is doing while 56.6% disapprove. Finally, at FiveThirtyEight, where the job approval polls are weighted based on a number of factors including poll reliability, Trump stands at 36.7% approval and 56.8% disapproval. As the chart from RealClearPolitics shows, Trump’s numbers of late have been trending downward, and seem likely to continue doing so:
As the chart above shows, Trump’s job approval now stands at its lowest level of his Presidency to date and his disapproval stands at its highest level during that period. This is on top of the fact that he continues to have the lowest job approval level of any President since World War Two, and there doesn’t appear to be any sign of that trend reversing anytime soon. In fact, Trump’s job approval stands at lows that most Presidents never saw during the entire course of their Presidencies. The only comparable situation appears to be President Bill Clinton, whose numbers were negative during the first year of his Presidency, but Clinton’s numbers were never nearly as bad as Trump’s are today and no President has reached levels like this until very late in their Presidency, such as what happened with President Nixon in the months before his resignation and President George W. Bush during his final year in office. Every other President, even during the worst periods of their Presidency, was in a far better position than Trump is in today. If history is any guide, it’s likely that things will only tend to get worse for this President as time goes on. Generally speaking, the first year of a President’s first term is usually a time when he’s viewed positively by the public, meaning that he’s able to get much of his agenda adopted and to lead the nation in the areas that don’t require Congressional action. Trump can’t point to any of that, and with things such as the Russia investigation likely to continue for some time to come it’s likely that things will only get worse. Given that, it’s likely that we’ll see Trump’s numbers go down even further and that we’ll get yet another test of just where Trump’s floor of support lies right now. If it starts to dip below thirty percent, which seems to be the next major floor they’re headed to, then the Trump Administration will be in a position unseen by any incoming Administration since the end of the Second World War.
I’d be surprised if he gets much below 35%…barring something major.
There are too many sycophants…JKB, Bunge, Guarneri, TM01…that are just flat out unwilling to, or incapable of casting an honest eye to the situation. Too many people are all too happy to believe that a guy with fake hair, a fake tan, and fake teeth, is being completely up front and honest with them. Too many people want to believe the mythos that Cheeto-Dick has created about himself, rather than confront reality.
Bunge, for instance, can’t even bring himself to admit that his Dear Leader admitted to serial sexual assault.
Now…once it’s Mueller-time…then maybe he’ll hit 30% or below. Probably not before.
My biggest fear is that one or two really terrible things happen, e.g. a serious terrorist attack and a N. Korean Nuke, that will both raise his approval as the nation rallys around the President (as is typical) and at the same time give him an opportunity to grab authoritarian power. That could forever change the course of this nation…which explains why he is busy kicking the hornets nest that is the Middle East, and also provoking N. Korea.
Another Poll Please You all know what happened in 2016 The Hell Bell lost I guess it`s time to import some more Dem votes by making the illegals, legal
Shameful.
@barbintheboonies: I sincerely hope you find your meds before it’s too late.
@barbintheboonies:
Making “illegals legal” is what Ronald Reagan did, remember? It’s also a core business issue in this country, from farm labor to the hospitality industry. We don’t need to “import some more Dem votes”–the President is doing just fine on his own, increasing support for Democrats.
I suppose one could argue that the President’s supporters are so dejected they are no longer answering their phones to indicate their support for him, but that would surprise me. No, this is an approval poll, and they tend to be pretty good at determining the range of support a president has.
He’s in trouble, Paul Ryan is signalling that he is out after the 2018 election cycle, and there is considerable enthusiasm among Democratic candidates for office.
@Jen:
Well, there are actually Dem votes being imported, and barbintheboonies should thank the President for them.
These would be the Puerto Ricans moving to the US because of Trump’s utter failure to help them in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria…
At some point his support numbers have to reach some sort of cognitive dissonance floor. That is, people who voted for Trump and support Trump who believe he really is doing a good job because they are too smart to have voted for this big of an idiot. Human beings seem to have at times a limited capacity to learn from our mistakes and judging by some of the commentors here Trump supporters are not an exception to this rule.
