W was never as beloved as establishment media made him out to be, but it is true that his approval rating really started to crater around the time of Hurricane Katrina.
The last few days have been pretty rough for Dolt 45. His approval is down six points with his disapproval up six in Gallup.
In the last week, his strong approval rating dropped seven points with strong disapproval up five in Rasmussen’s poll. And here’s the chart for his overall approval from Rasmussen.
(I realize Rasmussen is a right-wing poll, but I their numbers are meaningful relative to their previous numbers.)
Update 1 — by Dave Anderson Trump falls when he presses standard Republican policy proposals as they do nothing for his base and he stabilizes or rises to low negatives when he is punching the weak. So my plan is to keep on talking policy all day long every day of the week.
Baud
Trump is Trump’s Katrina.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
No.
Hunter Gathers
Can’t get his agenda passed.
He’s a low testoterone cuck beta.
And a fucking loser to boot.
schrodingers_cat
@Hunter Gathers: But we must fear the drunk he has put on the NSC.
Yutsano
Too soon for the TrumpCare effect. What happened last week that would have caused a crater like this?
(After those numbers come in I have a feeling he’ll be at the magic 27%)
zhena gogolia
I don’t know, but this is the funniest spoof video related to Trump I’ve seen yet.
different-church-lady
Negative in the Ras poll is important because it’s the go-to poll for the reality-denial crowd (which, of course, inculdes Trump himself.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
If memory serves, Dubya’s support numbers cratered when, finally, Republicans started abandoning him. That meant it was as important to track his numbers with Republicans more than everybody else since by that point, genital warts were more popular with non-Republicans than the Second Worst President Ever.
And last I checked (last week), Twitler remained yoooooogely popular with Repubs.
Betty Cracker
@Yutsano: Maybe it was his ridiculous accusation that PBO tapped his phone. Spam Spice tried to walk that back in today’s press briefing.
James Powell
No. Trump can’t have a Katrina because no one is expecting him to be competent. Everyone already knows that he is corrupt, dishonest, and not fit to serve.
His supporters voted for him because he promised to harm and annoy the people they hate. From their perspective, he is doing a great job. They could not be happier.
geg6
@Hunter Gathers:
This. I find nothing infuriates his supporters than implying that he’s a loser, based on his poll numbers, the media criticism and inability to get his agenda through as quickly and easily as he said he would. And if they are infuriated by it, it’s working. The sputtering and grumbling you get in reply is humorous.
GregB
His fucking rancid attack on Obama as wiretapper in chief.
p.a.
Trumplicans are America’s Katrina.
Ian G.
The funny thing is it’s obvious Trump/Bannon want to pin this mess on Ryan, but the kind of imbeciles who voted Trump and still support him are the kinds who probably can’t even identify the branches of Congress and have never heard of Ryan. He’s going to own this and own it fucking good.
It’d be amazing, wouldn’t it, if TrumpCare were the moment that the fabled working class whites realized that, hey, the GOP is going to fuck me over just as hard as they’re going to fuck over the “undeserving” minorities in Louisville/Cleveland/Indianapolis/Detroit/Milwaukee/[insert city with lots of blacks in state full of fabled WWCs]
zhena gogolia
@Ian G.:
Too fucking late.
Jay S
@Betty Cracker: The timeline is right for the tapp charge and the lack of twitter activity in support. The trumpcare may have been on the edge of the polling, but probably not the main cause of the dive.
p.a.
@Yutsano: Could be cumulative effect of 3 month exposure. Very effective on his part.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Good one! If you’ve seen the BBC dad video, you might also find this funny.
Roger Moore
@Hunter Gathers:
The strongest sign that somebody is a low-T cuck beta is that they obsess about who’s a an alpha, who’s a beta, who has high or low T, etc. Real alphas are more focused on what they’re doing than on how they’re categorized by others.
Ian G.
@different-church-lady:
Yup. Not that reality is going to have any impact in the Drumpfenbunker, but it might be why guys like Tom Cotton appear to be looking for the lifeboats.
efgoldman
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
But it’s Granny Starver’s
It’s about time that we stop thinking about president Bannonazi and speaker Granny Starver as evil geniuses
They do not do strategeric thinking. Mostly they don’t do thinking at all.
