Trump: Dismal polls, rising panic
President Trump is in a “state of panic about his dimming re-election prospects,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. A recent poll by Fox News showed the president losing badly in head-to-head matchups with the four leading Democratic candidates, with Joe Biden beating him by a whopping 12 points. Trump doesn’t even crack 40 percent in any of the imaginary races. How did Trump respond? By raging that his favorite network “is making a big mistake,” and calling the results “fake news.” State polls are even more troubling for Trump, said Ed Kilgore in NYMag.com. A new Civiqs poll shows his net approval ratings are deeply underwater in 10 states he carried in 2016: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, he’s down by 12 points, and by 11 in Michigan and 9 in Wisconsin and North Carolina. “It’s not a pretty picture for the president, to put it mildly.”
Still, “it would be a serious mistake” to count Trump out, said Yascha Mounk in TheAtlantic .com. Yes, Trump is deeply unpopular, and “most Americans abhor his bigotry.” But his approval rating of 42 percent is actually better than it was the day he was elected, when only 38 percent of Americans said they viewed Trump favorably. He won anyway, because voters disliked Hillary Clinton even more. When Clinton retired as secretary of state in 2013, two-thirds of Americans viewed her positively. But then Trump and the right-wing attack machine went after her character, and her approval rating plummeted. Any Democrat who is nominated will get the same treatment, so headto-head polls at this stage may be misleading.
Don’t bet on Trump winning another unpopularity contest, said Bruce Gyory in TheBulwark .com. With his race-baiting, childish tweeting, and constant chaos, Trump has permanently alienated many of the swing voters who decided to take a chance on him in 2016. As a Tea Party Republican who voted for Trump last time, said former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh in The New York Times, even I’ve seen enough. Trump hasn’t governed as a conservative; instead, he ran up a $1 trillion deficit and ignited an irresponsible trade war with China. But most of all, it’s his lying, bullying, and bigotry that make him “unfit for office.” It’s time for a challenger to look him in the eye and say, “Enough, sir. We’ve had enough of your indecency.”