Tonight I saw HBO’s film about the Rwanda genocide of 1994, “Sometime in April.” It’s a powerful movie, and it is especially impressive in making it clear how little the U.N. and the U.S. did despite extensive knowledge of what was happening day by day. As for the French… well, the film does a subtle but devastating job of showing Paris’ sympathy for the wrong side. As it happens, there is something that I and the other millions of people who may ultimately see “Sometime in April” can do other than feel guilty. We can raise holy hell about today’s ongoing genocide in Darfur, a situation in which New York and Paris and Washington (along with Moscow and Beijing) seem determined, once again, to do little or nothing until it is too late.The OAU presence in Darfur is completely inadequate to the task. U.N. action will probably be blocked by Russia and China. Today’s New Dem Dispatch proposes an emergency NATO mission. That will require immediate and vocal leadership from the President of the United States, who for once has a genuine opportunity to show he really believes in a “culture of life,” and in U.S. moral leadership. Like my colleague The Moose, I believe agitating for action in Darfur is a mission that should unite all sorts of disparate elements of the blogosphere.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 6: Trump Job Approval Again Underwater, Where It Belongs
As an inveterate poll-watcher, I have been waiting for the moment when Donald Trump’s job approval numbers went underwater, his accustomed position for nearly all of his presidential career. It arrived around the time he made his speech to Congress, as I noted at New York:
Even as he was delivering the most partisan address to Congress maybe ever, Donald Trump’s public support seemed to be regularly eroding. An updated FiveThirtyEight average of Trump’s approval ratings on March 4 (released just as news broke that ABC was shutting down the revered data site) showed him going underwater for the first time since reoccupying the White House, with 47.6 percent approval and 47.9 percent disapproval. That puts Trump back in the same territory of public opinion he occupied during his first term as president, where (per Gallup) he never achieved more than 50 percent job approval, and averaged a mere 41 percent.
Perhaps Trump will get lucky and conditions in the country will improve enough to validate his agenda, but it’s more likely that the same sour public climate that overwhelmed Joe Biden will now afflict his predecessor and successor.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey that pushed Trump’s numbers into negative territory showed a mood very different from the 47th president’s boasts about a new “golden age” for our country:
“Thirty-four percent of Americans say that the country is headed in the right direction, compared to 49% who say it is off on the wrong track. When it comes to several specific issues, Americans are more likely to say things are off on the wrong track than going in the right direction: cost of living (22% right direction / 60% wrong track), the national economy (31% right direction / 51% wrong track), national politics (33% right direction / 50% wrong track), American foreign policy (33% right direction / 49% wrong track), and employment and jobs (33% right direction / 47% wrong track).”
So all the hype about Trump being a popular president who was in the midst of engineering a major realignment of the American electorate is already looking more than a bit hollow. Trump has a solid Republican base of support and a solid Democratic opposition, with independents currently leaning towards the Democratic Party on most issues. Perhaps Trump’s agenda will gain momentum and support, but since he’s not trying to reach out beyond his party’s base at all, he’s going to need a lift from Americans who only voted for him in 2024 as the lesser of evils and may not vote in the 2026 midterms at all.
At present Trump has lost whatever presidential “honeymoon” he initially enjoyed after his return to the White House, and needs to find new converts to return to genuine popularity. He’s not off to a great start.