Every morning after I rise (actually after I have my first meeting at 6:30am) I turn to the opinion pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. This morning was much like other mornings. I was treated to a torrent of opinion pieces in the NYT and WaPo focusing on how everything was Trump’s fault.
Guys, it isn’t working. This morning President Trump’s approval rating is the highest of his presidency (47%) and his disapproval rating the lowest of his presidency (49.5%). You read that right. His disapproval rating is below 50%. Let me offer a prediction. If President Trump’s approval rating as reported by the RealClearPolitics Average is over 50% on election day, he will be re-elected.
I have a suggestion to offer to the editors and columnists of the NYT and WaPo and, indeed, to Democrats more generally. Declare a hudna. A ceasefire. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re right. Searching for the anti-Trump angle on every story isn’t working.
In his WSJ column Walter Russel Mead is on much the same page:
This is not what his critics expected. At 49% overall job approval in the latest Gallup poll, and with 60% approval of the way he is handling the coronavirus epidemic, President Trump’s standing with voters has improved even as the country closed down and the stock market underwent a historic meltdown. That may change as this unpredictable crisis develops, but bitter and often justified criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision making in the early months of the pandemic has so far failed to break the bond between the 45th president and his political base.
One reason Mr. Trump’s opponents have had such a hard time damaging his connection with voters is that they still don’t understand why so many Americans want a wrecking-ball presidency. Beyond attributing Mr. Trump’s support to a mix of racism, religious fundamentalism and profound ignorance, the president’s establishment opponents in both parties have yet to grasp the depth and intensity of the populist energy that animates his base and the Bernie Sanders movement.
The sheer number of voters in open political rebellion against centrist politics is remarkable. Adding the Sanders base (36% of the Democratic vote in the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, or roughly 13% of the national vote considering that about 45% of voters lean Democratic) to the core Trump base of roughly 42%, and around 55% of U.S. voters now support politicians who openly despise the central assumptions of the political establishment.
That a majority of the electorate is this deeply alienated from the establishment can’t be dismissed as bigotry and ignorance. There are solid and serious grounds for doubting the competence and wisdom of America’s self-proclaimed expert class. What is so intelligent and enlightened, populists ask, about a foreign-policy establishment that failed to perceive that U.S. trade policies were promoting the rise of a hostile Communist superpower with the ability to disrupt supplies of essential goods in a national emergency? What competence have the military and political establishments shown in almost two decades of tactical success and strategic impotence in Afghanistan? What came of that intervention in Libya? What was the net result of all the fine talk in the Bush and Obama administrations about building democracy in the Middle East?
On domestic policy, the criticism is equally trenchant and deeply felt. Many voters believe that the U.S. establishment has produced a health-care system that is neither affordable nor universal. Higher education saddles students with increasing debt while leaving many graduates woefully unprepared for good jobs in the real world. The centrist establishment has amassed unprecedented deficits without keeping roads, bridges and pipes in good repair. It has weighed down cities and states with unmanageable levels of pension debt.
While I agree both with Trump supporters and with Sanders supporters that we have deep, systemic problems, my preferred solutions aren’t the same as either. I think we need reform not revolution and we should start with boring, non-sexy stuff like civil service reform. State socialism, the preference of the Sanders supporters, is a losing proposition, particularly in a country with low social cohesion like the United States. It will inevitably lead to more government corruption.
Anarcho-capitalism is no solution, either. Too many people would be left behind. IMO what we really need is a return to the fundamentals of the American creed which include subsidiarity.
Right now the best thing the editors of the NYT and WaPo could do is to start celebrating the good. Identify what’s working and praise it. Don’t make every story a Trump hit piece. Or a puff piece on Nancy Pelosi.
Across the pond, Boris Johnson’s got a 90% approval rating on his handling of the crisis.
A 60% approval rating pales in comparison.
Approval ratings can crash quickly on mishandling of the crisis — or if it drags too long (Iranian hostage crisis, 9/11).
Listening to a podcast a few days ago (Talking Politics) with a political professor in Italy, I was shocked to hear that the Italian leadership is being given is receiving favorable public opinion for their handling of the crisis. How Italians are interpreting events seems far different than the outside world does.
There is no way Trump could achieve the approval rating of Boris, no matter the largesse of his leadership worthiness or how reformed his mouth might become. Performance really doesn’t factor in his polling as much as the relentless negativity deployed by an entrenched “resistance†since the beginning of Trump’s presidency.
Such closed-minded partisanship has handicapped Trump’s entire tenure in office, and is currently providing frustrating stumbling blocks in formatting legislative remedies aimed solely at the immediate needs created by this pandemic. Instead, the opposition party leadership is feuding and stalling votes so they can monetarily implement their “party vision,†tucked into an appropriately targeted economic aid package.
