Andrew Sullivan: Is Political Gravity Finally Sinking Donald Trump?

[DonViejo]

March 24, 2017
8:19 a.m.

Is he waving or drowning? Swimming or sinking?

I ask this question because we’re more than two months in and the trauma has not subsided, but it has, perhaps, bifurcated. Sure, Trump still shows alarming potential as a would-be tyrant, contemptuous of constitutional proprieties, and prone to trashing every last norm of liberal democracy. But he is also beginning to appear simultaneously as a rather weak chief executive, uninterested in competent management or follow-through, bedeviled by divisions within his own party, transfixed by cable news, and swiftly discrediting himself by an endless stream of lies, delusions, and conspiracy theories. Even the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal challenged his credibility last Tuesday. They did this because, at this point, among sane people, he quite obviously has none.

The polling, meanwhile, is brutal. Gallup puts Trump a full 21 percentage points below average for presidents at this point of their administration. Real Clear Politics’ poll of polls shows a new high in disapproval this week, over 50 percent, and a new low in approval, at 43. Gallup finds him in the upper 50s of disapproval, and in the upper 30s in approval. Even GOP-friendly Rasmussen now has his disapproval at 53. Quinnipiac sees his support among whites and men falling, and discovers that 60 percent of Americans think he’s dishonest and 61 percent say his values are different than theirs. Yesterday, Quinnipiac also found that the Republican Obamacare replacement — the first serious agenda item of the Trump era — is opposed by a whopping three-to-one margin. Money quote: “One out of every seven Americans, 14 percent, think they will lose their health insurance under the Republican plan. That 14 percent includes 27 percent of voters in families with household income below $30,000, 18 percent of working class families and 14 percent of middle class families.” Good luck with those midterms, guys.

In Washington this week, as this shambolic health-care plan staggered, zombielike, into the House, there was a palpable sense that political gravity may, for the first time, be operational around Trump. If he somehow muscles this legislation through, he will be stuck with an avalanche of angry.

So time to take a deep breath? I’d say a shallow one. I can see two possible scenarios that could follow a drawn-out Trump slump. One is the nightmare I’ve been having for more than a year now. A president hobbled domestically by his own party’s divisions and the opposition’s new energy may be tempted — Putin-like — to change the subject in a way that vaults him back to popularity. A foreign altercation from which he will not back down? A trade war? A smidge likelier, I’d say, is an over-the-top response to an inevitable jihadist terror attack in a major American city. A demagogue loses much of his power when he tries to wrestle complicated legislation through various political factions, in the way our gloriously inefficient Constitution requires. He regains it with rank fear, polarization, and a raw show of force. Heaven knows what the Constitution will look like once he’s finished.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/sullivan-is-political-gravity-finally-sinking-donald-trump.html

[tblue37]

1. That line is from a lovely, poignant poem by Stevie Smith:

Not Waving but Drowning
BY STEVIE SMITH

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

[pat_k]

2. Hope so. Fear not.

His "cut those pesky safety nets and transfer trillions more to millionaires and billionaires" tax reform will have more universal support within the Republican caucus..