Marking 10 years of Trump politics
This month marks the 10-year anniversary of his first campaign launch—and a politics that's equal parts volatile and inelastic.
Mark your calendars. Two weeks from today, June 16, is the 10th anniversary of Donald Trump descending the escalator to the lobby of his eponymous Manhattan building to announce his first candidacy for president. Whether that should be a cause for celebration or commiseration is up to each person. Ironically, to the extent it was noticed at the time, an event that drew more amusement than anything else has turned into one of the most important political events of the last century.
Over his 10 years as a figure in American politics, how many times did you hear, read, or maybe even say that some recent Trump statement, action, or revelation would be what brings his poll numbers down to earth? Words, deeds, or disclosures that historically might have forced someone to quit a race or resign from public office simply bounced off of Trump. In fact, Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism that “what does not kill me makes me stronger” could well describe Trump’s political career.
In the earliest stages of the 2023-2024 presidential cycle, there was some doubt among Republicans about whether it was a great idea to nominate Trump a third time. He had not left office under the best of circumstances; there were a few open minds. Some eyed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, others rallied to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and others were still shopping around.
A case can be made that any doubt about Trump winning the 2024 GOP presidential nomination was put to rest amid Republican backlash to the 34-count indictment against him in early 2023 by a Manhattan grand jury. District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case for falsifying business records was the flimsiest of the four cases against Trump, the one that appeared most political, and the first to go to trial. The other cases—the initial 41 charges levied by Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis and the federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith for actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and for mishandling sensitive government documents after leaving office in 2021, further rallied many in the GOP behind the former president and ended any real chance for DeSantis, Haley, or anyone else beating him.
Just as important, attitudes towards Trump, favorable or unfavorable, are so baked in that there is little good or bad that many people could hear that would alter how they feel about him. Over the 75 years of modern polling, no occupant of the Oval Office has had job-approval numbers as inelastic as Trump’s have been in the 52 months he has served as president. Even in the last week or two, we have read or heard journalists describe Trump’s approval ratings as plummeting, cratering, or in a free-fall when the reality is that they have only dropped slightly.
The first New York Times approval average of his second term, computed in January, showed his rating at 52 percent. As of today, it is 45 percent, a drop of 7 points. Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin average also started with 52 percent approval in January. Now it sits at 46 percent, a drop of 6 points. The RealClearPolitics average, the least discriminating in its inclusion of polls, showed Trump’s approval starting at 51 percent and dropping just 4 points to 47 percent today.
Since I tend to compare a president’s approval rating with predecessors, I tend to watch Gallup’s numbers closely. Its first poll after Trump took office showed a 47 percent approval rating. It now stands at 44 percent, a 3-point drop. I wonder how many of those portraying Trump’s decline of between 4 and 7 points as huge were saying the same thing when President Biden’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll dropped 14 points between June and October 2021.
A substantial share of Americans primarily read, watch, or listen to media that ignore, downplay, rationalize, or defend Trump on nearly everything. Another similarly sized or slightly larger group mainly consumes media coverage that is almost entirely critical of him. For both, the news that they consume reinforces preexisting views.
Finally, there is the slice of Americans who either unconsciously or deliberately avoid reading, watching, or hearing almost all news, who have exiled themselves to a media desert. These folks thus have minimal reaction to things that used to be enormously consequential. Of course, the flip side is that very few of these people vote, hence the inelasticity of our politics.
In today's politics, the two parties are like Schrödinger's cat, simultaneously dead and alive. The parties are so evenly matched, with so few in the middle who show up and vote, that there is little elasticity and tons of volatility. More than ever, many people are voting straight party tickets—some out of loyalty to their own party, and others simply because they despise the other. We see Democrats winning a federal trifecta, only for Republicans to repeat the feat four years later.
Will next year’s midterms shake us out of this pattern? Don’t bet on it.