Sometimes I think it’s going to be really hard to explain this era to people in the future and then I think, oh please let it be really hard to explain. I hope it makes no sense.
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) July 23, 2018
Now we just have the Media Village Idiots, doing their best to make news Silly (even Stupid) all year ’round. But there is still pushback…
“Most Republicans support Nixon” was an accurate statement the day he resigned. pic.twitter.com/fnhatuB3WS
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 22, 2018
Recent polling on President Donald Trump has increasingly been covered in a way that emphasizes Trump’s high numbers with self-identified Republicans rather than his low numbers with the American public…
American politics has grown more polarized over time. It’s become easier for presidents to maintain the political support of their co-partisans than it was in the days when both party coalitions were regional hodgepodges with little underlying ideological coherence. This, combined with Trump’s personal focus on his base, has enabled Trump to mostly hang on to his GOP supporters.
The truth, however, is that Trump is an unpopular president by historical standards, and his party appears to be suffering predictable consequences….
… The economy is growing, and American soldiers abroad are not dying in large numbers. We would normally expect a president enjoying those conditions to have pretty good approval ratings. Trump’s are terrible.
And it seems plausible to attribute those numbers to the all-base, all-the-time refusal to do anything on either a symbolic or a policy level to try to reassure people who aren’t in his base that their worst fears about him are mistaken. Trump’s strength with his base, meanwhile, isn’t a mitigating factor — it’s part of the overall problem. In a divided country, he makes no effort to serve as a unifying figure…
In other news, David Koresh had a 98% approval among Branch Davidians.
— David Oppenheim (@DavidMOppenheim) July 23, 2018
An interesting issue these polls rarely address is: Are fewer people identifying as Republicans as Republicaness comes to be associated with Trump’s misconduct?
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 22, 2018
As I recall, after Nixon fled the White House in disgrace, the number of polled voters who remembered they’d voted for McGovern increased by a factor of… many. George got to joke that if only the election could be held retroactively, he’d have won in a landslide!