4 responses to “Thursday’s Forum”

1. 

   Kylopod

   September 10, 2026 at 7:15 am

   At -17.4 on RCP, Trump has the second-worst presidential approval ever recorded on or around Labor Day of a midterm year.

   (We don’t have RCP before the 21st century, but we do have data from Gallup going back to Truman. Unfortunately, Gallup ended its presidential approval tracking poll earlier this year; so I don’t have an exact consistent point of comparison. I checked both when they were available.)

   Who was #1? It was Harry Truman, who was 19 points underwater on Labor Day of 1946. His party went on to lose 55 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate.

   Now, there isn’t any clear rule that the worse a president’s approval, the more seats his party loses. Obama’s approval on Labor Day 2010 was strikingly okay (dead-even on Gallup, just 3 points underwater on RCP), and that was one of the worst midterm years of the modern age. Biden in contrast was 12-13 points underwater on Labor Day 2022, and Dems suffered comparatively mild losses.

   It’s not just Dobbs that explains the disparity. I looked at a bunch of bad midterm years historically—including Truman in 1950, Ford in 1974, Reagan in 1982, Clinton in 1994, Bush in 2006, and Trump in 2018–and there isn’t a discernible pattern, other than a general observation that negative approval ratings are never good news for the president’s party. It’s important to note that Trump’s approval right now is worse than it was in 2018 (-13 on RCP, -16 on Gallup).

   There are always structural factors that need to be considered in any midterm cycle. In 2010 Dems were overextended, having picked up many red districts in the wave elections of 2006 and 2008. In fact a majority of the districts Republicans flipped in 2010 had voted for McCain two years earlier, which cuts against a narrative that the results reflected buyers remorse on the part of Obama voters.

   In 2022, even before Dobbs some of the data-oriented pundits noted that Republicans had limited terrain for gains, due to there being relatively few Dems representing R-leaning districts. In 2020, just 7 districts, a historic low, simultaneously voted for Trump and a Dem for House.

   Taken together with the uber-gerrymandering we saw this year, it makes sense that most forecasts have not shown Dems enjoying a wipeout in the House, even with the near-certainty they gain control. But Trump’s record-low approval needs to be taken into account. It’s the type of metric that could tear through these structural limitations.

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2. 

   MarkedMan

   September 10, 2026 at 7:42 am

   Apple released its folding smartphone yesterday, following their longstanding business strategy of waiting to see if a market is significant, then spending years evaluating the competitive products, while fine tuning and perfecting things before making their offering. It’s not for me. I’m a big guy with (literally) big pockets and so the largest non-folding smart phone fits just fine in my pocket so I don’t see any need to pay a $700 premium for a folding option), but I find this move fascinating nonetheless. I’m sure they will sell as well as anyone in the US and most of the rest of the world, but the real consumers of foldable phones is China, where they are super-popular, despite being priced out of most peoples reach. The Chinese bought more foldable phones last year than the rest of the world combined. Apple has somehow continued to do well in the Chinese market even without a foldable model, where other non-Chinese companies have seen serious declines, so I suspect that preserving that momentum was the main reason for them to finally act.

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3. 

   Scott

   September 10, 2026 at 7:49 am

   Taken together with the uber-gerrymandering we saw this year, it makes sense that most forecasts have not shown Dems enjoying a wipeout in the House, even with the near-certainty they gain control.

   It will be interesting to see how all the gerrymandering will impact who gets elected. There is increasing talk in Texas about how the gerrymander conducted may turn out to be a “dummymander”. Weakening solid Republican seats by moving their voters into fairly balanced district may just backfire.

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4. 

   Scott

   September 10, 2026 at 7:56 am

   Gas at the local Costco went up 6 cents a gallon yesterday.

   Do any Democrats have a gasoline price clock posted?

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