IF DEMOCRATS AREN'T CLOSING THE SALE, IT'S FOR A GLARINGLY OBVIOUS REASON

In nearly every poll this year, disapproval of President Trump's job performance has been much greater than the Democratic advantage on the generic House ballot. However, until now I haven't seen a poll with a gap this large:

A new Marquette Law School Poll national survey ... finds that Trump’s overall support continues to decline....

In this May poll, 38% approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 62% disapprove, a net approval of -24 percentage points....

Looking ahead to the November congressional elections, among registered voters, 46% say they would vote for the Democratic candidate and 45% would vote for the Republican, with 7% saying they would vote for neither and 1% who say they would not vote. The slight Democratic advantage is also seen among likely voters, i.e., those who say they are certain they will vote, with 49% saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate and 48% for a Republican candidate.

The congressional vote has tightened substantially from April when, among registered voters, 48% backed Democratic candidates and 44% supported Republicans, and there was a large Democratic advantage among likely voters, 53% for Democrats and 43% for Republicans.

So Trump is at -24, but Democrats are only at +1. Among likely voters, Democrats were at +10 in April, but that advantage shrunk by 9 points. We're told:

Some of this shift is due to an increase in likelihood of voting among Republicans and a decline among Democrats. In April, 56% of Republicans said they were certain to vote in November, which rose to 59% in May. Among Democrats, those certain to vote declined from 67% in April to 58% in May.

It's just one poll, and maybe it's an outlier -- in the Real Clear Politics average, Democrats have an advantage of 6.8 points. But Trump's job approval is at -16.7 points.

Why the gap? The Marquette poll makes this fairly obvious:

Among nine issues, the Republicans are seen as considerably better able to handle three issues than Democrats and slightly better on two issues. Democrats are seen as slightly better on two issues and substantially better on two issues.

After sixteen months of Trump and a GOP House and Senate, Americans are disgusted at the state of the country -- but they still prefer Republicans on five of nine issues.

Republicans have substantial advantages on crime, immigration and border security, and national defense, and a have a slight advantage on the federal deficit and taxes. Democrats have slight advantages on the economy and on inflation, and have large advantages on the topic of Medicare and Social Security and on health care.

I understand why voters might back Republicans on immigration and border security -- polls suggest that voters want a tighter border and deportations, though they don't approve of Trump's heavy-handed approach. And it seems to be impossible to persuade Americans that crime has been falling since the 1990s, and is low in many Democratic-led cities.

But national defense? Do poll respondents understand which party refuses to intercede to stop Trump's unpopular and ruinous war with Iran? Do they understand which party won't challenge Trump's attacks on allies and organizations meant to sustain global peace?

And on taxes, do respondents know which party voted for the very unpopular One Big Beautiful Bill, which was a giveaway to the rich?

We know they don't know who's running up a massive federal deficit right now, because they were asked: While 72% of respondents say they've "heard or read a lot" about the war with Iran, only 28% say the same about news that federal debt is now greater than U.S. GDP.

Why don't voters link these governing failures to Republicans? Democrats blame Trump, but they don't blame the GOP, and they need to start.

On the campaign trail, individual Democrats will link their opponents to Trump. That will be effective -- but they need to do more. The Republican Party needs to be thoroughly discredited. It needs to be portrayed as a party that always blows up the deficit in order to make billionaires richer, while slashing programs for ordinary people. It needs to be discredited as a party that always gets America into ill-advised wars. Add that to the abortion restrictions, the refusal to raise the minimum wage, the deep health care cuts, and dozens of other failings, and you might start building a case for why the GOP and not just Trump needs to be opposed, and needs to be opposed in every election for the foreseeable future, not just while Trump is in the White House.

