Curt Matlock of MyDD provided a link today to an ad that the Alliance for Justice (a respected liberal group that played a big role in the Bork confirmation fight back in the day) is planning to run on national cable and selected broadcast markets, in an effort to gin up the public against the “nuclear option” on judicial nominations.Matlock didn’t comment on the effectiveness of the ad, but take a look yourself, and see if you think a long animated spot featuring a talking bullhorn named Phil A. Buster, and his friends Check and Balanz (not to mention the Founding Fathers, described as “really smart guys”) is going to turn the tide. I do think the ad is likely to boost support for the filibuster among first-time voters in 2016 or so, but the deal will probably go down well before then.I know that some people don’t think Democrats should ever be critical of anybody on “our team,” and maybe the ad is one of those ironic, so-bad-it’s-good things that old goats like me don’t “get.” But I hope somebody’s working on an ad that operates on a slightly more literate level, if only to prevent those “really smart guys” who designed our system from rolling in their graves.
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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.