Why is President Trump's approval rating climbing?

Politics & Elections
61

Trump needs a minimum of 43% of the vote to have a real chance. Keep in mind that in some places (California, New York, Washington, etc) that number will be driven down by off-the-charts hatred for the bastard. He can survive the EV contest if he maintains mid-40s polling. But a dip below that, and he’s fighting for his political life even with the electoral college.

That said, we’re kind of assuming that there won’t be serious disruption at the polls, and with COVID, all bets are off. It’s hard to know what numbers are going to finish Donald off. I’ve believed for some time that we won’t know Trump is finished until his support collapses among blue collar whites. It’s the white vote that got him into office, and it might be the white vote that is needed to put his political corpse into the ground.

62

There are times when Trump seems more human and reasonable, and I can say, “OK, I see your reasoning,” like in some of these COVID press conferences, like ventilators being as complicated as cars, and he can’t just get orgs to whip them up out of nowhere, or when he makes the remark that America as a nation deeply needs to work, have a job, and we’re not designed to sit at home, this to explain his dragging his feet on the COVID response. I say: OK, I can see that. Thanks for giving me that insight. (But that doesn’t excuse bad decisions.) Remember, folks imbibing the right-leaning channels (well, really, Fox) only see the best of him.

Speaking of Fox, here’s a rundown of their (et al) various gymnastics in trying to spin blame away from the administration over the shoddy US coronavirus response. Unfortunately it’s by the New York Times, which means the people who most need to read it and think about it, won’t. Hyperpolarization yields more of the same. (Alternate link.)

63

Agree, but I would emphasize that he’s stupid in a popular way.
If he went on and on about Area 51 or crystals or something, that only appeals to a small demographic, everyone else would see him as an idiot.
Instead, his biases, his ignorance and logical fallacies are the same ones a huge chunk of the public share. He’s an everyman idiot, and he’s leveraged the ignorant / bigoted vote in a whole new way.

And it’s the same with this crisis. Most people know little about viruses or epidemics and feel it makes sense what Trump did. Block people coming directly from China (which I’ll concede was a good step, not saying everything needs to be wrong) but do no other preparation at all, because it’s only, like, 5 people with the virus. How big can it get?
When New York requests thousands of ventilators “What the hell, where did that come from? You guys must be selling them!”. Many people can relate to these kinds of sentiments, so he’s saying what they’re thinking.

Yep. With the existing dynamics of the media and the two parties, and Biden as the Dem nominee, I’d say it’s about 70:30 Trump gets reelected.

64

Listen to yourself. One of the biggest problems with trump is that his behavior 99% of the time is so bad/stupid/destructive and our standards have become so low that if he manages to convey one forkful of pudding to his mouth without stabbing himself in the eye, we’re ready to pat him on the back and say, “well done!” as if he were a chimpanzee learning table manners.

Obama was raked over the coals for wearing a TAN SUIT, FFS. Hillary was deemed unfit for office when she wobbled on her feet a bit. Joe Biden stutters (like he has all his life) and there are cries of “dementia! Alzheimer’s!”

There is no “best of him.” His “best” is acting temporarily normal. His “best” is refraining for a few minutes from lying, insulting someone, bragging on himself, praising the world’s criminal dictators, and did I mention LYING? This is his best.

65

Yes, I know several former never Trumpers who have become Trump supporters because:

Tax Cuts
SCOTUS nominations

These things helped sometimes and hurt sometimes:
Trade
Immigration
Killing that Iranian general

Some of them are backing away from him right now.

66

Umm

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fema-is-sending-85-refrigerated-trucks-to-new-york-city-to-serve-as-temporary-morgues-2020-04-01

67

That’s the thing. A more timely response would have prevented the need for a shutdown, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented the huge recession that we are heading into right now. To take the korea example:

Korea started screening travelers at airports in January, your temperature was taken at three different checkpoints before getting on a plane and at 2 different checkpoints before leaving the airport.
Koreans started wearing masks and practicing social distancing .

