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Friday’s Forum
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18 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
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Trump’s approval rating sinks to new second-term low, Pew poll shows (USA Today)
Trump’s performance in Thursday’s poll is only one percentage point better than his worst poll on Jan. 12, 2021, at the end of his first term, when he sat at a 29% approval rating.
The president’s new second-term low in Pew Research Polling is two points worse than former President Joe Biden’s low of 32% recorded in July 2024, and 11 points worse than former President Barack Obama’s low of 41% between October and November of 2013.
Gonna run out of new lows soon.
Trump Approval Hits New Low Compared With Biden Before Midterms (Newsweek)
…Democratic voters report greater engagement and motivation ahead of the November midterm elections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Trump’s approval rating is 8 percentage points lower than former President Joe Biden’s at a comparable point in the 2022 midterm campaign, when 38 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s performance and 59 percent disapproved, according to Pew’s October 2022 survey.
Much of the decline in Trump’s approval has come from his own 2024 voters, the survey found.
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“Much of the decline in Trump’s approval has come from his own 2024 voters, the survey found.”
That I think is the most important takeaway. In his second term, I think we’ve been starting to see something we never really saw before in the Trump era–a truly large amount of buyers remorse. There was some of that during his first term among 2016 voters, but it was largely superseded by gains he made with other voters, explaining why he was able to increase his support in 2020. Dems were able to win in 2018 and 2020 by showing up, but Republicans mostly stayed with him. And when they appeared to abandon him–such as just after Jan. 6–it was temporary. I don’t think it’s temporary this time, and I don’t think he’s reaching any new voters to make up for the losses.
Even beyond the Iran boondoggle and the inflation crisis he promised to solve on day one, AI seems to be driving a wedge into his base. He used to know when to pretend to support a popular position, and when he occasionally wandered into supporting something MAGA didn’t (vaccines, or his attempts to curb e-cigs and bump stocks during his first term), he would soon back off. He’s not backing off about AI; he’s doubling down. It’s like he’s totally lost his sense of what sells and what doesn’t among the crowd that used to adore him. I think it’s because he’s retreated into his little bubble where he prioritizes the King Trump stuff over anything else, and I think the muscle memes Natalie creates for him are at least as much of a factor in his attitude toward AI as the more conventional plutocratic desire to replace human workers with machines.
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Dang! El Taco was snubbed again!
How many wars, war crimes, repression, oppression, corruption, mismanagement, and utter contempt for the rule of law does one orange ass need to commit before he’s given the Nobel Peace Prize?
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Some discussion of why Christian Nationalism correlates so strongly with preference for authoritarian political leaders.
Also, why they like Donald Trump so much.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/you-cant-run-from-christian-nationalism/
Link includes discussion of two books on this.
“Evangelicals” seen likely to continue dominating the GOP post-Trump, keeping it authoritarian.
From the link:
Those of us who follow white evangelicalism will tell you until we are blue in the face that our current political crisis is actually a religious one. White evangelicals voted for Trump all three times, at a level unmatched by any other demographic, roughly 80 percent, and they continue to hold him above water as his approval rating sinks below 50 percent with almost all other demographics. Their influence within the Republican Party is pronounced. They make up almost one-third of Trump’s coalition, and they hold key positions of power in his government. Mike Johnson, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio are all evangelical Christians. JD Vance is a Catholic convert who codes evangelical; conservative Catholics as a group have been heavily influenced by white evangelicalism within the religious right.
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Beyond the numbers, what most political analysts miss is how strong and specific the authoritarian appeal is for white evangelicals, and how critical it is to at least weaken it. The roots of this confluence go back decades, if not centuries, and are deeply entwined with white evangelical theology itself.
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How do things just keep getting dumber and dumber?
The FBI wants to hire the Ultimate Fighting Championship to train its special agents under a one-year deal that would bypass the competitive bidding process typically used for federal contracts, according to federal records.
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@Jen – gotta wonder what kind of kickback Ka$h and Trump are getting from this one. Grifters R Us.
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I’m confused. Didn’t gas bue especially diesel get expensive because Ukraine has hit Russian refineries? then how is Mad Vlad’s fiefdom suddenly able to export diesel to the US?
Is Mad Vlad going to shortchange his own transportation or his troops? Or does he have excess capacity still. And if he does, then Ukraine’s actions didn’t make diesel prices explode, did they?
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My wife went to a weeklong craft seminar at a resort in NC last week. This morning she got an email informing her that other attendees had come down with COVID. My wife had made it a point to get a COVID shot before going and she took a home test today, negative. She’s probably OK.
Does James still have the Picard facepalm graphic? We’ve had good vaccines for six years now. But Trump and the GOPs decided to make a political thing of it and many people don’t get the readily available vaccine. How TF stupid are these people?
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Trump’s announcement that he’s broken his own sanctions imposed on buying Russian oil is surely peak Trump unprincipled opportunism. I look forward to hearing Senator Graham’s shameful excuses for Trump pissing on the Lindsey O Graham Russia and Iran Sanctions Act she sponsored to honour his memory.