There isn’t a single one of the RWNJ flying monkeys that’s competent to run a Kwik-ee-Mart U-Pump-It gas station.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Booyah!! Nothing else needs to be said.
Ian G.
@Roger Moore:
Pretty much. I’m guessing Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka were virgins well into their late 20s, if they aren’t still.
Hunter Gathers
@Ian G.: Ryan’s constant hangdog expression is the signature look for loser cuck betas.
ET
I am going to wish for this fervently but won’t hold my breath. Some his supporters or even those that voted for him because they just wanted someone to shake things up, will only bail when their insurance is cancelled or they can’t renew and along with that their situation just gets worse for other reasons. And he will still have some people who won’t bail.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
lol But kind of a slander on those cute kids!
efgoldman
@Betty Cracker:
Persimmon Pretender needs a different press secretary, one who is better at lying without looking embarrassed, sputtering and stuttering than Sphincter is.
Ian G.
Also, anecdotal evidence (my Facebook feed) suggests that the last straw for some of the more white-collar Trump supporters was the Bharara firing. One “constitutional conservative” lawyer I know (a nice guy, really, I just don’t know what goes through his head with politics) said he’s “done” with Trump because of that.
So the cratering approval rating may be a whole slew of things that this amateur clusterfuck of an administration has brought upon itself.
schrodingers_cat
@efgoldman: Conjob is more glib.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Roger Moore:
Well said.
(But for the record, my T count is off the chart, okay, the doctor said I have the best testosterone. There is no problem there, I assure you.)
Ian G.
Also, Doug!, I’m a tad disappointed by the lack of song lyrics in the title. Tom Petty, “Free Fallin'” would seem obvious.
debbie
How long until we see Tweets demanding Americans stop calling it Trumpcare?
Sebastian
@Ian G.:
Ding ding ding!
That’s what I’ve been saying for weeks. This is TrumpCare and he owns the failure of not passing. He owns everything that goes wrong in healthcare, even if laws didn’t change.
It’s TrumpCare now.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Kellyann knows no shame.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
They’re riding a tidal wave of white resentment. Not only does that not take a genius, it selects against.
It’s a Hell of a tidal wave, though.
@geg6:
Good point. Trump IS the base, and demonstrates how they can’t stand not being ‘the winner.’
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Then I hope that Dems are acid, and they neutralize him.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
Badumching!
TenguPhule
It doesn’t matter. Polls are only of concern when you need to worry about elections.
All indicators are, Trump doesn’t care. Increasingly, more and more Republicans in power are coming to the same conclusion.
Who needs elections when you control all the branches? How is anyone supposed to stop them when the institutions that should are not doing their jobs or worse, are beginning to actively collude with the Facists?
The Death spiral of Democracy is accelerating.
JPL
@Baud: Trump is our Katrina!
Tokyokie
@efgoldman: Running an independent convenience store requires a lot of work. Of course these guys aren’t suited for that sort of thing.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
Chyron HR
But he won by negative 3 million votes. That means Republican policies must be the new cultural paradigm (or “current year” as the kids say).
Barbara
Using twitter to accuse Obama of wiretapping his phones probably brought home how essentially unstable Trump is to more than a few people who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think that Trump’s downfall is his obsession with Obama, this cool younger guy who has apparently never struggled with his weight and seems to be very happily married. His overture to make the replacement to ACA even more toxic in order to get conservatives on board is also a function of his mental rivalry with Obama. He must take Obamacare out, no matter how many of his own voters he screws over. He will simply deny saying that everyone would have insurance, that it would be cheaper, better, etc.
guachi
It’s hard to tell if the change is meaningful or not. The day that rolled off the Gallup poll was Trump’s best single day since his first few days in office. He was at about +5 in the polling for the day.
Replace a +5 day with whatever yesterday’s polling showed (I’m not at home so I can’t say what it was exactly) and this is what you get.
As you can see from the polling, his disapproval peaks and valleys were getting lower and lower. Trump was becoming less unpopular over time.
