Whole Hog Politics: ObamaCare intensifies Trump slump
The latest poll from The Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked its usual slate of questions about voters’ views of President Trump’s job performance.
In so doing, it also offers some insights into how the looming government shutdown and ObamaCare fight are going to play out.
First, let’s get a baseline.
The president’s overall rating from the voters in the AP/NORC poll is pretty grim at 36 percent, the kind of number he hasn’t seen since the low points of his first term. Those came during his effort to retain power after losing the 2020 election and, his previous all-time low in December 2017, when his chaotic first year in office came to a close amid a government shutdown of his own making.
His current score in an average of high-quality polls is running 21.8 points underwater: 37.8 percent average approval and 59.6 percent average disapproval. The comparable period eight years ago saw Trump 18.4 points below sea level: 38.2 percent approval and 56.6 percent disapproval.
Context is key here. The president started his first term as an unpopular upstart succeeding a predecessor who left office with mediocre but stable approval ratings. On many occasions, Trump lived down to the worst expectations of voters, so his trip to the pits of December 2017 was a shorter one. This time around, Trump started with his best numbers of either term; his sole trip into positive territory so far. The president has fallen more than 25 points since January, while his 2017 journey to the bottom required only 13.6 points.
Four years of former President Biden fatigue and a recollection of the best period of Trump’s previous term — 2018 and 2019 — had raised expectations for a return to that middle era when his tax cuts juiced the economy and he was in many ways held in check by Congress. What voters got was a wilder, darker version of the 2017 disruptor with next to zero pushback from a Republican-controlled Congress.
Creative tension with old-school Republicans in the first term and then genuine fears about his own reelection following the trouncing the GOP got in 2018 produced a far more popular version of Trumpism than the current undiluted dose. Trump has been riding roughshod over Washington and voters are recoiling.
Looked at from Trump’s perspective in one way: So what?
He’s beyond the reach of voters, making money hand over fist on side deals, and he remains such a potent threat in most Republican primaries that few in his party are willing to resist him. Yes, if Democrats capture the House, he will almost surely be impeached a third time and at the very least spend the final two years of his term in gridlock and constant conflict. But the more that looks like a foregone conclusion, the more he can let himself enjoy the freedom that comes with lame duck status: keep working on his family fortune, legacy projects like building his Taj Mahal of a presidential library and dictating the terms of the 2028 Republican nominating contest.
Yes, Trump might like to be a popular president instead of skulking around in his current second-term Nixon mode, but MAGA’s core supporters will never abandon him. As long as he is still the Kingfish in much of Deep South, Appalachia, the Plains and the Midwest, two years of sticking it to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer (or his successor), doing softball interviews and dedicating buildings to himself might be OK.
But when have you ever known Trump to accept defeat?
If an economic recovery helped pull his numbers up after an almost equally dire first year of his first term, why not the second? The tax cuts passed this year will kick in soon, and while they’re not as consequential as the originals, there will be some real boosts. And if Trump can deliver a deal to end the trade war that China currently seems to be winning — or if the Supreme Court throws out the lot of the April “Liberation Day” import taxes — it would be a windfall for almost all Americans.
And while his decision to hit the campaign trail with regularity in 2026 is of dubious political value, it certainly suggests the president is not ready yet to yield to the blue wave.
So, back to the poll.
The only subset of job approval in which Trump isn’t underwater is border security, where he cards a 50 percent approval/48 percent disapproval. Everything else is in the tank, ranging from crime (43 percent/55 percent) all the way down to health care (29 percent/69 percent). Significantly, Trump does not have a positive approval rating on any issue with independent voters, including a gut-wrenching 15 percent approval on his handling of the economy.
This, more than anything, is why Democrats are having such a good run at the ballot box in 2025. They have the same or better intensity levels among their own voters that they did in their big 2018 midterm win, but right now, the independent majority makers are very down on the president and the party he represents. If Trump’s 2024 victory is best understood as a response to inflation and stagnation, there could be no greater sin for a “win so much that you’ll get tired of winning” kind of president to not deliver on promised improvements.
But if independents are most miffed about the state of the economy, why is health care Trump’s worst issue? Because of Republicans themselves.
