Poor delusional Democrats. They’ve convinced themselves that the Trump presidency is “collapsing.”
The White House communications director has just resigned. Obamacare may not be repealed after all. Trump’s early approval ratings are hovering near 40%, the lowest in history. The Independent Counsel investigating Trump is bound to find he acted illegally.
It’s only a matter of time before he’s impeached, Democrats say.
It’s becoming a familiar litany. We heard the same anti-Trump message throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. How Trump’s candidacy was bound to “self-destruct.”
It never happened. And it won’t happen to Trump’s fledgling administration, either. It’s the politics of distraction. Keep your eyes focused on the fundamentals. That’s what determines the success of campaigns – and of presidencies.
First, consider the state of the economy. Under Trump it is taking off, by virtually every measure.
Job growth has reached nearly 1 million during the first six months of his term. In coal, Trump has fulfilled a promise to open a new mine, the first in decades. Overall, some 50,000 new jobs have been added in this sector alone. And the troubled steel industry is also starting to rebound.
Meanwhile, the stock market has boomed at a rate not seen since the early months of the administration of George H.W. Bush (1989). While Democrats have tried to pooh-pooh these gains, more neutral analysts have suggested that Trump’s election, specially his promise to slash government regulations and sharply reduce the business taxes, has brought renewed optimism:
“No one ever knows why the stock market does what it does,” Alan Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton University, recently told Fortune magazine. “But it’s not an unreasonable supposition that the election of Donald Trump had something to do with it. Maybe a lot to do with it.”
A second key indicator is voter loyalty. To the chagrin of the Democrats, blue collar voters in key battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that voted for Obama but swung to Trump last November are holding strong. Trump has duplicated Reagan’s feat of converting these voters to the GOP based on the strength of his leadership and his positions on key issues like trade and immigration.
The message of “Make America Great Again” continues to resonate with workers left behind by the Democrats’ avid embrace of globalism and their celebration of an “identity” politics that only applies to non-White constituencies and upwardly mobile women.
As jobs increase, Trump’s populism, even among die-hard trade unionists, is continuing to take hold.
Third, if you talk to the Democrats they’ll insist that Trump is getting nowhere with his policy agenda. By nowhere, they really just mean Obamacare. Actually, Trump managed to get the House to vote for repeal, which sent the Democrats into a panic. It’s still not clear what the Senate will do but the terms of debate have shifted.
Health care premiums are skyrocketing as the GOP predicted and even Democrats admit that Obamacare cannot survive in its current form.
Meanwhile: Look at a slew of other issues, from getting Neil Gorsuch named to the Supreme Court, to cracking down on immigration, to rolling back nearly 200 burdensome federal regulations, to repealing the border tax — and the Trump agenda is steamrolling ahead.
Even Trump’s much-criticized travel ban enjoys strong support from American voters, polls show. But don’t expect liberals, who depict Trump as a xenophobe. to admit that.
No president since Harry Truman has had so many pieces of legislation passed — 27 total –so early in his administration. With tax reform and an infrastructure spending bill looming, the Democrats are desperate to stop the Trump train before it leaves them in the dust.
By any reasonable political standard, the Democrats are reeling. The party has lost four straight bellwether elections, including most recently a critical election in Georgia. No party has ever spent that much money on a single congressional election, and despite the usual promises of victory from Nancy Pelosi, the GOP handed Democrats a resounding defeat.
“Our brand is worse than Trump,” admits Rep. Tim Ryan, who is leading an internal party campaign to force Pelosi’s ouster – thus far, to no avail.
There may be good reasons Trump’s favorability numbers seem fairly low. The mainstream media has treated US voters to an unprecedented, non-stop onslaught against a newly elected president – a continuation of their openly biased news coverage during the 2016 campaign.
But remember: Trump’s favorability numbers are still higher than those recorded by Bill Clinton during his first term. And Trump’s numbers were just as low prior to the 2016 election – and it hardly mattered. Americans voted for Trump based on his expected performance, not his personality. And that performance is coming to pass.
Finally, Republican support for Trump is holding steady. While Democrats like to exaggerate difference within the GOP, while minimizing their own, the polls don’t lie. Nearly 90% of Republicans support Trump, many without qualification.
So ignore the Democrats and the mainstream media’s fog machine. While they’re still whining about “Russia-Gate,” and sponsoring a McCarthy-style witch hunt, the Donald is putting on a show.
Democrats can join this show — or not. Either way, the show must go on.