Special elections are already pointing to a familiar pattern.
Hello, everyone! You may have noticed that it’s been a while since my last newsletter. That’s because I’ve been on leave for the last three months — and I’ll be on leave for most of the next three — but I wanted to check in with a few thoughts and programming notes.
Since a few of you asked: Yes, The Tilt goes on. The newsletter will ramp back up as I return to work, and needless to say, there is a lot to cover. This is not an ordinary moment in American political history.
Here are a few themes on my mind so far:
The public reaction to Trump’s second term
From the usual job approval surveys to more profound issues regarding executive power, attitudes about President Trump will probably be the topic of the year.
To that end, my colleagues have already started collecting polls on his approval rating (we’ll add charts with the polling average in the weeks ahead).
Already, Mr. Trump has squandered his post-election honeymoon. His approval rating is back under 50 percent, with slightly more Americans disapproving than approving of his performance. This puts his standing more or less where it was before the election.
There are good reasons to think his ratings will continue to slip. One of the better rules of thumb in American politics is that public opinion tends to shift against the direction of policy change. Some political scientists call this “thermostatic public opinion,” in which the public turns up the A.C. to cool things down when the government starts running too hot. Few presidents have run the government as hot as Mr. Trump, and there isn’t much reason to think he’ll turn anything down on his own.