This make two really bad days in a row, though. So maybe it is because of DonTCare.
mai naem mobile
I don’t think it’s Trump care. I think it’s a combination of the wiretapping charge and also a cumulative effect of all the scandals. Also, the wiretapping charge reminded people of how Obama was No Drama Obama while Dolt 45 is 24/7 chaos scandal chaos incompetence chaos corruption.
TenguPhule
Trump doesn’t care about elections. And more and more Republicans are coming over to his way of thinking.
They have the power. Why should they give it up? Who will make them?
Yarrow
@Sebastian:
Exactly. It’s TrumpCare. If the stock market tanks, it’s the Trump Economy. If a terrorist attack happens, it’s Trump’s Failure to Keep Us Safe. He owns it ALL.
guachi
Also, for those who care, Obama’s highest disapproval ever was 55%. As you can see, Trump hit 56% on February 16.
In addition, Trump hit below 50% approval and above 50% disapproval faster than any President in Gallup polling history, going back to Truman.
He was below 50% approval on day 1 and above 50% disapproval on day 9.
germy
How worthless are these polls, though? Here’s what Rasmussen had to say in November:
drumpf’s base is still in love with him. Maybe this healthcare fiasco will be the last straw, maybe he’ll find a way (with help from the media) to blame the “democrat party”.
We’ve got the radio on right now. Listening to Terry Gross (“This is Fresh Air!”) and she’s talking about drumpf, saying the exact same things we say here. Unfortunately, more voters listen to hannity than Terry Gross.
Doug R
Rude pundit theorizes trump is only pretending to trust Ryan so Ryan shovels his bill out there and then trump leaves Ryan hanging. And then installs his own guy. Like Steve king.
TriassicSands
The Rasmussen information is beautiful. Rasmussen is almost always significantly skewed in a favorable direction for Republicans. But what we see here is that Trump is so bad that even the low-information, no intelligence fools who voted for Trump may be beginning to get the idea that he isn’t up to the job. (Something obvious to people in persistent vegetative states prior to the election.) It’s not just his policies, it’s his constant idiotic yammering on all sides of every issue. He’s announced how beautiful the Ryan plan is and then the White House announces that their take on Trumpcare is even worse than the CBO’s (26 million losing coverage instead of just 24 million).
So, what does Trump do with that information? In the past, he would simply start yammering about how he knew it all along and blah, blah, blah.
The question is are Trump’s past words ever going to catch up to him to the extent he can’t escape them by simply announcing some new fabrication of reality? In 2017 Amurka it’s hard to say.
Brachiator
No.
Bush was still president after Katrina.
Trump is still president now.
The Republican Congress is hot to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes for the wealthy, prohibit abortion, limit gay rights, punish Israel’s enemies, etc. Trump was their way in, and they will do what they want without regard to any popularity poll.
Even if the Republicans are devastated in the 2018 elections, the GOP will have passed a tax plan, placed one, maybe two justices on the Supreme Court, and will still have Trump and Pence in office.
Undoing the damage Trump will cause is not impossible, but it will take a lot of work.
ETA: Local news reports and comment boards (yes, unreliable) suggest that Trump’s core supporters are still with him. I would guess that a lot of these people either have health insurance through their employers or can afford policies if they are self-employed. They also attribute any increase in their rates to failures of Obamacare, without proof or evidence. And many of them forcefully embrace the idea that if you are poor, especially if you are not white, you don’t deserve a goddam thing, especially from the government.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Very funny. Thanks for linking.
germy
@Brachiator:
I think that’s pretty much it. Personally, I’m not getting my hopes up over a couple of Rasmussen points. As a matter of fact, fuck polls. Who are they talking to? Nobody answers their phone anymore if an unfamiliar number shows up on Call-ID. This isn’t 1964.
GregB
Trumpcaresless.
Yutsano
@germy: I’m still not convinced the machines in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania weren’t monkeyed with. It looks like just enough nibbling on the margins to cause it.
