Tweeter by Nancy OhanianA new CNN poll was released yesterday afternoon and the dip in favorable ratings for Trump-- from 42% to 41%-- was too small to be significant. It will have to be consistently below 33% before Senate Republicans give Pelosi the go ahead to start impeachment-- and by that time she may feel Democrats will be better off with him on top of the ticket than off it.The mid-March poll showed most of the half dozen Democrats they polled either below water or unknown by the general electorate. Only Bernie had more people liking him than disliking him:
• Cory Booker- minus 1 favorability with 48% either not knowing who he is or having no opinion• John Hickenlooper- minus 2 favorability with 82% either not knowing who he is or having no opinion• Jay Inslee- equal favorable/unfavorable (7%), with 86% either not knowing who he is or having no opinion• Amy Klobuchar- minus 4 favorability, with 68% either not knowing who she is or having no opinion• Bernie- plus 3 favorability, with just 11% either not knowing who he is or having no opinion• Beto- minus 2 favorability, with 46% either not knowing who he is or having no opinion
This is for Democrats and for independents who lean blue only:This question stands out: "How enthusiastic would you say you are about voting for president in next year’s election-- extremely enthusiastic, very enthusiastic, somewhat enthusiastic, not too enthusiastic, or not at all enthusiastic?" Look at that big spike between this cycle and... any other cycle!Measuring enthusiasm for the various Democratic candidates between early October and now:
• Biden- dropped from 33% to 28%• Bernie- rose from 13% to 20%• Kamala- rose from 9% two 12%• Beto- rose from 4% to 11%• Elizabeth Warren- dropped from 8% to 6%• Cory Booker- dropped from 5% to 3%• Klobuchar- rose from 1% to 3%• Castro- rose from zero to 1%• Gillibrand- flat at 1%• Inslee- rose from zero to 1%• Mayor Pete- rose from zero to 1%• Hickenlooper- rose from zero to 1%• Tulsi- flat at zero• John Delaney- flat at zero• Terry McAuliffe- flat at zero
Biden is carefully planning a grand announcement of a fourth or fifth or sixth presidential campaign-- who can keep count?-- but, according to today's Wall Street Journal, he has, of course, already reached out to the wealthy bundlers who have helped fund his very long anti-working family career. At least a half-dozen supporters got calls from him yesterday "to tell them he intends to run for president and to ask for their help in lining up contributions from major donors so he can quickly raise several million dollars... [He] has expressed concern to these people that he wouldn’t be able to raise millions of dollars in online donations immediately the way some other Democratic candidates have." Do you ever wonder why he can't?Trump loves that good ole tabloid drama and he spent the last couple of days fighting with Kellyanne Conway's husband and John McCain's corpse. George Conway certainly got the better of him but corpses can't punch back. I don't expect that Peter Wehner-- who served in the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations and is now a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think-- was thinking his Atlantic piece this week, A Damaged Soul and a Disordered Personality would help Trump's chances at reelection. His first sentence is simple: "Donald Trump is not well." Wehner is weirded out by Trump's "weird obsession with a dead war hero."For Wehner these "grotesque attacks once again force us to grapple with a perennial question of the Trump era." For him it's the danger that if we "allow Trump to succeed in keeping us in a state of constant agitation and moral consternation, in ways that are unhealthy and even play to Trump’s advantage, allowing him to control the nation’s conversation. But that view, which might apply in some circumstances, shouldn’t apply in all circumstances. The real danger in so desensitizing ourselves to Trump’s tweets is that we normalize deviant behavior and begin to accept what is unacceptable."
A culture lives or dies based on its allegiance to unwritten rules of conduct and unstated norms, on the signals sent about what kind of conduct constitutes good character and honor and what kind of conduct constitutes dishonor and corruption. Like each of us, our leaders are all too human, flawed and imperfect. But that reality can’t make us indifferent or cynical when it comes to holding those in authority to reasonable moral standards. After all, cultures are shaped by the words and deeds that leaders, including political leaders, validate or invalidate“To his equals he was condescending; to his inferiors kind; and to the dear object of his affections exemplarily tender,” Henry Lee said in his eulogy of George Washington. “Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue always felt his fostering hand; the purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.”But the other reason we should pay attention to the tweets and other comments by the president is that they are shafts of light that illuminate not only his damaged soul, but his disordered personality.It doesn’t take a person with an advanced degree in psychology to see Trump’s narcissism and lack of empathy, his vindictiveness and pathological lying, his impulsivity and callousness, his inability to be guided by norms, or his shamelessness and dehumanization of those who do not abide his wishes. His condition is getting worse, not better—and there are now fewer people in the administration able to contain the president and act as a check on his worst impulses.This constellation of characteristics would be worrisome in a banker or a high-school teacher, in an aircraft machinist or a warehouse manager, in a gas-station attendant or a truck driver. To have them define the personality of an American president is downright alarming.Whether the worst scenarios come to pass or not is right now unknowable. But what we do know is that the president is a person who seems to draw energy and purpose from maliciousness and transgressive acts, from creating enmity among people of different races, religions, and backgrounds, and from attacking the weak, the honorable, and even the dead.Donald Trump is not well, and as long as he is president, our nation is not safe.
I wonder if Pelosi and Nadler get that-- grok it. It looks like House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) does. Yesterday he told NBC News that Trump and his family of predatory grifters are "the greatest threats to democracy in my lifetime"-- and then compared Trump to Hitler. And Pelosi is playing games with impeachment? Hitler! Meanwhile, Yahoo News reported this morning that Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, told them that her father would be "horrified" by the state of the U.S. and the Republican Party under Trump. "I think he would be horrified. I think he would be heartbroken-- because he loved this country a lot and he believed in this country."