How Dems can talk to working class voters about immigration. (Click to Read.)
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
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.
While I agree that Dems should show sympathy for what is happening to the working class and the decline of industrial jobs, there is little in this memo that resembles a solution. Truth is a high school education is of limited value at this point in time.
We should promote strong labor forces and undo much of the damage the “right to work” movement has caused. But let’s hear about how we:
1. protect workers in the gig economy.
2. how to help small rural towns survive.
3. how to enhance labor protections.
If electric cars are the future, what do you propose for auto mechanics? A century ago, the question would have been, what do you propose for buggy whip manufacturers?
It is obvious Nancy Pelosi doesn’t live around Alexandria Virginia. I am an American citizen have paid taxes over the years I feel at this point as though I live in a foreign country anymore. More people speak Spanish than English we need legal immigration only we need to deport people who have come in illegally if not let’s open the doors to all the other countries to come in illegally. Democrats are not about what the people want the people want our country back wake up
these people that come in file papers and become fruit pickers, minor labor americans wont do.
you cant get a kid off the couch with his video games to mow a damn lawn ! let alone pick strawberrys and blueberrys,
lol yeah right