Is Trump's Disapproval Peaking or Can This Trend Continue?

We still have a long way to go. Does American have the stamina to last?

The pundits seem to all agree. Trump is weak. He’s losing.

Polls show dismal approval ratings, the worst for a president at this stage in their term in 80 years of polling history (basically as long as modern polling has existed). And this is across all issues, including ones that are considered Trump’s strengths, such as immigration and the economy.

Consumer confidence is at its near-worst level ever. America is now seen as a world pariah, more in common with North Korea than with Great Britain or Canada.

This is a very low point. And it’s undeniably the fault of one person: Donald Trump.

The protests have appeared to matter. Trump’s buffoonery seems to matter. His team’s incompetent overreach seems to matter. And U.S. voters don’t like it.

The Trump resistance has been successful.

Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking…

Unfortunately, time keeps moving forward, so the resistance can’t just declare victory and go home. America is only four months into Trump’s term. There’s still 3 years and 8 months left. That’s a fucking eternity.

So one has to wonder—at the risk of sounding too much like the social media spoof account NY Times Pitchbot:“Is Trump’s disapproval peaking too early”?

Before you roll your eyes, at least consider the question.

One common logical argument about this dismal polling for Trump is that if it continues, then Congressional Republicans will see the writing on the wall and start breaking from Trump.

This could be true, although there is little evidence to support this. If they haven’t broken from him after his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and his many felony convictions, they are unlikely to be worried about a backlash now. Plus, his supporters in the House just passed his preferred budget bill, which basically hurts the people that helped get him elected.

There’s also the fact that the midterms are only one-and-a-half years away, so maybe the resistance only needs to last until then. If his approval ratings can stay very low, or even go lower, then it indicates a potential blue wave in the midterms.

Great. Even if all this happens, what do we expect then?

Democrats will hold hearings that will paint Trump in a bad light. They might even impeach him again, perhaps more than once. This might or might not keep his approval ratings low up to the 2028 presidential election.

The best-case scenario for anti-MAGA forces is that Trump continues to botch his way to continued low approval ratings for another 1.75 years after the midterms, up to the 2028 election, where he’s either going to force his way onto the ballot again, with the blessing of terrified Republicans, or an heir apparent to Trumpism will take the reins of the Republican nomination.

It’s the economy, kind sir or madame (“stupid” is a little too harsh)

But a key question is how will the economy be doing? Right now things are not looking good. It appears there’s going to be significant recession coming soon combined with higher inflation. This is horrible news for the country.

But politically, this may be the necessary thing to keep Trump’s approval in the doldrums. If we’re all going to suffer, at least it could go towards something useful, such as the ultimate demise of the MAGA movement.

We can look to the Biden presidency as a model for how things could progress. Unlike Trump, Biden had high approval ratings in the first several months of his term, but they plummeted after the tumultuous Afghanistan military withdrawal. And they stayed low from there, largely due to the period of high inflation in 2022 and its lingering after-effects.

Even after inflation abated and the economy recovered in a big way, Biden’s approval never achieved the heights of the first several months. Consumer confidence levels stubbornly stayed among the worst levels in history despite the economic turnaround.

I’ve written about this extensively and have my theories of why consumer sentiment didn’t recover during a statistical economic boom. My main conclusion is that prices went up very fast from an overly comfortable baseline in 2022 and the population had a hard time adjusting. The discontent remained high, and coup-plotter Trump was voted in as a savior.

It seems that we are primed to go through another round of jolting price increases. But it would be from a baseline that’s less comfortable than the one previous to the 2022 period. The question would then be: Are Americans used to higher prices and going to be less shocked than before, and therefore tolerate it better?

And what if the economy does turn around eventually in a way the electorate can feel? It’s possible. In the three-and-a-half years until the next presidential election, a lot can happen. That’s enough time for the country to stabilize and adjust. The country had two years from Biden’s 2022 high inflation period, and it didn’t adjust. Will an additional 1.5 years matter?

We’ll find out in 2028. But in the meantime, it’s going to be a bit of work to keep an effective resistance going.

Are we up to it?