Señor T’s unpopularity just hit an all-time high according to the new Monmouth poll of registered voters nationwide. Trump has sunk appreciably among voters asked about their impression of him. And, overall, Biden-- also unpopular, though not as unpopular as Trump, would beat him by a massive 7 points if the election was held today. Trump's favorability:
Very favorable- 15%
Somewhat favorable- 21%
Somewhat unfavorable- 13%
Very unfavorable- 50%
No opinion- 1%
That’s a net favorability of negative 27%! Why is Trump sinking in voters’ esteem at a point— a political campaign— when he should be rising? What he’s saying on the media is divisive and ugly. Like this interview he did Tuesday on the Simon Conway Show, threatening violence against Jack Smith, and like his own social media ad on Thursday saying, in his own voice, “If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.” I'm sure that gots MAGAts hot... but probably not normal American voters.
Of course, it’s not just Trump making himself feared, distrusted and hated by the voters. The Trump Party (fka the Republican Party) is every bit as contemptible. Remember when they swore up and down that if they got rid of Roe v Wade they would never— who us??— put women in prison? Tell it to Celeste Burgess, 19, who was just sentenced by a Nebraska Republican judge for using a pill to end a pregnancy. “The teenager, Celeste Burgess, 19, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42,” wrote Michael Levenson, “were charged last year after the police obtained their private Facebook messages, which showed them discussing plans to end the pregnancy and ‘burn the evidence.’ Prosecutors said the mother had ordered abortion pills online and had given them to her daughter in April 2022, when Celeste Burgess was 17 and in the beginning of the third trimester of her pregnancy. The two then buried the fetal remains themselves, the police said. Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. She faces up to five years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 22, according to Joseph Smith, the top prosecutor in Madison County, Nebraska.”
Madison County, Nebraska… pretty white place— just 1% of the residents are Black. The last time the county voted for a Democrat was in 1936 (FDR). Trump won with 74.1% against Hillary and the folks there looked him so much they he did even better against Biden— 75.5%. Yeah… you don’t want to get a flat tire on U.S.Highway 81.
Back to Levenson, report, he noted that Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University Pittsburgh School of Law, said in an interview on Thursday that the case was a ‘harbinger of things to come,’ as a flurry of Republican-led states have enacted abortion restrictions and more women in those states have sought abortion pills as a workaround. ‘This case is really sad because people resort to things like this when they’re really desperate,’ Professor Donley said, ‘and the thing that makes people really desperate is abortion bans.’ Nebraska Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, had commended prosecutors for enforcing Nebraska’s 20-week law.”
And now, let’s take a quick look at that Monmouth poll again. Asked, “Is your general impression of the Republican Party very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable?”
Very favorable- 9%
Somewhat favorable- 34%
Somewhat unfavorable- 17%
Very unfavorable- 39%
No opinion- 1%
Asked the same question about the Democratic Party, wasn’t nearly as brutal:
Very favorable- 16%
Somewhat favorable- 29%
Somewhat unfavorable- 17%
Very unfavorable- 38%
Meanwhile, down the road, Missouri’s Supreme Court “handed Gov. Mike Parson’s hand-picked attorney general a high-profile loss Thursday, ruling that Republican Andrew Bailey improperly injected himself into a fight over abortion rights,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Acting quickly on an issue that has pitted Bailey against state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, the court in its 6-0 decision said the attorney general must comply with a lower court judge’s order to certify language associated with a proposed ballot initiative asking Missouri voters if they want to restore the right to abortion. The court said Bailey has ‘no discretion’ to inject his own opinion on the potential cost of the proposed constitutional change and must comply with Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem’s order to approve the cost estimate forwarded to him by Fitzpatrick… The ACLU said the decision is a victory for the right to direct democracy. ‘At every level of our judicial system, the courts saw the Attorney General’s effort to derail the initiative process for what it was: a deliberate threat to the direct democracy,’ said Anthony Rothert, director of Integrated Advocacy at the ACLU of Missouri.”
Missouri isn’t the only state where voters are going around patriarchal state legislatures to guarantee women’s Choice. Next month Ohio will vote in a special election to stop Republicans’ ploy to increase the voting threshold to 60% to amend the constitution. Early voting has begun.The vote on the amendment itself is supposed to be in November. There will also be votes in Arizona, Florida and South Dakota to override Republican legislatures’ abortion restrictions.
It’s a long way ’til the 2024 election, but there are elections this year still coming up… in case you’d like to give anyone a hand who’s not a Republican or a conservative). These are all pro-Choice candidates who will be going to the voters in 2023, this year.