InsideSources

Reports of Donald Trump’s demise have been greatly slightly exaggerated. At least in the Granite State.

In the newest state-by-state polling from Morning Consult, the president’s approval is just one-point shy of his all-time New Hampshire high, and his overall approval is the best it’s been since May of 2017. And while Trump is still underwater with Granite State voters, he has managed to make up more than half that gap in just three months.

When Trump was first sworn in, his New Hampshire poll number’s were 45 percent approve, 44 percent disapprove–the only time in the past two years he’s been above water with Granite Staters in the Morning Consult monthly polling.  In fact, in the fall of 2017 Trump fell underwater by a whopping -19 percent and as recently as this past September, he was underwater by -17 percent.

But in just three months, President Trump has gotten his approval rating back up to 44 percent approve/52 percent disapprove,  and he has cut his negative approval margin to -8 points.  Not great, but his margin is better than President Obama’s in October of 2011, for example (-12), though Obama was at -3 in New Hampshire around this point in his first term.

“Armchair political analysts love to talk about Trump being a one-term President because he is unpopular. This shows his numbers continue to rise and he will very likely be in the same spot Obama was when he began his re-election,” says longtime NH GOP strategist Mike Dennehy.  “Bottom line: anyone who counts out Donald Trump and ignores his ability as a candidate does so at their own risk of looking foolish.”

While New England remains America’s most deep-blue region (the six states have a total of ONE Republican in Congress–Sen. Susan Collins of Maine), there’s an interesting geographic divide: In Maine (45/51 percent) and New Hampshire, Trump’s numbers are at or above his national average of 44/52 percent; but in the other four states, Trump’s numbers are far lower.  Massachusetts and Vermont are tied with California as the states with the lowest Trump approval rating (33 percent), with Connecticut and Rhode Island at a dismal 38 percent.

(DC isn’t a state and is also in a league of its own when it comes to Trump hatred. His December numbers in the District are an abysmal 17 percent approve/79 percent disapprove.)

Meanwhile, Morning Consult also found an 84 percent approval rating among GOP voters, which makes a serious primary challenge very difficult to mount.   The NHGOP is certainly on board: “As our economy continues to soar and as Democrats continue to move further and further to the left, with talk of 70% and higher tax rates, Granite Staters will further support President Trump and the Republicans who have delivered such a strong economy,” says NHGOP Comms Director Joe Sweeney.

Somehow I got on the email list of Steve Novick, a Portland, Oregon, self-described progressive. Novick lost to the even more progressive (if that is possible) Senator Jeff Merkley in the 2008 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Novick was then elected to the Portland City Council, only to loose four years later to the even more progressive (if that is possible) Chloe Eudaly.

In his latest email, Novick tells of a conversation with his mother about progressives’ prospects in the 2020 election. It seems his mother is worried that Democrats, fearing that progressives can’t win in the general election, will opt for moderate candidates for Congress.

But Novick is more optimistic. He points to the near success of progressive Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election as evidence that ideology can have little effect on electability — and to the election of Ronald Reagan, “who everybody knew was far too right-wing to win.”

Novick may be right that ideology matters little, particularly in the present climate of political tribalism. The best strategy for progressives may well be to go full bore on nominating their own kind, with a confidence that moderates will be sufficiently loyal to the Democratic tribe to stay on board for the general election. Certainly Republican loyalties elected Donald Trump president notwithstanding his recently having been a Democrat and his distinctly non-Republican views on trade and foreign policy. Not to mention his indifference to basic norms of civility.

Novick reports that he is even more optimistic about progressives’ prospects in the 2020 presidential election. His list of progressive presidential prospects includes Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley.

Jeff Merkley?

Well, I guess Donald Trump was widely thought to be an implausible candidate as well.

While his consistently low approval ratings make Trump’s re-election seem implausible again, his chances would surely be improved with any of Novick’s favored candidates as the opposition. Republicans should be all in with the Novick list, particularly if the nominee campaigns on the policy positions Novick judges them by.  His list includes opposition to the military budget (which is “massively wasteful” and the “most obvious” way to fund the Green New Deal), of course support of the Green New Deal (which includes federal funding for renewable energy, insulation of homes, mass transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure and electric car infrastructure), Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee, affordable housing and “most importantly” fighting climate disruption. Being anti-Wall Street is a big plus.

