Bernie And Morning Joe-- A Meeting Of The Minds?

On Thursday morning, Bernie was a guest of the newly not-Republican-anymore Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. "It's not just his temperament and it's not just his stupid tweets," he told Joe and Mika. "Do not forget for a second that the policies that the policies that he is proposing are the most destructive policies being proposed in our lifetimes. This legislation that he is urging Congress to pass would throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance. How many of those people will die, we don't know-- but thousands of them will."

Scarborough was an ultra-conservative congressman from a backward, red district around Ft. Meyers in southwest Florida before he resigned in the midst of the very suspicious 2001 death of a 28 year staffer in his office, Lori Klausutis. On Wednesday he went public with his decision to leave the Republican Party and re-register as an independent. At an event sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at the National Archives in DC, Scarborough told the crowd that "the last straw for me actually wasn’t Russia, it was the healthcare bill. That kicks 25 million people off of their health insurance, and then they turn around and give tax cuts to the richest one percent of America. I think the healthcare bill is heartless, I think the way they did it is shameful, and they did it without any transparency, and at the end of the day I just couldn’t defend them anymore, after 20, 25 years."

And that wasn't all Joe wanted to get off his chest: "What bothered me the most was that the Republican Party and its leaders came up with so many reasons why they didn’t support Donald Trump, but I never heard that it was because he was a racist. That he was basically a political bottom-feeder, that he was trying to appeal to the worst instincts in the Republican Party... I’m a small government-- uh, I guess conservative. I’m afraid to even use that word now. There is nothing conservative about this party. I think the Republican Party is in for some very, very tough years ahead. I don’t know if they survive Donald Trump. I think George W. Bush, when he privately told people that he might be the last Republican president elected, I think he may have been right. Donald Trump is a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican when he discovered birtherism."

Who's more toxic to Republicans, Trump, McConnell or Ryan?

What a shame he wasn't as clear about that before last November. But, despite what you hear from the White House and from the pundits, more and more Trump voters are starting to wise to the disaster they were misled into voting for. Thursday, Gallup released some very interesting new polling showing Trump slipping significantly among some of his core backer demographics.

As you can see from the chart above, Trump's approval rating is down pretty strongly in every single democraphic they measured, including even evangelicals. Now, as we saw yesterday, some evangelicals are no longer even Americans-- just traitors and Putin ass-lickers-- but while Trump had a very strong +32 approval for his first 100 days among evangelicals, that has now sunk precipitously to +20, still strong, but a far cry from +32. Senior have actually turned against him, having gone from a +10 for his first 100 days to a -2 now. Gallup's analysis makes it clear that Señor Trumpanzee's "base of support is currently centered in the evangelical South and rural counties scattered throughout Appalachia and the Midwest."

In most other types of counties across the U.S., Trump's job approval is net negative, with the strongest pockets of disapproval coming from the nation's biggest cities and the dense urban suburbs around them.

While poll data consistently show the president earning well-short of majority job approval nationally, the community-level picture is more nuanced. Trump faces stiff opposition in some places, but in others he continues to be evaluated more positively than negatively.

The list has a fairly clear demographic underpinning.

The counties that support Trump are numerically extensive, but tend to be much more rural. Taken together, the 1,349 counties that make up his strongest base of support-- Rural Middle America, Evangelical Hubs, Working Class Country and LDS Enclaves-- are home to about 35 million potential voters. By themselves, the 47 Big Cities counties hold about 59 million.

Trump's base counties also tend to have median household incomes below the national figure of about $56,000.

The counties in which Trump faces his strongest opposition are generally the most densely populated places in the country, including the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs. These counties, along with the College Towns, also have proportionately more college graduates.

Overall, Trump has seen support slide slightly since the 100-day mark, with his national approval rating falling from an average 41% in the first 100 days to 38% in the month of June. However that data from the first 100 days of his presidency-- from Jan. 20 through April 23-- showed him earning net-positive reviews in eight county types in the ACP: the four types in the June poll, plus the Exurbs, Middle Suburbs, Military Posts and Graying America.

Trump's slip in those four county types may prove to be significant. They hold distinct parts of the Republican base.

• The Exurbs have higher incomes and more college degrees than the national average and than other GOP communities. They are somewhat representative of the Republicans' establishment core.
• The Middle Suburbs are a set of blue-collar counties based primarily in the Industrial Midwest that swung heavily to Trump in November. The president won them by more than 13 percentage points after Republican Mitt Romney won them by two points in 2012.
• The Military Posts, based primarily near armed forces installations, are reliably Republican and tend to be home to "national security" voters.
• Graying America, counties with lower incomes and large 50-years-or-older populations, consistently vote Republican and are scattered in rural areas across the country.

Trump won the vote in all those county types in November by double digits and, because they are home to 58 million adults, they would likely be key to his re-election hopes.

Gallup's June numbers filtered through the ACP county types also suggest that Trump has lost at least some ground in nearly every type of community since May. Most of these changes were small, however, given the two-point decline in his approval rating among all Americans between May (40%) and June (38%).

Bottom Line: The June numbers indicate that the negative turn in Trump's monthly job approval averages since his inauguration are broad-based, affecting all ACP county types. As a result, he has now fallen below majority approval in some areas that were key to his election. This could affect his viability in 2020 as well as his ability to govern, particularly if it intensifies.

Yes it can... and one other thing, beautifully illustrated in this graphic about the 2018 midterms: