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It's actually a humor piece, and NOT a subtle one, but it never fails to make me laugh, and I often repost it on my journal, or at least link it. Don't know who wrote it but here a good page for it:
https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php/55579-bush-losing-core-supporters-(nsr)?p=801714
It's entitled "Bush Losing Core Supporters" and despite it coming out over a decade BEFORE Trump, I think it explains Trump's inexplicably mediocre but steady approval ratings ten years later entirely.
No matter what Trump did, no matter what he said (even on-camera), he almost never had an approval rating lower than around 41-43%. That was his basement, and it almost never changed. It barely ever rose (except for the start of Covid) but he had a far higher approval rating than someone as openly evil, vulgar, and stupid as him should have had. And some foolish people (like me for example) thought Trump being the worst President we ever had would push his approvals even worse than George W. Bush's, who wound up nearly universally despised by the time he left office. Again, people like me always thought too highly of Americans. And that's not a benefit of the doubt we'll ever deserve again after 2016. It shouldn't have taken 2020 and then Jan 6 for me to realize we as a country are both broken and irredeemable. But I was still very much a Pollyanna even back then. Sue me.
And the actual reason those basement approvals never happened to Trump is because a great deal of Bush's disapproval came from horrible people pissed off he wasn't stupid and evil ENOUGH. Those precise people have nothing to complain about when it comes to Trump, so Trump's support may be low, but it's always steady, it's MUCH higher than Bush's by the time he left office, and never once approached those dregs. It's because the Total Fucking Morons got Trump's back. They recognized the Shit King as one of their own the way they refused to for W.
Our country is broken.
https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php/55579-bush-losing-core-supporters-(nsr)?p=801714
It's entitled "Bush Losing Core Supporters" and despite it coming out over a decade BEFORE Trump, I think it explains Trump's inexplicably mediocre but steady approval ratings ten years later entirely.
No matter what Trump did, no matter what he said (even on-camera), he almost never had an approval rating lower than around 41-43%. That was his basement, and it almost never changed. It barely ever rose (except for the start of Covid) but he had a far higher approval rating than someone as openly evil, vulgar, and stupid as him should have had. And some foolish people (like me for example) thought Trump being the worst President we ever had would push his approvals even worse than George W. Bush's, who wound up nearly universally despised by the time he left office. Again, people like me always thought too highly of Americans. And that's not a benefit of the doubt we'll ever deserve again after 2016. It shouldn't have taken 2020 and then Jan 6 for me to realize we as a country are both broken and irredeemable. But I was still very much a Pollyanna even back then. Sue me.
And the actual reason those basement approvals never happened to Trump is because a great deal of Bush's disapproval came from horrible people pissed off he wasn't stupid and evil ENOUGH. Those precise people have nothing to complain about when it comes to Trump, so Trump's support may be low, but it's always steady, it's MUCH higher than Bush's by the time he left office, and never once approached those dregs. It's because the Total Fucking Morons got Trump's back. They recognized the Shit King as one of their own the way they refused to for W.
Our country is broken.