Yarrow
@Doug R: Last night in the overnight thread Adam Silverman suggested that leaving Ryan out of dry is Bannon’s goal. He wants the healthcare bill to be an anvil around Ryan’s neck so he loses his power. Said it’s a typical Bannon move.
I’m fine with Ryan being shown to be the dumbass he is. I don’t think they’ll be successful in avoiding it being called TrumpCare, though. Which means its Trump’s loss, not just Ryan’s.
germy
@Yutsano: Who do you think did the monkeying? I don’t know if you’re correct or not, but I admit nowadays almost anything’s possible.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
W’s ratings were kept on life support because of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Had neither events happened his numbers would have collapsed early.
So far Trump doesn’t have a “sinking of the maine” or a “Reichstag fire” to prop him up.
Shell
Loved yesterdays use of air quotes. Nothing says ‘loser’ like…
germy
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Terry Gross is talking right now about recruitment going up for the Bad Guys. They’re using drumpf as a recruitment tool. I fear it’s only a matter of time drumpf gets his “sinking of the Maine” moment. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled when it happens.
Brachiator
@Doug R:
This assumes facts not in evidence, most of all, that Trump has any political skills.
And if Trump ever developed the political savvy to roll Congress, then he would be fuckin’ unstoppable.
ETA: Money would also work, but Trump is too cheap and dishonest to risk his own cash.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow: And yet he doesn’t care at all.
Trump is betting that elections won’t matter. The GOP is climbing into that boat too.
Democracy only works when people follow the rules.
Trump breaks the rules and laughs because there are no consequences to him.
We’re an Empire now, not a Republic.
Aimai
@Ian G.: im curious how this guy ever looked at Trumps history and thought he was ever snything but a grifter? I also think that I have no patience with people sho exhibit buyers remorse without any actual remorse.
cranky
@James Powell:
Exactly. Trumpcare passes/not passes, legislative agenda accomplished/not acomplished … everything is immaterial.
The RWNJ were hesitant in 2016, because they were unsure about their own power. Post Trump they know they can grab power, they have a constituency.
If Trump fails to get his agenda, the next election will give Trump/Bannon more power. The lesson the RW populace will take away from 2 years of failure will be this… Their ends are worth fighting for, but they did not fight vicious enough to gain the power needed to accomplish it.
2018 will see them gaining more power. Because the opposition is still dicking around within themselves, and not united or strong-willed as them.
This is not Bush’s time. That was an era when a pretense of civilized behavior was needed. That’s not true anymore. The game has changed. There is a good solid constituency in this country, across the whole economical, political and social spectrum, who will vote lockstep for a racial agenda to marginalize the minorities and monopolize the economic pie.
This is a brutal fight-to-death just getting kicked off. Defeat will only heighten the rage and the will to amass power. And with the current state of the liberal left, there is a lot of leeway for the RWNJ to gain more power next time.
The philosophical justification and social organization to confront this vileness does not exist on the liberal/left spectrum. It is a pipe-dream to think that this vacuum can be fixed in 1-2 years.
Dig in for a long hard fight.
raven
@geg6: A friend of a friend is working on this “Remake Learning” project in your area.
cranky
@James Powell:
Exactly. Trumpcare passes/not passes, legislative agenda accomplished/not acomplished … everything is immaterial.
The RWNJ were hesitant in 2016, because they were unsure about their own power. Post Trump they know they can grab power, they have a constituency.
If Trump fails to get his agenda, the next election will give Trump/Bannon more power. The lesson the RW populace will take away from 2 years of failure will be this… Their ends are worth fighting for, but they did not fight vicious enough to gain the power needed to accomplish it.
2018 will see them gaining more power. Because the opposition is still dicking around within themselves, and not united or strong-willed as them.
This is not Bush’s time. That was an era when a pretense of civilized behavior was needed. That’s not true anymore. The game has changed. There is a good solid constituency in this country, across the whole economical, political and social spectrum, who will vote lockstep for a racial agenda to marginalize the minorities and monopolize the economic pie.
This is a brutal fight-to-death just getting kicked off. Defeat will only heighten the rage and the will to amass power. And with the current state of the liberal left, there is a lot of leeway for the RWNJ to gain more power next time.
