Trump’s Numbers – and a Democratic Miscalculation

Although he uttered the iconic phrase nearly a century ago, incoming President Franklin D. Roosevelt is still remembered for assuring the American people facing the depths of the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

It was a boldly optimistic statement, a quintessentially American articulation of what FDR liked to call our nation’s “can-do” spirit. It resonated so strongly with the citizenry that a question naturally arose: Why didn’t outgoing President Hoover, a man with extensive political experience, reassure voters by saying something like that himself?

The answer is that Herbert Hoover did express similar sentiments – for the better part of a year. His problem was that the American people had long-since tuned him out (just as historians have). It’s a risk all presidents face. In our era of obsessive polling, it raises an issue of current relevance for the current incumbent. Simply put, is there a level of disapproval from which a president cannot recover?

The historical evidence is mixed. Richard Nixon and George W. Bush all had approval ratings in the mid-20s, but only as their tenure in the White House was winding down. Jimmy Carter was in the low 30s in 1980. This development compromised their effectiveness – in the areas of governing and politicking. In Nixon’s case, it doomed his presidency; for Carter, it portended his loss to Ronald Reagan. Harry Truman, on the other hand, was never very popular – he has some of the lowest Gallup numbers of any U.S. president – and managed to win in 1948 nonetheless.

The Truman example might give solace to President Trump’s loyalists, but it’s no secret that Trump’s job approval rating is in decline. The numbers vary significantly by survey, ranging from RMG Research’s 51% disapproval and 48% approval to the minus-19 points in a CNN poll. But the bottom line is that the president is underwater in every reputable poll. The RCP Average is minus-12.4 points.

For the most part, Republicans are standing by their man – and Democrats have hated him for 10 years – but it’s among independents that the president is hemorrhaging support. Congressional elections take place in a little over nine months. Fresh off their 2025 off-year election wins, Democrats are understandably buoyed by Trump’s downward spiral. Midterms are typically difficult for the president’s political party anyway, as worried GOP leaders are well aware. Republicans also know that, for better or worse, they are stuck with the man in the Oval Office. Despite his multiple obsessions that run far afield from swing voters’ concerns – Greenland, a new White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center – Republican candidates rely on strong turnout from the MAGA base, meaning they cannot disavow the president.

But there’s a trap for Democrats as well.

The president’s declining popularity and liberals’ vitriolic antipathy towards Trump and his administration’s policies make Democrats think that all they have to do is keeping shouting “Trump!” and “ICE!” This feels cathartic and it placates the party’s progressive base. It may even prove to be effective politics in the short term. But it does nothing to ameliorate the hostility to Democratic Party policies that led to Trump’s 2024 reelection in the first place.

For much of 2025, gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger positioned themselves as common-sense, mainstream Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively, and nothing in the mold of socialist firebrand Zohran Mamdani in New York City. As soon as the two governors were sworn in, however, they fell in line with the progressives’ agenda.

In Virginia, Spanberger immediately issued a spate of executive orders ranging from rescinding Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies of cooperating with ICE to asserting government’s role to set housing policy and kick-starting discontinued policies designed to produce a carbon tax. Spanberger’s fellow Democrats in the legislature have proposed a series of tax increases while one state senator proposed – in response to Minnesota’s burgeoning multi-billion dollar scams in Medicaid other poverty programs – to ban oversight of nonprofits receiving federal funds. As though stealing taxpayers money is a racial issue rather than one of good governance.

As for Gov. Sherrill, she read faithfully from the Democratic Party playbook in an appearance on “Morning Joe” Thursday when asked about the administration’s policy of breaking into homes when occupants under a deportation order won’t answer the door. Egged on by host Mika Brzezinski, who denounced the policy as an “obvious” violation of the Fourth Amendment, Sherrill repeatedly name-dropped Trump. She accused him of developing a “proto-militia that is acting unlawfully on our streets,” adding that ICE agents are acting at Trump’s behest.

The problem is that the Democrats never say what they think the nation’s immigration policy should be. If an illegal immigrant under a deportation order hides in their home, are they then simply allowed to stay in this country indefinitely? Do Democrats believe anyone in the world who manages to cross the U.S. border is beyond the reach of law enforcement – and entitled to receive taxpayer-supported welfare benefits? Does the modern Democratic Party share the antebellum-era Democatic Party conviction that states can ignore federal law? (Until Donald Trump came along, liberals had supported the primacy of federal law since the Civil War.)

Liberal commentator Noah Smith believes this is a worrisome response – particularly when it comes to immigration policy. “I have seen zero evidence that progressives have reckoned with their immigration failures of 2021-23,” he wrote. “I have not seen any progressive or prominent Democrat articulate a firm set of principles on the issue of who should be allowed into the country and who should be kicked out.”

Smith is harshly critical of Trump’s authoritarian impulses in general and ICE’s “toxic” methods in particular. It’s just that he believes liberals must develop and articulate principled immigration policy and plan for governance. They’ve done neither.

Veteran political scientist Ruy Teixeira, who has been issuing friendly (but generally ignored) advice to Democrats for years, goes further. Writing under his “Liberal Patriot” banner, Teixeira calls the Democrats’ stance “cultural denialism.”

In addition to immigration, Teixeira lists DEI transgender issues, Democrats’ “permissiveness toward crime,” and the party’s dependence on “useless or corrupt nonprofits,” as areas in which the party: (a) is at odds with public opinion; and (b) reveals themselves as “unserious about governing.”

The bottom line is that Trump’s plummeting poll numbers give the Democrats strong head winds. This is their election to lose. And they might find a way to do so.