The public has noticed:
The Republican Party’s image, already quite negative, has slipped since last fall. Currently 33% of the public has a favorable impression of the Republican Party, while 62% have an unfavorable view. Unfavorable opinions of the GOP are now as high as at any point since 1992.
In October, 37% viewed the Republican Party favorably and 58% viewed it unfavorably. The decline in favorability since then has largely come among Republicans themselves: In the current survey, 68% of Republicans view their party positively, down from 79% last fall.
By contrast, public views of the Democratic Party are unchanged since October. Currently, 45% of the public has a favorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 50% have an unfavorable opinion.
Now is the time to say the Democrats are also in disarray.
Our Ten-Percent-Less-Despised advantage!
http://images.dailykos.com/images/242779/story_image/TMW2016-04-27color.png?1461363546
Hang on to your hats, folks. This election is going to be a theme-park ride through the American dark side.
Hey, isn’t anything over 7% supposed to give us the House?
New Rasmussen poll (not that it has much of a reputation for accuracy:
Congress has for some time had favorable ratings below 33% and yet, incumbents rarely lose.
Behold the awesome power of gerrymandering.
And not bothering to invest.
does that explain why only 1 member of Congress has lost in a primary this year? And he goes on trial in May.
The Senate has 45 Republicans, 53 Democrats, and 2 Independents, who caucus with the Democrats. The average age of Members of the House at the beginning of the 113th Congress was 57.0 years; of Senators, 62.0 years.Nov 24, 2014
Oops, needs updating. Make them older.
Large states like CA, FL, and NY have yet to hold their 2016 Congressional primaries.
16% of respondents are full of shit.
Around here, quoting Rasmussen is a violation of Godwin’s Law.
Desperate.
Ridiculous.
A joke.
It’s a fun name to say though – especially when pronounced with a long “u”.
That may be what keeps them in business.
Not getting how it’s a violation of “Godwin’s law.”
Whether or not Rasmussen’s sample population is representative of the whole this time or not, the numbers aren’t unprecedented when the choices are limited to two presumptive nominees and nothing or a third party candidate. Check out polling from May 1992.
The linked chart shows, in May 1992, Bush Sr. and Perot both at 35%, Clinton at 25%. And the point is….?
The point is that at this stage of a presidential election, it’s not unprecedented to see a three way split among the general electorate. Obviously, WJC was under-performing with the Dem base as of May 1992 and Perot was over-performing, in part because he was new and quirky; whereas WJC was less well known and liberal Dems weren’t keen on another southern Dem. The question to ask is what is the nature and who are the voters that are disaffected and/or alienated from the Dem and GOP parties. Who is most likely to “come home” by election day?
More Dems than Republicans “came home” that year, but why? Who was in the tent as of May ’92 and who were outside? And who were the hold-outs in November? Why did near half of the hold-outs remain hold-outs four years later and why did the hold-outs virtually disappear four years later? How did GWB get the ’96 hold-outs?
Perot is a good example because his appeal was simplistic and it crossed party lines of the day and the GOP factions since then haven’t changed. Figure that out and the 2016 GOP intra-party splits during the primary become practically predictable.
Rasmussen: precise, but inaccurate.
As strong an indicator that they have their thumb on the scale as any.
Who the hell are these 33% who currently maintain a favourable view of the Republican party? That’s a pretty big cohort to be seemingly unmoored from reality. This may be part of our problem.
It’s the same 33% who’ve always seen the Rs as favorable. The percentage has dropped – very very briefly – to as low as 28%. But it typically is around 33%. The R party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the USA media-complex, which trends from conservative to really really conservative to batsh*t insane. People are inundated 24/7/365 with rightwing propaganda. The wonder is that the numbers aren’t higher, frankly.
I, personally, heave a sigh of relief that it’s still around 33%. And yes, I do question the statistics. All must be taken with pallets of salt. But it’s an indicator.
One-in-three wilfully unrepentant nincompoops? I don’t want to be in that lifeboat. Strikes me as about the limit of what the market will bear before the onset of late-imperial forgettery and consequent dystopia.
The same ~28% of deadenders who supported Bush as New Orleans was drowning and Iraq was burning.
I’m not so sure I would get excited about only being 12% more favorable than the mess that is the GOP.
Actually it might be time to say the Democrats have some type of problem if they are only ahead by 12%…
Apparently, we’re not supposed to say that. I’ve never understood why. But that’s just me.
Especially when you factor into it that the only time the Democratic party has had a higher favorability rating was when Bush was in office, or Clinton was in office.
Hoping that the Democratic party has a higher favorability rating almost implies that the US needs either a center-right Democrat, or a Republican in the White House.
So, uh, be careful about what you wish for I guess.
Given the 20 year drumbeat that both sides are equally obstructionist, equally beholden to the radical wings of their parties and equally ideologically rigid, I’m surprised the Democrats have as high a rating as they do. The “both sides” effect is almost guaranteed to work, simply by osmosis. That’s part of what makes the whole “government is the problem” line so effective.
LATimes – Pentagon disciplines 16 for deadly attack on Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan
Guess MSF Lives don’t matter.
Getting to be a feature, not an aberration. Happened again with US allies in Yemen and two in Syria.
Don’t know how true it is but another site said that the commander believed “allied” intelligence without double checking it. No wonder he was sacked.
This incident seems a clear sign of stunning failure; that our enemies could bamboozle us into attacking a publicly gazetted MSF site exposes some glaring shortcomings in the whole chain-of-intelligence and doctrine of command.
DNC might be in disarray after 2016 Congress elections.