The philosophical justification and social organization to confront this vileness does not exist on the liberal/lefts spectrum. It is a pipe-dream to think that this vacuum can be fixed in 1-2 years.
Dig in for a long hard fight.
raven
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: soon come mon, he’s ramping up in Syria and when the body bags start flowing again he’ll use that to the max.
Mike J
@Ian G.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-WMbP1RcC4
Yarrow
@TenguPhule: I’m still skeptical that we’ll have free and open elections, on their proper day, in 2018. But we’ll see how it goes.
I disagree that Trump doesn’t care. He cares a lot what people think of him. He wants to be loved and respected. It’s one of the few constants in his life. Take it from Howard Stern who has known Trump a long time:
Bad “ratings” (poll numbers) are going to bother Trump a lot.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
on the other hand, Alec Baldwin’s ratings are through the roof – he’s never been more liked.
Gin & Tonic
So the plagiarist Monica Crowley, unsurprisingly, lands on her feet. She took a PR job for Viktor Pinchuk, the pro-Putin Ukrainian billionaire.
Can you see my shocked face from where you are?
The Moar You Know
Overall approval ratings don’t mean jack shit when one party owns the entire government. What’s his disapproval numbers among Republicans?
Until those start moving the GOP isn’t changing anything, and the dismantling of the safety net and the federal government will continue.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Are ALL the Republicans in bed with Putin and Russia? Seems like it.
randy khan
@Ian G.:
These are chickens I definitely won’t count unless they hatch, but that would be the best, even if we got it for just one election. Just the thought of the WWC turning on Ryan in his home district makes me see little starbursts.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m reliably informed that they can see it from Russia.
Bess
@germy:
If you don’t trust the number then at least look at the trend.
Whoever is answering their phones (older folks with landlines and not much happening in their lives?) is the pool that is being sampled. Over time they are souring on Trump. And there’s a good chance that his support runs higher in that pool than in the general public.
Gin & Tonic
@TenguPhule: I’d better unplug my microwave.
cain
@Yarrow: Getting rid of Ryan would be perfectly fine with me. Watching that guy lose his shit and his influence would make me laugh. If they replace it with a bomb thrower like Steve King it will be even better because we can watch the Senate and the House going at it.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
“Fake polls”. Crowds in eyesight is all he wants and understands.
But perhaps you’re right and I’m wrong.
rikyrah
Paul Ryan won’t escape blame for failing on health care
03/14/17 12:56 PM
By Steve Benen
About a week ago, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a harsh critic of the House Republicans’ health care plan, said something interesting about the state of play within his party.
I didn’t think much of this at the time, but Rand Paul may have raised a legitimate point.
It’s not unreasonable to conclude that Donald Trump is an easy mark. Love the president or hate him, the amateur politician has no working understanding of public policy in any area, especially health care, and as recently as late October, Trump made clear that he hates the Affordable Care Act despite not understanding the basics of how it works.
……………………………………..
And second, it’s hard to overstate how much blame Ryan will take if/when his health care plan fails. The House Speaker took it upon himself to oversee every step of this process, and he managed to do just about everything wrong, writing a secret bill behind closed doors, seeking no input from his ostensible allies, getting no buy-in from the industry or stakeholders in the system, and crafting a wholly inadequate blueprint that seemed slapped together, despite seven years of effort.
TenguPhule
@Bess:
Which is why he’s making sure to kill them through neglect before they can vote again.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: You know what happens when you get in bed with the KGB, sooner or later you end up dead.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Many, many people are saying, the BEST people are saying that Baud is spying on us through our toasters. Believe me! Believe me!
randy khan
@Brachiator:
Anecdatally, my two pro-Trump trolls on Facebook have been very, very quiet since the wiretap thing.
scottinnj
Well, the one skill Trump does show is he is very good about finding others to blame when the brown stuff hits the spinning blades. I’d expect knives out for Paul Ryan very soon.
