24
votes
US voter opinions about inflation and consumer prices look very bad for Donald Trump
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- What voters in every state think about Trump and prices
- Authors
- G. Elliott Morris
- Word count
- 1987 words
What does "look very bad for Trump" even mean?
Why would he care about what people think of him? He isn't up for reelection, and if he somehow is in three years then the public opinion is kind of moot.
If this is meant to be "Republican Party" instead of "Trump" then I sincerely doubt the rest of the party means much to him.
I had to think for a minute. It's a good question.
According to the article, the negative opinion is focused on Trump's handling of inflation and consumer prices, shorthand for how he handles the economy, a key part of his job as president and a significant part of his campaign promises.
Knowing this would hurt his ego, which a narcissist will perceive as bad.
But more seriously, negative public opinion about Trump makes it more likely that Republican representatives and senators who are up for reelection will go rogue and not support the president's program. We saw that with the law requiring the release of the Epstein files. There is a reasonable chance that rogue republicans will join democrats in January to bring back the subsidies for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. If opinion of Trump continues to drop, there is even a chance that some republicans will support impeachment.
And?
Not being dismissive for the sake of being dismissive, but he has already been impeached. It hasn't come up as a problem.
Nixon resigned because the numbers were such that he would have been impeached and removed. Nothing is impossible.
Impeaching and removing Trump lieutenants is a much easier lift and he would feel it emotionally.
But, I'll happily settle for a democratic majority after the midterms and a win in 2028. These numbers are not good for republicans in the near future. People blame the president but they take it out on the party.
The people are looking much more closely than 2018, or even 2021. People are hungry and angry at Republicans this time aroun. Any senate who tries to defend Trump will risk their reelection. Even for states you'd think are safe. It's that bad as of now.
Its a slow process, but if no one is willing to "speed it up" (so to say), then it's really the best shot at trying to reverse things civilly.
Not to mention how it affects his international goals, which seem to be a particular focus of his at the moment. Trump will have a harder time bullying other countries as their governments become increasingly confident that his threats and policies will likely be undone in short time.
Mostly "click here to have your bias confirmed".
The number of articles written during his elections ending in "looks bad for Trump" are possibly in the thousands. The vast majority are hyperbolic and wrong.
This doesn't seem to be that different.
Obviously, Trump's approval ratings, one way or another, will no longer matter. There is the EXTREMELY small chance that he will wind up impeached and convicted, but you won't need a blog post to tell you if things actually get anywhere near that bad.
You could argue they matter for the mid terms, which they do, but it's literally at the very end and extremely vague. Looking at something like 270towin(far from perfect) it's far from looking like anything nearing "oh shit we've fucked up". Iowa and Texas are FAR from in play, ESPECIALLY when you consider that there's lots of discussion about how reliable our polling methods and projects are these days. Doubly so in relation to Trump.
The second problem with arguing this matters for the midterms, is they might as well be in another timeline given how people usually perceive politics, and especially now. Obviously inflation is likely to not get better, or even just stay where we are at, but bluntly until we're about 2 months out from the election it probably won't matter. I wouldn't put it past trump and the reps in the slightest to pull out ALL the stops before then, at any long term cost, should it still appear to be a major issue. Remember "people don't like how trump is handling inflation" does NOT mean "and will vote against him and his party for Democrat X". That feels crazy to type when yes in the past it almost certainly would have, but we've stretched the gap between parties soooo far these days.
I really don't like comparing the approval map to Reagan vs Mondale. That's just outright misleading and the usual "lying through statistics and charts" i get tired of. The "as a bonus" approval by region, surprise, looks like every other chart of dems vs reps/urban vs rural. The electoral college is a thing, and before you even get into any fuckery that region chart is far more honest, and much less damning, than showing the first one and putting it next to fucking Reagan vs Mondale. "most adults in the every state don't approve of Trump!" reads real nice but "most adults in every state live in cities" is the known issue.
All of this is true, but I think the biggest point is that it does not matter how trump is handling the economy.
I don't think anyone with half a braincell really thought Trump would handle the economy well.
They voted for him for ideological and tribal reasons, against their own interests in most cases. They wanted him to piss off people they don't like, and he's done a very, very good job of that. Focusing on polling asking about how he's handling the economy is cherrypicked nonsense that really isn't relevant.
His base is going to vote for him no matter what, because the economy isn't actually what they care about. They could have their house forclosed on, be fired from their job, and forced to live in the streets, and they'd still support Trump for sticking it to the libs.
It's shocking that after so long, we still don't understand this, and keep writing articles that some day, all of these people who have never looked at the evidence or seen reason will finally see the light.
They'll insist he's the best president to ever exist despite any evidence until the day they die. It's an identity for them, not a rational choice.
