We are not a serious country

Donald Trump’s poll numbers are cratering pretty much across the board, despite:

(1) The larger economic effects of his idiotic tariff policies haven’t even hit yet, but will soon; and

(2) Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do when he was running for president last year.

Trump’s 41% approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days dating back at least to Dwight Eisenhower – including Trump’s own first term.

Approval of Trump’s handling of the presidency is down 4 points since March, and 7 points lower than it was in late February. Just 22% say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the job, a new low, and about twice as many say they strongly disapprove (45%).

Since March, Trump has seen notable drops in approval from women and Hispanic Americans (down 7 points in each group to 36% among women and 28% among Hispanics). Partisan views of Trump remain broadly polarized, with 86% of Republicans approving and 93% of Democrats disapproving. But among political independents, the president’s approval rating has dipped to 31%, matching his first-term low point with that group and about the same as his standing with them in January 2021.

Let me say to the 28% of my fellow Hispanics who still support Trump that they might as well be in a Jews for Hitler club, although I expect Trump’s horrific abuse of immigration law will gradually knock that number even lower.

In any event, it couldn’t be clearer that the American electorate has the long term memory of a fruit fly.  It’s as if 2017-2021 simply didn’t happen.  Or more precisely, people somehow remember low gas prices but don’t remember trying to overthrow the government, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths, trying to extort the Ukrainian government, endless daily chaos, etc.  So it is that three months into his second presidency, Trump is already wildly unpopular even though he’s doing exactly what he said he would do. 

And because of our ever-more creaky and dysfunctional constitutional system, there’s basically nothing, as a formal legal and political matter, that can be done about this at the moment, even though in a parliamentary system Trump would already be hurtling into Liz Truss head of lettuce territory.

You do not know anyone as stupid as the marginal American voter. You just don’t.