A new NBC News poll finds that President Trump's job approval is mired at 43 percent. But the president's approval on the economy is higher--49 percent to 46 percent--which shows that even with all the talk of a possible recession, the economy could still give Trump an advantage as he seeks re-election.
But here's an interesting nuance. NBC's Mark Murray tweeted out some additional polling numbers, noting that of the sliver of voters who approve of Trump on the economy but disapprove of his overall performance, a generic Democrat beats Trump by an astonishing 73 percent to 5 percent.
One way to view this is that it perhaps undermines one working Republican theory of 2020, which holds that even if Trump has alienated lots of voters with his racism, cruel treatment of migrant children, and all-around malevolence and depravity, it's still possible he could get them back if they end up deciding the economy is good for them, and hold their nose and vote accordingly.
The voters in question here are probably suburban and college educated whites, mostly women, who defected from the GOP in 2018, even though they are relatively affluent and doing well under Trump. The new NBC numbers suggest Trump could seriously struggle to get them back: As Ron Brownstein puts it, Trump is facing massive defections among voters who are satisfied with the economy.
Another way to view this is that there may be a sizable bloc of voters who like the economy but don't give Trump credit for it. In this scenario, the voters who say they approve of Trump on the economy even as they disapprove of him overall are basically registering their satisfaction with the economy but don't necessarily see Trump or his policies as central to its performance.
In 2018, Democrats won the House by campaigning against Trump's failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his massive corporate tax cut. This enabled big gains for Democrats, even among voters who are relatively more affluent, though they won them largely by promising safe things like preserving the ACA's protections for pre-existing conditions.
The voters who approve of Trump on the economy but disapprove of him overall probably represent some kind of mix of those categories. But regardless, this sense of a bloc of swing voters of this kind is likely to shape the debate among Democrats over how to make the case against Trump in the general election.
So candidates who are more moderate on health care and the economy--especially former Vice President Joe Biden--are likely to conclude that such voters can be won by telling them they can keep the current economy, without too much disruption from the left, without having to endure Trump's craziness and destructiveness any longer.
By contrast, the more populist Democrats--like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, running on Medicare-for-all, taxing extreme wealth, and ambitious reforms that would restructure corporate governance to enhance worker power and create a new, progressive international trading order--will argue that the more careful approach is far too risky.
In that analysis, Trump won the "blue wall" Rust Belt states by promising his own variety of structural economic change, vowing to take on plutocratic elites and rip up trade deals that hollowed out the industrial heartland. This all turned out to be fraudulent, but that fraudulence, combined with Trump's unpopularity, may be creating an unusual opening for a Democratic nominee to offer a genuine agenda of ambitious populist transformation, an opportunity that must not be squandered.
The debate over which approach will work better against Trump doesn't really have an obvious answer. So Democratic voters should opt for the agenda they prefer on the substance.
Of course, if we do tip into recession, all of this goes out the window and this whole divide will be upended completely.
Editorial on 08/21/2019