Democrats disapprove of everything the president does. Even on border security, 80 percent of Democrats still give him a thumbs down. Most of the rest are more than 10 points higher. And in previous polls, you could say the same thing about Republicans in reverse. But this time, some cracks are showing.
Trump has more than 80 percent Republican approval on the border and crime, but then the slide starts, including a 69 percent approval rating on the economy. But there below that sits health care, where Trump is doing just 59 percent with Republicans. By Trump standards, that’s flunking out.
We might normally say that at least some of those folks are conservatives who think that Trump is doing too much on health care, but since the most controversial provision of his only major piece of legislation was a substantial cut to Medicaid, that seems unlikely.
The only reasonable conclusion is that Republicans want Trump to be doing more to deal with health care, and the most problematic part of health care in the U.S. is definitely costs.
Here, I’d highly recommend Yuval Levin’s excellent piece on the GOP’s struggle to offer workable conservative alternatives on health insurance. But also instructive is Noah Rothman’s work on the question of the new Republican coalition, which, as it turns out, isn’t very conservative.
If you get a bunch of blue-collar former Democrats to join the Republican coalition because of a combination of economic and cultural issues, you have not made Friedrich Hayek devotees of them. The premise of big government nationalism is that the government will take care of its people, and letting insurance premiums double on government subsidized health insurance is probably not part of that vision.
America First and Austrian economics are not natural stablemates, which is something that Vice President Vance and the other nationalists keep reminding old-fashioned Republicans. That’s true enough, but that revelation carries some substantial political implications that the GOP is only beginning to reckon with. Vance can praise Zohran Mamdani all he wants, but cutting Medicaid and letting ObamaCare fall off a cliff is not the way to keep the voters he wants on board with the new post-liberal GOP.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is out in front on this one, flaying his fellow Republicans for not keeping premium supports in place. But so far, most die-hard Republicans want little to do with spending billions of dollars to keep ObamaCare propped up. It’s a program many of them have been trying to kill since before it was born.
That’s how you end up with the president losing altitude with his own party for failing to boost ObamaCare compared with his first term when the most notable intersection with the issue was GOP outrage at failing to repeal his predecessor’s signature law.
If Trump concludes that he has to support an extension of ObamaCare to keep his party at least in the game for 2026, is he ready to be the guy who admitted defeat on one of his greatest frustrations from the first term? He’s got just a few weeks to decide which is more unpalatable: accepting ObamaCare or kissing off the midterms.
Maybe they can just Gulf of America this sucker and rename it. So long ObamaCare, hello Trump Health Gold Edition.
[Programming alert: Watch “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt — As Americans face sky-high health care premiums and a struggling economy, Congress remains deadlocked on solutions with yet another government shutdown on the horizon. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is spearheading the effort for a GOP alternative on ObamaCare joins us. And Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.) on the Democratic response, the direction of his party for 2026 and the primary calendar in 2028. And, as always, we’ll have expert analysis from our best-in-the-business panel of journalists, including the great George Will. Be sure to catch us on NewsNation or your local CW station at 10 a.m. ET / 9 a.m. CT.]
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NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Trump Job Performance
Average Approval: 37.8 percent
Average Disapproval: 59.6 percent
Net Score: –21.8 points
Change from two weeks ago: ↓ .8 points
Change from one month ago: ↓ 4.2 points
[Average includes: AP/NORC 36 percent approve – 61 percent disapprove; Reuters/Ipsos 41 percent approve – 57 percent disapprove; Gallup 36 percent approve – 60 percent disapprove; American Research Group 35 percent approve – 62 percent disapprove; Fox News 41 percent approve – 58 percent disapprove]
Gotta get back in time
If you could choose, would you rather live …
In the past: 45 percent
In the present: 40 percent
In the future: 14 percent
[Pew Research Center survey of 9,653 adults, July 8 to Aug. 3]
ON THE SIDE: A WAY WITH WORDS
Quantum Magazine: “[W]hat if our neurobiological reality includes a system that behaves something like an LLM? Long before the rise of ChatGPT, the cognitive neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko began studying how language works in the adult human brain. The specialized system she has described, which she calls ‘the language network,’ maps the correspondences between words and their meanings. … it acts as a translator between external perceptions (such as speech, writing and sign language) and representations of meaning encoded in other parts of the brain (including episodic memory and social cognition, which LLMs don’t possess). Nor is the human language network particularly large: If all of its tissue were clumped together, it would be about the size of a strawberry. But when it is damaged, the effect is profound. An injured language network can result in forms of aphasia in which sophisticated cognition remains intact but trapped within a brain unable to express it or distinguish incoming words from others.”
