Can Trump shovel enough red meat to keep his presidency alive?

[DonViejo]

SATURDAY, SEP 9, 2017 08:00 AM EDT

Charlottesville, transgender troops and the 24 Percent Salvation Army

Can Trump shovel enough red meat to keep his presidency alive?

LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

Okay, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out at mid-week has Trump at 36 percent, down two points since June and the lowest he’s polled since the inauguration on January 20. Seven more points to go and he’s in the 20’s. When you figure that the White House runs tracking polls of its own constantly, they’ve known this new low was coming for weeks, which may give us some clue why he has been so panicked that he’s using a goddamned front loader to shovel red meat into the maw of the Base Beast for the last couple of months. Trump is nothing if he’s not a ratings guy, and he has a finely-tuned, not to say obsessive, fascination with his numbers. He was at their mercy for the 14 years he hosted “The Apprentice,” and every time he opens his mouth in the vicinity of a microphone he rattles off everything from his electoral victory margin to the number of states he won to the number of lamesters and losers he beat in the Republican primaries, usually tossing in a few lies for good measure. But his numbers have been heading south since inauguration day. That’s why the latest polls have got to be driving him fucking crazy.

Even among his own supporters, he is slipping down a slick, steep slope. A poll of Trump voters taken by Politico in early August revealed that only 41 percent strongly approve of his performance as president, with 17 percent admitting to strong disapproval. Those numbers were 56 percent and 1 percent respectively when he was inaugurated. A few days after these troubling poll numbers were published, Trump made his series of execrable comments following the murder of a young woman in Charlottesville by a white supremacist. A few days after that, a Gallup poll had Trump’s approval at 34 percent and his disapproval at 61 percent, numbers Gallup never recorded as low or as high for either Presidents Obama and Bush.

But it’s when you peer through the looking glass that the Trump numbers really look bleak. Both a recent CNN poll and Politico’s tracking poll from last week reveal what amounts to a bottom containing Trump’s Salvation Army: 24 percent of voters who, despite everything, tell pollsters that they “strongly approve” of the job Trump is doing. His Salvation Army pops up again and again as you dig deeper, suggesting that the Trump’s actual base isn’t 36 percent, but rather the quarter of the populace who believe his lies, love his tweets and will forgive him anything. Hell, they probably also like his hair. The CNN poll reveals that 24 percent trust all or most of the swill coming out of the White House; 24 percent told an ABC poll that Trump behaves in a way that is “fitting and proper for a president;” 24 percent told ABC that they approve of Trump’s unhinged thumb-thwacking on Twitter; and yep, there are 24 percent of our fellow Americans who taunted Monmouth University pollsters by asserting that they “cannot see Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him.”

So when you get right down to it, the fate of Trump’s presidency lies somewhere between the 34 to 36 percent who approve of him generally, and the hard core 24 Percent Salvation Army who wouldn’t be bothered if he shot down a mother holding her baby in the middle of Fifth Avenue. But while Trump can obviously count on his 24 Percent Salvation Army to have his back no matter what, he’d better not be counting on the 10 percent in the gap above them. Which perhaps explains his frenzied hoisting of red meat in their direction lately.

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/09/09/charlottesville-transgender-troops-and-the-24-percent-salvation-army/

[Girard442]

1. Unfortunately, there's still one giant slab of red meat to throw -- going to war.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. The only nations that threaten us aren't pushovers.

[dalton99a]

2. There is no shortage of lies he can make up

which means the sky is the limit for manufactured outrage