Replies to post #288767 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[PegnVA]

T/Y.

[conix]

How do liberals reconcile Bezos, the progressive liberal, with Bezos, the richest man in the world underpaying his employees?

Interesting question.

[fuagf]

Why Trump’s Base of Support May Be Smaller Than It Seems

"PegVA, Does The GOP Belong To Trump?"

By Brendan Nyhan

July 19, 2017

Donald J. Trump’s approval ratings are the lowest at this stage of a presidency since modern polling began in the mid-20th century. But his party’s base still appears highly supportive, which has discouraged .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/upshot/republicans-have-one-big-incentive-to-stick-with-trump.html .. Republicans in Congress from abandoning .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/14/no-matter-how-bad-it-gets-for-him-heres-why-trump-isnt-getting-impeached-this-year/?utm_term=.2bbd71a6d48a .. the president and his legislative agenda.

Even the most recent Russia revelations seemingly haven’t dented .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-jr-russia-poll_us_5967a821e4b0a0c6f1e6dd8a?u71 .. support for Mr. Trump among Republicans, who continue to approve of his job performance at very high rates — 82 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-finds-trump-standing-weakened-since-springtime/2017/07/15/2decf03a-68d2-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html?pushid=596ae569f1dad71d00000022&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term=.b475adea8705 .. released Sunday, for instance.

But numbers like these may mask a decline in support for Mr. Trump among his original party base.

A new working paper .. http://zacharypeskowitz.com/PAR_Writeup.pdf .. by the Emory University political scientists B. Pablo Montagnes, Zachary Peskowitz and Joshua McCrain argues that people who identify as Republican may stop doing so if they disapprove of Trump, creating a false stability in his partisan approval numbers even as the absolute number of people approving him shrinks. Gallup data supports this idea, showing a four-percentage-point decline .. http://www.gallup.com/poll/211817/democratic-edge-party-affiliation-seven-points.aspx .. in G.O.P. identification since the 2016 election that is mirrored ..

On PID Trends: Be careful about mode and question effects. In best live polls a bit down for both parties. Across all modes, stable. but… /1 pic.twitter.com/Tu0t0cJ0EC

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) July 16, 2017

.. in other polling, though to a lesser extent.


President Trump remains popular among Republicans and Republican leaners, but some erosion of support may be hidden.
Eric Thayer for The New York Times

One example is the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress and an increasingly vocal Trump critic who has announced .. http://thehill.com/media/341561-scarborough-leaving-republican-party .. that he is leaving the party. If most people who have stopped identifying as Republicans are Trump disapprovers like Mr. Scarborough, we could observe stable party approval ratings for the president despite waning popularity with his previous party coalition.

Individual news media polls typically do not have a measure of how respondents previously answered questions about party identification, so Mr. Montagnes and his co-authors had to estimate a range for Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. approval rating among those “missing” respondents — people who previously identified as Republican but no longer do so. If all of them approve of Mr. Trump, the resulting estimate would be the upper bound on his partisan approval rating. If all such respondents disapprove of him, that would be the lower bound.

These lower-bound estimates are likely to be much closer to reality — Pew Research Center data show .. http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/17/partisan-identification-is-sticky-but-about-10-switched-parties-over-the-past-year/ .. that disapproval of Mr. Trump was 84 percent among people who switched from identifying or leaning Republican in December 2015 to identifying or leaning Democrat in April 2017.

When the Emory political scientists use the Gallup data to account for Republicans who have stopped identifying with the party since the election, they find that partisan support for Trump could be substantially lower than it appears. The lower bound is often from 70 percent to 80 percent instead of the 80-to-90 range that Gallup polls typically show. Given the decline in Republican identification since last November, they find, “the lower bound on Trump’s partisan approval rate is much lower” than partisan approval at a comparable point in the Obama presidency and is lower than it was even during Mr. Obama’s second term.

This finding contains an important lesson for interpreting presidential approval polls. Mr. Trump remains popular among the people who currently identify as Republican, but there is a group of “missing” former Republicans who most likely disapprove of him and are excluded from that calculation altogether.

Brendan Nyhan is a professor of government at Dartmouth College. Follow him on Twitter at @BrendanNyhan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/upshot/why-trumps-base-of-support-may-be-smaller-than-it-seems.html

[BOREALIS]

‘Knock It Off!’: Outraged GOP Gov. John Kasich Trashes Republicans For Blindly Following Trump

Posted on Wed, Sep 12th, 2018 by Sean Colarossi

Ohio’s GOP Gov. John Kasich trashed Donald Trump for creating so much “chaos” since taking office and lashed out at his own party for not calling this White House out when they cross the line.

In an interview with Chris Matthews on Wednesday, Kasich – who may launch a presidential candidacy in 2020 – said the Republican Party needs to grow a backbone and put country over politics.

“If they want to do better, then these individual Republicans need to start being their own man or woman, their own person,” an outraged Kasich said. “If the president does something they don’t like, tell people!”

Kasich added that he is proud of the fact that he, unlike many in the GOP, never sold out and supported Trump’s dangerous agenda.

Video: 1:15

John Kasich says Trump's current behavior is the reason why he "never supported the guy." #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/yTeDO4QAUU

— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) September 13, 2018

Kasich said:

When you’re the president of the United States, people look to you as a father, they look at you as somebody who’s a consoler, they look at you as somebody that can bring harmony, they look at you as somebody that can bring peace. … The sense is that our president is a special person who’s not supposed to engage in name-calling or fighting or chaos all the time. That president is supposed to be somebody that is a healer and brings the country together. This is one of the reasons why I had never supported the guy. You know, one of the few in my party that didn’t support him, because I believe people need to be lifted. I don’t believe that people need to be divided and all the name calling and all that is just wrong and it continues. There’s going to be Republicans who are going to pay a price for it. If they want to do better, then these individual Republicans need to start being their own man or woman, their own person, and talking about the things they believe in and knock it off, and don’t be afraid. If the president does something they don’t like, tell people!

John Kasich will have the last laugh

Republicans may fear the short-term wrath of a base that has embraced Trump‘s politics of bigotry and division, but the long-term decision to stick by this president no matter what will do great damage to them in the long-term.

John Kasich, the popular GOP governor of Ohio, seems to have recognized that. Sure, he has been virtually exiled from the new party of Trump, but he knows he will have the last laugh when all is said and done.

Every day, Trump‘s presidency implodes a little bit more, whether it’s through new details about his potential crimes or revelations about his mental instability. When he falls, all those Republicans who stood by his side will go down with him.

And Republicans like John Kasich will be standing there on the other side telling them, “I told you so.”

https://www.politicususa.com/2018/09/12/knock-it-off-outraged-gop-gov-john-kasich-trashes-republicans-for-blindly-following-trump.html