No, this is not yet another ‘low’ in any relevant sense. The Approve/Disapprove gap was 20 points in August, it’s 20 points now. Trump has been in the high 30’s since forever, and the opposition has been around 55% since forever. The gap runs from as low as about 15 points to the current high of 20 points. When I see the polling average gap get above, say, 22 points for a couple of weeks, I’ll agree that we have a trend.
What is important in the polling is intensity. The number of Americans who absolutely despise Trump is twice as high as the number who absolutely loves him.
And most important of all is that Trump has shown no capacity at all to get back to his initial 46% of the popular vote, let alone climb above 50% which typically is the safe line for an incumbent. It is his utter lack of political skills, his imbecility and vulgarity that are important because they go to the extreme unlikelihood of some upswing in Trump’s support. If he’s in the high 30’s with full employment and a record stock market he has no up-side potential.
In nautical terms the good ship Trump has a slow leak, but the pumps are going and they are keeping the boat from being swamped. . . in calm seas. In ideal conditions. We obsess over the 37% and ignore the fact that this is Trump’s ceiling as well as his floor.
I did hear from another site that support fro Trump among Fox News viewers is barely above 50%. That’s striking.
I wonder how he’s rationalizing this. When he had a 36% approval rating, he Tweeted that “an almost 40% approval rating was not bad.”
No, Don. In the first place, 36% isn’t almost 40%. In the second place, it’s a lousy rating for president only five months into office, as you were at that point.
Who is he blaming for the fact that his presidency is an utter disaster, a shambles characterized by unspeakable vulgarity, buffoonery, and ignorance? He’s certainly not blaming himself.
I have a vision of him lumbering around the Oval Office, veins in his temples popping, hurling abuse at the 60-inch tv screen and at whatever hapless minions wander into view.
@barbintheboonies:
Your argument needs updates. The most recent example of a candidate who trailed in the polls going on to win isn’t Donald Trump, it’s Doug Jones.
Polling errors are, of course, absolutely normal, and when two candidates are nearly neck-and-neck even a small error can cause the winning candidate to look like they’re losing, and vice versa. There is nothing remarkable about this, and it doesn’t mean all polls should be ignored any more than that weather news should be ignored because their predictions are occasionally wrong. The science of prediction doesn’t have to be infallible in order to be useful.
That’s why just a few days before Election Day 2016, the 538 site put out an article titled “Trump is just a normal polling error behind Clinton.” And just a few days before the this week’s Alabama election they put out an article titled “Doug Jones is just a normal polling error away from a win in Alabama.”
On the other hand, their article just before the French presidential election this year was titled “Le Pen is just a gargantuan polling error behind Macron.” (The spam filter prevents me from posting another link, but it’s easy to find via Google.) And lo and behold, the Donald Trump of France didn’t beat the polls and win. There was a polling error in that election, but it didn’t favor the right-wing populist, it favored the boring centrist. Macron actually turned out to have an even more massive lead than the polls suggested.
Similarly, the Virginia elections from a few weeks ago turned out to be massively underestimating the Democrats, who not only outperformed their polls in the gubernatorial race, but made big gains in the Virginia House of Delegates, possibly taking over the chamber (the votes are still being counted as we speak), an outcome that absolutely no one saw coming.
Over the last year, both inside the US and abroad, there’s been a distinct turn away from the right and toward the center-left. So if there are polling errors currently, they’re a lot likelier to favor Democrats than Republicans.
Still, let’s forget all of that and assume it’s still November 2016 and the polls are still underestimating Republicans. Even then, it doesn’t much help your argument that we should disbelieve polling on job approval. This Monmouth poll, for example, shows Trump with an approval rating of 36%. If it’s off by a few points like the 2016 polls, that would mean his popularity is at, say, 39%. That’s still very unpopular.
Or, to put it another way, “Trump is just a gargantuan polling error away from being a popular president.”
