John Kerry leads George Bush 49-46 percent of nation-wide LV’s, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos Public Affairs Poll conducted 10/18-20. The poll also found Bush’s approval rating at 47 percent.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 10: Democrats Shouldn’t Miss Opportunity Created by Trump Tariff Blunders
I realize trade policy has been a very contentious issue among Democrats during the last 30 years or so. But they absolutely must seize the current opportunity to go after Trump’s tariff program, as I argued at New York:
For months, Democratic elected officials have been trying to figure out a compelling message on Donald Trump’s agenda that will gratify the grassroots Democratic demand for vocal and united opposition. At the moment, the headlines are full of extremely high-profile turmoil involving Trump’s “Liberation Day” agenda of tariffs and trade warfare. It is likely getting the attention of not only politically active people but anyone whose investments or 401(k) accounts are affected by equity markets. And there is zero question that rank-and-file Democrats hate what Trump is trying to do with greater unanimity than on any of the other things they hate about Trump 2.0. If you have any doubts about that, check out the very latest, post–Liberation Day findings from Quinnipiac:
“97 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 44 percent of Republicans think the tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy in the short-term. Forty-six percent of Republicans, 19 percent of independents and 2 percent of Democrats think the tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the short-term. …
“95 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of independents and 10 percent of Republicans think the tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy in the long-term. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans, 35 percent of independents and 3 percent of Democrats think the tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the long-term.”
You don’t see polling that conclusive very often, even in this era of hyper-polarization. But beyond the simple fact that the Democratic base instinctively hates Trump’s tariff agenda, this should strike Democratic politicians as a heaven-sent opportunity to expose Trump on an issue of maximum vulnerability: the cost of living. One would think, given the crucial importance of this issue to his victory over Joe Biden last November, that the 47th president would do anything imaginable to avoid a spike in consumer prices anytime soon. But instead, Trump is courting exactly the worst kind of disaster, and voters across the board recognize it:
“Most Americans are bracing for higher prices on a wide range of consumer goods following President Donald Trump’s move to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from most of the world, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
“The three-day poll, which concluded on Sunday, found that 73% of respondents said they thought prices in the next six months would increase for the items they buy every day after the new taxes on almost all imports took effect.”
So in recognition of this potentially earth-shaking own-goal by Trump, the product of his economic ignorance and long-held ideology, Democratic elected officials should be issuing a trumpet call of great volume and total clarity, right?
Check out this description in the Washington Post of a speech by one of the Democratic Party’s brightest stars and see if it reflects the total opposition to Trump’s tariff agenda that is clearly called for at this particular moment:
“Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, sought Wednesday to distinguish herself from fellow Democrats who have been strongly criticizing President Donald Trump and his tariffs, offering a more nuanced assessment during a speech emphasizing bipartisanship in Washington.
“The speech came ahead of a meeting with Trump at the White House, her second since Trump returned to office.
“Whitmer made clear that she disagreed with Trump’s sweeping and abrupt use of tariffs, saying it has been ‘really tough’ on her state and the auto industry that powers its economy. But she withheld more pointed criticism of the president, saying she understands the “motivation” behind his tariffs and agrees that Americans ‘need to make more stuff in America.'”
Now, as it happens, Whitmer made her mixed message immeasurably worse by immediately going into a private Oval Office meeting with Trump that the president (either craftily or fortuitously) turned into a photo op in which the Michigan governor stood there while he signed some particularly obnoxious executive orders. It’s not exactly the picture of vicious hand-to-hand combat with the authoritarian of the White House that grassroots Democrats have been demanding. But Whitmer’s not alone in struggling to bring herself to blast Trump’s tariffs entirely, as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out at The Atlantic:
“Two days after President Donald Trump’s shambolic “Liberation Day” announcement, which set off a full-scale economic meltdown, House Democrats released a video response. It was oddly sedate, almost academic in its nuance. The video featured Representative Chris Deluzio, from western Pennsylvania, who calmly intoned, ‘A wrong-for-decades consensus on “free trade” has been a race to the bottom’ and ‘Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically, or they can be misused.’
“As the American public was screaming, ‘Please, God, no!’ the Democrats were calmly whispering, ‘Yes, but.’”
