ARE THE DEMOCRATS IN A POSITION TO TAKE BACK THE CONGRESS?

…Trump adviser, Kellyanne Conway admitting that Trump’s numbers have slipped.

Are the Republicans setting themselves up for a new political “bloodbath”?

The president can Tweet until he’s blue in the face, but it won’t remove the fact that even with his base, he is slipping in the polls.

Oh, I know, he continues to call any negative polls, just “fake news”.  But just as he had said during the campaign, that the published unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) were “fake news”, now that he is the president, he will falsely take credit for any good unemployment or market numbers.  So now those BLS numbers are believable and just fine with him.

President Trump is very upset, (starting at 6:00AM, the first of 12 presidential Tweets started arriving), and of course the latest polls had said that his negative approval ratings were getting even worse.  But of course, per the president, this is all “fake news”.

All of that barrage of Trump Tweets was just the president pushing back against the idea of his losing his base as the Tweets were coming from his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, where aides said he is having a so called “working vacation”.  This was because some needed renovations are being made at the White House.

(No, Trump didn’t order to have his name added to the roof of the White House as it is today on Trump Towers. Though I’m sure he would approve of that.)

These are renovations that include new White House heating and air conditioning, new kitchen renovations and basic fresh painting and new carpeting that were recommended and approved by President Obama before he left office.

The reality is that Trump’s approval that even his White House Senior Adviser, Kellyanne Conway, a former pollster herself, has discussed on ABC’s “This Week”.  Her admission was that Trump’s base approvals have “slipped”.  To be clear, as Trump’s overall approval rating has sunk, some of the president’s core supporters have seriously soured on his performance to date, and the polls show that subsequent drop.

A Quinnipiac University poll, which is usually skewed more toward the conservatives, last week it found that only 23% of registered voters “strongly approve” of Trump’s handling of his job.  That’s down from 29% who felt that way during his first week in office. Even those white voters with no college degrees, one of the demographics that backed his candidacy most enthusiastically, they also disapprove of how Trump is handling his job by dropping from 50% to 43%.

Ms. Conway stated: “In some of the polling, which of course I scour daily on behalf of the president, his approval rating among Republicans and conservatives and Trump voters is down slightly,” she said. “It needs to go up. They are instead telling him, Just enact your program.”

But the reality is that they haven’t just slipped “down slightly”.   Notably, Trump’s approval is still in a strong positive territory among Republicans.  That is a dynamic that has kept many GOP lawmakers lashed to the president amid all these tumultuous early months of his administration. (Yes, but he still has the worst approvals ever of a new president’s first months in office.)  According to Gallup’s weekly tracking averages, 82% of Republicans last week said they approve of Trump’s performance.  But that’s down from 89% in January and he still hasn’t put any legislative “wins” in his column.  Nothing has happened on health care and now he’s going after Tax Reform, which appears to be even more difficult than health care.

GOP pollster, Neil Newhouse has conducted polls this year for GOP congressional and gubernatorial primary races around the country.  He said he has not found any place where Trump’s approval among Republicans has gone below 75%.  He also suspects that a share of Americans are reluctant to tell pollsters that they support Trump, a phenomenon some argue impacted public surveys during the 2016 election. “I think you have a small chunk of voters who are just unwilling to admit it,” said Newhouse.  He seriously believes that dynamic undervalues the president’s overall approval rating by as much as three points.  Still, intensity for Trump remains among his supporters, Newhouse added: “They are very protective of the president.”

In the end, however, nervous Republicans can only take so much comfort from Trump’s support among party loyalists. Scott Clement, The Washington Post’s polling director, noted that the percentage of Americans who strongly approve of the president has declined to only one quarter of the electorate.  That’s lower than his first weeks in office. “His lopsided disapproval among political independents is more worrisome for his political future,” Clement said.

Trump’s upside-down overall approval rating is a flashing warning sign for the GOP for the 2018 midterms.  The Democrats need to win 24 seats in the House and three in the Senate to take control of Congress next year. For many reasons, including the right’s success at mastering redistricting battles across the country, the Democratic party still faces stiff head winds.  But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has high hopes that Trump's low approval rating will help them recapture the Senate majority.

Trump’s unpopularity does give Democrats hope that an intense rejection of his politics will overcome their structural disadvantages. 

Since 1966, when the incumbent president’s job approval had fallen below 50%, his party has lost an average of 40 House seats and five Senate seats during the midterm.  That is according to Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.  Cook put together a chart that illustrates all the past partisan bloodbaths. “Fifty percent has been the magic number,” he said.

The point is that Trump’s most recent approval rating in Gallup’s tracking poll is down to 37%.

But do the Democrats have the right people and the right message to give the GOP another political “blood bath”?

Watch this space.

Copyright G.Ater  2017