From the post:
This is well supported by historical evidence. One of the main points of the post is that this looks bad for republicans in the mid terms (and local elections between then and now) and that is very bad for Trump. Without control of both houses they can't ram their agenda through as effectively.
Also:
Politically engaged and informed people care about a variety of nuanced issues. The majority of people mostly just care about whether their lives feel easy or hard. And financial wellbeing is the biggest part of that. Meanwhile the media has consistently put the spotlight on the president as responsible for all wins and all losses for decades and decades. Even in areas that have little to do with the President. So at this point that's just how the average person sees it. They won't make the distinction between Trump and the rest of the Republican party, it's just Trump's party.
Which is not to say that the midterms are a foregone conclusion, but I'm kinda pulling for them to continue to act like complete idiots where the economy is concerned, even if it hurts short term.
Pessimism: there's a vast distance between disapproval candidate running for my preferred party, and approval for candidate running for my non-preferred party.
Hope: When will Americans consider a third party?
Also Hope: there are lots of undecided people, and traditionally elections during times of distress are favourable for the other party
When we write a new constitution.
Genuinely at this point a third party will just kill off one of the other two and revert back to the two party system. At best. That's what keeps happening. It took a civil war to really shake up the number of parties significantly, and we ended up right back at two.
It's why it's so frustrating to see people say we should give ground on principles of equality and human rights rather than acknowledge that this means the system is broken badly enough that it's gotta be redone. And i mean people in power, not randos here.
I mean these seem to go together? Regardless of whether it’s through constitutional amendment or popular revolution, you’ll have to convince a lot of people to get a redo of our electoral system. To do so you’ll likely have to run a single-issue campaign on electoral reform and be OK with a big tent that statistically would have to include Republican voters, and whatever baggage that association comes with.
A campaign was not what I had in mind. (Nor was violence to be clear)
Running a campaign on this issue is not a way of fixing it, IMO. Maybe I'm wrong and said third party arises but I suspect it fails to make reform and reverts to one of 2 again.
We'd need more states to adopt voting systems that aren't first past the post. The voting system as of now is simply an inevitability of basic game theory.
Change the incentives, change the outcome. Now when will more states do that? Hard to say. It'll certainly the people fighting against bipartisan opposition. The only thing the 2 parties can agree on is keeping their current power.
There's a third party making a gradual takeover of the Democratic Party from the inside: Working Families Party. [Full disclosure - I'm a member; though my state doesn't have an organization yet, I've worked on a couple of WFP-endorsed campaigns.]
The Guardian just had an article about their plans today. I don't know if they're ready to be a fully independent party yet, but they've been effective in sponsoring grassroots candidates (including Zohran Mamdani) and caucusing with Democrats to get legislation passed.
I have to say, it is a remarkable feat of our system to come up with two parties that split almost 50/50 between voters. Although many people voice that they feel unrepresented, I think that both parties actually do a fairly good job calibrating across the political spectrum to achieve such equilibrium.
In countries that have additional parties, they inevitably split between two coalitions anyway.
It's fundemental to how the system works. It's a negative feedback loop. If a party has a significant shortfall in voters, they adjust their platforms and messaging to gain more. If one party starts a winning streak, people start blaming their problems on them and the challenging party gets to capitalize on those weaknesses, and the cycle starts again.
It's always going to find an equilibrium setpoint because that's how first past the post systems inevitably work.
It's like how two connected lakes will always have the same water level given enough time.
I don’t think it’s that remarkable, it’s fairly common. It’s just natural for people to be stronger together than separate - first past the post elections amplifies this, since third parties just end up being spoilers, but even in parliamentary systems with runoffs there in practice tend to be coalitions (one represent the “left” and one the “right”) of roughly equal strength.
If you are actively trying to min-max to not allow another power to become a super majority and rule by majority forever, you have to adopt and change to achieve a 50% parity to overcome that. a bimodal political system is inherent to a population attraction strategy as all sides will be min-maxing to recover the same population into their numbers to not allow one party to be entirely in ownership. A two party system is likely the only naturally acquiesced balance of value for an ideologically bent (changeable, transfiguration) population leading to a polarized 'balanced' dichotomy.
Stuff like this makes me wish we had a mechanism to recall federal officials. Because really, like @deaconblue said, polling this poorly does nothing to Trump. He's never going to resign. Sure, the Republicans probably lose majority control in 2026, and probably lose the presidency in 2028, but that's a full year from now, or a full three years from now. Otherwise, we're stuck with this garbage that almost no one supports.
I know that impeachment is supposed to be this mechanism, but Congress has abdicated its powers thanks to the GOP sycophancy committee.
I also wish that we could call snap elections like our friends with parliamentary systems.