@Jen: I didn`t like it then and I hate it now
@barbintheboonies: In 2016 the polls said Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote. She did.
@barbintheboonies:
We’ve covered this. What part of “a grave accent is an entirely different diacritical mark than an apostrophe” did you not understand from the last time?
Look at your keyboard. Do you see the ENTER key? Look left, one key. If you want to insert an apostrophe, then USE THAT KEY!
Look at your keyboard again. See that key just to the left of 1. If you want to insert an apostrophe, then DON’T USE THAT KEY!
it’s not it`s
didn’t not didn`t
Quoting you (with my customary fore- and aft- Jesse Pinkman verbal tic insertions):
Yo, LOOK IT UP It`s all FB, bitch!
@de stijl, @barbintheboonies:
I messed up your quote from our earlier discussion and accidentally elided the “over.”
I said:
but, I should have said:
Please accept my humble apologies.
(Please be aware that the “yo” and the “bitch” are my embellishments, and were not in in the original https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/another-day-another-trump-attack-on-racial-minorities/#comment-2262018 comment. It’s my homage to Jesse Pinkman.)
@pylon:
If that holds up that could be really interesting. Fox is essentially 110% in the bag for Trump right now. But from what I can see, that is totally a business position. They can attract more stupid, gullible people that way, and let’s face facts, if your business is selling supplements, massively overpriced gold bars of questionable purity, and “As-Seen-On-TV” gadgets, gullible and stupid is your sweet spot.
But if Fox were ever to feel that supporting Trump would cost them viewers, well, they would turn on him as fast as Trump turned on Luther Strange or Judge Moore. And then we would see his approval plummet below that 30% number in no time. We might even see a few Republicans talking about impeachment.
Dear Republicans,
You would have my deepest sympathy, but…
Elect a clown, get a circus.
I would also like to say: Not my circus, not my monkeys… but I can’t. We all know that we will have to elect another capable Democrat with political experience (maybe a community organizer or something) that will clan up this s#it.
But the nice thing: Republicans are really putting all their really terrible ideas up there for everyone to get a look.
Clean coal? check.
Pipelines instead of clean energy? check (plus they did leak. a lot)
Heathcare is a privilege? check.
Tax cuts for corporations and the rich? check.
raising taxes for everyone else? check.
Public lands taken to be sold off to corporations? check.
Going after “entitlements” (your Social Security and Medicare)? check.
Wall? nope.
Jobs in underdeveloped areas of the US? nope.
Hell, how about those Carrier jobs Trump bragged that he saved? nope, nope, nope.
Nice job, alt-right-republicans. You killed your party for about 20 years.
Let’s not try to cover up the ineptitude with a nuclear war, m’kay?
.
@Liberal Capitalist:
As much as I would like to agree with you, I’ve been hearing statements along those lines for years, and now the GOP control Congress, the presidency, most governorships and most statehouses in the country.
In 2008, the Bush Administration left the country in two hapless wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Two years later–two years and they’d wrested back the House of Representatives. Six years after that, they had unified control of the federal government.
Not only does the public have a short memory, the Republicans used the Tea Party and, later, the Trump movement to convince the public they were no longer tainted by the failures of the Bush years and deserved another chance in power. I have no doubt that if the Trump White House turns out to be the political disaster it seems to be shaping up to be, Republicans will find a way to disown him just as they disowned Bush. They’ll write him off as an aberration they never really supported. And a lot of voters will eat it right up.
I don’t think Trump will ever go below the thirty percent crazification factor no matter what. In fact, I think he will always do a little better than thirty percent. As someone observed up thread, people don;t like to admit to being wrong, Plus there’s the bubble phenomenon, the refusal of the rightwing base to face facts, that locks them into being crazy (in their political lives. They may be relatively normal in other respects)
@Laura Koerber:
The crazification number is 27%.
