photo credt: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg
How's Donald's re-election campaign going? Jonathan Bernstein says not that great:
After a month of bad news, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have taken another hit. He’s in serious trouble for re-election.
Most of the damage is on the disapproval side. On May 1, Trump was at 43.3% approval and 50.7% disapproval, according to the estimate at FiveThirtyEight, which is based on an adjusted average of all the polls out there. Now? Although his approval is down just a bit, to 42.9%, his disapproval is up another three percentage points and sits at 53.6%. Two months ago, Trump was getting his best approval numbers since his brief honeymoon; now, he’s lost all of that and is back to where he’s been for most of the past two years.
As was the case last month, that means that his numbers resemble those of the last two elected presidents to be defeated for a second term, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. He’s solidly behind Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom won re-election in reasonably contested efforts, and far behind landslide winners Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
There’s a lot of speculation about how the current round of protests over police violence will affect Trump’s re-election prospects, including comparisons of his strategy to Nixon’s in 1968. I’m extremely skeptical that we can predict what effects these events will have — if any. After all, this would hardly be the first extremely important event that was either forgotten by Election Day or simply reinforced everyone’s previous vote choice.
If I had to guess, however, I’d say that the Nixon comparisons are off-base. Trump is the incumbent, so he’s not especially apt to pick up the support of undecided voters upset by the status quo. And Nixon was skilled at identifying issues that would put him on the side of large majorities, even at the cost of intensifying social fault lines. Trump is good at the inflaming part, but there’s just no evidence that he has any feel for where majorities are. Instead, while Nixon was willing to ignore “Goldwater conservatives” to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate, Trump specializes in appealing to only his strongest supporters — which since the early days of his presidency has essentially meant the core audience for Fox News and conservative talk radio.
His actions Monday brought home the point. After giving a statement about the protests at the Rose Garden, Trump had police and members of the National Guard clear out peaceful protesters from in front of the White House so he could take a brief walk to nearby St. John’s Church, which had been damaged during earlier demonstrations. The idea that anyone other than Trump’s most dedicated supporters would find walking a block and back heroic seems … unlikely. (This is the article in its entirety.)
As was the case last month, that means that his numbers resemble those of the last two elected presidents to be defeated for a second term, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. He’s solidly behind Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom won re-election in reasonably contested efforts, and far behind landslide winners Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
There’s a lot of speculation about how the current round of protests over police violence will affect Trump’s re-election prospects, including comparisons of his strategy to Nixon’s in 1968. I’m extremely skeptical that we can predict what effects these events will have — if any. After all, this would hardly be the first extremely important event that was either forgotten by Election Day or simply reinforced everyone’s previous vote choice.
If I had to guess, however, I’d say that the Nixon comparisons are off-base. Trump is the incumbent, so he’s not especially apt to pick up the support of undecided voters upset by the status quo. And Nixon was skilled at identifying issues that would put him on the side of large majorities, even at the cost of intensifying social fault lines. Trump is good at the inflaming part, but there’s just no evidence that he has any feel for where majorities are. Instead, while Nixon was willing to ignore “Goldwater conservatives” to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate, Trump specializes in appealing to only his strongest supporters — which since the early days of his presidency has essentially meant the core audience for Fox News and conservative talk radio.
His actions Monday brought home the point. After giving a statement about the protests at the Rose Garden, Trump had police and members of the National Guard clear out peaceful protesters from in front of the White House so he could take a brief walk to nearby St. John’s Church, which had been damaged during earlier demonstrations. The idea that anyone other than Trump’s most dedicated supporters would find walking a block and back heroic seems … unlikely. (This is the article in its entirety.)
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