Where Trump Stands. It's time to accept how unpopular Donald Trump really is.

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/donald-trump-is-very-unpopular-in-the-states-he-barely-won.html

Where Trump Stands
It’s time to accept how unpopular Donald Trump really is.

By Jamelle Bouie
July 26, 20185:39 PM


Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity has yet to harden into conventional wisdom, even as he’s trailed previous presidents in job approval at nearly every point in his administration. Instead, mainstream pundits and reporters focus on his relatively high marks with Republican voters, convinced that this gives insight into his political standing. The idea isn’t completely unreasonable; without Republican unity, Trump would have lost the election. The moment GOP voters break with the president is the moment he’s undeniably in political trouble.

But this is also a truism: the moment any president loses his base is the moment he is trouble. A better measure, especially for the winner of a close election like Donald Trump, is performance with more marginal supporters: people who weren’t typical Republican voters, who didn’t like Trump himself, but who chose him over the Democratic alternative for contingent and provisional reasons. They are voters who liked Trump’s message on jobs and trade, and ignored his crude and inflammatory rhetoric—voters who wanted a generic change in the White House, and thought Trump might deliver.

We know that these voters were disproportionately white, and less likely to hold a college degree. And we know they were concentrated in the industrial Midwest, where Trump made dramatic gains over previous Republican presidential nominees. The latest national survey from Marist and NBC News polls several of those states, giving us a snapshot of the president’s popularity with voters he has to hold to win a second term. The picture isn’t great.

In Michigan, where Trump won by 11,000 votes, 54 percent of registered voters disapprove of his performance, compared to 36 percent who approve. In Minnesota, where he narrowly lost, 51 percent currently disapprove, compared to 38 percent who approve. And in Wisconsin, a state he won by 23,000 votes, 52 percent disapprove, compared to 36 who approve.

By wide margins, voters in these states want a Democratic Congress. They want that Congress to act as a “check and balance” on Trump. Despite the growing economy, few give him credit for economic improvement, and looking ahead to 2020, nearly two-thirds in each state say it’s time to “give a new person a chance” in the White House.

Trump’s unpopularity, nationally, and Democrats’ growing advantage on the congressional generic ballot haven’t made a substantial difference in how the president is covered. Some of this reflects the way his most visible supporters—white, blue-collar workers—are used to symbolize an authentic “Americanness” which then colors perceptions of Trump himself. If he wins these most American of Americans, then perhaps he still channels the popular will in some imperceptible way. Likewise, some of this reflects shell shock from the 2016 election: Even those aware Trump could win didn’t believe he would, prompting a crisis of epistemology when he did. If we were wrong then—ignorant of his appeal to millions of Americans—perhaps we are wrong now.

But the lesson of 2016 isn’t to ignore the polls; it’s to pay greater attention to what they’re actually saying. On the eve of the election, they were increasingly favorable to Trump. As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote at the time, “the possibility of an Electoral College-popular vote split keeps widening in our forecast.”

What are polls saying now? That Trump, and his party, are in serious political danger.

[Achilleaze]

1. America vehemently rejects him and his republican-russian cabal

and that should be universally understood by now. Corporate media is actively UNWILLING TO KNOW. Tragic dereliction of duty.

[workinclasszero]

11. Unwilling to know is right

The MSM would be savaging any Democratic President with historic low polling like Shit45. But their corporate masters are republicans so Benidict Trump gets a hundred passes a day from the media.

[Scarsdale]

13. Remember when one TV

executive said "He is great for ratings"?? Watching a train wreck is, too. What about the voter purges, the Russian intervention and the gop's inaction about Russian meddling? We had certainly better pay attention to the voting machines, make sure everything is open and above board. Gerrymandering is still operating, too. The gop will hold on to power any way they can, even having a slimebag as their "leader"

[workinclasszero]

20. Totally agree with you

GOTV no matter what the media says about polling because we need a massive turnout to overcome Russian interference, GOP gerrymandering and media circus chasing.

[UCmeNdc]

18. Plus all of the gigantic blunders in judgement Trump makes.

The MSM just will not expose his weaknesses as being weak.

