Your own chart shows “strongly approve” on a down trend. And sitting just below 60 percent as of a week ago. Combined with “somewhat approve”, which is on an up trend, and far from a ringing endorsement. Glowing reviews situation. You hit your claimed 90.
And that chart is on Trump voters. Fewer people voted for Trump then Clinton. Not every typical GOp voter voted at all, or voted for Trump. And turn out for 2016 was something like 58%. Like I said a subset of a subset with clear evidence of support eroding. His general approval ratings are among the lowest ever recorded. And like wise on a down trend. And his own party is beginning to vocally push back on his most recent policy proposals. And some of those policy proposals risk losing this key,
small demographics that helped him eek out a win on a technicality. Like his healthcare bill alienating rust belt workers who need medicare/caid, And his immigration proposals that are causing panic among farmers. This is not a politician with a large, durable, base capable of unilaterally wresting control from anything. If it came to it, more people would want to hit Trump with sticks than defend him from sticks.
A faction within a faction.
As for trumpist “locking it down” I’m not exactly sure what your referring to. If it’s the shake ups in the executive. Yeah there is some what of trend of ditching GOP functionaries for insane people. But these have been scandal driven, or the result of continual infighting within Trumps camp. But it’s not as if a Trump true believer group has just won out over a faction willing to push back. Preibus is out. But there are still a couple different groups of Trump backers that are pulling in different directions. Bannon and the fascists, The family/kirschner, hardline far right GOP functionaries, increasingly military leaders. He’s ditched as many of his own supported for supporters from a different group. And then reversed to ditch those supporters for supporters from other groups.
This is not a concerted effort. It’s still a shit show. Staffers are still leaking left and right to one up each other, or out of concern for what’s going on. Your doing the four dimensional chess thing.
If your referring to efforts to sand bag the elections or cripple Congress. The executive doesn’t really have that power. Our elections are controlled largely by the states. GOP voter suppression efforts have been quietish. And the courts, even GOP packed ones have been actively pushing back on voter suppression. Are starting to come around on gerrymandering. And have generally enforced the rule of law on Trumps nonsense.
Attacks on Congress? Yeah as craven as they are I don’t see the GOP just going along with that. They are craven precisely because they want to maintain their own power. Attempts by Trump to truly remove, usurp or limit that. Trump has curiously few true, hardline backers in Congress and most of them are in the house. Major moves in this direction would likely break whatever half assed alliance they have.
Attempts to side step any of these protections. Or to ignore the courts. That there is a constitutional crisis. That there is impeachable abuse of power. And while we should be worried that Trump might slip past that, ignore it, people might be complacent enough to allow it. We should have those same concerns if he’s impeached tomorrow. Because it’s the same circumstance. And That generally hasn’t been the way things have gone so far. The courts are still willing to do their fucking job, his nonsense has not become law as often as he’d like. And his people can’t get their shit together long enough to be effectively evil.
The midterms I’m unsure. Which is why I went with ifs and qualifications. There are very slightly more dnc voters in the country. The flip side of Trumps win is that it was probably more about bad turnout among key dnc demographics. Overall and in key states. Than it was about those tiny groups that flipped. The handful of special elections we’ve had so far, while dnc losses, we’re far closer than those districts have ever been before. Those races would not have been competitive without Trump.
But the DNC are being idiots. As are the left generally. And without a concerted, sensible effort. Something not just about Trump. More focus on down ballot races. And fixes to badly fucked up data and turnout Operations. None of that gets us too far.
