I’m not a pollster. But I am a political junkie who thinks that there is useful information in polling.
NBC released their standard issues and approval poll over the weekend.
Thirty eight percent of Americans say they approve of Trump’s job performance — down five points since September — while 58 percent disapprove.
The issues polling looks like this:
One of the things that stuck out to as I was debating whether or not I wanted to begin the process of becoming hung-over the day after the election was the following:
Only 38 percent said Trump is qualified to serve as president, while 52 percent said Clinton is qualified. And yet Trump won. Americans elected a candidate they don’t believe is qualified!
These are different polls and different methods but they point in the same direction. The people who think that Trump was qualified to be President last November are all that he has left. The people who thought he was not qualified to be President and still voted for him are special snowflakes whose fee-fees are enabling a rolling constitutional crisis in the quest for upper-income tax cuts that won’t actually trickle down to them have dropped their support. It was weak and fracturable support.
The base remnant are the people that think Trump is a plausible President and just what we need.
However, even that support can be fractured. A little less than three-quarters of his general approval people think he is doing a good job for Puerto Rico. These are the ultras, the hardest of hardcore who are wrapped in a bubble so tight that they may need to call Green Balloons and get out of their wetsuit. The people who think he is doing a good job in Puerto Rico belong in the Crazification Factor.
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
John: … a bit low, actually.
So one more year until we can get some meaningful checks and balances in to contain and segregate the alternate reality that dominates our current reality.