This long list of federally funded programs and benefits will have appeal to many voters. It seems the only thing Novick left out was free college for all — probably an oversight. But except for cutting military spending, Novick offers no suggestion of how this  banquet of benefits would be funded. Nor does he recognize what all of this would do to individual liberties and to the personal responsibility necessary to a society that aspires to equal liberty for all.

Novick’s optimism would be well-founded if deep-blue Oregon is representative of the nation as a whole. But it is not. The progressive agenda will appeal to the many who would be direct beneficiaries of its smorgasbord of free stuff, notwithstanding that the young people among those beneficiaries will be left with servicing what can only be an ever larger federal debt. But there may still be enough voting taxpayers to resist the progressives for now. At least we should hope so, even if we are stuck with Trump for an additional four years.

Soon-to-be Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s op-ed attack on President Donald Trump got a lot of attention, but it didn’t answer the key question: What does Mitt want?

“He doesn’t ‘want’ anything,” longtime Romney ally and advisor Jim Merrill told InsideSources on Wednesday. “He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

Romney’s opinion piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post decried President Trump’s character (“presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring”) and Mitt pledged to “speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”  Tough talk–but what does it mean?

According to Romney, what it doesn’t mean a primary challenge. “No,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper who asked him about a 2020 POTUS run. “You may have heard I ran before. I’ve had that experience.”

So why release the op-ed?  It’s certainly not a message GOP voters–who still overwhelmingly support President Trump–want to hear. On talk radio Wednesday, callers from across the nation and from his former home state of Massachusetts expressed their anger with the 2012 GOP POTUS nominee. “He should be loyal to Trump–period!” one caller told national talk host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday morning. “Every Republican needs to support President Trump.”

On Boston’s WRKO, which serves vote-rich southern New Hampshire, a Republican called Romney a “two-faced, back-stabbing snake.”

Stephen Stepanek, the likely incoming NHGOP chairman, isn’t much kinder. “Trump is out fighting for Americans and Republicans like Mitt Romney aren’t standing with him like they should. When it gets nasty and the Democrats start attacking, they aren’t there in the trenches,” Stepanek told NHJournal.

“When the going gets tough, Mitt gets going,” Stepanek says.

Mitt has even annoyed some family members, with his niece (and GOP Chairwoman) Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeting: “For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack @realdonaldtrump as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

Not that Romney’s prospects in a primary against Trump were strong before the Wednesday papers hit. In a Suffolk poll of New Hampshire voters released last May, Trump was handily beating Romney 63-28 percent, similar to his 66-23 percent margin over outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich, though better than the projected 72-15 percent beatdown he’d give former AZ Sen. Jeff Flake.

One theory is that Romney wants to establish himself as the leader–not just a member–of the loyal GOP opposition to Trumpism. One longtime GOP activist, however, told InsideSources that Romney wrote on the eve of his entrance in the US Senate in order to “get him in the conversation about 2020. He’s clearly got it on his mind.”

But as Merrill, a key GOP player in New Hampshire politics and longtime Romney ally, pointed out, Romney was already there.

“He doesn’t need to interject himself into the conversation, he’s already in that conversation.  Mitt Romney is a leader in the party and he’s going to be a leader in the Senate,” Merrill said. “When people start thinking about alternatives to President Trump, his name is always going to come up.

“Which is why calling Mitt a ‘freshman senator’ was so unnecessary. Nobody looks at Mitt Romney that way,” Merrill said.

For his part, President Trump doesn’t appear to be worried, quipping that “If he fought [President Obama in 2016] the way he fights me, I’m telling you, he would have won the election.” Trump pointed out that he endorsed Romney “and he thanked me profusely.” If there’s a potential political foe keeping Donald Trump awake at night, it’s not Mitt Romney.

So the question remains: What was the purpose for releasing the op-ed?  According to Ryan Williams of FP1 Strategies (and a former Romney spokesperson), it’s all about timing.

“Romney has said all these things about [Trump] before. The reason for writing this now is because December was a bad month for Donald Trump. Romney’s been looking for a big moment to speak out. This is the moment,” Williams said.

Both Williams and Merrill are actively involved in GOP politics and both reject the premise that the op-ed is related to a POTUS bid.  Instead, they told InsideSources they believe Romney’s primary motivation is to lay the groundwork for how he plans to work with the president in the future.

“Read that paragraph about how he would work with Trump like he would with any president, it’s all there,” Williams said. He also believes Romney’s op-ed avoided personal attacks on the president. “He wasn’t gratuitously attacking President Trump, he was pointing out how character effects our relationships with our allies, how willing people are to work with you on policy.”