THE PLATNER NEWS HAS ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS DOING WHAT THEY ENJOY MOST: BEATING THEMSELVES UP

Graham Platner is, or was, a lousy husband. He was sexting with other women in the early days of his marriage. He and his wife, as she noted in a video over the weekend, are in marriage counseling, and are looking into fertility treatments in order to have a baby. They're trying to make the marriage work. It was Platner's wife who brought the texts to the campaign's attention. That happened last fall. For some reason, this story broke now, more than a month after his main primary opponent suspended her campaign, and with very little time for Maine Democrats to pick another candidate. (In the most recent public poll of the primary, Platner has a 73-point lead over the only remaining Democratic opponent who's on the ballot and actively campaigning. The primary is a week from now.)

Do Maine Democrats even want to switch candidates? In isolation, this is the kind of story that hasn't derailed politcal careers in the past few decades. Ever since Bill Clinton, voters have decided that marriage is personal, people are flawed, and relationship troubles are none of our damn business. Down in Texas, opponents of the GOP's Senate nominee, Ken Paxton, have tried to use his marital woes against him in more than one election. Voters don't care.

But many members of the Democratic Establishment have decided that they should be angrier about Platner's philandering than the voters themselves are likely to be. First out of the gate was Cory Booker, over the weekend on ABC:

Asked Sunday if Booker had concerns about Platner jeopardizing Senate control for the Democrats, Booker said he did.

"Yes, I have concerns. That guy has questions to answer,” Booker said.

Booker didn't have to say this. Booker could have shut this down. He could have changed the subject by giving a rah-rah response about Democrats, or by attacking the GOP, President Trump, and the complicity of Susan Collins in Trump's reign of terror.

But no. The happy place for Establishment Democrats is self-flagellation. Democrats love saying Democrats are flawed. They love being Artie Fufkin, the promo guy who fails to draw a crowd for the band Spinal Tap at a record store event in Chicago, and then berates himself and asks the band to physically abuse him:



Booker, to be fair, expressed mild concern. The Democrat who really makes me see red is an anonymous consultant quoted in this Politico story:

“Is he going to be an albatross to run with? Absolutely,” said one Maine Democratic strategist, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He’s going to lose. All these polls showing him up against Susan Collins — people forget that the voters who decide this race make their decisions in the last two weeks.”

A Politico reporter shoves a mic in your face and you, a Democratic strategist, say, of the presumptive Democratic nominee in a critical Senate race, "He's going to lose"? Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you?

And he's not alone:

“Up until now, the things that have come out, most Mainers have been pretty forgiving — enough to force out a sitting governor in a primary,” said Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist who is advising multiple Senate campaigns but is not involved with Platner’s bid. “The thing that bothers me about Graham is every week it seems like it’s something else. … I worry because I have the scars of trying to beat Susan Collins for many cycles.” ...

“If [Platner] dips below like 65 percent or something [on Tuesday] I think he’d be in trouble,” said a second Maine Democratic strategist. “That’s gonna be tough for him.”

The sitting governor, Janet Mills, dropped out of the race in April, but she's still on the ballot -- and she reminded voters of that over the weekend in an interview with a Portland Press Herald columnist. That's an obnoxious thing for her to say. If she wants to try to take Platner down, she should reenter the race. She should start campaigning again. This half-in, half-out nonsense helps no one except Susan Collins and the Republican Party.

But for observers of American politics, Democratic self-hatred is, in the David Foster Wallace sense, the water we swim in and don't even notice. We think it's normal that Democrats routinely attack their own party ("Weak!" "Woke!") and are afraid to say categorically that their own party is better than the opposition party. We think it's normal that Democrats echo Republican framing of Democrats. We think circular firing squads like the one in Maine are normal.

You know who's not organizing a circular firing squad right now, in response to the voters' choice of a flawed Senate nominee? The Republican Party. Graham Platner damaged his marriage, but it's still intact. Ken Paxton of Texas broke up his marriage with multiple adulteries, and is a sleazebag in many other ways -- he was once impeached, though not convicted, in a Republican-controlled Texas legislature.

