Trumpproval

electoral-vote.com's lips to a goddess' ears...

It's been just less than a week since Donald Trump's controversial performance in Helsinki, which is enough time for some polling. CBS News has taken the lead; they asked respondents whether or not they approved of the President's performance. He did dismally among Democrats, of course (8% approve, 83% disapprove). He did poorly with independents (29% approve, 53% disapprove). And he did well with Republicans (68% approve, 21% disapprove). Since the President's performance seemed so clearly to be a disaster (even to right-leaning politicians and media outlets), that 68% approval among Republicans is getting all the headlines, and is generally being presented as good news for Trump... but these headlines might be missing the point. First of all, those numbers among independents are pretty ghastly, especially for a president who has very little margin of error to work with if he wants to be reelected. More precisely, he got between 48% and 52% of the independent vote in the three states that he won by a combined 77,000 votes. The evidence is mounting that he won't do nearly as well the second time around. Second, and more importantly, the big news in the two weeks (or so) before Trump's European trip was that he was at 90% approval among Republicans... Just about a quarter of those 90% are now unhappy enough with what they saw that they were willing to tell a pollster about it. Perhaps every one of them will fall back in line behind the Donald, but the smart money says some do not. And again, this is a president with very little margin for error -- he can't afford to bleed 2 or 3 percent of his support. Put another way, we wondered on Monday whether or not Donald Trump had reached his tipping point. That is a question that cannot be answered right now, but what we can say is that this is exactly what it looks like when such a moment arrives.

Notwithstanding the fact that bigot TrumpBase deplorables are still gonna deplorable, that gerrymandering and disenfranchisement and the anti-urban bias in our election-system are all gonna do their damage, that Russia and other assorted foreign powers have every reason and capability to be up to shenanigans, and that one can never underestimate the ability of the US left to divide and squabble and indulge in purity cabaret rather than actually vote on the left wing of the possible, still events and energy seems on track for November to deal a blow to the present TrumpGOP control of every level of government and hence put a check on the worst of the abuses in this moment of Trumpmerican danger and demoralization till the next Presidential election offers the opportunity of a more absolute repudiation (one hopes and prays and works like hell for) and a turning of the tide against the unsustainable white racist cishet corporate-militarist patriarchy at long last...

Also, Janelle Monae and Michelle Obama are asking us nicely.