The bottom line, according to Jim Merrill:  “Mitt Romney didn’t need a political motivation to write this. He was doing what he thought is the right thing.”

Soon-to-be Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s op-ed attack on President Donald Trump got a lot of attention, but it didn’t answer the key question: What does Mitt want?

“He doesn’t ‘want’ anything,” longtime Romney ally and advisor Jim Merrill told InsideSources on Wednesday. “He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

Romney’s opinion piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post decried President Trump’s character (“presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring”) and Mitt pledged to “speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”  Tough talk–but what does it mean?

According to Romney, what it doesn’t mean a primary challenge. “No,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper who asked him about a 2020 POTUS run. “You may have heard I ran before. I’ve had that experience.”

So why release the op-ed?  It’s certainly not a message GOP voters–who still overwhelmingly support President Trump–want to hear. On talk radio Wednesday, callers from across the nation and from his former home state of Massachusetts expressed their anger with the 2012 GOP POTUS nominee. “He should be loyal to Trump–period!” one caller told national talk host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday morning. “Every Republican needs to support President Trump.”

On Boston’s WRKO, which serves vote-rich southern New Hampshire, a Republican called Romney a “two-faced, back-stabbing snake.”

Mitt has even annoyed some family members, with his niece (and GOP Chairwoman) Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeting: “For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack @realdonaldtrump as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

Not that Romney’s prospects in a primary against Trump were strong before the Wednesday papers hit. In a Suffolk poll of New Hampshire voters released last May, Trump was handily beating Romney 63-28 percent, similar to his 66-23 percent margin over outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich, though better than the projected 72-15 percent beatdown he’d give former AZ Sen. Jeff Flake.

One theory is that Romney wants to establish himself as the leader–not just a member–of the loyal GOP opposition to Trumpism. One longtime GOP activist, however, told InsideSources that Romney wrote on the eve of his entrance in the US Senate in order to “get him in the conversation about 2020. He’s clearly got it on his mind.”

But as Merrill, a key GOP player in New Hampshire politics and longtime Romney ally, pointed out, Romney was already there.

“He doesn’t need to interject himself into the conversation, he’s already in that conversation.  Mitt Romney is a leader in the party and he’s going to be a leader in the Senate,” Merrill said. “When people start thinking about alternatives to President Trump, his name is always going to come up.

“Which is why calling Mitt a ‘freshman senator’ was so unnecessary. Nobody looks at Mitt Romney that way,” Merrill said.

For his part, President Trump doesn’t appear to be worried, quipping that “If he fought [President Obama in 2016] the way he fights me, I’m telling you, he would have won the election.” Trump pointed out that he endorsed Romney “and he thanked me profusely.” If there’s a potential political foe keeping Donald Trump awake at night, it’s not Mitt Romney.

So the question remains: What was the purpose for releasing the op-ed?  According to Ryan Williams of FP1 Strategies (and a former Romney spokesperson), it’s all about timing.

“Romney has said all these things about [Trump] before. The reason for writing this now is because December was a bad month for Donald Trump. Romney’s been looking for a big moment to speak out. This is the moment,” Williams said.

Both Williams and Merrill are actively involved in GOP politics and both reject the premise that the op-ed is related to a POTUS bid.  Instead, they told InsideSources they believe Romney’s primary motivation is to lay the groundwork for how he plans to work with the president in the future.

“Read that paragraph about how he would work with Trump like he would with any president, it’s all there,” Williams said. He also believes Romney’s op-ed avoided personal attacks on the president. “He wasn’t gratuitously attacking President Trump, he was pointing out how character effects our relationships with our allies, how willing people are to work with you on policy.”

The bottom line, according to Jim Merrill:  “Mitt Romney didn’t need a political motivation to write this. He was doing what he thought is the right thing.”

How do Republicans feel about President Trump facing a 2020 primary challenge?   The topic gets people pretty whipped up around the NHGOP headquarters, but most GOP voters aren’t nearly as upset by the notion.

Last August, an exclusive NHJournal poll found 40 percent of Granite State Republicans thought a primary would be a good thing—a pretty high number given Trump’s 71 percent approval rating among Republicans at the time.

Now a new poll of GOP Iowa caucus goers finds support for a primary challenge is even higher. According to a new Des Moines Register/CNN poll, 63 percent of Iowa Republicans say the party should welcome a primary challenge to the president, while just 26 percent say challengers should be discouraged.

