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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEzra Klein: Can anything change Americans' minds about Donald Trump?
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21409364/trump-approval-rating-2020-election-voters-coronavirus-convention-pollsCan anything change Americans minds about Donald Trump?
The eerie stability of Trumps approval rating, explained.
By Ezra Klein@ezraklein Sep 2, 2020, 7:30am EDT
snip//
Trump isnt Teflon
I occasionally hear Trump described as the Teflon president. Many liberals are agog at how many scandals, disasters, and offensive comments Trump has survived. It can seem like nothing sticks to him.
But Trump isnt Teflon. Its simply that whatever will stick to him has already stuck to him. Absorbing this much damage and provoking this much loathing has not been a successful strategy. Stable poll numbers in the low-40s are hardly a political triumph. When the economy was strong, his approval ratings were far lower than the jobs and GDP numbers would predict. And while Trumps approval ratings on the coronavirus are higher than what I think he deserves, theyre punishingly low in comparison to other world leaders.
According to Morning Consult data, Frances Emmanuel Macron is up 5 points since January, Canadas Justin Trudeau is up 9 points, Germanys Angela Merkel is up 16 points, and Australias Scott Morrison is up 25 points. Viewed in this way, Trumps stability might be best understood as a tremendous political failure: He had the opportunity for a rally-round-the-leader effect that could have locked his reelection. His weak, erratic, ineffective response instead turned the pandemic into the central threat to his reelection: In Morning Consults polling, Biden held a 14-point advantage by the end of June when voters were asked which candidate they trusted on the coronavirus, up from a 3-point advantage in April.
It is also possible that the headline numbers hide smaller but electorally consequential shifts. If there is one group Trump is leaking support from, it is older white people in Florida, says Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina. At least that is how I read the data coming out of Florida. The Covid-19 response is actually killing older people there. As this goes on, more and more of them actually know someone who has been affected in some serious way. According to our data, that appears to have the power to blunt partisanship. Republicans follow their leaders when they are not afraid of getting sick. They dont follow those cues when they are afraid of getting sick. Biden now leads by more than 4 points in Florida, up from a dead heat in April.
It is telling that Trumps strategy for winning reelection doesnt seem to be a new message or a new plan for controlling the coronavirus or restarting the economy. Instead, hes running a racialized campaign against protests, riots, and disorder even though that disorder is happening on his watch as president. The GOP has no policies so they deal entirely in grievance and identity, says Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland. That has been enough for Trump to hold a bit more than 40 percent of the electorate. But a bit more than 40 percent of the electorate is not a winning coalition, and it is far less than a capable leader might now hold.
So perhaps, compared to a hypothetical Trump response that was commanding and competent, the political cost of the path Trump followed has been significant, and it may lose him the presidency and discredit him in history. Its worth remembering that even Herbert Hoover got 40 percent of the vote in the 1932 presidential election more than three years into the Great Depression and not far off from where Trump is polling now. Sometimes its easier for the country in general, and partisans in particular, to admit a leaders failures after hes lost than it is when he and they are still fighting to keep power.
But still: Forty-two percent of Americans look at Trump and believe hes doing a good job, or at least a good enough one. And nothing theyve seen over the past year has shaken that view.
Farmgirl1961
(1,493 posts)What would it take? Does he literally have to hold the gun and pull the trigger on white folks?
I am actually very curious to know what the threshold and turning point would be.
What would make them change their mind would be if he turned away from the politics of white grievance, which is why hes clinging to those politics so tightly.
He already lost regular Americans a long time ago. A last-minute Hail Mary pivot to suddenly attempt to appeal to mainstream voters, that involved looking conciliatory on issues of race, or suggesting that maybe there is something wrong with policing in this country, would do nothing but cause confusion and resentment among his own cult.
Thats why hes not just going to ride that white grievance train all the way to the station, hes going to stand on the footplate desperately chucking coal into the boiler.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,014 posts)suicide cult of ignorance
genxlib
(5,526 posts)Is inadequate without mentioning the propaganda network of Fox, Rush, radio, internet, social media etc.
They don't believe he is doing a bad job because he is bubble wrapped in support by those sources of "information". At least some of those are driven by bots or foreign influence.
Perhaps as important, that same network of "information" has demonized Democrats and progressive politics to a degree that they will support a deeply flawed Republican just to avoid the "evils" of BLM, antifa, socialism, etc.
beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)that SS and Medicare WILL go away if trump is re-elected. We see that happening in Arizona and Florida already
Poiuyt
(18,123 posts)beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)SuperPacs going up with ads in several southern states with significant level of older/retired residents. Trump/GOP really want this to cause a generational voting war and I think they really are giving democrats a huge landslide with this.
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)And he puts his finger on something very dark here:
Cartaphelius
(868 posts)Would be relatively cheap and 100% effective for all but Jim Jordan,
Mark Meadows and all other "former" Tea Baggers.
Strange how the TEA BAGGERS morphed into the Freedum Caucus.