If the North Korea situation goes very south [*wink*], and the DPRK sends about two million artillery shells into Seoul proper in the first five hours of conflict, several hundred thousand or several million South Koreans are killed outright, the world economy collapses, China enters the fray, things go nuclear, and there is a full exchange which Russia decided to join into because reasons.
Of the 100 people still alive in the aftermath in the land area formally known as the United States, exactly 27 of them will believe with all of their heart that Trump’s actions up to and including the full nuclear exchange were correct, proper, and right.
The valiant 27, that band of brothers, will form a ragtag badass militia whose primary goal is to loot pre-war booze for personal consumption, but mostly just to piss off the remaining 73 libtards.
Even after an extinction level event, the 27% crazification factor still holds. It is immutable.
It’s science, bitches!
@barbintheboonies: What a horrible thing to acknowledge.
Immigrants add so much to this country. Many are fleeing persecution and wars, some are running from starvation and collapsing governments, and some are here because their lives are in danger precisely because they chose to help America.
From Google to Tesla to many other prominent companies, to those who pick the fruits and vegetables that grace your table, immigrants contribute.
@MarkedMan:
http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-popularity-plummeting-even-among-fox-news-viewers-748765
In June, 90 percent of respondents in a Suffolk University poll who said they trust Fox over other news networks viewed Trump favorably, but by October, approval had fallen to 74 percent and plummeted to 58 percent in December, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. That’s a 32-point drop in six months.
@de stijl: Compared to other explanations of the secret meaning of the 27% magical number, yours is so much more…. Colorful! That’s the word: Colorful.
Getting back to the Original Post: It’s gratifying to see Pres Trump’s political fortunes on the downward swing of the pendulum but there are several cautionary thoughts. Obviously, what goes down tends to come up. And equally obviously there are ways to make that pendulum go up again sooner and higher. Does anyone remember Weapons of Mass Destruction? Self-Propelled Bio-Weapons vans?
My favorite: Does anyone remember the Reichstag Fire?
@Jen: Immigrants add so much to this country.
As horrible as Trump is, I think the thing I hate most about him is his constant demonization of immigrants, both illegal and LEGAL. I believe that is a large basis for the “27%” crazification factor, of which Barbintheboonies seems to be a proud member.
I’ve worked for almost 40 years, and I can think of so many people I’ve worked closely with and became friends with who are immigrants. I like to think I never thought of them as “others”.
And Trump is particularly evil because he latched onto to demonization of immigrants when he realized that he could use it politically. The Trump companies use immigrant labor just like other companies.
@barbintheboonies:
Actually we do know what happened: Hillary won the popular vote by 5 million,in line with most poll projections, but Trump, with important Russian assistance, won 3 swing states in which a shift of 77,000 votes would have tilted the race to the popular vote winner.
Also, those 3 million “illegals” made legal? I’m happy that you’re reading fiction these days.
@al-Ameda: She lost the election and the polls thought they had it in the bag. Many pollsters are biased as we all are in some way. The political climate in 2016 was bad as it is now. When people are afraid to put a bumper sticker on their car for fear of getting it trashed, they will not say anything out loud about who they would vote for. The rioting in the streets after the election proves it. We have now so many news outlets that lean left, how do you expect to have fair criticism. I`ll bet most people disliked Hillary Clinton, but were afraid to say it out loud, for fear of being called a bigot. People`s jobs were at stake if they were slandered that way. If you were a Hillary supporter, then you were the compassionate person (RIGHT) People are sick of all this BS and can see through the extortionist party.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Unless either of those phrases are much more common than I think they, we may know each other IRL.
@Laura Koerber:
I agree that 30% is probably about as low as it can get. IRC, that’s about the same percentage of the country who believe in a geocentric solar system/flat earth/faked moon landings/etc. Some of those people probably write in votes for Lydon LaRouche, but I’d guess most of the rest will stick with Trump till the bitter end.