[Demovictory9]

2. Trump tweeted his GOP poll numbers two days ago as if the rest of us don't matter

Link to tweet

[Demovictory9]

3. Some of this reflects the way his most visible supporters--white, blue-collar workers--are used to sym

Some of this reflects the way his most visible supporters—white, blue-collar workers—are used to symbolize an authentic “Americanness” which then colors perceptions of Trump himself. If he wins these most American of Americans, then perhaps he still channels the popular will in some imperceptible way.

[MountCleaners]

17. I think a lot of these people identify with that "authenticity", but

like "the farmers", their representation in Trump's base is NOT a majority.

Moreover, according to what is arguably the next-best measure of class, household income, Trump supporters didn’t look overwhelmingly “working class” during the primaries. To the contrary, many polls showed that Trump supporters were mostly affluent Republicans. For example, a March 2016 NBC survey that we analyzed showed that only a third of Trump supporters had household incomes at or below the national median of about $50,000. Another third made $50,000 to $100,000, and another third made $100,000 or more and that was true even when we limited the analysis to only non-Hispanic whites. If being working class means being in the bottom half of the income distribution, the vast majority of Trump supporters during the primaries were not working class.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?utm_term=.2a64a1820504

This "blue-collar" bullcrap is just self-indulgence on the part of the media, who are self-conscious about their own origins. I was in an elite journalism school for a while, and it was depressing how many of the students came from bland upper-middle-class white suburban backgrounds. They have a habit of treating blue-collar people as exotic. Also, they have cultural biases - they think pick-up trucks and guns and, well, the horrible fashions of Trump's supporters are a "working-class" thing, but people with money do this shit.

[Saboburns]

4. I happened to watch Karl Rove segment on Fox News y'day

It was my Grandfather's 95th birthday and we had a little party. He's a Pearl Harbor survivor and is credited with shooting down a Japanese Zero off Hospital Point.

He's a lifelong Republican and Fox watcher, but he's not a hateful man and he's wonderful to be around. He was actually driving a city bus until he turned 88 years old. An inredible character.

So he had Fox News on and Karl Rove came on for a segment and Rove had the same message that is in this article. How unpopular Trump is, how the House is looking like it may go Democratic, and that the Freedom Causus was in big trouble. They haven't raised hardly any money, have no money on hand and many of them are going to get beat.

I, of course, could not believe what I saw. I'll try and find a video clip. I was floored in that there was no Republican slant, no bullshit, he just ran down a myriad of facts. And it wasn't to scare the Republican base up either. Just cold hard facts one of which is that Midwestern Republican support has cratered.

Here's the clip
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5814234248001/?#sp=show-clips

[Dem_4_Life]

10. That is very interesting and Happy Birthday to your Grandfather!!!

Your grandfather sounds like an amazing man.

[Saboburns]

21. Thank you

My Grandfather is an incredible character. Always has been. He spent 3 years in the Army til his hitch was up and came home to West Virginia and worked as a coal miner. He was home a couple of months and got in some scrapes and fights, and chased women til he finally got in a bit of trouble with the local police and came before a judge who told him either go back to Army or he was going to put him in jail.

But instead of the Army he joined the Marines. And was at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. He manned a machine gun next to the Navy Hospital on Hospital Point. He is credited with shooting down a Japanese Zero.

After the war he worked in the coal mines as a dynamite man. Then started a trucking company with his brother. He just recently told us the true tale how at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis he was contracted to haul 2 Hydrogen bombs from Norfolk VA to Macdill Air Force Base near Tampa FL on a flat bed trailer pulled by his semi. He drove one bomb and his brother took the other one. He said they were huge things, over 40,000 lbs. He had an armed soldier riding shotgun and a couple dozen armed escorts in jeeps and deuce and a halves. He said it all happened so quickly and was an unplanned surprise to him, a sort of panicked response to what was happening in October of 1962. He said he still has no idea why the Air Force chose his little trucking company as he had had no dealings with any of military before or since and he is still not sure how the Air Force chose him and his tiny company. But that for some reason those H bombs had to be trucked to Florida ASAP to help counter the threat from an atomically equipped Cuba and their patron the Soviet Union. So they drove some 30 odd hours, much of it on 2 lane highways as most interstates had not been built yet.

