Holy fuck, could people please stop arguing about approval rating differences smaller than the margin of error on most approval polls?
You misspelled “radical reactionary.”
Don’t beat yourself up about it though. People have been doing that since Newt first picked up the Speaker’s gavel.
The right wing media is not Trump’s base.
Really? You don’t think Breitbart, Drudge, Infowars, Zerohedge, Limbaugh and Fox “News,” among others, don’t speak to and for Trump’s base? I wonder who their audience is, then?
I listened to a bunch of Alabamans live on the tee vee this morning who had voted for Trump on the strength of Sessions’ support for him. They were not happy at all about Trump’s talk of firing Sessions. Maybe they count.
They do count: Trump’s approval has dropped (as predicted in this thread):
Trump's approval rating slumps to new low - CBS News
What changed from late June? Well, for one thing, Trump started making noises about firing Jeff Sessions—the guy who’s actually doing the stuff Trump voters want to see done. Some Trump voters apparently did notice that Trump was itching to can Sessions; it would appear that they’ve taken away the lesson that Trump himself doesn’t, after all, prioritize those things that are so important to his voters.
I know they count. 
I keep pretty good tabs on that crowd, who they’re watching, what matters to them. Sessions is a demi-god to these people. (I happen to think he’s going to get squished with the Mueller investigation, but not for awhile. Perjury is perjury, and he committed it in his confirmation hearing.)
I posted your link in another popular Pit thread earlier today. I am so pleased to see the drop in his popularity. And yes, Trump’s attack on Sessions has a lot to do with that.
Sessions is inside the beltway stuff. The base has a hundred other reasons to back Trump.
Um, nothing at all? June 13: +38.6, -56.0. August 2 +38.4, -56.9. The real question is why is numbers “improved” from June 13 to late June? Improved in quotes because that’s a two point change in each number, essentially meaningless.
Is there any other conceivable thing besides Sessions, who has been out of the headlines, that might have bumped Trump down a point or two in the last week? cough health care cough Yeah, probably not. :dubious:
Of course ‘health care’–which is why I wrote “for one thing” and “some Trump voters apparently did notice.”
Exapno Mapcase, you quoted this from Sherrerd:
[quote=“Sherrerd, post:94, topic:792292”]
[li]Trump has no idea that the core remains devoted to him mainly because of what Sessions has been doing and continues to do.[/li][/QUOTE]
And then replied this, of which I have bolded the pertinent point:
And that’s what I initially responded to. Now you’re saying this:
Which is different than what you previously said. Of course, health care has had an impact. But health care has been in the debate for months. Literally months. The needle didn’t move till Trump threatened to fire Sessions – and then it dropped by a bunch in a month. It’s also the first time Republicans began to openly criticize Trump. So can you consider that maybe Sessions has something to do with it, too? Like… maybe quite a lot?
In general, I think you and I on the same team, but I agree with Sherrerd, that Sessions has a lot to do with the support Trump receives. Quinnipac polls showed a drop in support for Trump from around 40% in late June to late July. That’s a huge drop, in a very short amount of time.
I thought we learned long ago never to cite one poll or one pollster. If you did you could cite results like Reuters/Ipsos, which has Trump’s approval rising from 35 to 37 from June 27 to August 1.
The only meaningful number is the average of respectable polls, like those on realclearpolitics or 538 (which shows almost exactly the same numbers over the same timeline). There is no huge drop shown in either one. A slight dip attributable to health care can be seen over the past week and nothing more.
If Sessions leaves we might see activity in the polls. Since he hasn’t I can’t image how you can read his staying on into any changes at all.
Not to bring back this argument, but Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 36%. Of course, today is 8/2, and the rating is for 8/1, so it’s old news. Wonder if there are any algebra experts who can tell me when the current (but old!) approval rating will fall off the page? (hint for 5th graders: they update the page at noon)
His disapproval rating is also a (tied for) historically high 60%. The combination provides him with I believe historically low net approval ratings.
Keep it up, Trumpy. You’re doing a heckuva job.
Jeffbo probably has a big chunk of the Southern bunch of Trumpniks, what Nietzsche referred to as the Goobermensch.
Out of curiosity, and because I am an idiot, I decided to go read what freepers think of Mistah Sessions.
An oft-repeated sentiment, though the Capitalization is Thankfully not Common (I won’t link because ooky):
So, my theory, such as it is, is that it’s true that the substance of Sessions is what Trump’s base really wants, but the act of firing Sessions would be okay because they associate the good stuff with Trump and the bad stuff with the media.
I think the error the OP makes is thinking that there is a cause and effect thing that is happening with this administration–that Trump’s supporters support him for what he is doing or will do rather than for what he is and who he hates.
I doubt that half of the people who voted for Donald could tell Jeff Sessions from Irene Ryan. Of those that do, they simply parrot the official White House line: “Sessions recuse self… this leads to Mueller… Sessions BAD!” Maybe Alabamians are upset that their former Senator is treated like a cat at a dog party but the rest of the country doesn’t really care.
Well, maybe, but keep in mind that Trumpniks like to think of themselves as a persecuted majority, and this is especially true for “Southerners”. JeffBo is “one of them”, Trump is not.
I think that’s probably true. But when even those people, asked why they still support Trump, reply ‘because I like what he’s doing’—even those people, though they may not realize it, are referring to what Sessions is doing, rather than any accomplishments of Trump himself.
They see the headlines about non-violent Latino immigrants being rousted out of their homes and jobs and then deported, and those Trump voters are thrilled. They see these more recent headlines about the Justice Department going after gay rights and non-white college applicants, and they are thrilled. They see stories about more ‘urban’ non-violent drug offenders receiving harsher sentences, and they are thrilled.
That they don’t ID Sessions as the hand behind it–attributing it all to Trump–doesn’t change the fact that if Sessions were to be removed, his replacement is unlikely to be so much a hammer to the non-whites and the gays, as is Jeff Sessions—because the Senate is unlikely to confirm any nominee who’s as hammery as Sessions. Sessions got the job because of his years in the Senate. There’s no one else who can both do the base-pleasing hammering, and also get confirmed.
Trump doesn’t realize how lucky he was that Sessions exists, and Trump both does and doesn’t realize how much disapproval and backlash he’ll receive from the base if Sessions goes and the hammerin’ stops. Trump can’t let himself know. He can’t tolerate the thought that Sessions is so important to his own approval from his base–which is part of the reason for his days of whining about Sessions without actually pulling the lever to remove Sessions.
(Apparently Kelly has put a stop to Trump’s agony by simply telling Trump he’d better leave Sessions alone; Trump wants Kelly’s approval and has, it would seem, decided to believe that what Kelly says is actually what Trump himself wants. Very face-saving.)
All of this is basically independent of the question ‘how much of the base realizes that what they ‘like about Trump’ is actually the work of Sessions?’ The answer to that question is certainly relevant in approval-polling, but it’s all chaff in the wind compared with the question of how the base would react to an end to the hammerin’—regardless of who knows about Sessions’ role and who doesn’t.
I don’t agree with you. F’rinstance, the worst Cabinet nominee was Tom Price (you may not believe me, but you should) and he was confirmed. Not a Senator. Possibly reptilian.
The problem with getting an AG confirmed is timing, not that they wouldn’t go for Adolf Hitler with a JD from Tom Cooley.
Did Tom Price have a record of racism? (Corruption, yes–but sadly, that seems to be a-okay with Republican Senators.)
Well, if we’re ever going to have a chance to see your theory tested, it will be in this administration.