I’d add I still don’t see why they just don’t go with the tax cuts for the Job Creators and leave (most) of Obamacare in place. I think the GOP does like to kick the poor and blahs, but they really care more about lower taxes for Job Creators. If you can kick the poors and help the Job Creators in one fell swoop, sure, but if you have to pick they can live to kick the poors another day.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: What do you think of the Americans? You likey?
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Trump is also the master of shrugging off responsibility when things go wrong. It’s in his nature, and we may end up seeing the presidential version of this, bigly.
More than anything else, Trump is beholden only to his ego needs. A shift in the polls will only mildly rattle him. He can blame failures on Congress.
What might rattle him is if he is booed loudly and continuously at one of his staged rallies. And this would be tough because you know he screens these things to keep out any
TenguPhule
@scottinnj:
Because not enough poors will suffer and die. Its not enough to be rich, they must be rich and know that people are suffering and dying to make their wealth grow.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: You’d be surprised at what people say and do in their kitchens.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: I have not watched it. I don’t watch very much TV.
different-church-lady
@Shell: “Maybe I don’t ‘smell good’…”
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
It’s absolutely Trumpcare.
different-church-lady
@TenguPhule: Trump saying somthing is fake is a sure sign said thing is getting under his skin.
japa21
OT, but today is Pi day and, as they do every year, Penzey’s sent out an email advertising their pie spices. But, this being Penzey’s, they also added a little editorial comment:
Obviously probably edited yesterday after the CBO came out with its scoring. Guess I have to put another order in. Emphasis added.
Bess
Trump hates Obama. Trump repeatedly stated that he intends to create a health insurance program better than the ACA (insurance for everyone, better rates).
Ryan has given him a crappy replacement of the ACA. Something far worse than Obamacare, not far better. Trump is supporting that because the real goal is to undo everything PBO accomplished.
rikyrah
Paul Ryan Wants to Make You Less Free
The government safety net promotes individual liberty. Progressives need to start talking about it that way.
by Joel Dodge
March 14, 2017
The conservative charge to repeal Obamacare is in trouble. House Speaker Paul Ryan has tried to rally the troops by reminding them of the Big Government tyranny of Obamacare. “Freedom is the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need,” Ryan recently tweeted. “Obamacare is Washington telling you what to buy regardless of your needs.”
This is familiar terrain for Ryan. He has warned that the safety net creates a “hammock” of dependency, sapping people of their initiative and autonomy. Barack Obama’s center-left agenda, Ryan argued in 2012, “grows government, restricts freedom and liberty, and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, Western-civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place.”
That was the right’s critique of the Obama years: that a decent, modern welfare state quashes freedom and is downright un-American. This line of attack has become so familiar, even omnipresent, that it’s worth remembering how utterly it defies history and common sense. A decent government safety net that guarantees healthcare, guards against poverty, expands access to education, and aids families is far from a menace to individual freedom. In fact, it’s the opposite: for most Americans, personal liberty and individual opportunity are impossible without the safety net.
……………………
Sometimes it takes an outsider to make sense of American life. Anu Partanen came to live and work in the U.S. as a journalist in 2008 after growing up in Finland. She was surprised to find that the lives of her American colleagues were wrenched by anxiety and dependency. Government simply wasn’t stepping up to meet people’s basic needs. This left many Americans she met highly constrained in their day-to-day lives, and far removed from meaningful freedom.
Partanen wrote about her experience in her 2016 book The Nordic Theory of Everything. In Finland, she had access to a welfare state that provided universal healthcare, extended paid family leave, affordable childcare, and free (and excellent) education from kindergarten through graduate school. Nordic societies—and their public policies—are structured around promoting “a single predominant goal,” Partanen explains: “[I]ndependence, freedom, and opportunity for every member of society.”