On January 20th the first case of COVID19 was diagnosed in korea (the same day that the first case was diagnosed in the USA).

On February 4th, they created a test and effectively commandeered korean factories and started manufacturing test kits and had tested

When someone got diagnosed with COVID19, they used their Cell phone GPS history to publicize where they had been and then scoured everyone else’s GPS history to track down and test anyone that might have been in contact with that person within the last 72 hours.

By February 26th korea had tested 46,000 people. America had tested 426 people.

Korea has this more or less under control and can fight any outbreaks on a rapid response basis. There have been 165 deaths due to COVID19. This number will inch higher but their current practices makes it unlikely that they will see anything close to what we will see here.

Korean society is generally less outraged by the notion that he government is using the GPS on your phone to track down people who might be infected to test them. Some even see it as a miracle of modern technology. I suspect it would go down like a lead brick in this country.

Our rugged individualism and anti-authoritarian inclinations helps us preserve our democracy but the tree of freedom is demand quite a bit of blood this time around.

68

Would have happened with any Republican president, including if Trump had ever been impeached from office since Mike Pence would also fall under the heading of “any Republican president”. Or does someone think that Mike Pence would be like, “Oh m’lordy! No, no we must keep those taxes in place! I will not listen to the cries of my kinsfolk in Congress!”?

More importantly, while members of the White House were involved in the discussion, Trump himself was not leading it and near-abouts destroyed the whole thing by trying to strap wall funding to the issue.

He did, in fact, cause the ObamaCare repeal to fail through that and also by boosting the crazy wing of the party, so that they felt more comfortable opposing the centrists. If Trump had simply kept his yap shut, the Republican party would have been able to get rid of the hated Obama healthcare package.

The previous holders died under a Republican president. Unless one claims that Trump murdered them, this has little to do with Trump. And if one does make that claim, it makes no sense that he would have murdered the Republican judges and maintained a status quo from before his election.

One might also note that Trump was trying to nominate his sister and Fox newscasters to the Supreme Court. The selection of people that we got is thanks to Mitch McConnell and Don McGahn, not Donald Trump. And Don McGahn has gone on the record to tell us that Trump is a fuckin’ moron who would screw the nation over on any given day if it weren’t for everyone and their brother ignoring him and stopping him. This is also what every other person has said, from Omarosa to John Kelly.

69

Interestingly, Rasmussen, the usually Trump friendly poll has him dropping and at a low.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history

70

Oh boy. This probably requires more finesse than I can muster, but I’ll try.

I totally understand your anger, and I’ll “listen” however much is necessary. My concern is that such responses need to be weighed against creating orthodoxies, inhibiting people from attempting reasonable explanations of what “the other side” sees in Trump and Trumpiness, which is crucial to answering the OP and, I think, for the health of threads like this.

The hyperpartisanship has gotten so bad that each side has started to see the other as a “dangerous threat.” That “excuses” to the “other side” just about everything you’re complaining about–any tactic is OK in the barfight. “Dippy-dopey” Trump becomes their prince charming. The partisan doom loop starts to loosen (get better) if everyone without a life-or-death stake in the political process takes a deep breath and for a few minutes, however odious the exercise is, puts themselves in the other side’s shoes. (Again, that may well be impossible if you’re deeply involved over certain issues. Totally understandable.)

If you don’t have a life-or-death stake, try saying each of the following sentences to yourself five times (top of my head), then think about how Trump addresses such concerns:
[ul]
[li]I’m afraid and angry about losing my cultural majority in this country.[/li][li]I live paycheck to paycheck, like 80% of Americans, and I have a job that’s threatened by [immigration, outsourcing, technological replacement]. (pre-COVID, at least)[/li][li]I feel less powerful now than I did ten years ago, and I feel like family and community bonds are crumbling. I want to go back to the way things were.[/li][/ul]

Then you’ve got to consider value systems (very much differ between sides, and may well be hard-wired). Then you’ve got to detangle advocacy from analysis. Just because a poster is bringing up those points, doesn’t mean they support that POV. You can’t well separate the diseased tissue from the healthy in hyperpartisanville without undestanding where the other side is coming from, and seeing things through the lenses of their value system. That lack of discernment is one of the very things Trump exploits.