@Pretty much everyone:
I also agree that this administration may start a war to benefit from it domestically. Dan Drezner had a post recently about how he was hearing serious whispers about a pre-emptive war with NK, and Trump has been itching for a reason to start bombing Iran since he got into office. I don’t take to the streets often, but I those contingencies might be an exception.
@barbintheboonies: Wow. Your views are as vile as they are ignorant. And yet I’m supposed to pretend to care what people like you think–as if those petulant fancies that wander through your brain can be called “thinking”.
And you still can’t figure out how to type a damned apostrophe.
@rachel: Go ahead point to my flaws it only shows that you have nothing. The truth hurts. Trump maybe crude but even a smart person like yourself cannot deny the stock market is better than anything anyone could have imagined. I remember many people posting here said it would tank. The rich guys on this thread said they would move to another country. What BS Anyone one now who is a Democrat is either on the tit on the payroll, or just plain stupid.
@barbintheboonies:
The stock market is a poor indicator of the state of the economy.
Job creation is off from 2016.
Look at the two year graph of the Dow…it’s a straight line. Nothing has changed…it’s just continued as it was. Promise of a massive tax cut to the rich hasn’t hurt it, of course.
Try to remember that less than half of the country is invested in stocks.
Also…I promise you this will not last for the duration of Trumps incompetence in office.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: We`ll wait and see
@barbintheboonies:
I’ll let you know when I notice anything coming from you, beyond ignorance and prejudice.
OMG, you clearly know nothing about why the stock market goes up or down. Here’s a hint: “when the stock market is better than anything anyone could have imagined”? That’s the rubes leaping in with both feet while the smart money is finishing up with skinning them and getting ready to cash out.
I’m in another country, you dope. The USA’s brain drain is only accelerating.
You pathetic old lamb. Clearly, you are going to go to your grave without learning the difference between the shepherd and the wolves.
@rachel:
Even more cynical than your take if you will, most of the fluctuations in the stock market may represent downturns and upswings from institutional investors (mutual funds and hedge managers among others) and computer programs buying and selling to manipulate valuations as they take profits and reinvest.
Re skinning the rubes: Gold is a really good example of the skinning you describe. The rule on gold that I’ve always used is that when “market mavens” are advising people to buy gold, they’re want to sell their’s before the price starts its downcycle.
I know this has been brought up before, but I think it’s worth mentioning again:
Those are pretty bad approval numbers no matter how you look at it. For being poll numbers with ~4% unemployment, low inflation, and a euphoric stock market….wow. I know we’ve been tossing around a 30% floor, but if the market corrects or we go into a recession, I’m thinking it might become ‘torches and pitchforks’ time.
Specifically, I’m guessing the WSJ and National Review will come around to impeachment (‘We’ve always supported Bob Mueller!’) if the market corrects. If we have a major recession and/or rapid inflation, all bets are off. It might be time to tally up my points for New Zealand’s immigration policy though….
@barbintheboonies:
The rich guys on this thread said they would move to another country.
Not sure who you’re talking about there but as @rachel points out, some here already are. I suspect the ‘rich guys’ you’re talking about are @HarvardLawyer and me. FYI, @Harvard is @ Paris @ the moment, I gather he’s bought a very nice house.
As for me as I’ve said from the start I have a kid still in HS. When she’s out in June of 2019, I’m out of the country. Planning and preparation are already under way. I don’t think I’ll buy a house in Paris – that would be a stretch for me economically, though if the GOP/Trump tax cut is what I think it is, I’m thinking 3 bedroom flat in Marylebone with a cold weather place in Spain and a bunch of travel beside.
@barbintheboonies:
No they didn’t. That’s a myth. RCP’s average of the polls just before the election was just 1.1% off in the popular vote, and in terms of the states, it called every state correctly except four, which all were decided by razor-thin margins: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada, the last of which it actually called for Trump but ended up going to Clinton.
That’s a tiny, unremarkable polling error. That’s why 538 pointed out before the election that Trump was just a normal polling error behind Clinton. They examined past presidential races and found that it was perfectly normal for polls in presidential elections to be off by a few points. Indeed, the polling error in 2012 was much larger than 2016, underestimating Obama’s margin of victory by over 3%.
