Americans are generally aware of what President Donald Trump’s job approval rating is, estimating it as 46% in a late July Gallup poll, when his actual rating in the same survey was 42%. When Gallup conducted the same exercise in 1999 for Bill Clinton, Americans’ estimate was even closer — […] Read more »
Nancy Pelosi, Impeachment, and Places in History
… The basic historical error behind suppressing an impeachment inquiry confuses the genuine crisis surrounding Trump with the manufactured one that engulfed Clinton. In 1998, the House Republicans, lacking public support and all but assured that the Senate, though it was controlled by their own party, would not convict Clinton, […] Read more »
What Trump May Be Missing In Those Polls He Calls Fake
As President Trump attends the G-20 summit in Japan this week, a score of Democrats who want his job are debating in Miami — vying for a nomination that looks increasingly worth having. Major polls taken in the late spring showed President Trump trailing his top Democratic challengers both nationwide […] Read more »
Democrats Learned the Wrong Lesson From Clinton’s Impeachment
Democrats debating whether to impeach Donald Trump may be misreading the evidence from the last time the House tried to remove a president. It’s become conventional wisdom—not only among Democrats but also among many political analysts—that House Republicans paid a severe electoral price for moving against Bill Clinton in 1998, […] Read more »
The Shadow of 1998
The Democrats’ 40-seat net gain in the House last fall was the latest example of the midterm election serving as a check on the White House. Since the Civil War, there have now been 40 midterms, and the president’s party has lost ground in the House in 37 of those […] Read more »
Trump Character Ratings Improved, but Still a Weakness
More Americans today (40%) than two years ago (33%) believe President Donald Trump has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have, although that still represents a minority of the public. In contrast, roughly six in 10 Americans thought George W. Bush and Barack Obama had the right presidential […] Read more »