71

Trump is, for the first time in his presidency, actually dealing with a matter in a real and personal way rather than (for the best that I can tell) goofing off and trying to reenact House of Cards.

The positive points that you mention are true, but if we’re realistic about what a President of the United States (e.g., the most powerful person in the world) should be like, we should note that Trump sounds human and reasonable because he is at long last - three years into his presidency, and dealing with a crisis that is going to kill millions - listening to people who actually know what they’re talking about and relaying what they’re saying to him somewhat honestly.

Woohoo. Why couldn’t he have listened to experts and said things human and reasonable in all the time until now? Why is the most powerful person in the world a person who couldn’t have thought, “Hm, building this stuff is complicated. It’s now January. This is going to keep getting worse for 4-5 months according to my experts. Maybe I should start issuing executive orders to get stuff built now, rather than waiting to April to do so.”

Vladimir Putin just sent us a bunch of supplies. You can bet your ass that he spun up production several months ago, and thanks to that he has enough gear ready to go that he can save his own country and still buy some sweet deals off desperate nations.

“Human and reasonable” is a damn low bar. And it follows on a long period of not that.

72

Yeah. They weren’t so sure it would happen under Trump.

They now see him as a vehicle to more victories that will help them advance their agenda.

Can you point me to any source where Trump tried to nominate his own sister to the court? She was elevated to the 3rd circuit by Bill Clinton. Can you point to some source characterizing her as a Fox Newscaster?

At this point you are basically just making excuses why the “never trumper’s” reasons for now supporting trump would not be good enough for you. They’re good enough for them. It doesn’t really matter if you approve of their reasoning.

I’m sure that conservatives have a host of reasons why former Bernie or Bust supporters should not support Biden.

73

I cannot. Apparently, I was mislead by Ted Cruz.

I watched the Bloomberg interview and it is clear that Trump was simply being polite to his sister and had no intention of considering her.

I also note that he seemed to be able to talk somewhat coherently at the time. I find that interesting since, for example, if you listen to Giuliani talking in his recorded phone call that the press overheard, he’s also coherent and logical. It’s once he’s required to make absurd lies to cover his ass from the cops that he starts to sound like he’s a drunk who just came in from the bar.

No, but that’s not what I said.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/andrew-napolitano-supreme-court-shortlist-trump-236488

Let’s say that I organize a Meetup to trade tips on living healthy. For whatever reason, 80% of the people who show up are morbidly obese and start using the forum as a way to swap recipes on how to prepare multi-gallon, extra mayo Mac and Cheese for pre-sleep light eating.

I’m certainly outvoted. But they’re still doing everything wrong, both in terms of what they were supposed to do, and in larger terms of how they are living life if they had any interest in the subject in which they were participating. And that’s not subjective. There are certainly areas of healthy living that are subjective, but this particular instance is not and it requires insanity to believe otherwise. And it’s not unreasonable to say that a group of people matching the above description are, in at least one field of their life, objectively crazy and objectively in the wrong.

I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. You can come up with reasons for anything, from reasonable to outlandish. Most of those will be subjective. And I wouldn’t generally expect a partisan person to oppose someone on the opposite side of the fence to have reasons that are honest nor objective. Likewise, I wouldn’t expect a partisan to support a candidate for reasons that are honest and objective.

And, since you have thrown in something that is largely irrelevant, I’ll do the same and say:

You do not have to be stupid and buy into falsehoods to believe in small, local government, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, etc. That everyone on the right seems to have decided that this is so, as best I can tell, has more to do with the matter that when you’re getting older and you’re still in fairly good health, and you’re bored and sitting at home all day with not enough to do to keep your mind satiated, it becomes fun to think of the world as being like a real 24, House of Cards, or Homeland and you start seeking out and rewarding media sources for presenting a world that falls into that presentation.