PRIME CUTS
Indiana GOP rebuffs Trump’s gerrymander demand: The Associated Press: “Indiana Republican state senators voted against a redrawn congressional map Friday that would have favored their party in the 2026 elections, a resounding rejection of a plan pushed by President Donald Trump to help his party win all nine of the state’s congressional districts. Twenty-one senators from the Republican supermajority and all 10 of the chamber’s Democrats voted down the redistricting proposal, which would have split the city of Indianapolis into four districts and potentially eliminated the districts of the state’s two Democratic congressional representatives. While Republican-led states like Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina have answered the redistricting call, many Indiana Republicans have hesitated over the idea of partisan gerrymandering. The state Senators faced months of pressure from the White House, and the redistricting defeat marks a distinct break from the president by members of a party that has largely bowed to his wishes in his second term.”
Dems announce new targets after off-year election wins: The Hill: “Emboldened Democrats are expanding their target lists for the House and state legislatures after a series of notable wins and overperformances on Tuesday. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) both announced Wednesday morning they were expanding their target maps as they hope to shift the balance of power on the state and federal levels. The announcements are the latest sign the party is feeling increasingly energized heading into next year’s midterms, with Democrats optimistic that anti-Trump anger and a message focused on affordability will turn out their voters in waves. ‘In election after election this year, voters have sent a simple message: they are ready for change,’ DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said in a Wednesday statement.”
Yglesias: Senate in reach for Dems if they take the hint from Tennessee: Slow Boring: “The message of the Tennessee special election should be that even though it’s tough to win in Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Alaska, and Florida, it’s not impossible. Democrats secured roughly the level of overperformance that they would need in a reasonably high-salience race, and they did it with a candidate who had some pretty big flaws. In four other House special elections with lower salience but better nominees, Democrats put up the numbers they would need to carry those states. And the good news about the generic ballot is that, while it’s not currently good enough, the historical trend is for things to get worse for the president’s party during the midterm year. It’s not inevitable that the generic ballot will converge to the kind of numbers we’ve seen in actual elections, but it’s certainly plausible and in line with history.”
SHORT ORDER
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) declares for Senate, tilting race further in GOP’s favor — The Hill
Former Rep. Colin Allred decamps for House race, ditching Texas Senate run — KDFW
Dems notch yet another special election victory in red Georgia district — The Downballot
Emerson poll puts Vivek Ramaswamy in a dead heat with leading Democrat for Ohio governor — The Hill
Trump fumes as Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) declines to switch parties after pardon — The Guardian
Former Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) makes comeback bid as Dem gerrymander shapes up —The Washington Post
Poll shows young voters down on Democrats, Republicans worse — Harvard Institute of Politics
A compendium of 2026 carpetbagging — DDHQ
TABLE TALK: SHE KNOWS THE SYSTEM
“Voters should trust me precisely because I am someone who stands up to government pressure.” — Gaea Powell announcing her candidacy to serve as California’s San Luis Obispo County’s top elections official despite currently facing eight felony counts of election and voter fraud.
MAILBAG
“Something, in my opinion, your article overlooked about the Tennessee special election was that some of the votes [Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn] got were from voters who were protesting President Trump. She also lost votes because of her extreme stance on many issues. Tennessee, like many states, is made up of a lot of moderate voters who were ignored by both candidates. There are people like myself who don’t agree with the extreme policies of both parties realizing that neither side has all the answers to solve the nation’s ills. Many voters are turned off by the Democrats LGBTQ+ policies etc. while others are turned off by the Republicans immigration policies and such. Until the Democrats find a truly moderate candidate that can cross party lines they will struggle. The last several presidential elections, I looked strongly at the Libertarian Party. Both parties believe one size fits all but it doesn’t. Politically this country is in the pits because compromise and understanding has become extinct. Both parties live by the idea of ‘my way or nothing at all.’” — John Bench, Clarksville, Tenn.