And, as in New Hampshire, the party rank-and-file are lined up behind President Trump. He has an 81% approval rating, a 77% favorability rating and 67 percent of Iowa Republicans say they would definitely vote to re-elect him.  So despite the push to change the rules of the NHGOP, it turns out it’s possible to be both pro-Trump and pro-primary challenge.

How?

It could be that Trump’s strongest supporters tend to be the same grassroots Republicans who’ve felt left out of the party process themselves and, therefore, don’t like the idea of candidates being excluded. Or it could be that the GOP base feels extremely confident about Trump winning a primary and so they’re unconcerned about a challenger.

Or maybe both.

On the one hand, their confidence in Trump is strikingly at odds with the other data, like his low approval rating (42.7 percent in latest Real Clear Politics average) and the fact that 44 percent of the country would like him impeached and removed from office.

On the other hand, it’s hard to see a Republican today who could mount a serious challenge. In an article entitled “Republicans Who Could Run Against Trump” at the liberal New Yorker magazine, Amy Davidson Sorkin allows herself a flight of fancy through the potential POTUS challengers and the results are….uninspiring.

After shooting down the two most commonly-mentioned candidates—Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Jeff Flake—as all-but-assured losers, Sorkin moves on:

“Perhaps a way to speed matters up is to put some more names on the table,” she writes. “Mitt Romney, once a vocal opponent of Trump, was just elected to the U.S. Senate from Utah, and so he has an active political operation. Romney’s old running mate, Paul Ryan, who is retiring as Speaker of the House, and liked to hint, when convenient, that he was not happy with the President, might want to prove that he meant it. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, left her job as Trump’s U.N. Ambassador with her dignity intact.”

Then for good measure, Sorkin throws in a litany of names: Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Ben Sasse. Govs. Charlie Baker, Phil Scott  and Larry Hogan. Plus liberal NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg –who’s a Democrat—because…well, why the hell not?

After all, the one thing all these people have in common is that none of them are running, or even hinting about running, or even hinting about hinting about running in the GOP 2020 primary. And unless there is some major shift in the political landscape—like Trump leaving office—it’s virtually assured none of them would.

In other words, the New Yorker’s mental experiment unintentionally proves the pro-Trump thesis: As of today, he’s untouchable.

There is, however, another question: What kind of Republican would have the best chance?

For example, retiring Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker is a longtime conservative from a solidly red state who has a strong resume on foreign policy.  He gave a vague, non-committal answer over the weekend about the possibility of running (“I want to get away from [DC] and think about that”).  On paper, he’d be a pretty good POTUS candidate.

But the new poll of Iowa Republicans found that Corker would get crushed. And for exactly the reason so many media liberals want him to run in the first place: He hates Trump.

In the poll, 40 percent of GOP caucus goers said they would “never” vote for Sen. Corker, while only 11 percent said they would even consider it. The same for other outspoken Trump haters like Kasich (39 percent would never support him) and Flake (47 percent say “no way”).

However, these same GOP voters were far more open to the idea of possibly supporting Rubio (59 percent), Romney (53 percent) and Haley (49 percent.) What do they have in common? They’ve all made their peace with President Trump.

In other words, the ideal challenger to Trump wouldn’t be one of his mortal enemies but one of his pragmatic allies—someone who voters understood wasn’t a big fan of the president but decided to find ways to stay positive rather than preaching doom and gloom to the GOP faithful.

Of course, as soon as one of these Republicans announced their candidacy they would immediately become Trump’s mortal enemy, too,  and their approval inside the party would plunge.

And that is the political Catch-22 that’s going to keep President Trump from facing a serious primary challenge as long as he can keep the GOP grassroots majority on board.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who just survived a massive blue wave that handed control of the legislature to the Democrats, has announced he opposes a proposal to have the state party openly support President Trump in the 2020 primary.

A vocal group of Republicans, led by Trump supporters state Rep. Fred Doucette and Windham town selectman Bruce Breton, are promoting a rule change allowing state party officials to promote incumbent Republican presidents in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation (FITN) primary.

“Whether it’s President Trump or President XYZ, it’s the same,” Doucette told NHJournal. “Republicans work too hard to win the White House to sit back whenever an incumbent Republican is being challenged.”

Gov. Sununu does not agree.

“Whether it’s a primary for the New Hampshire House or the White House, the New Hampshire State Republican Committee must remain neutral in primaries,” Gov. Sununu said in a statement released to NHJournal. “After hard-fought primaries, the State Party is the vehicle to unite Republicans, and that is hard to accomplish if they try and tilt the scales for any candidate.”