That’s bullcrap. If you’re bored and want life to be exciting, don’t hire an idiot conspiracy theorist like yourself to office, go and learn to parachute or something. Go back to work. Find a better hobby than mowing the lawn. Turning into a crazy nutbag just makes you look like a loon, and it’s depressing to watch.

74

Rasmussen now even lower, down to 44% which in the 538 adjusted world brings it to 38%.

Apparently taking COVID seriously helps him with the normos, but the right wing really does not like it.

75

To be fair, you would probably prefer her to his last few nominations. She is a republican but a north eastern rockerfeller republican.

I’m not really sure that is a cite that supports the notion that Trump was going to try and nominate Napolitano. It seems like wishful thinking on Napolitano’s part.

Did Trump nominate well qualified conservative justices? Yes
Were the never Trumpers confident that he would do this? No
His first nomination is when the tides turned for a lot of never trumpers.

Did Trump push through a tax cut for the rich in his first year as President? Yes.
Were the never Trumpers confident he would do something like this? No
He got a ton of support from rich people and corporations when he cut their taxes. A lot of those never turmpers were rich people.

And trump is very electable (at least up until this coronavirus thing happened)

I was pointing out that it is wishful thinking to think that the Never Trumpers have largely remained never trumpers. And the never trumpers have good reason to change their stance if SCOTUS and taxes are high on their list of priorities.

76

Telling me her party affiliation makes me like her as much as knowing that she has her heart more towards the left rather than the right side of her body. Good for her.

People who we can conclusively say were Trump-and-Trump-alone hires:

Omarosa Manigault
Heather Nauert
Michael Cohen
Michael Flynn

One might also mention his history of careful selection in business partners:

Saying that because Napolitano is a Fox news host, he couldn’t possibly ever get the job is not realistic. To be sure, Trump might have just been buttering him up. But I see no real reason to think that he wouldn’t have gone ahead with the guy if the Senate had said that they were willing to buy it.

Paul Ryan’s message, leaving the government, was that the last two years of his service were devoted to stopping calamity from unfolding each and every day, on the basis of the inane things that Trump would suggest. It’s what Don McGahn said. It’s what John Bolton seems to have wanted to say. It’s what John Kelly said. It’s what Omarosa Manigault, of all people, said.

From the man’s history, I would put the weight of probability on their being honest. A disgruntled former employee (which Paul Ryan isn’t) still complains about the things that were actually sucky about their former place of employment. They don’t invent something out of wholecloth.

I didn’t mention them. If you thought that I was, and replied to me about them thinking that I was discussing them, then you misunderstood something that I wrote. I have no wishes towards nor against them and didn’t raise any. I have no opinion on whether Never Trumpers have stayed the course or not and have no particular interest in the subject.

77

It doesn’t matter! Elections in the US are not won by changing people’s minds. It’s all about motivating your supporters to turn out to vote, and discouraging or blocking your opponent’s supporters from voting.

Trump is doing exactly what he needs to win: portraying everything (including COVID-19) as a partisan issue, and telling his supporters that they are under attack by liberals and the media. And the media is doing a remarkably good job of enforcing that attitude.

78

Finally a Florida poll, UNF Biden 46, Trump 40 Biden +6
UNF is University of North Florida. No clue how objective they are.

But Florida polls have been in short supply and it is hopeful that Trump is trailing. If Florida turns from Trump, Biden only needs to pick up one other good size state to take the electoral college.

Michigan and/or Ohio are pretty likely flips.

79

If Florida goes blue, the national climate will probably have been such that several other swing-y states also go blue, with larger margins. IIRC, the chances of Florida being the tipping point state are quite low, so consistent good polling for the Democrats in Florida would be an extremely good sign.

80

Of the states Biden needs to flip, I’d rate them in this order of likelihood:

Pennsylvania
Michigan
Wisconsin
Florida
Ohio

Get the first three and the other two become moot.

I believe the only issue will be the virus. DJT’s rally around the flag bump was puny and is now fading. If the death toll goes over 200,000 I think he’s toast. Everybody is going to know somebody who died, everybody will remember about the cases going to zero and how he had it contained.