President Trump likely finds the latest Gallup poll neither very special nor particularly beautiful. If it’s incredible, that’s because it’s incredibly alarming.
“In early May, Trump’s approval tied his personal best at 49 percent — before it sank amid nationwide protests over racial injustice after the death of George Floyd,” Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones wrote about this survey of adults, released Monday. “Now his approval rating stands just three percentage points above his personal low of 35 percent registered on four separate occasions in 2017.”
Even more ominously, Jones notes this about the president’s 38 percent thumbs-up figure: “The drop in Trump’s job approval rating puts him in the company of George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter … who also had sub-40 percent approval ratings in June of their reelection years.”
And look what happened to them.
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Election Day is Nov. 3, but Americans will begin casting morally repugnant early votes on Sept. 18 in Minnesota and South Dakota. (Citizens should vote as one nation, on Election Day, after weighing all available information and arguments, and not a second sooner).
Given these grim poll results, and with just nine weeks before voters pull the first levers, President Trump at once needs to focus like a bloodhound on winning a second term.
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The alternative is unthinkable — an addled Democratic President Joe Biden weakly assenting to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, and their every unhinged, extreme, vindictive, far-left fantasy.
The president needs to stop wasting precious time with Twitter messages about seemingly every petty controversy that arises.
The president already has a massive problem getting his important messages out, thanks to the Hate Trump Media, which constantly gnaw at him like termites nibbling through the floorboards.
Trump must remember that he is not running against athletes, comedians and pundits.
Creating his own distractions makes it that much harder for Trump to get reelected — an objective that has grown from an urgent priority to an existential imperative for the survival of America as we have known it.
The president needs to stop caving in to temptation as he recently did on Twitter, when he wondered if NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace would apologize over a two-week-old incident involving a noose-like garage-door closer discovered at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway.
First, Wallace is not like failed, publicity-starved actor Jussie Smollett, who totally fabricated a racial “attack” on himself. At worst, Wallace rushed to misjudgment about the noose/rope in his garage stall. Fifteen FBI agents soon determined that it had been there since October, and there was no hate crime.
Second, Wallace is not like Colin Kaepernick, an anti-American radical who denounced July Fourth as a “celebration of white supremacy.”
Third, who cares? The president of the United States has far bigger cars to race, especially a fortnight after this flap ended with warm shows of support for Wallace, NASCAR’s sole Black racer.
On Saturday, President Trump travels to Portsmouth, N.H., for a campaign rally. Energizing his base is vital. But with 91 percent of Republicans already supporting Trump, per Gallup, he cannot rise much above his near-deity status within his own party.
Trump needs to expand his base, pronto.
For every rally, the president should do at least three events with independents, suburban women and Black voters. Trump should explain to Black parents that he strongly backs school choice, while Biden sadistically promises to padlock charter schools.
Trump should visit minority-owned companies that have grown through his Opportunity Zones program. He should introduce Americans to Black former prisoners who have benefited from his First Step Act criminal-justice reform and made something of themselves.
Trump repeatedly should visit historically Black colleges and universities and explain how his robust support for those institutions boosts the educational and professional prospects for the Black students who populate these campuses.
If Trump can capture 15 to 20 percent of the Black vote, he will romp in November. That looks daunting, but it’s worth the effort — not least because asking for Black votes calms Whites rattled by relentless, filthy media and Democratic lies about Trump’s alleged racism.
Trump’s White support has fallen from 57 percent in May to 48 percent in June. Appealing to Blacks also will boost Trump’s approval among Whites.
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The president should offer a positive, optimistic vision of how his ideas will reverse COVID-19’s damage and make America great again, again. Trumponomics triumphed. Tax cuts, deregulation, energy independence and other pro-market reforms can work their magic once more.
Finally, Trump must remember that he is not running against athletes, comedians and pundits. He is running against an increasingly befogged Joe Biden, first elected 48 years ago.
So, atop his own positive message, Trump must highlight Biden’s weaknesses, his shabby Senate record, the Obama-Biden administration’s abundant failures, and the bonkers AOC/BLM/Antifa left that will control Washington if Biden wins.
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President Trump should discuss these huge ideas, ignore sniping celebrities, and lock up his magic Twitter machine, save for major, upbeat announcements such as bill signings, new treaties and COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs.
In short, a presidential reelection is a terrible thing to waste.