That Bubbly Sensation of Hope

I've commented on polling before. I've especially commented on how polling on trump's approval/popularity should be taken with a grain of salt because of how the Far Right adoration of him creates a false impression. For example, the fact that trump rarely if ever slid below the 40 percent approval threshold because the only number that mattered was the too-high 85-90 percent approval from just Republican voters skewing the averages.

Until now.

Referring to Martin Longman at Washington Monthly:

Until today, Trump’s approval numbers had been declining slowly but still holding at around 40 percent. A handful of recent surveys had him falling into the thirties, but they looked like outliers. But now the new AP/NORC survey has him at 34 percent and he’s fallen below the 40 percent threshold in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls. Even Rasmussen and Hill-HarrisX have Trump at his lowest mark despite being consistent outliers in his favor...

It's not so much the decline in Republican support trump has - it's still pretty high - it's from the collapse of the Non-Party/Independent voters no longer viewing trump as either/or "effective" / "harmless". In this month of trump running into the brick wall of Pelosi's Democratic House, people are starting to see how bad of a dealer - how inept of a leader - he is.

Looking at the aggregate polling of the last two years actually shows a lower point in trump's polling numbers in late 2017, but he did crawl back out of that into the low-40s where he's usually treading water.

But the likelihood his numbers went up due to the Midterms - when the voting base was invested in turnout for his Congressional allies - is probably an explanation for that rise. Now that trump is on his own again, his numbers are sliding down due to his own bad moves.

It's interesting to note how this compares to previous Presidents. Obama in particular had an oscillating polling chart of approval. But where Obama bounced between 55 percent to 45 percent approval on average, trump is bouncing between 44 to 34 percent, vastly more unpopular than any other person sitting in the White House (even Dubya had months over 50 percent approval).

That's what happens when you're the President Loser of the Popular Vote.

It's that consistency of low polling that has me feeling a bit better about the numbers. The polling for non-Republican voters have sunk to near-record lows for an incumbent Republican candidate. For all the odds that favor incumbency in re-elections, there are election cycles when incumbency can't overcome bad optics. An incumbent who never breaks over the 50 percent water margin in polling even after years in office to prove his (in)abilities isn't going to find enough voters to win again (and trump never even won a majority in the first place).

And trump can't overcome the political axiom from Machiavelli I keep referring to: Always avoid being Hated rather than Feared or Loved, because when you lose people to Hate they will never look at you otherwise and they will do everything they can to throw you out of power.

It's not the low approval numbers, it's the opposite end of the scale, the DISAPPROVAL numbers, and as long as those are at 60 percent or so, trump ain't winning anything other than the 2020 primaries (if any Republican tries to primary him, that is).

There's one other polling number to keep an eye on. Voter turnout. The reason why Dems did so well winning the U.S. House of Representatives against hard odds - Republicans pushing every voter suppression trick in the book - was because voter turnout was the highest for a Midterms (Non-Presidential) Election cycle in over 100 years:

See that sharp spike on the brown line?

Granted, it's not a guarantee the Presidential election turnout (the gray line) will go up, but there is a trend there, you should notice the charts of the two different election cycles tend to match at peaks and valleys.

If there was that sharp a swing UP in voter turnout for the Midterms, we should expect - we should work towards - a similar spike UP in the Presidential Election in 2020.

And that's not a good sign for Republicans or trump: More voters will tend to come not from the extremist voter blocs that show up no matter what, the expanded voter turnout comes from the moderate/Independent voters who are rarely encouraged to vote on their own.

If THAT moderate, Indy leaning bloc shows up to vote in higher numbers, it's usually because of one thing: THEY'RE PISSED. Let's be honest: People don't vote when they're content, they tend to vote angry. And they vote angry against the SOBs mismanaging everything (hint: name rhymes with DUMP).

The 2016 Election cycle wasn't a good indicator of that, sad to note: there was a split among Indy voters 46-42 favoring trump over Hillary. For all my hope during that election cycle, Hillary was hated enough to lose voters. But Hillary's not running this 2020. For all the Far Right will try to do painting the Democratic candidates in as bad a light as Hillary, none of them share Hillary's unfavorable numbers. trump is going to be the most hated candidate on the ticket in 2020, and as Machiavelli warns, never be that hated...

So looking at several factors - trump's unpopularity gap reaching Dubya-esque levels, trump's losing support among non-partisan voters, higher voter turnout - there is a bit of hope this morning. There is a feeling that the nation as a whole is recognizing the nightmare we're in and doing something to stop it.

I did write before that the only number that mattered was the insanely artificially high approval numbers trump got from his Far Right Republican base. Granted, that's still in effect. But all it's doing now is keeping trump out of the mid-20s approval where he deserves to be. As trump starts to hover in the mid-30s at least for longer periods of time, fellow Republicans facing their own re-election concerns are going to view trump as the millstone he is.

The only thing from that point on will be the Far Right Media's control of the Republican Party to keep everyone in line. But even that is going to break sooner or later when their own Narrative can't support a deeply unpopular bastard like trump. Already unelected overlords Coulter and Rush are looking for the lifeboats.

So, today in 2019, there is a reason to know hope.

Problem is, 2020 is still too far away on the calendar to end this nightmare fast enough.

C'MON MUELLER INDICT EVERYBODY BETWEEN trump AND PUTIN ALREADY.

/sigh