Donald Trump and the GOP are in quicksand

| 11:30 pm EDT July 17, 2020
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Donald Trump is an incompetent buffoon who before he somehow stumbled his way into becoming president managed to destroy everything he touched. However, even as embarrassing and ill-prepared as he is for every occasion, he’s not fully responsible for the sinking of the Republican Party that we’re seeing unfold in real time. The GOP has favorability ratings even worse than Donald Trump’s. Since the beginning of 2020 alone, the number of American voters who identify as Democrats has increased by a full 13 points, according to a new Gallup Poll.

At the time of Trump’s impeachment in January, Republicans were up two points in terms of favorability – with many pundits confident that the GOP would keep the Senate. Now Democrats are up 11 points, with a three-point increase just happening in June. For the party to have a double-digit advantage of this size is somewhat unusual – but it’s always been consistent with one thing: the party winning big. The last three times it happened in an election year, for example, were after Presidents Clinton and Obama were re-elected in electoral college blowouts, and after Democrats re-took the House in 2018.

It’s also been a pretty reliable indicator of when people aren’t particularly happy with the Republican Party, as it stayed that way for the end of President Bush’s tenure and the Great Recession in 2008, and following President Clinton’s impeachment in 1999. It’s going to be hard for the GOP to turn things around, particularly when they’re focused more on their public image in a global crisis than actually putting in the work that leadership entails. In November, it’s time we give them a lesson on this and vote them out of office at every level.