The General US Politics Thread

Newest AP-NORC poll has Trump at a 36% Approval Rating, with a whopping 62% Disapproving. This is Trump's lowest poll in a long time (it might actually be his lowest poll yet). Trump's handling of the Economy is also down; only 46% approve, and 51% disapprove (I think this is the first poll where Trump's economic handling is more disapproved then approved). He also has a 36% approval rate for handling gun policy, with a 61% disapproval rate.

Edited by DingoWalley1 on Aug 23rd 2019 at 1:31:45 PM

Cue Trump whining about how the poll is "rigged" any day now...

Ironically the disapproval might be coming from both sides. The gun-nutters who hated that he voiced the possibility of universal background checks, then the gun control crowd who hated that he backed out on that.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down almost 550 points as of this writing after Trump tweets out an order for all American companies to find alternatives to China after China adds an additional tariff on $75 billion in US goods.

Also, a tweet asking whether Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is a greater enemy than Chinese chairman Xi Jinping after Powell's speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Edited by tclittle on Aug 23rd 2019 at 12:33:57 PM

I can hear the economy Obama gave us being flushed away...

I'm seriously considering selling off the stock I just acquired in my company. I don't know how hard the market's going to tank in the coming years, but the certainty of it tanking is rising by the day.

In the first year of his Presidency, Trump dipped to 36%, but after that he's mostly been stable at 41-42%. But that's the aggregate of polls, not every specific poll.

Note that in aggregate, he still seems to be in the 41-42% range. At the individual level, Rasmussen even had him as high as 50% just three days ago; the polar opposite of this 36% poll.

What's interesting about Trump's remarkable stability is that it makes it difficult to predict his re-election chances. Presidents who've won re-election like Obama, Bush Jr., and Clinton rarely dipped as low as Trump typically remains. Reagan, Clinton, and Obama have all briefly dipped as low as Trump's average and still won re-election, but those were small low points that soon gave way to a rise back up towards 50-ish.

But Presidents who've lost re-election like Bush Sr. and Carter had a plunge in public support that dipped them into the low 30's and even 20's before doing so, which Trump generally remains safely above.

The only President who really matches Trump stable 41-42% history is Gerald Ford, the lame-duck that took Nixon's baton. And he narrowly lost re-election in 1976 to the aforementioned unpopular Jimmy Carter, who scraped by to victory with 50.1% of the vote.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 23rd 2019 at 12:12:26 PM

Now see my understanding is that this kind of approval rating usually leads to one losing the election. Unless it changes before the election, but Trump's approval ratings have been very stable over a long time frame.

That's the interesting thing. A recurring trend I noticed with sitting Presidents facing re-election is an upswing in public approval as soon as the re-election campaign starts propagandizing. It will be interesting to see if Trump follows suit and sees a rise in popularity in 2020, or if his stable numbers remain unchanged.

If Trump's numbers don't rise, then it's really anybody's game. But they usually do right before an election.

The fact that he's been campaigning for 2020 since 2017 might actually work against him here. He's inoculated a lot of people against pro-Trump advertising. Where other politicians usually can go "Hey, remember that cool thing I did?" and get some positive energy going, Trump's been trying to say that every single time he's ever been in front of a camera. We're used to hearing him brag about himself and shit-talk his enemies.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 23rd 2019 at 12:15:20 PM

I was thinking the same thing. Trump is in campaign mode all the time and propagandizing all the time, why should it work any differently now than in 2018?

"At the individual level, Rasmussen even had him as high as 50% just three days ago; "

Why do they always have him polling so much higher than all the other polls?

Right-leaning bias. Rasmussen has a C+ rating for accuracy.

Ginsberg has been treated for pancreatic cancer. The good news is that it apparently hasn't spread at least, but she's clearly living on limited time.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-cancer-supreme-court/index.html

We are going to fucking rue the day she didn't retire during the Obama presidency, aren't we?

If the Supreme Court shifts one more point in the Republican direction, things will go downhill in a hurry. As it stands, numerous issues have had one conservative defect to keep things from getting too bad, but if two defection are needed each issue...

A couple months ago Ginsburg did an interview where she related a conversation she had with a senator who told her she wasn't getting any younger and should be thinking about retirement before she died on the bench. She ended it with:

"That senator is now dead."

No. We are, and will keep, ruing the day Donald Trump became POTUS.

RBG's plight is just one of the many symptoms of that.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 23rd 2019 at 1:07:04 PM

Lee and Kirby were truly ahead of their time, weren't they?

Pithy, but a meaningless deflection. We are seriously running out of time, and all the memetic badassery in the world can't change that.

I find it hard to see a way forward if conservatives take an ironclad grip of the Supreme Court. What happens if we end up with an untouchable body of conservatives with no way to hold them accountable as the highest court in the land?

I had heard once that the justification of lifetime appointments was to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming a partisan body, but, uh, that ship has clearly sailed. I'd like to know: Is there any feasible way to counteract this in the worst case scenario? Like, what steps can realistically be taken in the event that the Supreme Court is overwhelmingly conservative, assuming the country as a whole (including Senate and House seats) *does* continue to drift leftward?

I don't give a damn about her witty remarks. She should have stepped aside when the Democrats had control over the Senate. Assuming Trump loses in 2020 (if he wins, her seat is lost for sure), she (a four time cancer patient) has to survive until early 2021. If she doesn't, the reactionaries might shove the US into the 19th century.

I think it's within the rules of the system to add more supreme court seats, but 1)I don't know the process that has to go through or if it'd be able to pass and 2) there may as far as I know be a very good reason for not doing that anyway.

RBG is incredibly tough, spiteful as fuck, and getting the best of care, but pancreatic cancer is very, very bad news. It’s seldom caught in time for various reasons, (problems with pancreatic functions are not always noticeable and are frequently passed off by people as other issues, for starters) and is likely to spread before being caught.

If they did catch it in time to prevent a spread they definitely beat the odds.

Who's Ginsberg?

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, an elderly, liberal Justice of the Supreme Court

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 23rd 2019 at 2:00:13 AM

x5

"She should have stepped aside when the Democrats had control over the Senate."

Unwavering pessimist that I am, I can't help but think that that would've just meant two Supreme Court seats being stonewalled and stolen by the Republicans instead of "only" one.

Edited by Reflextion on Aug 23rd 2019 at 4:05:39 AM

The living embodiment of the fragile thread the Supreme Court’s legitimacy hangs on.

Edited by Bur on Aug 23rd 2019 at 3:04:53 AM