bystander
@Doug R: Loved Rude’s comparing Ryan to an 80s porn fluffer. He’s going to take the blame when the “star” can’t get it up.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ian G.:
My RWNJ mom is still out there, though, still determined to think that an EBT wielding project mom with $115 monthly benefit is what keeps honest white folks like her and me down, and that I’m just too blinkered to understand how happy and wealthy I’d be if I just got with the program to eliminate it all and force those lazy negroes to get off their shiftless asses and work.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Baud: Sometimes home furniture and appliances say the darndest things (photo)
different-church-lady
@Yarrow:
No: he wants to be admired. That is different in a very significant way.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah:
Benen is out of his mind. Doesn’t he know that Ryan is the GOP’s wonk? Paul Ryan is a policy wonk on the budget and a deep thinker on issues such as poverty and the poor, and policies related to those issues. Shoot, it’s not hard to find Ryan most days. If he’s not washing pots and pans at the local soup kitchen then he’s either at the gym or in The Wonk’s Nook at the Library of Congress. Only don’t bother him there as he is probably deep in concentration studying some new policy way to help the poor and relieve poverty.
Brachiator
@scottinnj:
The Republicans want to rip out the funding for Obamacare: the individual mandate and the small increases in taxes on the net investment income and Medicare taxes of wealthy taxpayers. Adding instability makes it more likely that insurance companies will pull out of Exchanges. And then look for the insurance companies to find ways to undermine any weak provisions that the Republicans agree to keep.
germy
@rikyrah:
I remember many years ago trying that line of reasoning with a conservative co-worker. His counter argument was: “Sure, but those are Nordic countries.” Yes, he was a racist.
Peale
@TenguPhule: Because you can’t pass something through reconciliation unless its budget neutral or reduces the deficit. They need to spend less to offset the cost of the tax cuts or it won’t be deficit neutral. So 600Bn in tax cuts needs to be offset by $900bn in healthcare cuts so they can claim that it reduces the deficit. Then they can use reconciliation rules, so the Democrats can’t filibuster. They will never get 12 democratic votes for this. There aren’t 12 Democrats in the country who would vote for this. Not just in the Senate. But 12 Democratic voters.
debbie
@different-church-lady:
Envied. Don’t leave out envied.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Speaking of ratings:
In this (video) an adult woman squeals as if she just met the Beatles on Ed Sullivan
Ian G.
@Aimai:
Hillary was worse. Emails. The Clinton Foundation. Goldman Sachs speeches.
Thanks, Comey! Thanks, NY Times!
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: Neither do I, but that show is worth making an exception for.
patroclus
I think most of the responses above are assuming that most people follow political news all the time – like BJ readers do. I think the answer is more simple – the stock market rally has stalled, interest rates are headed up tomorrow, confidence is no longer rising. The Trump “rally” has stalled. AND, people are growing concerned about the effect of Trump’s proposed policies – including the health care monstrosity and the Muslim ban and all the rest. Whatever “euphoria” that existed among Trump supporters is finally petering out and more basic concerns are taking hold.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Are you following Pete Souza on Instagram? He’s posting almost daily from his Obama archive.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@debbie: yeah, it’s great.
MCA1
@Bess: Agreed. I mean, this is now twice in a month that he’s been at a -16 approval with Gallup, after starting right about even. The Resistance was catalyzed from the perspective of how it would respond to a Gallup presidential approval poll from the morning after the election, so there’s little chance much of that movement is Democratic constituencies who’d decided to give him a chance realizing they shouldn’t have. It’s the foolish hope for the best after we blow it up Republicans, and the but her e-mails Republicans and other low info voters getting rather immediate buyer’s remorse.
And the Rasmussen chart is more or less a straight downhill climb. Going from 60% approval to consistently under 50% in a poll out of a heavily R skewing outfit is something remarkable.
Now, what that all means for actual votes, of course, is waaay up for grabs. But it looks to me like people who think of themselves as sober, good government, fiscal conservative/social liberal Republicans are recoiling and looking for rationalizations for their T vote right now. Again, that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for a Democrat next year or in 2020, but if they turn on Drumpf it will have ramifications.
Personal guess is that this latest sharp downturn is a delayed result of the wiretapping tweets. Why that took a week to materialize in the numbers I’m not sure, but I see that in the middle of last week he was trending upward in the Gallup numbers, several days to a week after the “Who’s the goooood bbbboooooyyyy?? Donny’s the good boy! Donny likes the teleprompter!” pundit reaction to his speech to Congress. So there seems to be a lag here. Perhaps because most people aren’t junkies who keep up with every single outrage coming out of Der Fuchspeltfuhrer in the moment.