My Grandfather was a rounder, he had a different girlfriend in every little town in the area, although he stayed happily married to my grandmother for 70 years until she died. Like I said earlier after he retired from trucking he became a commercial bus diver and drove a city bus until he turned 88 years old. He was featured at the time in a newspaper as the oldest public bus driver in America.

Last September he finally recieved a Purple Heart 76 years after he had been hit in the leg by shrapnal on December 7th, 1941. After he shot down one Japanese airplane, another Japanese plane that had been hit earlier and was doomed, tried to crash into the Hospital he was next to Kamikaze style. The plane just missed the Hospital and he caught some shrapnel from it in his knee. In the panic afterwards he, a marine, was treated in an Army Hospital, he spent a few days there getting his leg sewn up. But in all the confusion his medical records were lost by either the Army Hopital or the Marine Corp. My Grandfather isn't the worrying kind so he never said anything about it til 70 years later when he told this tales over beers at the bar at the local American Legion. His buddies, veretans themselves, urged him to see what could be done so he made few phone calls.

The next day Senator Joe Manchin (Dem WV) phoned my grandfather and assured him that he and his office would investigate and see what could be done. A month or so later Senator Manchin called again, this time to say that his records had been located and after 76 years he would receive a Purple Heart. So at a wonderful ceremony held at Marshall University and hosted by Sen Manchin, with nearly thousand people on hand my grandfather recieved his purple heart.

And yes Sen Manchin rightfully catches a bunch of shit here on DU. Some of his votes and conservative actions piss off a bunch of us Democrats. But for him to be elected in WV as a Democrat, he is somewhat beholden to the his constituency. A constituency that voted for Trump by some 30 pounts.

But I do want to say how wonderful Sen. Manchin was to my grandfather and indeed our entire family, spending 3 hours talking, listening, sharing stories, laughing, and listening as my grandfather told tales the many he'd that lived though.

Here is a wonderful article on my grandfather, His nick name was 'Sundowner' because he said the best time to steal your beighbors chickens was at Sundown.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/purple-heart-finally-awarded/article_b3fd21d4-3524-510b-bdfa-979bcf5f5ae2.html

Purple Heart finally awarded
By BISHOP NASH Sep 16, 2017 (1)




HUNTINGTON - Misplaced paperwork lost in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and a neglectful company first sergeant kept Wetzel "Sundown" Sanders from his Purple Heart for 76 years.

A 94-year-old native of East Lynn, West Virginia, wounded while manning Oahu's anti-aircraft defenses, Sanders held out hope for a time, but had long given up until his story reached U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's office.

"After about 50 years, I thought that'd be about the end of it," Sanders said.

After about two weeks of digging through hospital records on his behalf, Manchin's office announced it had secured a Purple Heart merited to the shrapnel in Sanders' knee as he fired into an onslaught of Japanese planes.

"I thought I was going to have a heart attack," Sanders joked when he heard the news earlier this month that he would finally receive his medal.

Better late than never, he did.

Manchin, D-W.Va., arrived in Huntington to personally pin Sanders' long-awaited Purple Heart during a ceremony Friday afternoon at Marshall University.

"Today's our way of saying, 'We didn't forget, Wetzel. It might have taken 76 years, but buddy, we didn't forget,'" Manchin said.

Sanders' life is as colorful as his demeanor. Born to Barney and Emma Jane Sanders in the wilds of East Lynn in 1925, he earned the nickname "Sundown" by regularly sneaking into a neighbor's chicken pen at night before heading into the woods to fry up a few stolen birds for dinner. Sundown was the time to best raid the chicken pen, he added, and it has stuck ever since.

Dissatisfied with a life of hauling coal at age 17, Sanders lied about his age and enlisted in the Army prior to U.S. entry into World War II. Having asked the Wayne County jailer to forge his father's signature, Sanders was already in boot camp by the time his family realized he had disappeared to enlist.

Hawaii, he explained, was where he wanted to wind up.

