Gallup finds 60% of voters approve of his handling of the crisis. As usual, the establishment is clueless.
This is not what his critics expected. At 49% overall job approval in the latest Gallup poll, and with 60% approval of the way he is handling the coronavirus epidemic, President Trump’s standing with voters has improved even as the country closed down and the stock market underwent a historic meltdown. That may change as this unpredictable crisis develops, but bitter and often justified criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision making in the early months of the pandemic has so far failed to break the bond between the 45th president and his political base.
One reason Mr. Trump’s opponents have had such a hard time damaging his connection with voters is that they still don’t understand why so many Americans want a wrecking-ball presidency. Beyond attributing Mr. Trump’s support to a mix of racism, religious fundamentalism and profound ignorance, the president’s establishment opponents in both parties have yet to grasp the depth and intensity of the populist energy that animates his base and the Bernie Sanders movement. . . .
That a majority of the electorate is this deeply alienated from the establishment can’t be dismissed as bigotry and ignorance. There are solid and serious grounds for doubting the competence and wisdom of America’s self-proclaimed expert class. What is so intelligent and enlightened, populists ask, about a foreign-policy establishment that failed to perceive that U.S. trade policies were promoting the rise of a hostile Communist superpower with the ability to disrupt supplies of essential goods in a national emergency? What competence have the military and political establishments shown in almost two decades of tactical success and strategic impotence in Afghanistan? What came of that intervention in Libya? What was the net result of all the fine talk in the Bush and Obama administrations about building democracy in the Middle East? . . .
On domestic policy, the criticism is equally trenchant and deeply felt. Many voters believe that the U.S. establishment has produced a health-care system that is neither affordable nor universal. Higher education saddles students with increasing debt while leaving many graduates woefully unprepared for good jobs in the real world. The centrist establishment has amassed unprecedented deficits without keeping roads, bridges and pipes in good repair. It has weighed down cities and states with unmanageable levels of pension debt.
The culture of social promotion and participation trophies is not, populists feel, confined to U.S. kindergartens and elementary schools. Judging by performance, they conclude that people rise in the American establishment by relentless virtue-signaling; by going along with conventional wisdom, however foolish; and by forgiving the failures of others and having their own overlooked in return.
The blame game playing out over how the president has handled the coronavirus epidemic reflects the dynamics of this struggle. Mr. Trump’s establishment critics want a narrow fight over the dismal trail of bluster, evasions, missed opportunities and failed predictions that marked the president’s approach to the virus earlier in the year. Like many criticisms of Mr. Trump, these arguments against him are by and large correct and significant and it is part of the proper job of a free press to make them.
However, Mr. Trump’s supporters are not comparing him with an omniscient leader who always does the right thing, but with the establishment—including the bulk of the mainstream media—that largely backed a policy of engagement with China long after its pitfalls became clear. For Americans who lost their jobs to Chinese competition or who fear the possibility of a new cold war against an economically potent and technologically advanced power, Mr. Trump’s errors pale before those of the bipartisan American foreign-policy consensus.
The establishment’s massive, decadeslong failure to think through the consequences of empowering Communist China and creating a trading relationship that, among other things, left the U.S. dependent on Beijing for pharmaceuticals is a much less excusable and more consequential error than anything Donald Trump has done in 2020—and it has a direct bearing on the mess we are in.
Unlike Obama’s weak, almost non-existent response to N1H1,
Trump has organized a massive response not only to the virus crisis but also to the enormous economic crisis caused by the virus. NO ONE reacted faster and with better focus than Trump has and only where state control of public life is acceptable and full and total shutdown of public life was quickly mandated was the control of the virus better… initially.
But that doesn’t stop the whiny, crybaby, sore loser, ignorant elite from heaping scorn and criticism on Trump’s response (primarily, putting together very early and very quickly an expert team) as compared to… what? NO ONE has done better and the criticisms have prompted people to look back, investigate and find numerous instances of actual liberal ball-dropping of monumental scale.
I have no doubts Hillary would have completely politicized this crisis and, like Benghazi, totally bungled it. She would still be calculating quotas of blacks, Hispanics, women, gays and XYZgenders for a socially acceptable team. Biden would be at a complete loss. Bernie would be loading the sick in cattle cars and sending them to the middle of the Mojave for forgetting. Obama would have golfed… just like last time. I wouldn’t say Trump is the BEST, but it is difficult to imagine anyone doing better.
Of course it will make him stronger. It’s even making Cuomo look strong.
Which reminds me, who are the people that insist it’s best if we all live on top of each other, crowded into urban areas?
Yeah, no thanks.
@Meremortal: I wonder if Cuomo minds if some of those nurses, doctors and National Guard are any Republicans he told to get the hell out of the state?