President Donald J. Trump is joined by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, right, as walks across the field during the 120th Army-Navy football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pa. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
A Quinnipiac poll this week shows support for President Trump’s impeachment and removal from office has gone down since October, to 45%. Why?
Peggy Noonan in the WSJ offers “guesses:”
- … in the past 10 days the latest jobs numbers came out, and America has functional full employment.
- A Quinnipiac poll released Dec. 10 showed that since February 2018, the share of the population who believe the Republicans handle the economy better than the Democrats has gone up seven points, from 42% to 49%.
- The share who say they are better off financially since 2016 is 57%.
Powerful Numbers
When people have peace and prosperity they don’t like to make a change at the top. That’s what saved Bill Clinton when he was impeached. They knew he’d done what he was accused of, but they let it go.
Democrats Historic Misjudgment
From their first debates in June, their major candidates announced themselves to be for sharply higher taxes, banning private health insurance, the Green New Deal, free college, complete student loan forgiveness, free health insurance for illegal aliens, and functionally open borders. They would ban fossil fuels and fracking. At least one candidate said America’s religious institutions should lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage. They are extreme on abortion—no limits, ever—and in their support of identity politics, which sees not a country but a thousand warring tribes endlessly rewarded for being at each other’s throats.
The Democrat Message Is Grim
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “The Squad” enthusiastically held up by the Democrats’ friends and operatives in the press as the future of the party. If they are, the future is grim, with their Leninist insistence that you’ll do it their way or be flattened. It is not only policies that count but spirit. Theirs is one of accusation and division. Where they should be ardent they are only arrogant. Their approach speaks of a desire not to make progress but to unsettle and undo.
The left’s powerful miscalculation is turning Donald Trump into a savior, Ms. Noonan reminds readers.
He was not a savior before AOC. He was not a savior before Elizabeth and Bernie said they’d ban your health insurance.
But the past year has allowed the president’s supporters, and independents, to see him that way. It has given them something new to fight for, something better. They don’t have to say, “I’m for Trump because I love him,” or think, “I’m for Trump because I have sacrificed all standards for power.”
They can say, “I’m going to defend the free-market system and our liberties by voting for Trump.”
Read more here.