"When I was growing up, every once in a while my dad would get a can of pineapples and I knew they came from Hawaii," Sanders said. "I'd seen these hula dancers with them grass skirts on, and I thought I'd like to go over there and see."

Sanders was pointed at an anti-aircraft battery on Hospital Point in Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes began to fly over on Dec. 7, 1941. Sanders manned a .50-caliber machine gun as he shot down multiple Japanese fighter planes strafing the hospital because a chunk of shrapnel split his knee open.

Sanders rushed himself to a nearby Navy hospital and remained in Hawaii until March 1942 until he was redeployed deeper into the Pacific Theater, facing combat at Guadalcanal and Bougainville before being discharged in 1945.

As the company first sergeant took stock of the damage in the aftermath of the attack, Sanders was the only man in the battery reported wounded. He had a personal disdain for the "hillbilly" troops, those from West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, Sanders said, and his wound was not recorded.

"The first sergeant said, 'That West Virginia hillbilly, you couldn't hurt him if you shot him between the eyes,'" Sanders recalled.

Sanders returned home and spent a career as a bus driver, retiring just five years ago at age 89. At the time, he was the oldest public bus driver in the country.

"He's such a character, and he remembers everything," Manchin said. "He's living history right there."

Sanders is one of two Pearl Harbor survivors alive in West Virginia. He lives in Midkiff in Lincoln County.

Follow reporter Bishop Nash on Twitter @BishopNash.

[uponit7771]

24. +1

[SWBTATTReg]

26. Thanks so much for sharing your stories w/ us, and of course, your gfather's service to ...

our country. Amazing.

[oberliner]

5. The presidential election is in 2 1/2 years away

[Squinch]

6. We may have the people, but they have the voting machines. We will see

which if those strengths wins in November, and that is how we will find out if we still have a country.

[Saboburns]

23. Yes. I am sure Republican are hacking, or trying to hack our voting machines

Because that's the kind of shit they do, and will always do.

Lieing, cheating, and stealing are as natural to Republicans as breathing. If there not doing one of these than by Ned they're trying to do them.

Also Democrats need to make a National Voting Holiday mandatory. You know it's harder for working class voters, the Democratic base, to vote than it is for wealthy or retired voters. Most of which are Republican.

Hells Bells we lost the 2000 and 2016 Presidential election by just few thousand votes. An need to proactively fight for common sense ways THAT WILL HELP OUR PARTY WIN THESE RAZOR THIN ELECTIONS.

[jambo101]

7. We'll find out

How popular or unpopular trump is in the upcoming midterm elections. i'm hoping for a major landslide victory for the Dems.

[mopinko]

8. not sure if spanky is taking rauner down, or the other way around,

but there is a serious, serious blue wave forming in illinois.

[Scarsdale]

14. Thank GOD.

Rauner promised to be a "one term governor" when he ran. Strange how once these people get into office, they change their minds, isn't it? Rauner has to go, along with Snott Walker in Wi. Another total disaster who does not know what he is doing, apart from taking orders from the Koch brothers.

[mopinko]

25. jb's teevee ads are great.

he comes across as a big teddy bear, even tho he is rich. in truth, quite a bit of the pritker money is in the business of doing good things.
the attack ads are well done and sharply pointed.


and half the thugs voted for ivie. they have zero reason to turn out.

[Orsino]

9. We demonstrably passed the point some years back...

...at which mere unpopularity could cost someone an elective office.

Other factors outweigh it, or Cruz and trump wouldn't be where they are today.

[Doitnow]

12. 88% of what total?

[Scarsdale]

15. Probably the

members of Heritage Group, or Russia??

[Stuart G]

16. k and r..outstanding post, thanks for posting this...no text

[Johonny]

19. I can't imagine what happens when the steam of the current economic up swing runs out.

It will run out eventually. Trump's white house is in no condition to handle a private sector down turn.

[Saboburns]

22. Donald Trump has done nothing to cause this economic surge

As a matter of fact this economic surge continues is spite of Dumb Donald, a man intent on starting a trade war with not just one country. But seemingly all countries.