So, even though Trump’s approval rating may “pale†in comparison to others, he, nonetheless, is chipping away at his disapproval numbers, as more people are repelled by the nauseating press coverage and kindergarten behavior of his democrat peers.
I also agree with Dave’s closing paragraph, suggesting it would be helpful if major news media would honestly report the good, bad, misleading, ugly actions/reactions of party leaders on both sides of the political aisles.
That wasn’t actually my message. When I said “celebrate the good” that’s what I meant not “celebrate the good in politics”. Most of the good things happening have nothing to do with politics. Sure, if some politician does something good, that should be celebrated. I don’t believe that simply doing their jobs qualifies.
“repelled by the nauseating press coverage”
Which mostly consists of quoting him.
Politicians should never get a medal, a pay raise, or pats on the head for doing their job. IT’S THEIR JOB. Ordinary people don’t, why should they? Our reward for doing our job is to keep our job.
The ‘centrist’ establishment politics have in the opinion of many been f**king up for the last few decades. Leeching off the taxpayers. And their attitude to complainers, aided by their sycophantic pile-on allies in the MSM, is ‘shut up, we’re the experts, and if you don’t we have six ways from Sunday to crush you’. And then they’re surprised when they get an f**k you right back you’re outta here?
They forgot who put them in place. The voters. They reward who they think got them in place, the donors.
Did not mean to misinterpret your “good news†comment, Dave. However, with nothing but implications, ramifications of the virus inundating everything, I followed that thread into supporting virus news that contained positive decisions, as well as positive turn of events.
One news piece not covered (so far) by US media, is one that has made it’s way into the UK media. It covers the Imperial College London study created and touted by Neil Ferguson, citing numbers of 2.2 million to die here from the virus, and 500,000 to die in the UK. He has now done an abrupt turn, saying he was mistaken to quote those numbers, and has devised an entirely new model, dropping the UK figures to no more than 20,000, adding that probably half that number would have died anyway from old age, etc., and that there will now be no lack of needed beds. He came to this page-turning opinion by positing the virus had spread among the population much earlier than thought, and so altered all of his projected assumptions regarding a contagion that had already effected greater numbers of the population. No mention, however, was made about the massive deaths he penciled in for the US, and our great media appears to have not seen the necessity of calling into question those numbers, in lieu of his faulty analysis of the UK’s.
I didn’t take offense; just wanted to clarify.
That’s certainly what I think.
How much trust can you put in the Imperial College of London?
First the UK thought the disease was mild enough that they would let the majority of the population get infected and have “herd immunity” to protect the vulnerable.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/new-data-new-policy-why-uks-coronavirus-strategy-has-changed
Then Italy happened, they revised the models and said 500000 Brits would die, causing the UK government to impose a nationwide lockdown.
And now they are revising the model again to project 20000 deaths?
Keynes said when the data changes, I change my opinion, what do you do….? But in this case it seems more whatever happens, the Imperial College London will say they predicted it.
I know nothing about the Imperial College of London, nor the epidemiologist associated with it, whose Coronavirus model predicted a catastrophic number of deaths, lighting the media’s hair on fire. However, Neil Ferguson’s numbers, gleaned from that now questionable model, has stoked many of the fears, perceived by the media and others as validation for the authoritarian measures put into place by a number of state governments. I believe it’s been prudent to shelter in place, in order to avoid further virus spread, especially in various hot spots around the country, However, I also think it’s consoling and merits consideration to publicly speculate when some of these restrictions can be lifted. When the WH tosses out such a date, though, weaning us off of this locked economy, it’s promptly derided and discredited by a media who refuses to entertain and/or discuss it’s feasibility.
Never heard of the guy before. No idea where he ranks in the epidemiology world. What I do know is that it is nearly always a mistake to believe one person. I would look at the range of predictions from a number of people using different models. Never been a fan of just citing the one person who confirms my beliefs.
Steve
I am not unsympathetic that we need to think that we as a society need to think and plan beyond a lockdown. If only to have hope there is something to live for.
But I am mindful that this virus has dashed every hope so far that the worse is over — it is contained in China, it is still overseas, there are only a few cases in this country… I think it is prudent to plan as if the virus is the worst, that the fatality rate is 10x the flu, that it is going to be endemic.
The US can still plan to move beyond a lockdown even in the worse case — but the plan should be based on real data (from epidemiological testing). Also, plans are needed to lower the risk of spreading the disease when things reopen; eg how to reduce the spread of disease due to domestic air travel, how to improve contact tracing when a case is detected, etc.