The media is starting to tune Trump out, and it's helping him in the polls

[DonViejo]

By Megan McArdle
Columnist

July 12 at 4:41 PM

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Over the past few months, Trump’s approval numbers have been slowly inching upward, and his disapproval numbers drifting gently south. They’re still abysmal, considering he’s presiding over the lowest unemployment rate in decades — but then, they were abysmal before he got elected. The gap between his approval and disapproval numbers is smaller than the gap was between his favorables and unfavorables in November 2016. And as my colleague Henry Olsen has pointed out, The Post’s latest poll shows him doing even better in key swing states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.

Is the public really that excited about the Trump administration’s new policy to improve treatment for people with end-stage kidney disease? They should be, because it’s great policy. But I suspect that there’s a simpler explanation: For the first time in several years, the media is starting to tune Trump out.

I’m not the first to observe that if the president wants better approval ratings, all he needs to do is shut up. Every time he stops tweeting, his numbers improve. Besides, the economy is good, and the public grows fond of presidents who preside over strong economies. Barring a recession, if Trump would just let the economic news speak for itself, he could probably sail to reelection.

Luckily for Democrats, Trump seems constitutionally incapable of learning from experience. Unluckily for the Democrats, their primaries are mimicking the effect of Trump holstering his Twitter finger. The media is now too busy analyzing the Democratic race to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s every tweet.

That won’t continue indefinitely; eventually, the Democrats will pick a candidate, and the spotlight will shift back toward Trump. But the higher his approval numbers go, the less beatable he looks. And the less beatable he looks, the more the Democratic Party’s choice of candidate and platform matter, because we’ve already seen that it is possible for Trump to beat a Democrat despite having high unfavorable ratings.

True-blue progressives will say we know all that, and argue that the party needs to move to the left precisely because they don’t expect 2020 to be a cakewalk. In these partisan days, there aren’t enough swing voters to matter; what matters is turning out the base, and you can’t do that on Republican Lite. If Hillary Clinton had turned out minority voters at the same rate as Barack Obama, she would have won.

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more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/12/media-is-starting-tune-trump-out-its-helping-him-polls/

[Iliyah]

1. Another set up for stealing the EC's again.

This time, it ain't going to work. His so called approval ratings in reality in going

[Skya Rhen]

2. The media has tuned Trump out because they have turned their attention to the Democratic Primaries.

[Hoyt]

3. Have always felt trump should be on TV 24/7 to remind those, who need reminding, what a

buffoon, racist, criminal, loser he really is.

For some reason, lots of Democrats have criticized media for showing his rallies, etc. Again, put him on 24/7.

[octoberlib]

4. McArdle is a rw Libertarian so I wouldn't

put too much stock in her views.