Trump is not used to this, but to be fair, few presidents would be. As this column has written time and again, for all Trump’s reputation as the teflon guy, the one who survives every scandal with the support and love from his MAGA heads, he has never had to navigate the presidency amidst true economic worry and anger. And while the market may have survived the collapse of an impending bubble over AI with Nvidia’s surprisingly high earnings report, Americans are still furious with increasing inflation driving up the cost of living, and now they’re taking it out on Trump with a very apparent and substantial drop in his polling across a wide swath over the last ten days. So Trump is now forced to face the Epstein scandal at the worst possible time – as Americans shop for Christmas.
\Good.
The news rattled even CNN’s Harry Enten, their “man at the board” with numbers (As if they are impossible to interpret by a sitting anchor). Enten laid out just how dire the situation faced by Trump and his administration. We have a report by Rawstory:
“When your best poll has you still 14 points underwater, you know it’s truly bad and it’s as bad as 26 points underwater!” Enten said. “We’re talking about an average well, well underwater with the deep blue sea swimming with the fishes!”
As to what was driving Trump’s historic polling drop, Enten pointed to the president’s “atrocious” favorability among independent voters, which dropped by a staggering 39 points since Trump took office, from minus 4 points in January to minus 43 points in November.
Keep an eye on that number because control of the House runs through independents. Though there are very few remaining competitive seats, far more seats open up as competitive when the Independents are pissed off. While the Democrats are hardly popular as a party, the fact that Independents are furious about the state of things means they’ll take it out on the party in power, and Republicans have all the power across all three branches right now. They’d best get set for a gut punch.
That punch will land primarily in Trump’s ample abdomen, softer than ever, because the reason that Trump gets away with nearly anything is that the GOP majorities ensure that there is little to no committee oversight; no one asks the administration hard questions. A Democratic majority of just one vote next year means that these committees will now unleash themselves investigating Trump’s dirty deals, and likely more into Epstein. That is precisely what Trump et. al. are looking at:
“Oh my God… when you’re 43 points underwater with independents, you know you’re doing terribly!” Enten said. “You can’t win with this! If this holds for next year’s midterm election, wave adios amigos, goodbye, see you later to that House Republican majority. And that Senate Republican majority? Very much in danger as well!”
Well, the Senate is a tough go from here to the foreseeable future because of its very makeup. There are just so many tiny red states; Wyoming’s two senators cancel out California, Idaho cancels Washington, and on and on. But the House is in play, and it is always hard for an administration to gain House seats in a second term. In this environment, it is nearly impossible. In the end, too, control over the Senate means relatively little (Over the ’26 to ’28 years) because Trump isn’t signing anything they might pass anyway. The investigations mean everything.
Quite obviously, this is why the Administration is really feeling the heat. They are acting like a fascist state and robbing the place at gunpoint. Many are piling away cash in various ways because Trump doesn’t allow allies to be punished. All of that is put into jeopardy if the House is exposing the deals, setting up possible future prosecutions by a Democratic DOJ or even a non-Trump White House (for the worst of it).
To be sure, Trump is going to do all he can to steal the next election. He will set the military up at polling places, he will challenge all results, perhaps even refuse to recognize a Democratic majority, maybe even try to cancel the election altogether – that’s what he does. But as he is forced to get further and further out there, he assumes more and more risk, risk that he may balk from, allowing the country to turn back to a more democratic small “d” future.
We can hope. The signs are promising. And even for a guy who is seemingly scandal-proof, all evidence as to that resilience has only ever come amidst a stable, fairly decent economy. Not so much now.
And it shows.
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ETTD.
Including his own political power.
Eventually.
After all, anyone this incompetent at EVERYTHING can’t survive their own consequences.