The Sanders folk have a new outsider strategy…
https:/brandnewcongress.org
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/28/this_is_what_the_revolution_looks_like_former_sanders_staffers_are_l
aunching_a_new_pac_aimed_at_midterm_congressional_elections/
Good.
Imagine if this movement had started in November 2014.
Perhaps Sanders would be the presumptive nominee and we could be testing out the “The US will elect a socialist President” idea. I’d be much more enthusiastic about this election cycle, which is to say, I’d actually be enthusiastic, instead of being just a dependable voter.
The problem that Democrats and progressives have is that they typically only show up during Presidential election years. When it comes to…trumping…the White House, nothing is as valuable as having control of Congress.
With ratings like that, perhaps someone will figure out that maybe it is the right time to change the brand label and start a new party. I wouldn’t be surprised if the billionaire class wasted no time taking advantage of the situation.
Obviously Bloomberg was threatening to run if the Democrats went with the socialist- but he seems to be fine with Hillary now. The Kochs seem to be warming to her as well. But you have to figure that somewhere there is a wealthy right leaning oligarch wannabe with money to burn who wants to make history by starting the second Republican party-“real republicans”, “GOP v2.0”, or perhaps they would call it… “Atlas Shrugged”.
Time is running out though… filing deadlines are fast approaching. Surely someone is game?
“GOP v2.0”
Wasn’t that what the tea party was supposed to be, after the Bush debacle?
You can tell they’re getting ready to launch by the Thomas Freidman column. It worked so well for him last time.
I’m sure he can find a billionaire taxi driver to quote. Pity everyone’s using Uber or Lyft instead…
Ross Perot might have had more success today.
Well Dems may find themselves gaining an inch or two of ground with Hillary if she keeps up the smart comebacks to Trump like her new “Hillary Women’s card”.
I pity the Rep down ballot folk having to run in Trump’s shadow and try and gain traction with the women’s vote after this week. Course they’ve already lost the Hispanic, Asian & Black vote so maybe they won’t notice.
Clinton isn’t very popular down ballot as well. Just watch how many Blue Dogs, and those wanting to be the new Blue Dogs, try and run away from her come fall.
On what basis do you say that Clinton is not popular down-ballot? And to what Blue dog Democrats do you refer? I live in a red state that used to have Blue dog Democrats at the national level (my Rep was one) and after 2010 there are none left. What few Democrats we have left are African-American ones. My take on those in my state is that they like Hillary Clinton. We shall see later in the year after all the primaries are over how many down ballot Democrats will be running away from Hillary.
Do you not remember the 2010 and 2014 mid-terms? Do you not remember how many House Blue Dogs voted against the ACA?
The House Blue Dogs have been reduced to almost nothing; I think there’s only about ten remaining. They were almost all booted from office in their general election fights in the elections after the 111th Congress did its good work. Opposing or refusing to campaign on the many progressive accomplishments of that Congress didn’t save them.
I don’t see evidence that Clinton and her popularity will hurt Congressional Democratic candidates down ballot in November. She has also raised money for all of their campaigns, a very good thing for her to have done, despite that some find it distasteful. Underfunded candidates are unlikely to win, particularly when buried by money from ALEC, the RCCC and others.
I’m referring not to just how the down ballot candidates relate to Trump’s policies but how the voters dislike what he stands for and how the candidates will find themselves on the defensive.
So Republicans have a net 29% unfavorable rating and Democrats have a 5% net unfavorable rating.
But 68% of Republicans have positive opinion of the Republican Party. What is not disclosed is what percentage of voters consider themselves Republicans.
Both brands are indeed in trouble.
Democrats have been in disarray for around six years. Republicans have been in disarray for the same amount of time, but they tried to co-opt both the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus; the old Republican Party has now lost the ability to act at all at the federal level and has become captive of ALEC at the state level. Unfortunately for them, the voters are nowhere with them. But in too many places there are no real alternatives and procedurally this year’s election is already corrupt and confusing for voters. For example, in North Carolina, we have not voted for the Congress or the legislature because of court confusion about gerrymandering. Other states are in a similar position.
Journalist who profiled Melania Trump hit with barrage of antisemitic abuse
Julia Ioffe has received disturbing calls and online abuse since profiling Donald Trump’s wife for GQ, and likens antisemitism to `shit I’ve only seen in Russia’
Journalist Julia Ioffe has experienced this kind of harassment before: in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
In the 24 hours since her profile of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, appeared in GQ magazine, the Russian-American journalist has received a torrent of antisemitic, vitriolic and threatening messages from supporters of the Republican frontrunner.
In the deeply disturbing response to her piece, Ioffe said she sees a frightening future of what freedom of the press – and the country – might look like under a president Trump.
“What happens if Donald Trump is elected?” Ioffe said. “We’ve seen the way he bids his supporters to attack the media, his proposal to change libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists.”
Trump: The 4chan candidate.
I need some help unraveling a difficult ideological problem.
So, I have these long-time (25-year) neighbors who are really decent folks. We’ve watched each others’ kids grow up, done the neighborly things like feed the cats and bring in the mail when one or the other of us is gone, helped each other with home-repair projects, and lent each other tools. We’ve been to parties at each others’ homes and like to stand at the fence and chit-chat.
Problem is, Mrs. R is a diehard Hillary Clinton supporter who never forgave Barack Obama for defeating Hillary in 2008, and Mr R is an ex-Democrat turned Republican about 20 years ago. He claims to be an independent but seems to always vote GOP. Oh, and Mr R is deadset against gun control.
I’m really troubled by this situation.
Should I hate my neighbors? Hate myself? Commission a poll of the neighborhood to figure out my favorability rating? And my neighbors’ favorability rating?