You can’t really draw any analogies to water dripping in this case, because the chart from Gallup as of today betrays neither stalagmites nor stalactites:
The two relevant numbers are, for approval of Trump as President, 34%, and disapproval, 61%. As you can see, they continue to diverge, indicating the President’s support is decaying. When the numbers manage to reach a 2-to-1 ratio, what will happen? It’s not totally unprecedented, as President Nixon’s numbers were worse at the time of his resignation – below 30% approval.
Will Trump leave office of his own accord, his ego having taken enough of a beating? Or will he wish to press on, to prove himself right? I’m betting the latter, being such an egotist, so the numbers must be analyzed for what they indicate about his support, not his future actions. The divergence suggests one of two things – and they are not mutually exclusive.
This is what I’d like to be at some Trumpist meetings where they discuss his accomplishments.
First, the Trumpist hard core is gradually losing its sheath of GOP members who voted Trump and approved of him for a while on a partisan basis, but are gradually discovering that his many extremist views and incompetent approach to the Presidency is really too much to stomach. As part of such a movement, I can postulate that at least some will begin considering competency as more important than in the past, moving ideological purity down the priority list and, for the truly suspicious ones, discounting the manipulations of the right wing media circus. They might even discard the entire ‘team politics’ approach, which has hamstrung the moderates to the point where they can only leave the party to protest those who’ve clambered to the top of the pile of candidates in search of power. And this may begin to move the GOP back to the left, which will appall those who have benefited from the right wing gallop in which the party has engaged for the last 25, if not 40, years, and now think they can fling the weakest of rhetoric into the wind in order to profit (see this post from earlier today for the level to which arguments from the right have sunk). This movement can only be a good thing for the Party as a whole, as well as the country.
The second possibility is that the Trumpist core of support itself is beginning to crack. There have been reports of late that Trump’s “ego-rallies,” as a friend calls them, have been less well attended than President Trump might like. If this is true – and I don’t know that this has been verified – it doesn’t mean that those who are disaffected will begin to judge future candidates using better criteria, because it’s quite possible that Trump’s failure to deliver on various promises has merely disappointed them without educating them. A sad possibility, but some citizens will only use that criteria for their judgment of candidates. I vividly recall Trump being the hands-down winner at making ridiculous promises and predictions during the campaign, especially the primaries, leaving his GOP rivals red-faced and in the dust as even they couldn’t really force themselves to promise 10% economic growth. If the Trumpists tied their support to his promises, many of them impossible and most outlandish, then we may see Trump sunk by his own rhetoric. You can start your own private company and remain king of the castle for so long as you can keep the creditors at bay; the political game is far, far different, and Trump doesn’t really seem to appreciate that. There are several factors – be appealing to the independents, keeping your supporters happy, while remaining within the bounds of the law and understanding the purpose of the various conventions which we follow – up until now. In the area of supporters, if you choose to keep them happy through concrete promises, such as increasing the military budget by $500 billion, then you have a problem when you fail miserably. Principles and policies are better promises than simply saying you’ll spend $X more on the military, outlaw abortion, or put guns in the hands of the mentally ill..
Will his numbers continue its divergence? I am aware that most folks don’t pay a lot of attention to the issues I’ve started thinking about since I started blogging; I’ve long said that political groupies think the world should revolve around politics, and bewail the simple fact that it doesn’t. I don’t, generally, as it’s an ugly business, but these days it’s more important than it used to be to pay attention the political world around us. So I’m often disappointed in how slowly Trump’s support has eroded, even if it’s been at historically low levels. I viscerally loathe his mendacious lies, I find his incompetency wretched, and his fascination with fringe-right web sites appalling.
But I hope there’ll be a silver lining left behind when his cloud sinks into the sea – that of more political involvement from solid citizens, those who had ignored the political world and have found that, for all that politics can be a sausage making business, at least it got things done – until the GOP of 2000 and then 2016 took over and have demonstrated their awful incompetency. Perhaps the participation of citizens who have one hand covering their nose as they push the levers of power will bring sanity back to our political world, in terms of compromise and decisions made with less regard to political issues and more to national issues of justice, prosperity, and security.
