‘Whether by design or lucky accident, he has given himself a singular armor, a special inoculation, which is that no one expects more from him…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In spite of the incessant attacks from the Left calling President Donald Trump a “racist” and claiming he is the direct cause of “carnage” due to a spate of public attacks, his approval continues to climb.
Now, media figures who felt certain their biased barrage could undo the president have begun second-guessing their ability to sway the public.
In a column published Thursday, New York Times number-cruncher Nate Cohn examined recent public opinion polls “of the highest-quality” and noted the trend, which his ivory-tower cohorts referred to as “scary” and “outrageous.”
“Donald J. Trump doesn’t always seem like a candidate focused on expanding his base of support. He may have done so anyway,” wrote Cohn begrudgingly.
Rather than reflect on how their elitist groupthink may have left them out of touch with ordinary American citizens, the pundits went on to grasp for every possible explanation that might still validate their worldview.
Cohn, himself, underscored that the number is by no means an indicator of future election success for Trump, whose job and personal approval numbers have only rarely crossed the 50-percent threshold.
However, he said, it does mean that the hubris-prone opposition party cannot take success for granted either—particularly considering the inherent biases in polling that were revealed following the 2016 election.
Flawed Opposition
Many on the Left have proceeded under the assumption that “Democrats fell just short of victory,” Cohn said, because Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate—itself a rare acknowledgement in the mainstream media.
Thus, they contend, they need only a slight improvement to put them over the top.
But in ignoring their party’s race to the socialist fringe, most remain unwilling to acknowledge the underlying problems with the Democratic platform or the possibility that their 2020 candidate may be even worse.
Although Clinton’s lack of popularity was unprecedented at the time among Democrats, “an analysis that freezes the president’s standing in 2016 but assumes an improvement for the Democratic nominee would be misleading,” Cohn wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s opponents have assumed that ratcheting up their rhetoric against the president using the most extreme forms of polemic exaggeration would alienate his supporters—much as it did during the George W. Bush era—but, instead, it has done the opposite.
“Millions of Americans who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do,” Cohn wrote. “Over all, his personal favorability rating has increased by about 10 percentage points among registered voters since Election Day 2016.”
Cohn’s Times colleague Frank Bruni recognized that a bungling Democratic candidate could prove to be Trump’s biggest advantage of all.
Naturally, his reaction was to deflect the concern by blaming Trump, saying the Left’s blunders were “picayune” when compared with the president’s.
“The truth is that any week—maybe even any day—of Trump’s presidency contains enough gaffes, crassness and fiction to sink any one of the Democratic candidates for president,” Bruni said. “And those candidates suffer for their worst moments in a way that he doesn’t for much worse ones.”
Bruni continued to whine that “Teflon Don” had shielded himself against criticism from his adversaries by simply refusing to succumb to it.
“Whether by design or lucky accident, he has given himself a singular armor, a special inoculation, which is that no one expects more from him,” Bruni said. “After all, he never managed or earnestly promised to be any better. There’s no shock factor.”
In a sense, Trump benefited from the low expectations he started with as a known public figure whose sole mission was to disrupt the politics-as-usual paradigm—which he has done in droves while presiding over a robust economy, restoring balance within the courts and undoing many of the Obama-era policies that voters found unpalatable.
Shy No More
Cohn said conservatives who initially disapproved of the president may actually have changed their opinions for the better—or else resolved, when faced with a far-left alternative, to hold their nose and vote for the incumbent.
He noted that Trump’s stability in online polls was long presumed to account for the “shy” Trump voter, who would be less likely to acknowledge support to a live person.
While the online figures have not changed drastically, the president’s success in phone polling, therefore, indicates that people are becoming more open and outspoken in their support.
“It’s true that the president’s job approval rating has been unusually stable when compared with other presidents,” Cohn wrote. “But the possibility that he has lifted his ratings, however fleetingly, to match the highest levels of his presidency is a reminder that the ceiling on his support is higher than some may think.”
Many analysts on the Left—including Cohn and Bruni—are now expressing hope that an impending economic collapse, further bloodshed from political violence or other factors might drive down Trump’s approval rating among those still wavering.
But already they have begun testing other excuses for a Trump 2020 victory, citing such things as the unfair Electoral College and Russian interference, yet again.
Either way, they are determined to continue attacking the president—even if doing so feeds into his success.
“That’s not because we in the media have stopped scrutinizing him and chronicling his errors and outrages,” Bruni wrote. “It’s because there are so many that they blur. It’s because they’re baked into the Trump brand. They’re part of the deal that his supporters have made. This is the Trump they bought. This is the Trump they’ll keep.”