The problem in 2016 wasn’t a polling problem, it was a pundit problem. Pundits believed Clinton had the election in the bag, even though that’s not what the polls were showing.
And let’s not forget, the entire reason you brought up the 2016 polls is because this thread is about how low Trump’s approval ratings are right now. You are using polls that were off by 2-3 points as a basis for dismissing polls that would have to be off by 20-30 points in order for Trump to be secretly popular. You have no sense of scale; your basic position is that polls must be absolutely 100% accurate all the time or they’re completely worthless. That’s like refusing ever to get on an airplane because there have been crashes.
@Kylopod: Just to add to your righteous rant, someone more intelligent than barbi could try and make the argument that Trump approval ratings don’t matter, because various reasons (Republicans always come home, people can disapprove of Trump personally but like his policies,or disapprove of Trump but approve of his policies, Democrats are also disliked, the Democrats are divided and weak ,etc, etc). Except that at this point we have enough evidence from actual elections that the polls are not wrong! I
test
@barbintheboonies:..the polls thought they had it in the bag.
Please produce a link to any poll from November 2016 that stated they had it “in the bag”.
@barbintheboonies:..I`ll bet most people disliked Hillary Clinton, but were afraid to say it out loud, for fear of being called a bigot.
Let’s just set aside the fact that there is no way that you can speak for most people.
Being called a bigot is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a Citizen when compared to the REPUBLICAN Presidential candidate calling for his opponent to be killed.
REPUBLICAN President USA Candidate Donald Trump calls for the assassination of his opponent Hillary Clinton.
“I think her bodyguards should drop all weapons. Disarm immediately,” Trump said. “Take their guns away, let’s see what happens to her.”
“Take their guns away, OK? It’ll be very dangerous,” he added.
@humanoid.panda:
It’s interesting you bring that up, because I’ve generally leaned toward the skeptical side that his approval polls matter that much in an electoral sense. He won the election while being historically unpopular. His favorability ratings on Election Day were 38/60, according to CNN’s exit polls. Of course, Hillary Clinton was nearly as unpopular as he was, so they just sort of canceled each other out. But I think at least part of it was simple partisanship: many Republicans registered their disapproval of him but still voted for him because of the R after his name.
I don’t believe he’s immune to low poll numbers, and I don’t think there’s any doubt they played a role in recent Democratic successes in Virginia and Alabama. But I still think he has a greater threshold for winning an election with relatively low numbers than most candidates would, due to the “Yes, Trump is awful, but…” phenomenon we’ve seen over the past couple of years. If Obama had faced reelection with a 40% approval rating, I don’t think he would have won. I can’t with any confidence say the same about Trump.
@humanoid.panda: One aspect of the Trump approach (or Lee Atwater approach or whoever) to politics is that the opponent always gets thoroughly slimed. As much as we hear about the ways Hillary was a ‘bad’ candidate if she had been running against Adlai Stevenson in the primaries and Eisenhower in the general, she’d have looked like a stronger candidate because she’d never have become “Crooked Hillary”. Very similar attacks on John Kerry (Swiftboaters for Truth anyone?) were also effective.
@pylon: Wow. I mean, wow. Think about what would happen to Trump if he loses Fox.
@michael reynolds:
Consider the Scandinavian capitals (or provincial cities) if you’re dark tolerant. (If you’re only there outside of winter, you don’t even have to be dark tolerant.)
I’ve done live-like-a-local work gigs in all but Stockholm and they are very livable, but spendy. Reykjavik is an architectural black hole, but Icelanders are outstanding folk. Helsinki is stunning. Oslo is kinda “meh”, but good “meh” if that makes sense. Copenhagen is the most cosmopolitan.
@JohnMcC: It isn’t just Trump or Atwater, it’s the whole Republican apparatus. They have put together a very effective character assassination machine. Look at it from their point of view. What else can they do? Run on policy?
