Donald Trump’s approval rating is still falling, but his political capital is now at zero
Numbers don’t lie, but sometimes they don’t mean what they sound like they mean. For instance a five percent unemployment rate is considered to be net-zero by most economists, because at any given time that many people are naturally in the process of changing jobs. Similarly, when we talk about Donald Trump’s approval rating, it’s not truly on a hundred point scale. And in fact his approval has sunk to the point where, in terms of political capital, it’s at zero.
If you’re a president with a 50% approval rating or higher, you have a safe level of political capital. Members of your own party are eager to stand alongside you in the hope your popularity will rub off on them, while members of the other party have think twice about whether they want to be seen as defying someone as popular as you are. But at the 40% mark, it’s a different ballgame. Your own party is hesitant to defend you, while the other party concludes it can score points with the American middle just by attacking you. And at 30%, your presidency is officially over. At that point even your own party wants you gone so you can’t take them down with you.
So we’re really looking at a twenty point scale, where 50% translates to limitless political capital, and 30% means you’re so far into negative political capital that out the door. Donald Trump, depending on how you want to average the polls, is at somewhere around 35% or perhaps at best 38%. He entered office in the low forties, so when you consider that he’s dropped five to eight points on a twenty point scale over the past half a year, that’s a lot. He’s still not sufficiently underwater for the Republican-majority Congress to remove him. But based on the political climate that’s begun emerging this past week, we’re seeing that his current approval rating translates to zero.
Trump is desperate to pass any version of TrumpCare at all, so he can call it a win. But the Senate is hedging its bets on that vote. Trump is even more desperate to ease sanctions on Russia for personal reasons, but Congress is going the other way by stripping his ability to ease sanctions. The Republicans won’t have serious internal conversations about impeachment or the 25th Amendment until his approval rating bottoms out at 30%. But he’s now low enough that he has zero political capital, even with his own party. And it’ll only get worse for him.
