Nice try, not even close

| 11:00 pm EST January 9, 2020
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He’s done it again. Whenever Donald Trump is truly down in the dumps, he starts tweeting the same exact laugh-out-loud poll number: he claims he has a 95% approval rating within the Republican Party. He doesn’t even bother to say where the number supposedly came from. He just keeps repeating it, as if he were trying to convince himself that his tidal wave of ongoing bad news and unpopularity can’t be real, because of this one magic number.

The funny part is that whoever is feeding Trump this Republican approval rating number isn’t even trying particularly hard. For instance, Trump periodically tweets the latest Rasmussen poll number, which invariably claims that his approval rating is at 50%, or 51%, or whatever number it happens to be. Rasmussen is a notoriously inaccurate poll that always overstates the popularity of Republican politicians, and is always proven wrong come election time. But at least Trump is quoting a real fake poll, so to speak; one with a name, and whose numbers move around a bit like a real poll.

When it comes to the Republican approval rating number, it’s always the same 95%. Actually, Trump used to consistently claim it was at 90%, and now he consistently claims it’s at 95%. So we suppose his handlers have bumped up his standing in this imaginary poll they invented, as they try even harder to keep him from feeling insecure about how bad things are getting for him.

If you want to win in politics, you have to start by taking an honest look at your current position, so you can figure out how to adjust course. Donald Trump obviously isn’t capable of doing that. When you’re reduced to clinging to imaginary polls to try to cheer yourself up, you’re not trying to win. You’re trying to coddle yourself. Trump is eminently beatable. The Resistance just has to keep at it.