FlipYrWhig
You know what Trump should have done? Some kind of Carrier-like deal with a willing health insurance company to begin offering wicked awesome low-premium American Greatness policies as soon as Obamacare was gone. Or MAGA-branded discount card for medical stuff like I see advertised on cable news all the time, maybe in gold plastic with picture of Trump giving a thumbs-up. And he’d get great press for it from all the Republican idiots who are on Medicare or have insurance through work. It’d be just like his usual Trump University get-rich-quick sucker-scamming crapola, which is his “strength” as a “businessman.”
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1: I’m more concerned that it was possible for him to have had ANY good days in polling since becoming President.
Bess
@MCA1:
I’d guess it’s due to some people assuming Trump had some sort of evidence and waited on him to produce it.
If that’s the case then his tweet hurt him more. Those people are probably feeling like they were played for suckers. People don’t like being played.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@debbie: Pete is a BIG fan of folk-rock singer Brandi Carlile and he was over the moon when he accidentally met her because of his boss (photo)
catclub
@Bess:
I don’t think so. The authoritarian followers are so enraptured by their leaders, they really do not care when the leaders fuckup. The lamest excuse for any failures by the leader is enough to keep them following – the alternative is thinking for oneself – too horrible to contemplate.
MCA1
@germy: I’ve had similar conversations. Great concern trolling position for the mediocrities of privilege you may run into: explain that the key feature, and great beauty, of the Scandinavian model is not that the huge safety net (which they take to mean “moocher’s paradise”) disincentivizes people from trying hard, but precisely the opposite. Sweden’s awesome because free post-high school education and family leave and everything else create a totally cutthroat competitive environment where everyone can get in the game, thus approaching a true meritocracy. Everyone’s given the same opportunity to rise to their highest and best use, and isn’t that what a virtuous society is supposed to provide? That’s why their actual upward mobility rates are so much higher than ours.
In a place like that, one can also take a much better informed judgment about how hard someone else worked or how smart they are, should one choose to, because they’ve had to compete like a mofo at every step along the way, and no one gets a running start just because they grow up outside the ghetto.
Funny how few people would actually sign up for that when they consider the increased likelihood they wouldn’t be on the same rung of the ladder in such a system that they occupy in ours. I’ve used that line of argument a couple times with people who probably know deep down how they’re not as smart as their dry cleaner but act like they’re the bomb because they sell real estate and lease an Audi while spouting off about how there’s no entrepreneurship in Denmark because the tax rate’s too high.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Yes, I saw those shots; they were great. I’m also a Brandi fan.
Bess
@catclub:
There’s the “27%” and the “40-odd%” who voted for Trump in November. The 27% are probably not reachable assuming no Pearl Harbor type event. Some of the people closer to the center are more responsive to facts.
TriassicSands
@GregB:
Trumpcareless?
It seems like no simple, catchy name can quite capture the true worthlessness of the GOP health care plans.
TrumpCouldn’tCare
TrumpCareLess
TrumpCouldn’tCareLess
WeDon’tCare
Don’tCare
ChumpCare
In some ways I like ChumpCare the best because although it doesn’t refer to Trump (except indirectly by sound) it does refer to the people responsible for Trump’s election and thus, the GOPs ability to repeal Obamacare and replace it with JunkCare. I’m referring to the chumps who voted for Trump thinking he and the Republicans wouldn’t do what they’ve been saying they would do for years. They really are chumps.
Ideally, no catchy name will be necessary because all the horrible Republican plans will fail and become nothing more than bad memories.
sukabi
@Baud: fuck8ng Drumpf is the entire country’s Katrina…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I predicted it before and I will say it again, the second Trumps stops being a fake rebel and starts trying to govern is the moment he loses his audiance. That’s when Trump goes from being an entertainer to being a politician.
different-church-lady
@Bess: This is a cult of personality. The normal rules may not apply.
ChrisGrrr
@japa21: Due to their “editorial comment” I just followed through and placed my first order with Penzey’s.
Props to ya.