Nathan Gonzales has an interesting observation in Roll Call. Presidents generally lose ground in public support during first midterm election years and they never become more popular. That is until Joe Biden.
Gonzales looks back 70 years to Harry Truman and finds the pattern is consistent. The only marginal exception is Donald Trump in 2018. But that’s largely because he started off at 39% and was at 40% by election day. Biden was a great exemplar of this pattern until about seven weeks ago. He started the year weak, treaded water until the spring and then saw his numbers drop consistently. Then about seven weeks ago he started an upward trend which now has him at about 43% support.
Needless to say these are not great numbers. They’re a bit below Barack Obama’s at his first midterm, a bit over Trump’s at the same period. Both had big midterm losses. But the upward trend this late in the cycle is basically unprecedented.
Steve Bannon faces new criminal charges in New York state, charges which appear to mirror the ones for which he received a pardon from then-President Trump before Trump left office. He is expected to surrender to authorities in New York tomorrow.
In response to last night’s Post revelation about documents found at Trump’s villa, I said that the most likely foreign countries whose defense secrets were found there were the United Kingdom, France and Israel. This was guesswork and a process elimination. But a few of you have written to tell me you suspect it’s Iran. I don’t think so. But the information we have to go on is so minuscule that almost anything is possible. Let me explain.
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The Washington Post just published a story with two notable details. One is merely atmospheric. Some of the documents recovered from Trump’s Florida villa were so highly classified that none of the people involved in the investigation were allowed to look at them. “Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs,” says the Post.