CONFRONTED WITH A VULNERABLE TRUMP, DEMOCRATS JUST KEEP BERATING THEMSELVES

A new Fox poll suggests that President Trump is out of step with public opinion on a range of issues:

Voters have concerns about the recent government spending cuts executed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), even as they see the need for such an effort.

Most think the national debt is a crisis or major problem, and nearly 6 in 10 feel a great deal or almost all of government spending is "wasteful and inefficient," according to a new Fox News national survey.

Yet a slim 51% majority opposes substantially shrinking the number of government employees, some 56% disapprove of the job the Trump administration is doing identifying and reducing wasteful spending, and another 65% worry that not enough thought and planning has gone into the cuts....

Forty percent approve of the job Elon Musk is doing working with DOGE, while 58% disapprove....

When asked about funding for specific federal programs, majorities think the government should increase funding for Social Security (63%), Medicare and Medicaid (58%), and medical research (53%)....

Voters also have doubts about tariffs, as majorities think the measures will make products that they buy more expensive (69%) and hurt the economy (53%)....

On the overall economy, a growing number of voters think it is in bad shape, many think inflation is out of control, and most believe a recession is at least somewhat likely.

Views of the economy have soured since President Donald Trump began his second term, as 79% of voters give it negative marks....

And yet:

Nearly two months into his second term, President Donald Trump’s approval rating matches his all-time high.

Congressional Republicans also enjoy record ratings, while views of congressional Democrats tumble near an all-time low, according to the latest Fox News Poll.

Trump's numbers aren't great in this poll -- 49% job approval, 51% disapproval. That's approximately where he is in the polling averages (Nate Silver: 47.5% approve, 49.7% disapprove; RealClear: 47.9% approve, 48.8% disapprove). We're not seeing the "massive collapse" that James Carville told us would take place "in less than thirty days." (Carville said that on Friday, February 21, which was 27 days ago.) But Trump's numbers are slipping.

Why aren't they slipping more, while Democrats' numbers are cratering? (The number for congressional Democrats are 30%/66% in the Fox poll, echoing similar numbers in a February Quinnipiac poll.) In part it's because Americans have turned extremely anti-immigrant, and Trump gets high marks (in this and other polls) for his brutal crackdown on immigrants. In part it's because for years Americans have bought the lie that government is massively wasteful, and they believe DOGE is a sincere effort to cut waste, although they're squeamish about how the unlikable Musk is going about it. That seems to be enough to make up for the fact that they're very unhappy with how Trump is handling the economy, which is their #1 issue. (In most recent polls, including the Fox poll, respondents disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy by double-digit margins.)

I think a significant reason that voters haven't fully turned against this presidency is that Trump and Musk keep telling us all what an awesome job they're doing. For millions of Amnericans, that enthusiasm is contagious.

Meanwhile Democrats, whose numbers are abysmal, keep telling voters how much they suck. For instance, yesterday in The New York Times, Michelle Cottle published a column about Jason Crow, a House Democrat from Colorado who's been tasked with recruiting candidates for future races (assuming there'll be any). Here's the lede:

For Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a Democrat who may just hold the key to his party winning back the House in 2026, the path to victory starts with understanding how Americans live their lives, down to the most personal details.

“A lot of communities divide the world between when you shower: before work or after work,” he told me, chowing on a burrito at a corner table in Milly’s Community Cafe in Aurora, Colo., at the heart of his district outside Denver. Many who shower later — working-class folks living paycheck to paycheck — have tuned out Democrats, he said. “They’re not listening to us because they don’t believe that we respect them and see them.”

He’s not wrong. How the Democratic Party wound up in the political wilderness has myriad answers. But one of the clearest and, for many Democrats, the most vexing, is that the party became identified as the champion of cultural elites.

A few paragraphs later, Crow elaborates on his "We suck" message:

“You go into rural areas, you go into red areas, you hang out with the people that I grew up with, and they just straight-up think that a lot of Democrats don’t respect them — that they’re the deplorables,” he said, nodding to Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Donald Trump’s supporters in 2016. “I still hear that word come out of so many places when I’m talking to people, when I’m trying to earn their trust.”

I should note that if Crow's account of these conversations is accurate, then the conventional wisdom is wrong. We're told endlessly that the people doing the most damage to the Democratic Party are progressives who say things like "Latinx" -- but if Crow is right, then the word that did the most damage to Democrats was "deplorables," and it was uttered by the moderate Hillary Clinton.

But why is Crow agreeing to do an interview with a columnist for the most influential mainstream news outlet in America if the point of the interview is to give him an opportunity to bash his own party? Trump is increasingly unpopular, Musk is very unpoular, and instead of talking about them, Crow is punching himself in the face?

Here's what Crow should have said to Cottle:

Is this going to be another story about how awful Democrats are? Because if it is, this interview is over. I'm not doing this if that's your angle. I will talk about the damage Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing to the economy, to programs like Social Security and the Postal Service that Americans need, to the rule of law, and to America's safety in a dangerous world, which these guys are making more dangerous by alienating allies and cozying up to dictators. If you want to talk about all that, let's talk. Otherwise, I'm not interested.

But it's obvious that Crow wanted to talk to Cottle about how much he thinks Democrats suck, just like Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel and John Fetterman. And then they wonder why the party's poll numbers are scraping the bottom.