Poll: Do You Approve of Trump?

[Bethere]

The solution is a peaceable, organized dissolution of the union. Opposing factions cannot coexist peacefully under a unitary political system. It has never worked in history and it isn't working now.

Not going to happen.

[Hal Jordan]

It's also worth noting that people who promote "diversity" and "multiculturalism" don't actually believe in those concepts in any meaningful sense. In fact, the political policies they promote tend towards the homogenization of culture.

To be fair, I think difference helps progress. I don't want America to be "homogenized" at all. I feel that making the disparate portions to be the same only hurts us. Allowing difference allows us to look at the same problems from different angles, which allows us to see things we wouldn't otherwise. I don't want a "melting pot" and think it would be stupid in the end.

[Docthehun]

Things I approve: I've no problem with rounding up the worst of the illegals, like the M-13 crowd and sending them packing.
I concur the governmental regulation program (from the Fed down to the locals) is outdated and overly burdensome.
I like a fair amount of his cabinet choices, from Rex, Mattis, McMaster to Sonny Perdue.
I like Gorsuch as the SCOTUS choice.
I like the notion of a tax cut even though I'd have a totally different approach.

On the other side: I'm not the least fond of unprofessional, let alone, un-Presidential personal conduct.
His White House staff.
Being smart, but not close to being a scholar.
Hair trigger finger.

[IMPress Polly]

Green Arrow wrote:
Honestly, realistically? Nothing lasts forever. All we need is the right candidate. While I liked Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, they weren't the right candidates. Bernie was, but we didn't get him. In four years, though? The gap between Berniecrats and the Clinton wing will get closer, and think about it: several states are already doing away with superdelegates, or at least tying the distribution of superdelegates to their state's primary results. We barely lost to the Hillary wing last year, with those two changes alone we could probably win. We just need to find the right candidate and then go balls-to-the-wall for them.

While I'm all for doing away with the superdelegates, there's a fundamental problem with your line of argument: the Clinton campaign also won the popular vote by a margin of 14 points (57% to 43% overall), which really isn't that terribly close, especially when you consider how unpopular Clinton was. Now some people respond to that by pointing out the closed primaries that many states used to suggest that, in a contest that consistently allowed independent voters to cast ballots, Sanders would have done better, but that isn't necessarily true when you consider the fact that, as I recall, most of the states Sanders won in were caucus states. The caucus process is an older system designed to limit voter turnout as much as possible in such a way as to ensure that only hardened activists have enough determination to go through the process and cast ballots; a set-up that structurally favored Sanders, given that the activist energy was on his side. If they were all open primaries and there were no superdelegates -- i.e. if the process were as genuinely democratic and open as possible -- the contest in delegate terms might have been closer, but it seems unlikely that the actual vote ratio would have been much closer.

Lest you think I'm a total pessimist though, conversely, while it's true enough to say that there is always a labor candidate in the Democratic primaries (by which here I mean a candidate substantively for actual working class people more than a candidate broadly endorsed by the labor unions) and that that candidate seems to always lose anymore, it is also true to say that there was something genuinely different about last year's contest in that the youth were the driving force behind the Sanders campaign, and the youth, of course, define the future. In the election contests that I've grown up under, the youth never backed a comparable candidate. In the 1992 primaries, the youth favored Bill Clinton. In the 2004 primaries, they (including me myself) favored Howard Dean (the labor candidate being John Edwards). In 2008, they favored Barack Obama (a candidate in many ways similar to Dean). But this time they supported the labor candidate, having come full circle from the position of the youth in '92, at least on economics. One then becomes hopeful that, as that generation grows up, they will form a larger share of the electorate; enough to tip the balance. That is indeed a genuinely hopeful prospect!

There are problems with relying on such a deterministic view of it all though. For example, Hillary Clinton was an unusually weak establishment candidate and the party establishment may favor a less transparently fake one next time (like Joe Biden for example). That might make a difference in how much populist energy there is. The sides also may not each rally around a single candidate early on like they did in the 2016 contest either. What if, for example, we go into 2020 with the corporate establishment wing united around Joe Biden and the economic populist wing divided up between several candidates for a long time? After all, reporting has it that, in addition to Joe Biden, fully one-fourth of the Senate's Democratic Caucus is already weighing the possibility of a 2020 presidential run, as is at least one celebrity (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson ) and that includes a lot of progressive Senators. While that's a very good thing, as it shows you which side the momentum is on right now, it also makes for the possibility of more division during the primaries themselves than we saw last year.

Another challenge may be the different gender dynamics of the 2020 contest. There's little question that the Resistance will be a big factor in the 2020 primaries and it's about 80% female. I don't want to get metaphysical about that, but it definitely means there will a different kind of energy than what we saw in 2016. Women have not traditionally belonged to the activist camp of American politics in a big way until now. This last election seems to have been the factor that changed that fundamentally. Any candidate of the working class who wishes to harness that energy (and one would be foolish not to try) must come to understand that energy in its newness to the political arena.

My point is that it may not all be as simple as "going balls to the wall for them". We have to know who "we" are and who "they" are.

[Robo]

So I thought I'd test and see just how far afield from actual public opinion the overall view from PF is on this subject. As of this date (May 17th), the most recent three major polls (all the ones conducted on the subject this month to date) show the president's job approval rating in the upper 30s and disapproval in the mid-to-upper 50s and likewise the Gallup daily tracking poll shows the same trend. Let's see just how far away from that the general opinion is on this message board: Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing as president?

I do believe there's also a poll that shows that if the Trump/Clinton election were held again Trump would win again by even a bigger EC vote and probably even the popular vote. Seem Hillary's popularity is slipping even further than Trumps, huh?

[Green Arrow]

I do believe there's also a poll that shows that if the Trump/Clinton election were held again Trump would win again by even a bigger EC vote and probably even the popular vote. Seem Hillary's popularity is slipping even further than Trumps, huh?

Hillary became irrelevant as of November 9, 2016.