Yet Republicans are uniting in opposition to his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, defining him as trans and vegan, and preparing the party for a meme war:

All these memes are (apparently) coming from outside the official GOP, but the GOP has made the campaign's message abundantly clear, and these memes are in perfect sync with that message.

Democrats could unite around the goal of winning the Maine election the way Republicans are uniting around the goal of winning the Texas election, but too many Democrats are comfortable in defeat, because they don't really believe that their party's ideas and values are better than the GOP's. Graham Platner might win this race anyway, but he'd be better positioned to win it if his party had his back.

MAYBE GRAHAM PLATNER IS THE DEMOCRATIC JOE ROGAN

It pains me to say that I agree with anything in The Free Press, but I think River Page's "Why the Attacks on Graham Platner Don't Work" makes some good points (free to read here).

Getting a regrettable tattoo while drunk does not necessarily prove that you are an antisemite—or at least it didn’t to Platner’s Jewish relatives, who he claims knew about the tattoo for years and never said anything about it. It does, however, suggest that you might be a guy who made an egregious mistake without thinking about what the political consequences might be in 20 years, rather than a neurotic careerist who’s been ruthlessly plotting his rise to political power since grade school, which is worse. If voters liked ambitious robots, we’d be halfway through a second Pete Buttigieg administration by now....

In some sense, the [sheer] scale of Platner’s Reddit-related controversies—which run across the political gamut—do actually suggest that he was, as he claims, more of an internet troll than a hardened ideologue.... On the whole, from his Reddit to the regrettable tattoo to that video of him getting wasted and dancing shirtless at a wedding, Platner comes across as a bonehead, and maybe even an asshole—but never a schoolmarm, careerist, or self-righteous hypocrite. Most politicians do, and that’s why people don’t like them.

I give Page credit for pointing out that voters are responding to Platner's political views, and acknowledging that those views are popular.

... when it comes to ideas, people seem to like Platner’s—if they didn’t, perhaps the attacks on his character would have worked better. Proposals that are ostensibly radical by Washington standards, like Medicare for All, are actually supported by a majority of Americans—including Platner. Similarly, like most Americans, Platner wants to tax the rich. And so forth.

Even what might be considered one of his most controversial positions—that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza—is not a fringe belief by polling standards. Half of registered voters believed this to be the case by the end of last year, including four out of 10 American Jews....

Platner’s willingness to support bold ideas and run against the Democratic Party establishment, despite the skeletons in his closet, makes him look like he’s interested in enacting genuine political change. At the end of the day, this is all people really want. And the fact that, despite his upbringing, he genuinely does seem like a guy you could meet at a dive bar doesn’t hurt either.

Do you remember the moment, about a year ago, when Democrats were talking about the need to find a "liberal Joe Rogan"? Many Democrats felt that the party lost the 2024 election because Donald Trump and other Republicans were eager to sit down with podcast bros who aren't "woke" and don't self-censor. Kamala Harris has expressed regret because she didn't appear on Rogan's show during the campaign. Personally, I never wanted Democrats to cozy up to podcasters who demean women or gleefully use slurs, but many very smart people thought the party should embrace them.

Well, now there's a candidate who, in the past, demeaned women, Blacks, and others on Reddit, and who thought it was badass to get (and keep) a Nazi symbol tattoed on his body -- and polls say the voters of his state are embracing him. I hope they're embracing him because they like his politics (I like his politics), and because they think he's sincere about wanting to be a better person than he was when he was a Reddit shitposter and Nazi tattoo acquirer.

And now we have his bad behavior early in his marriage to contend with, although his wife's video response over the weekend seems like a sincere plea for voters to let the two of them work it out.



Platner has not been well behaved for much of his life -- but not being well behaved is what a lot of Democrats seemed to like about the podcast bros, or at least what they thought their fans liked about them. Now there's a badly behaved candidate in a statewide race, and he's leading in the polls. Draw your own conclusions.