Bernie Will Flush Trump Down The Toilet

Vice President Mike Pence-ilneck has been out parroting Trumpanzee's line about the collusion delusion. The Russia hoax is finally dead? Except for his pathetic dead end followers, Americans don't believe that. As entertaining as Saturday Night Live was last night, today's NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll is even more fun!

First off, only 29% of registered voters believe the Mueller Report has cleared Trump of wrong-doing. Obviously, no normal people believe it but 29% means that even people in his hard-core base understand that his collusion delusion nonsense is just more gaslighting. And among independent voters that 29% who believe he was exonerated sinks to just 19%. Although 53% of American disapprove of Trump (with 43% approving), fully 50% of registered voters say they feel "very uncomfortable" with him getting a second term.

There was another significant poll released today that is worth taking a look at, the one of Ohioans by Baldwin-Wallace. Background: Hillary did so poorly in Ohio that elements of the Democratic Party have written the state's 18 electoral votes off. Trump trounced her 2,841,005 (51.69%) to 2,394,164 (43.56). In 2012 and 2008 Obama won the state, each time with over half a million more votes than Clinton got in 2016. Maybe the lesson shouldn't be Ohio is too red but that Democrats need a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. Despite warnings from Democratic groups-- stocked with her former staffers-- than Ohio is off-limits, Bernie's campaign is doubling down on beating Trump there. And the poll that came out today shows that's a smart move.

Trump's approval rating in Ohio is a dismal 39% with almost three times more Ohioans pollsters that they they "strongly disapprove" of Trump’s handling of the presidency than those who said they "strongly approve." 61% of people polled said they disapproved of Trump to some degree.

Far fewer of those surveyed-- slightly over 12 percent-- said they “strongly approve” of how Trump has handled the presidency. Thirty-one percent of Republicans who responded to the survey were in that camp, as were 15 percent of men and 10 percent of women. The poll has a 3.4 percent margin of error.

The latest nationwide polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight show Trump with a 42 percent approval rating. Every other president since Harry Truman had a higher approval level at this point in his presidency, the website’s statistics indicate, except for Ronald Reagan, whose approval rating was 41.1 percent.

Could it get worse for Trump before the election? Oh, yes, much worse. For example, in today's Washington Post, Seung Min Kim reported that congressional Republicans have no intention of heeding Trump’s urgent-- and harebrained-- demands for a new health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, "fearing the potential political damage that such a proposal could cause in 2020 and hoping he will soon drop the idea." Despite Trump's boastful claims that the GOP will be the party of healthcare and that their plan will be better than the Democrats' socialist plan (yes, Medicare is socialist and the vast majority of Americans love it, including the idiots who support Trump), "not only is there no such health-care overhaul in the works on Capitol Hill-- there are no plans to make such a plan." In 2018, 42 red seats flipped blue (and another one in North Carolina probably will) and every analyst says there are two reasons: district and a negative feeling among voters for Trump and one hugely important issue-- healthcare.

Chyron of the Day-- Trump still has support from the right... but they're mostly morons

As Alex Roarty and Adam Wollner reported for McClatchy a couple of weeks ago, Bernie's the only Democrat taking on Trump directly, consistently and by name. When Bernie speaks at rallies he will often remind people that Trump is "the most dangerous president in American history," that he "simply does not know the difference between truth and lies" and that his relentless attacks on the free press are "beyond disgraceful." Everyone knows it but only Bernie says it out loud. "This is what demagogues always do. Rather than accept responsibility for what they do, they claim what anyone is saying about them is a lie." How many times have you heard him say that Trump is "a pathological liar?" Everyone knows it; no one says it.



Bernie's videos have made the case over and over again-- making sure the voters know that Trump is full of shit. He often contrasts himself to Trump. Roarty and Woller point out that "the inclusion of Trump-centric attacks reflects how his campaign starts this primary in a different place than that of many of his rivals, most of whom must still spend the next few months introducing themselves to voters."

Sanders’ rivals have not gone to nearly the same lengths to attack Trump or lay out their path to victory against him. The latest candidate to enter the race, Beto O’Rourke, didn’t mention the president at all in his campaign launch video.

“This is going to be a positive campaign that seeks to bring out the very best from every single one of us, that seeks to unite a very divided country,” O’Rourke said.

Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates don’t shy entirely away from Trump; the senator from California, for example, has begun tweeting recently that “we need a new president.”

But asked for her plan to defeat Trump during a recent campaign stop in North Charleston, S.C., Harris offered a more general response, saying she planned to start by traveling the country.

“We are going to work hard,” Harris said. “We are going to be in the rural communities, as well as the communities where there is a dense population, and talking with folks about the things that matter, including health care, including public education, including gun violence and the need for smart gun safety laws. And that’s how I plan on winning.”

And at her campaign’s official launch last month in Lawrence, Mass., Elizabeth Warren made clear her campaign’s emphasis is on other, policy-focused concerns.


“Because the man in the White House is not the cause of what’s broken, he’s just the latest-- and most extreme-- symptom of what’s gone wrong in America,” she said.

Sanders advisers say their candidate’s message is still mostly about pocketbook issues, and, indeed, last week in New Hampshire most of his stump speech covered income inequality and reducing the influence of money in politics.

But they say the campaign is intent on using Trump himself as a part of that message, as an example of a system that’s faltering for reasons that go beyond one election.

“We are not basing the campaign exclusively on Trump, but Trump is certainly an exhibit in the trial,” said Josh Orton, a Sanders senior adviser. “He’s a proof point.”

That ActBlue thermometer on the right? You can click on it and help make sure the worst occupant of the Oval Office in history, is followed by one of the greatest-- a 21st century FDR or Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln. We shouldn't elect another mediocrity to follow Trump, just because he or she passes the extremely low bar of being better than he is.