In any free and fair election, a president whose handling of an ongoing catastrophe polled this badly wouldn't have a chance in hell of winning reelection. It remains to be seen how free and fair November turns out to be.
But in the meantime, the new CNN/SSRS poll is a mind-blowing indictment of Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans, 68%, are embarrassed by the U.S. response to the pandemic. And fully 79% are either very or somewhat angry about how things are going in the country right now, with a whopping 51% saying they're "very angry." CNN notes it has polled the question periodically since 2008 and "the previous high for the share who said they were 'very angry' was 35%, reached in 2008 and 2016." So Trump is really knocking it out of the park there.
Another stunner is how many Americans now know someone who has been diagnosed with coronavirus—67% do now, a 27% jump from the 40% who knew someone in early June.
Trump’s disapprovals on his handling of the pandemic also reached a new high of 58% in the poll after rising steadily over the past few months from 48% in March.
In terms of resuming normal daily activities, 52% of Americans say they are not comfortable doing so. In June, just 9% expressed similar discomfort with resuming their daily routines.
As for reopening schools, 57% say their local schools should not reopen for in-person learning while 39% say they should. But partisanship is playing a major role in driving people's views on this question and many others, with just 12% of Democrats expressing support for school reopenings while 74% of Republicans do.
The survey also found giant partisan divides in other areas:
Democrats (76%) and independents (58%) are far more likely to say the worst is yet to come in the outbreak than are Republicans (26%), and the poll finds a massive 64-point gap between the percentages of Republicans and Democrats who say they are comfortable returning to their regular routines today (82% among Republicans, 18% among Democrats).
That said, when nearly 7 in 10 of the electorate is embarrassed by the country's coronavirus response, it's fair to say, as Trump did in 2016, "Please, please, Mr. President, we’re sick and tired of winning."