Mr. Bench,
I was perhaps making too many assumptions! I shorthanded state Rep. Behn as “very progressive,” but might have done well to include a few lines of exactly why that description fits her. You folks in the Cumberland Valley didn’t need a primer, but I would have done well to offer some details.
But I will say in my defense that you are kind of making my point for me. The challenge I was describing for Democrats is that what their die-hard members want is not saleable in many of the districts they need to win in order to have a big year in 2026.
The problem there is that many of the primary voters in these reddish districts aren’t interested in electability as much as they are in winning their own internal struggles against the moderate members of the blue team. You sound exactly the kind of voter they should be keeping in mind as they head into primary season.
All best,
c
“Whole Hog Politics feels like having coffee with an old friend. And though I’d never watched you on any program, now The Hill Sunday is my ‘go to.’ … Age discrimination? I found it curious that you did not include the 65+ category with the “News They Don’t Use” in your Nutritional Information box in today’s newsletter. You even had room by adjusting the byline spacing. There are no excuses! Your Pew-Knight Initiative source does include such an age category, thankfully. In spite of this, I want to thank you for all your good work, of course!” — Chris Howard, Mesa, Ariz.
Ms. Howard,
Mea culpa!
It wasn’t that I was trying to save space, which is theoretically unlimited in an email newsletter, but rather I was trying to avoid distractions. I know readers are only willing to pay attention to a fairly limited number of digits in a given period, and I’m always looking to leave out the things that don’t enhance the relevant story.
I was focused on the rock-bottom numbers on news consumption among younger Americans, figures I find deeply disturbing and which continue to bear out the concerns I examined in my 2022 book, “Broken News.” I confess to being a bit of an obsessive on the subject.
So much so that I lost sight of the ultimate goal of this weekly note: to edify our readers. I gained little by the omission and put you to the trouble of poking around the internet to find what I could have shared in a few pixels.
Please pardon the omission and accept the chart as it should have appeared:
News they don’t use
Percent of U.S. adults who say they follow the news all or most of the time, by age
2017; 2025
Ages 18-29 31 percent; 15 percent
Ages 30-49 41 percent; 26 percent
Ages 50-64 56 percent; 45 percent
Ages 65+ 76 percent; 62 percent
[Pew-Knight Initiative surveys]
All best,
c
“Virginia’s [state liquor stores] are now using the raccoon as a marketing asset. “Raccoon approved” cocktail recipes and merchandise. Virginia based distillery is also in on the trend. Cardinal News has an interview with the raccoon in question by Dwayne Yancey.” — Donnie Bishop, New Castle, Va.
Mr. Bishop,
I won’t be able to improve on Mr. Yancey’s work, so I will pass on this passage from the fictive interview with the ring-tailed liquor store inebriate:
“Have raccoons ever had any good experiences with people?
Well, let’s see, there were the Whigs. You know how Democrats have the donkey and Republicans have the elephant? The Whig Party used raccoons. Symbol of the frontier and all that. I miss the Whig Party. Better a Whig than a wig, I say.
And then there was Calvin Coolidge. Someone sent him a raccoon for Thanksgiving dinner, but he turned her into a pet instead. Rebecca. If raccoons had the right to vote today, we’d all vote for Coolidge. Not that it would do him much good now, I suppose.
Nowadays, we don’t even get a good cliche. ‘Drunk as a skunk.’ Give me a break. A skunk would have stunk up that joint. I just passed out.”
That’s gold, right there.
All best,
c
2024 Election Coverage
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FOR DESSERT: UP ON THE HOUSETOP, CRAB LEG CLICKS
WKRC: “Authorities confirmed that a drone was intercepted at a prison. According to a statement posted to X on Monday by the S.C. Department of Corrections, a drone arrived at Lee Correctional Institution carrying multiple items, including crab legs, seasoning and marijuana. ‘Seems some folks were planning an early holiday Old Bay crab boil and steak dinner along with their marijuana and cigarettes — all dropped by a drone at Lee CI,’ the post reads. The image appears to show Old Bay seasoning, Marlboro cigarettes, crab legs, and steak. Authorities did not confirm whether any arrests were made in connection with the incident.”
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