From a purely historical perspective, this anti-anti-protectionism is astounding. Until very recently, basic support for free trade (albeit sometimes with exceptions) was the oldest continuing policy tradition of the Democratic Party. Every Democratic president from Martin Van Buren to Barack Obama favored expanded global trade to create new markets and reduce consumer prices. But, as Chait observed, that changed with Joe Biden, who embraced “a decade-old strategy designed to co-opt Trump’s appeal to working-class voters by backing away from the party’s general support for free trade under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama” (and, I’d add, under Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Carter). This reversal was reinforced by multiple factors, including the longtime protectionism of manufacturing unions, the hostility to globalization among progressive activists, and the pivotal role Rust Belt swing states have played in the politics of the Trump era. It’s no coincidence that Whitmer represents one of those states, and one in which Democrats have long embraced trade restrictions.
In the current Trump 2.0 emergency, maintaining an anti-anti-protectionist position is incredibly shortsighted. Democrats do not need to declare themselves 100 percent free traders in order to 100 percent deplore what Trump is doing, instead of tut-tutting that he’s doing a good thing in a bad way. Trump’s innate 19th-century protectionist instincts will always create enormous pressures for falling economic growth and rising consumer prices; indeed, the ultimate economic nightmare of stagflation is precisely what some economists consider the most likely consequence of a MAGA trade war.
If Democrats believe half of what they are saying about the threat to democracy Trump 2.0 represents, they’ll recognize that a strong pushback against Trump’s tariffs is absolutely the best way to undermine his political position and divide Republicans, a majority of whose elected officials are stone free traders in the Reagan-Bush tradition. Democrat thinkers and political practitioners have plenty of time to figure out exactly what their own international economic policies will be if they regain the White House in 2028. But if they don’t take full advantage of the present opportunity to unite grassroots Democrats and inflation-hating voters generally and exploit Trump’s unforced errors on trade policy, they will have nobody but themselves to blame if power continues to remain elusive.
Demtom,
In answer to your second question, I saw a report a couple of months ago that no incumbent president in the past 80 years (since polling really began) has ever won re-election when the challenger was ahead in the polls at ANY POINT DURING THE CALENDAR YEAR. As we know, Kerry has been ahead in the polls for about half this year.
That same report said no incumbent had ever gone onto re-election when they were not at least 16 points ahead in the polls after their convention. As we know, Bush was up by an average of 4 points after the GOP hatefest.
All in all, not good indicators for the incumbent.
The EMD explanations on polling and its limitations are helpful. But they are far less reassuring that I’d like when virtually all the national polling trends show Bush gaining, not losing…and when many of the key battleground polls show similar trends. I’d sure sleep easier if the trend was reversed, even if Kerry were mathematically behind–but gaining. T.J.
The one thing that seems so clear from all the polls over the last couple weeks is this:
The tide is with us and it is strong.
Demtom:
My view is that what we are seeing is the outcome of seeing Bush during the first debate. Remember prior to that- almost all other exposure to Bush was in an unchallenged situation except the Meet the Press interview where his numbers also fell. This is the realization of really bad news (Iraq, the flu, etc) that demonstrates a common narrative, that this President means well , but is incompetent (kerry’s line that you can be resolute and wrong is perfect). I forget where but there is an excellent post on one of the blogs about how Bush is actually just Carter revisited on the Republican party.
demtom wrote: “has any incumbent president trailed his challenger in ANY poll this close to an election and still managed to win?”
Well there’s Truman, of course. But I don’t think it’s happened since then.
I don’t think we’ve had an election comparable to this one in quite a while, so historical analogies don’t hold much water for me. (I keep hoping for the 1980 analogy to come through, but that may just be wishful thinking.)
I so sick of seeing national polls. With less than two weeks left, I think its time we start focusing solely on the states that matter.
Two things:
1) Does it strike anyone else that most recent polls not only show Bush with approvals that are dangerously low, but that are in most cases his bottom point — e.g., the Time poll had him at 49%, not nearly as good-for-Kerry as the 44-47’s floating around elsewhere, but it’s still the lowest of recent vintage in a poll that had always scored high for him. For many of us, it’s been a source of consternation that, despite accumulating bad news (and public awareness of said news), Bush’s job approval had always remained respectable — at least, compared to his dad and Jimmy Carter. But maybe what we’d been seeing was only a stubborn hanging-on of the post 9/11 haze: that a certain percentage still reflexively gave “approval to the executive in time of war” but nonetheless didn’t really like Bush all that much, and now, with re-election very much in the balance, these voters are expressing their true (lower) opinions for the first time.
2) I’ve asked a variation of this question in the past and never got an acceptable answer. We can all talk about who’s up who’s down, 50% rules, undecided to the challenger, likely voters — but, has any incumbent president trailed his challenger in ANY poll this close to an election and still managed to win?