The worm appears to have turned on Trump

This week was a first.

Every reputable survey released since Monday found Trump's job disapproval running in double-digit, net-negative territory: YouGov's disapproval, 11 points higher than approval; Marist, 11 points; Pew Research, 18 points; Siena, 11 points; Marquette University, 14 points. [Saturday update: YouGov, 16 points.]               

Even better were his "strongly disapprove" numbers: YouGov, 44%; Marist, 46%; Pew, 47%; Siena, 46%. [Saturday: YouGov, 46%.]

President Obama's "strong disapproval" ratings never exceeded the 30s' range in the comparable period, and even President Biden's rating, in the month after the 2021 Afghanistan debacle, was a bit less abysmal than Trump's.

Who is losing some of his base as well, after alienating all sentient Americans, especially those capable of smelling rancidity and seeing rot. Marquette found that one of five Republicans now disapprove of Trump's "job" performance. (What a quaint term.)

Marquette also found his approval among independents, who tend to lean Republican, has plunged to 27%. Another 3-pt. dip and they'll feel as warm about Trump as the general public did Nixon in the climax of his resignation days.

Anything in particular that Trump's doing which a majority are disapproving of? Only his handling of inflation, the economy, immigration, urban crime, the Epstein issue, tariffs, the Israel-Hamas war and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Perhaps best of all, every reputable survey released since Monday was conducted the week before Trump and his Reichstag allies hung a "Closed" sign on the federal government so that millions of Americans can be barbarically deprived of affordable healthcare in the coming years.

Oh my, that may have sounded polemical, harsh, uncivil. And I ought not be uncivil, not since the sophisticates of Steven Miller's "School of Civility" distributed his instructional pamphlet to those of us prone to the boorish.

I shall make amends. I'll let Trump explain, in his own dignified way, why the shutdown is a gift of both sage necessity and godly virtue to all Americans: "The Democrats want Illegal Aliens, many of them VIOLENT CRIMINALS, to receive FREE Healthcare," and the ACA-subsidizing Democratic Party is "the party of hate, evil, and Satan."

Yet it seems the American people aren't buying what Trump's selling — not only his exquisitely thoughtful objections to Medicaid's funding, Obamacare's enhancement and the opposition party, but virtually all his wares.

Could be the worm has, as last, turned.

Still, Americans at large, increasingly disgruntled, are of no troubling consequence to an authoritarian goon concerned with only the public's rabble-rousing, pseudo-populist fragment. And so our national affliction will take much longer than 10 months to overcome.

***

Cross-posted in Substack.