I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.
This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.
Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.
Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.
Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:
“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’
“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …
“During a Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”
In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.
It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.
It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.
the correct link for WSJ’s battleground poll results page is this one:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battleground04-frameset.html
On the Truman-Dewey race in 1948.
This is a classic that has long been taught in survey research courses — and there are some interesting points that suggest things to consider this year.
First of all, the last Gallup poll was conducted in mid October. It did not pick up Harry Truman’s passionate late campaign by rail, and it did not pick up the near collapse of the Wallace campaign in the last weeks. Remember, 1948 was a 4 way campaign, Truman and Dewey, plus Strom Thurmon on the Dixiecrat ticket, and Henry Wallace running as a progressive.
But the real polling era was Gallup’s — they had not considered the need to adjust their polling results to the vast demographic changes that were the result of World War II. In many respects, they still operated off demographics from the 1940 census — and the War had changed lots of things.
In particular, Northern Industrial States had many precincts that were 3-4 times as populus post war as pre-war. But housing was scarse, and people were living doubled and tripled up. THIS WAS PARTICULARLY TRUE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY. With the labor movement putting massive effort into registeration and GOTV that year — Industrial worker precincts were way underpolled given their population.
But it was really the Black Community that made the critical difference. In fact, Gallup did not really poll blacks, and it employed no black interviewers, and apparently they just assumed Blacks were Republican. But that wasn’t true any more. Blacks who had migrated from the South — from can’t vote states to places like illinois and PA where the CIO would actually take them down to register after work — fully understood Truman had started to integrate the services, supported Fair Employment Practices, had voted in the Senate for the anti-Lynching laws — and most important, had the courtesy to ask for votes. It’s the moment of the “big switch” which had been underway for some years. Blacks turned out big time in 1948, and provided the margin in Industrial States that put them over the top for Truman.
In many ways this election could be somewhat parallel to 48 in that the technology change from land lines to cell phones could be systematicly missing a significant segment of the electorate. Likewise, I am not certain we yet know how the GOTV strategies of this year are going to work.
Bill,
I’m not sure why, but it takes time for changes in national polling to be reflected in polling from individual states. The states usually lag the national trends. However, electoral-vote.com, for what it’s worth, has it Kerry 253 Bush 264. Not bad.
Actually, Kerry’s further ahead in the electoral college than he is in the general population.
Things are looking better for Kerry in the polls but he still shows quite a bit behind in the electorial college. It seems like if he is nearly tied in the polls he should be tied in the college.
I know this blog is for polling, but below is an interesting article that I think sums up the campaign from here on out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1322354,00.html
Also, demtom, back in 1948 they basically didn’t poll undecideds, and many of the national polls vastly overrepresented the pro-Dewey northeast.
Thoughtful comment Ramdan and I would add that it all depends on the distribution of a relatively small number of voters in a small number of swing states. A nail biter, at this point anyway.
I certainly hope the tightness of the race is giving Nader voters pause.
More pro Kerry polls for Iowa, Minnesota, Florida, Wisconsin and New Mexico…
http://actforvictory.org/act.php/truth/articles/new_swing_state_polling_from_america_coming_together/
Enjoy.
-DS
This is going to be a breakout year for voting. High registration, high motivation (on both sides) and improved GOTV efforts will result in the highest participation we have seen.
Polls aren’t able to track the new voters that only have cell phones, or don’t meet the likely voter filter. Frankly, that filter is clogged, and needs to be cleaned. This year is nog going to conform to the model of previous years.
It’s close now, but the momentum has shifted. Be careful of pitfalls, and watch out for an Octuba surprise.
Bush basically has done a terrible job in the last 4 years, so he doesn’t have much to run on. This week his best reason for invading Iraq was blown out of the water. His post invasion strategy was shown to be flawed. And he showed his ugly scowl to over 60,000,000 on tv.
The Los Angeles Times had an editorial on Thursday, October 7, 2004 saying
“Is He a Dope?
Although neither group likes to say so, some Americans who support President Bush and many who don’t support him have concluded over four years that he may not be very bright. This suspicion was not allayed by Bush’s answers in the first presidential debate a week ago.”
There’s no good news for Bush in this poll. None.
Waiting for some comments on the WSJ-Zogby Battleground Poll completed yesterday:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/interactive.wsj.com/us_business_news;famil=news;s0=;s1=;s2=;u=ThuOct7120553EDT2004019722341;meta=DEN;sz=120×600;ptile=1;ord=11385113851138511385
Adding in all leaners within margin of error gives Kerry the win with 322 to Bush’s 216. Removing the states within the margin of error puts it Kerry: 243 electoral votes to Bush: 189. This appears to be the largest number of electoral votes outside of the margin of error for either candidate since Kerry’s 252 on 7/12. (Other previous bests are 235 for Kerry on 8/2 to Bush’s 225 on 8/23.)
WSJ’s analysis basically tries to undermine some of the poll they sponsored. Interesting.
-DS
using this poll and all other nationals polls via pollingreport.com
Difference of 1.16%
bush 47.6
kerry 46.5
not using polls if they are greater than 2 STDEVs from mean
bush 47.33
kerry 46.66
its a 0.66% difference. if we expect 110,000,000 voters than thats a difference of just 730,000 people
I think Bush is very close to the “tipping point” where things will quickly start to unravel. If Kerry crushes Bush in Friday’s debate, which i believe he will, the momentum might be unstoppable. As GWB’s platform is built upon a bed of lies, his campaign might crash harder than all of us suspect.
Well, this is certainly encouraging news for Kerry, although I don’t know what to think about the reason(s) for it. Too late for a post-debate bounce from last week. Is there any such thing as a pre-debate bounce?
This has been a week from hell for the GOP on Iraq. Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney continue to insist that Saddam might not have had weapons or the means to develop them, but he WANTED them, so the war was the right thing to do. And, by the way, everything’s goin’ fine. Maybe LVs and RVs across the country are starting to think that the president and vice-president have actually lost their minds.
I’ll tell you what, though. This polling roller coaster is starting to drive me crazy. November 2 can’t get here fast enough. I can’t take much more of this.
Has anyone created an algorithm that translates a popluar vote into the most probable electoral vote? Is that even possible?
Are we supposed to be looking at poll results from likely voters or not? Isn’t Bush over 50% in any poll bad news….
I’ve asked this question elsewhere and never got an answer: has there ever been a time when an incumbent trailed in a serious presidential poll this close to an election and came back to win? I suppose Truman would be one case, though apparently, back then, pollsters stopped surveying right after Labor Day, believing opinion was solidified by then. It strikes me as a very ominous sign for Bush.
It’s hard to find any polls at this point that give Bush 50% or better; the only distinction among the varoius polls is how low Bush’s number goes (somewhere from 45 to 49), and how much of the opposition has so far declared for Kerry. Zogby, for instance, has it Bush 46/Kerry 44, but his profile of the undecided makes it clear they’re most Kerry votes waiting to happen.
Meantime, the reports of new registrations read like a DNC fantasy. If these numbers translate into real turnout gains in November, we could be looking at something extraordinary.
Okay, note to self: turn off the excitement meter and hunker down. 26 grueling days to go.