35% Approval and a Midterm Disaster is NOT What America Voted For
A tough and realistic conversation for the short-sighted
Happy Monday, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve been on the road for 9 days and am a bit worn down. I’m not my chipper self today, and I’m going to open your week with a bit of shockwave for needed perspective, accountability, and hopefully, direction.
Simply put, when Americans voted for a political revolution and won, they didn’t vote for a 35% approval rating and they sure as hell didn’t come out in droves just so the Republican Party could get shellacked in the very next midterms. They were told about America’s decline, viewed that fateful quadrennial presidential election as a last ditch effort to reverse course peacefully in America, and responded with a popular vote win that featured Republican presidential victories in:
Arizona
Michigan
Nevada
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
…and blowouts in Texas, Florida, and Ohio. This unrelenting base was ready to crawl over shattered glass and gas station bathrooms to vote for a man who became the oldest president of all time upon inauguration. That old man could have enjoyed his fame in retirement, but chose to step into a toxic arena and wear every label, accusation, and slander imaginable and even survived an assassin’s bullet.
To imagine that this man would be underwater and through uncontrollable world events struggle to deliver the full economic revival he promised his working-class base just two years later, and on the verge of losing midterms, is utterly unimaginable, unpalatable, and unacceptable to the people who believed in him.
Thirty-five percent approval.
In the celebratory aftermath of his victory and the rip-roaring fast start of the administration, no one would pencil in a 12% loss to Democrats in the House popular vote, and a loss of 26 seats, along with key gubernatorial races in must-win states. Seeing the base fray at the seams was not what I’d have envisioned watching such a political revolution unfold just two years earlier.
My assumption is that you had no idea I was talking about President Ronald Reagan’s administration and the beating the Republicans received in 1982.
Yes, indeed - at the start of 1983, right after the Democrats cleaned House, President Reagan held a 35% approval rating.
This was back before we had 900 different polls using different methodologies to produce heavily propagandized results, so a 35% approval rating hurts a lot more than the fabricated ones encircling President Trump’s administration these days. Reagan was widely thought to be a one-term president in the making at the same point in his administration as we find ourselves into Trump 2.0’s administration.
Likewise, vultures are circling today - forecasting doom in 2028 despite Republicans performing extremely well in voter registration bearing down on a midterm that, according to 92 years of history, favors Democrats, and the rapid emergence of the DSA faction of the Democrat Party.
Three-time Trump voters perpetuate online conversations 24/7 spreading negative energy (“blackpilling”) and convincing those on the fence that the fight isn’t worth fighting and exists only to be lost. Now let me tell you how we got here, how we get out, and what mindset shift must occur if there is to be a freer future obtained through peaceful means.
TALKING SENSE IN AN AGE OF POLITICAL ILLITERACY
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