Trump Popularity Sinks Lower (And You Thought That Wasn’t Possible)

“MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN,” boasted Trump on his social media.

Analyst G. Elliott Morris notes that this is technically true, if he means the high “disapprove” number.

Trump is at roughly 36% approval and 61% disapproval, and he’s rapidly losing ground.

He set a new record low five days in a row just in the last week:

This puts him lower than every other modern president at this point in either their first or second term — with the exception of Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after dropping to 24% approval.

It’s a struggle, as Morris notes, to figure out how Trump dropped so low. He reasons that 40% of people are Republicans, and they seem to be uniformly behind Trump’s personal version of Republican: MAGA.

He reports that two important groups of former supporters are turning on him — and a third is incredibly activated against the GOP, too.

As yesterday’s Democratic primaries showed with the push to a more radical Left, GOP voters are losing enthusiasm, while independents move toward the progressive Democratic base.

Independents are giving Trump the worst ratings of his presidency.

And almost a quarter of Trump’s own 2024 voters now say they regret their vote, up from 19% in late June.

This presidential disapproval translates to the overall election picture for November. On a generic ballot, Trump voters back Republicans by about 84 points - but Democrats back Democrats by about 92 points. That’s how you spell “show up at the voting booths.”

Upshot? America may be headed for an even bigger “blue wave” than the one in 2018.

In that wave, Democrats gained a net total of 41 House seats and won the national popular vote by a margin of roughly 9.7 million votes. They also gained seven state governorships and control of six state legislative chambers.

2018 also saw the highest voter turnout seen in midterm elections since 1914, at 49.4%. The elections saw several electoral firsts for women, racial minorities, and LGBT candidates, including the election of the first openly gay governor and the first openly bisexual U.S. senator.

Democrats focused on health care and the GOP push to repeal Obamacare, and the incompetence of then-president Trump. He launched a China-IS trade war. Go figure.

Looks like history is ready to repeat itself.

If anything, says Morris, Democrats are even likelier today to win control of the House than they were at this point in 2018.

These kinds of pronouncements excite me (I don’t get out much).

Compared to 2018 there are more “Lean Republican” seats for the Democrats to pick up — and fewer Lean Democratic seats for them to lose. “Lean Republican” means close-call polling.

Today the race is meaningfully tighter, at 211 to 253 Democratic seats — with far more simulations where Democrats clear the 218 seats needed for the majority.

There is another hopeful factor: in a mid-term election, the party that controls the White House (Republicans this year) tends to stay home historically, conferring a large turnout advantage onto the opposition party (Democrats).

This goes beyond a turn of events where some voters in all groups are souring on Trump.

“The problem for Trump isn’t just that he’s unpopular, it’s that the people most opposed to him look more locked in than the people who elected him, while independents are also moving away from the right in a big way,” notes Morris.

“That’s going to have big electoral consequences.”

And what might those consequences be?

Just to sum up why the GOP will lose control of the House: 1. They have only a handful of seats to lose to cost them control; 2. They will be hurt by Trump’s low job approval rating; 3. the “generic ballot” poll shows voters would prefer Democrats; 4. The war in Iran/the Middle East will continue to be a disaster even if Trump says he “won” it; and 5. The party that controls the White House will lose a substantial number of House seats.

Immediately after seizing power, House Democrats would gain control of committee chairmanships, congressional investigations and the legislative calendar.

Then, in Mike Johnson’s own words: “If we lose the midterms, the Democrats will go after the president’s family, the cabinet, his donors, friends, and the rest of you who have committed crimes.”

How many would that include, “those who have committed crimes”?

There is a long list of deeds and fellow actors that many consider illegal or unconstitutional.

These actions include trying to end birthright citizenship, refusing to spend billions of dollars appropriated by Congress, imposing tariffs without congressional approval, deporting unauthorized immigrants without due process and demanding nearly $1 billion in free legal services from major law firms to avoid losing federal contracts, security clearances and access to federal buildings. Trump’s also threatening to cut billions of dollars in federal funding to universities that refuse to follow his rules on hiring, admissions and teaching, restricting the access of news organizations he dislikes and improperly firing officials at independent federal regulatory agencies.

All of the people involved in these crimes are open to investigation and punishment.

As Columbia University Law Professor David Pozen puts it “The depth and breadth of this administration’s disregard for civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and legal constraints of all kinds mark it as an authoritarian regime.”

And the new Democratic majority in the House would impeach Trump for a third time.

He has been through this before. If he gets impeached a third time, says the new York Times, it would be an extraordinary miscarriage of justice if he gets away untouched again. But the Senate needs a two-thirds majority to put the icing on a cake made by the House, so it could happen again.

Even progressives acknowledge that there’s little to be gained from putting effort into a process that’s destined to fail in the Senate.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said “Literally no Democrats are talking about this; this is not something that comes up in our discussions at all.”

Democrats would also kill Trump’s legislative agenda. He doesn’t really have anything except moves to pour money to billionaires, so this may be disrupted.

Control of the Senate could also affect the prospects of future legislation and shape the political environment heading into the 2028 presidential election.

For the Dems to control the Senate, they would have to pick up five seats in mid-November. They have a chance in seven: North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, Texas, Michigan and Alaska.

If the Dems take the Senate, Trump can kiss goodbye to the Supreme Court. Justice Alito will ‘be encouraged’ to retire on November 4. There will possibly be a Clarence Thomas retirement too.

Here is something that will be on the priority list of any progressive Dem winner:

50 billionaire families have already spent $440-million on the 2026 mid-terms. 80% of the cash is going towards politicians and groups who will protect tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. Before Citizens United made it legal, total billionaire spending was $16-million in 2008. The arrogance is now so bad, that Musk feels able to send out posts like this:

He has just announced that he will be spending $100-million for the mid-terms. Musk has been centered out for possible violation of Wisconsin election bribery laws so perhaps that process has already started.

Re-casting the political financial base will remove the excessive control of the wealthy and invite more even-handed laws that overturn wealth inequality.

Trump also knows the DOJ will be forced to release the Epstein files and people will be arrested for the cover up.

He also knows that we have barely scratched the surface of the ugly world he lives in. He raised $300-mllion for his ballroom bunker, and then he got taxpayers to fund it, pocketing the $300-million.

The ICE and military leaders who have followed illegal orders will be under a spotlight. ICE has summarily executed Americans in the street to the cheers of Congress, thrown children in secret prisons, and deported anyone they please to some Third World torture chamber without the slightest oversight. That will change.

Trump and his family made billions of dollars last year through grift and corruption. This will be under a magnifying glass.

Trump will lose the midterm elections by a landslide. So decisively, in fact, that fraud is impossible. As Kamala Harris would say, it will be “too big to rig”. He will try NOT TO ACCEPT the election results…but the evidence will be blinding.

Face it, whatever Trump has done before to try to cheat, has collapsed under incompetence and poor judgement.

Storm the Capitol?

Are you SIMPLE?

What did he think was going to happen? There was no end-game where that had a chance of advancing his cause.

Now, challenge the mid-terms?

He has already lost so badly, that his only remaining option is to pick out the colour of his prison uniform.

The only good thing for Trump, is that he will probably sleep through the coming decade, and not register any of it.

A bonus to all of this, is that Iran has said it would not conclude the war until there had been a regime change in America.

Coming soon.

Get ready to open the Strait! America is coming through.

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In the coming weeks we will look at WHAT IF THE PRESIDENT IS AN IDIOT – Trump, power and the death of serious politics – How a reality show became a presidency.

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