The weirdest thing about this is that, maybe, it might actually be better for the country that the Orange Mange is president right now…if Hillary had won, Republicans would be on their way to supermajorities next year in Congress and the fools probably would have tried to impeach her within months of her becoming president…meanwhile, we have this horrible charlatan in the White House who is doing everything he can to destroy the Republican brand…if we can survive the idiot, we may be better off at the end of all of this…
@gVOR08:
As a general rule, modern-day Republicans are much better at platitudes than they are at actual policy.
They are built as if they were the permanent opposition party. They are very capable at saying “no” and at obstructing the majority’s (or the President’s) will.
The issue is that they are the majority in both houses and have the Presidency.
They should be ticking off boxes from their bucket list like OG Bosses, but they can barely name a new Post Office without triggering a government shutdown. Their window closes next fall. They should be legislatin’ like legislatin’ fools, and they have the will but they lack the skill. Seriously, every random notion on their wish list should have been accomplished months ago.
They are very good at telling the people who can govern that “Ur Doin’ It Rong”, but when given the opportunity, they are presently incapable of governing. They can’t even exploit their majority.
When a fella like Paul Ryan is your go-to policy wonk, you have a problem.
Ryan is an idea guy, not a policy guy…. And as Speaker, he makes Boehner look effective in retroactive comparison.
R’s don’t have the staff to write legislation. They outsourced that capability to lobbying shops a decade ago.
@An Interested Party:..it might actually be better for the country that the Orange Mange is president right now…
That’s easy for you to say. I’m betting you don’t live in Puerto Rico.
“They want everything to be done for them…” Pud.
Re: Paul Ryan. What happens when a libertarian is given power. Theoretical ideals hitting the pavement like a tomato wiping out at 90mph into a cheese grater.
And you would be correct there…it certainly isn’t a good thing that this bloated menace sits in the White House…but imagine a replay of the 90s, with a Clinton in the White House and a rabid Republican supermajority in the Congress…at least the Dems have a chance to retake Congress next year and put a check on the increasingly nihilistic GOP…
I’ve used this analogy before but it’s been awhile.
Watching Rs trying to legislate is like post WW2 remote Pacific islanders coping with the aftermath the American military presence leaving after the war has moved on, but leaving some of their gear behind.
House Rs are cargo cult legislators.
They mimic the process to the best of their ability, but the supply planes never return. They can jerry-rig something that looks like a radio using crab claws and coconuts, but it isn’t a real, functional radio. And the magical plane is never coming back.
@michael reynolds:
Also listen to Talking Heads’ Cities from their 1979 album Fear Of Music
before making the final call on where you want to live. (GD, that’s from nearly 40 years ago, crikey, I’m old!)
Marylebone is in London and…:
Think of London / A small city / It’s dark / Dark in the daytime
But, eventually…
I have to find a city, find myself a city to live in / to live in
Who knows, maybe Memphis? it is…
Home of Elvis / and the ancient Greeks
I’d recommend eating ~ 1 gram of quality ‘shrooms and the listening to the first three Talking Heads albums – ’77, More Songs About Buildings And Food, and Fear Of Music – in order and in toto before making any major life decision. You owe it to yourself to ensure you’re making a prudent, well-considering decision.
David Byrne is a wise person. He will not steer you wrong. He will put you in the appropriate head-space to help you make the decision that you should.
Talking Heads
Best. Rhythm. Section. Ever.
I’m tired of traveling.
I just want to be somewhere.
@de stijl:
You’re tired of hangin’ around, you’d like to travel
Get tired of travelin’, you want to settle down
I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’
Get out of the door light out and look all around
Sometimes the light’s all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it’s been.
@CET:
FTFY.
@michael reynolds: These are good choices.
I decided that I would not raise my children in doomed country when W; won reelection. Took a few years, moved to the EU after Obama was elected. I almost wondered then if I had made a mistake. Clearly not, as it turned out.