Tuesday, January 22, 2019

That Sinking Feeling

Trump is in trouble.  Although his name was on "The Art of the Deal," his negotiation style is better represented by Sartre's "No Exit."  In the shutdown he has no end game, no strategy, just bluster.  Not surprisingly, his poll numbers are near historic lows.

Rasmussen is hardly the Cum Laude of polls, with a C+ grade at FiveThirtyEight.  But now that the other daily tracking poll has Galluped away, it is the only horse in the stable.  Tracking polls are useful for spotting trends even if the absolute numbers are soft.

Rasmussen has two numbers, a total approval rating, and a much more interesting approval index.  The latter is the delta between strongly approve and strongly disapprove.  These are the voters you can count on.  The last 3 rolling averages have had Trump with a negative number of 16 to 17.  Strongly approve has been at between 31 and 32, and strongly disapprove at between 47 and 48.  That is, a near majority would vote for virtually anyone but Trump, while less than one third of the voters are locked on him.

For the President, the ride ahead may be rocky.  House investigations have yet to start, and the Mueller Report, which may cause him to ride off into the sunset, is on the horizon.  Happy trails are unlikely.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

It's All Happening at the Zoo

“You know why you can enjoy a day at the zoo?” the son of President Donald Trump wrote in an Instagram story on Tuesday night. “Because walls work.”

This is so inane, let me count the ways.  Most offensive, it is squarely in the racist tradition of the Trump family to compare people of color to animals.  From his first public escalator ride Papa Trump has attacked brown, which is so strange, since it is the only color that compliments his iconic orange.

Second, it calls attention to the closure of the National Zoo, because of the Trump shutdown.  Third, like the proposed border wall, it is contrary to science.  Modern zoos, where possible, use natural barriers based on species behavior to replace walls.

Finally, zoo walls are as much to protect the animals from Eric and Junior, notorious game hunters, as they are to protect the Trump brothers.