Talk about the bigotry of low expectations. As news outlets gather ‘round and marvel at Donald Trump's slowly improving popularity, he's basically being rewarded for having posted truly middling polling numbers for the past two years. Virtually ignored in all the coverage is the fact that Trump is the only president in the history of modern-day polling who has spent his entire presidency at an under 50 percent approval rating. Trump has effectively rewritten the American record books for how consistently unpopular a sitting leader can be. After eight years of trolling President Barack Obama for not being popular enough and supposedly suffering from "plunging" approval ratings, the Beltway press has politely flipped the script for Trump.
Note these recent headlines:
"Trump reaches highest approval rating of presidency in latest poll" (NBC News)
"Poll: Trump's approval rating hits highest point of presidency" (The Hill)
"President Trump's job approval rating reaches high mark in NPR/PBS/Marist poll after racist tweets" (USA Today)
"Trump’s approval rating hits record high: poll" (New York Post)
None of those reports contain any context explaining that Trump's new "highest" represents a historically low showing. For a sitting president in his 10th quarter in office, the average approval rating is 52 percent, according to Gallup's analysis. Trump currently sits near 44 percent. It's amazing how a president running that far below the historic average is able to rack up so much positive coverage about his approval rating.
And let's be clear: There is no surge that's driving Trump's still-tepid approval rating. Despite the context-free coverage, which certainly leaves the impression that Trump is riding some sort of wave, his approval rating today is basically where it was last year. For instance, according to Gallup, Trump's approval rating currently stands at 44 percent. And according to Gallup, 12 months ago it stood at 42 percent, which signifies virtually no change. Also note that among the crucial category of independent voters, Trump's approval ratings is a dismal 38 percent today, just as it was one year ago.
The recent polls come with a bunch of bad news for Trump, but most of that takes a backseat in the media’s coverage.
For instance, a new Marist poll shows a robust 54 percent of respondents say they'll "definitely" vote against Trump, while just 32 percent think the U.S. economy is "working well. Note that during this juncture in Obama's first term, none of the six polls asking about Obama from November 2010 through November 2011 showed a majority "definitely" committed to voting against him.
Keep in mind, the often-glowing coverage comes as the same polling data shows Trump losing badly in a match-up with Democratic candidate Joe Biden. According to recent Fox News as well as ABC/Washington Post polls, Trump trails Biden by 10 points nationally. And in a Quinnipiac poll, Trump trails the Democrat by eight points in Ohio. Indeed, shouldn't that have been the headline for these polls? Something like, "One year before re-election, Trump badly trails Democrat"? Instead, the coverage has stressed that Biden was the "only" Democrat leading Trump in Ohio. "Joe Biden is the only Democratic 2020 contender leading President Trump in an Ohio hypothetical general election match-up, according to a new poll," Politico announced on Twitter.
But that's not actually news. Republicans won Ohio by eight points in 2016. It's now considered a red state. Why would it be news that a Republican president is leading most Democratic challengers in a red state? What is news is that Trump, after winning Ohio by eight points three years ago, currently trails Biden by eight points, which represents 16-point net swing.
Meanwhile, at Reuters, the news wire service recently stressed how Trump's approval rating had gone up following the racists tweets he posted about four Democratic congresswomen. But the real news from the survey was that Trump's support among independent voters had plunged 10 points.
With Trump polling at 44 percent, the Post stresses he has a "real" path toward re-election. But eight years ago when Obama's approval dipped and he was polling around 44 percent, news outlets often stressed how that was very bad news for his re-election chances. The truth is, during his two terms the press repeatedly worked to depict Obama’s standing as being on the decline, and often downplaying his success. At one point, a New York Times editorial, anxious to push a narrative about Obama's supposedly broken presidency, simply fabricated his approval rating, claiming it was 40 percent in a new poll, when it was actually 50 percent in that new poll.
There's another interesting pattern at play. Today, some in the press are busy trying to pump up Trump's soggy approval rating. And just over a decade ago, some in the press were busy (some were even obsessed) predicting that President George W. Bush, entangled at the time in a trillion-dollar war debacle, would soon be enjoying a "rebound" in his approval status. As the Republican's presidency cratered, D.C. media insiders were certain it would turn around … soon. It never did, as Bush left office with a 22 percent approval rating.
And now we have the same press anxious to hype Trump's "highest" new approval rating, even though it represents an unparalleled failure for any sitting president.
Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.
This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.
