The Political Risks of Loathing Trump

Charlie Cook: “Polls show Pres­id­ent Trump’s ap­prov­al num­bers lan­guish­ing around 40 per­cent, while the an­ger and in­tens­ity of the Demo­crat­ic base is rising and the Re­pub­lic­an base re­mains pretty com­pla­cent, not full of fight as it was dur­ing the Obama years.”

“That’s a lot for Demo­crats and lib­er­als to be ex­cited about, but both groups would be well ad­vised to con­sider what happened to the Re­pub­lic­an Party and the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment in an ana­log­ous time, after Pres­id­ent Obama was elec­ted. Tea-party ral­lies were bois­ter­ous and of­ten un­ruly, town meet­ings of Demo­crat­ic law­makers drew pro­test­ers and some­times turned in­to shout-fests, and con­ser­vat­ive-me­dia rat­ings soared. Many ele­ments of the Obama agenda be­came enorm­ously un­pop­u­lar, and the Re­pub­lic­an Party took a sharp turn to­ward the right and away from es­tab­lished party power cen­ters. Obama ef­fect­ively rad­ic­al­ized the Re­pub­lic­an Party and the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment to the point that the tea party took over both the GOP and right-of-cen­ter polit­ics. The po­ten­tial for the Demo­crat­ic Party and the Left be­hav­ing the same way in the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion is very real.”