President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump has seen a bump to his approval rating in the past couple of days. Rasmussen shows that President Trump's approval rating is 52%, the highest he has seen since the first weeks of his presidency. It comes after much lower numbers during the government shutdown that had him at 43% approval. Other polls have a similar bounce in approval for the president.
So what caused this? I think part of it was the government shutdown ending. Shutdowns are never good for a President's popularity and this one was no exception. It doesn't matter what the cause is or what other players are involved. The president gets the blame for it when the government isn't working. It probably cost Trump around 5 to 7.5% in his approval rating.
Trump also had a very good State of the Union speech. It was a unifying speech and one that wasn't all that partisan. Pretty much everyone loved it and it even had the Democrats in congress yelling "USA!" at points. It was one of his best speeches and ranks up there as one of the best State of the Union speeches period.
However, Trump has been helped by a number of huge missteps and scandals by the Democrats. One of these was the passage of a late term abortion bill and the Virginia Governor's comments on a proposed bill in that state. Abortion is a hot button issue and becomes a lot less popular when it is done. Preforming an abortion at nine months is hugely controversial and many people consider it to be infanticide. I'm not getting into the issue that much but I am sure that by looking so horrible to pro-lifers and even some pro-choicers, the Democrats probably pushed some people towards President Trump.
Speaking of Virginia, the state is having massive problems. Both Governor Northam and Attorney General Herring have gotten involved in blackface and Klu Klux Kaln scandals. And the Lt. Governor Farifax has a #metoo scandal. Virginia is such a mess that they have managed to damage the Democrats image as a whole.
The Democrats in Virginia have alienated their black and social justice supporters who think that blackface is racist (and, once again, the KKK). Women will be turned off by the #metoo scandal and everyone else will be against the 3rd trimester abortion/infanticide bill.
Of course it's not just Virginia that has caused problems. The Democrats freshmen congresswomen have put their feet in their mouths as well. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the inexplicably famous congresswoman from New York released her "Green New Deal" plan and that went over horribly. Indeed, people thought it was a parody of a Democratic policy proposal with gems like banning air travel, getting rid of nuclear power and even mandating that ALL buildings have to be updated to be energy efficient. Such a plan would cost trillions of dollars all in the name of global warming which many people don't either care about or believe in.
Finally, a freshman congresswoman and Muslim from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, is caught up in an antisemitism scandal. Though I didn't find her comments to be all that offensive, AIPAC is a major lobby group after all, she did manage to piss off both Jewish people and their supporters. America has a very low tolerance for even the appearance antisemitism and this is probably affecting things as well.
And we cannot forget the Covington school scandal where the media, leftists and twitter blue checkmarks all lost their minds for about 72 hours. Targeting random boys who did nothing but stand there and wear MAGA hats with threats, harassment and other acts of insanity was a huge scandal and is one that isn't going away. I think it was a major wakeup call for people that finally realized that even despite his flaws, at least Trump is, well, sane in comparison.
All of these scandals help Trump in multiple ways. The obvious one is that people are going to leave the Democrats if they keep making own goals on themselves like this. Putting your foot in your mouth all the way up to your ankle isn't the way to win support.
A secondary effect of this is probably even more helpful. The media has essentially been forced to cover the Democrats for once due to these huge misteps. That means the constant calls of racism, sexism and complaints about Russia have faded into the background. Indeed, I noticed the phenomenon when the Brett Kavanaugh hearings were happening. As the media worked overtime to attack Kavanaugh and destroy his life, they were no longer able to attack President Trump. I think something similar is happening now. Just imagine how well Trump's approval rating would be if they gave him a fair shake or the fawning coverage they gave Barack Obama...
Either way though, the high poll numbers seem to be a good thing for President Trump. With another shutdown likely to be avoided (breaking news tonight) and the Mueller probe slowing down, it's likely that Trump's numbers will remain high into the 2020 election. With the Democrats in disarray and his approval literally high, plus the natural advantage of incumbency, Trump seems like he will be elected again in 2020.
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