Gov. Sununu did not mention the other commonly-made argument against ending the NHGOP’s neutrality policy: The risk it might pose to New Hampshire’s precarious position at the front of the line in electoral politics.

Follow NHJournal on Twitter.

The new Morning Consult poll of President Trump’s state-by-state approval ratings for November show that, while the president remains unpopular in New Hampshire, his numbers here have edged up slightly.  In fact, New Hampshire–which long had a more negative few of the president than the nation as a whole–is now close to the national polling average on the Trump presidency.

Trump’s November numbers in New Hampshire are 42 percent approval/55 percent disapproval among registered voters a net – 13.  In September those numbers were 40-57 percent, a net -17 percent. In September of 2017, Trump was underwater by 19 points--quite a turnaround for a candidate who lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton by just 0.4 percent of the vote a year earlier.

By comparison to New Hampshire’s 42/55, Morning Consult put Trump’s national average at 43 approve/52 disapprove, a 9-point deficit. So while Trump is still less popular in New Hampshire (hardly a surprise in deep-blue, anti-Trump New England), the gap between the Granite State and the rest of the nation has narrowed.

Trump’s numbers across most of New England are abysmal, ranging from -16 in Rhode Island to -25 in Vermont. The notable exception in Maine, where Trump’s under water by just 9 points, matching the national average.

So in a state where the incumbent Republican president is unpopular and Democrats just won a crushing victory, how should the NHGOP respond?

Longtime Republican strategist Mike Dennehy tells NHJournal that how Trump governs in the new era will be important:

“People will be paying very close attention to how Trump interacts with the new Democrat Senate Majority Leader and the Democrat Speaker,” Dennehy said.  “And in similar fashion, people will be looking to see how Governor Sununu gets along with the new Democrat majorities in the State House.  People are looking for action, but the current political environment doesn’t appear to allow for it so it will take strong leadership at the top.”

Dave Carney, another veteran NHGOP consultant, says “President Trump is in a decent position today, but in this new political world 18 months is like five lifetimes. The world will change many time before the electoin rolls along.”

Carney warns that both Republicans and Democrats in the Granite State should avoid overreaching when it comes to Trump and 2020, for the sake of the First In The Nation primary.

“That means not trying to tilt the tables in the primary,” Carney told NHJournal.  “New Hampshire is unique in that anyone can run for president and get a fair hearing from our voters.  Any perception that the game is rigged will help the other states undercut our position.”

“The people of New Hampshire should not underestimate how many other states want to take our FITN status away from us,” Carney said.

Controversy surrounding President Trump is so intense that you have to wonder whether he’s going to want the job beyond his current four-year term.  Surfing the morning news, you get to listen to non-stop attacks from MSNBC on the left, equally hard-hitting defenses from Fox on the right — and not all that much in between.

Trump himself goes on with barbs at “fake news” in the middle of a firestorm that’s partly of his own making. Sometimes you doubt he’s thought through what he’s saying as when he criticizes a Navy SEAL team for not having gotten Osama bin Laden long before he was killed in a raid in the compound where he was staying not far from a Pakistan army base. And you find it hard to believe he could have been so hard on the late Senator John McCain, captured and imprisoned for years in North Korea after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War.

Nor, for that matter, can anyone, really, see why Trump, so great at playing to his base among red-blooded Americans who can’t stand the media elitists who keep bashing him, would not have visited the Marine cemetery during his recent trip to France or, for that matter, have taken a bow at the Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day. Yes, Trump has said he should have visited Arlington, so why doesn’t he make the trek right now across the Potomac from the White House? The cemetery is open every day, not just Veterans Day.

The daily tirades, the sniping, the words of wisdom from panelists and analysts, capture your attention in a drama that never gets boring, but they’re also a massive distraction. Has Trump considered seriously what he’s going to say to Kim Jong-un if they do meet again for that second summit? Vice President Mike Pence, in Singapore at the recent confab of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, spoke highly of Trump’s success in getting Kim to stop threatening the United States with nukes and missiles, but he also raised a couple of issues that might not be to Kim’s liking.

For one thing, Pence stuck to the mantra of CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization). While Kim might agree in an abstract sense on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, as he did at his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June, it’s inconceivable he’s going to throw out all his nukes and missiles and the facilities for making them. In fact, there’s little doubt that North Korean engineers right now are making more of them or at least working on the means to do so.

For another, the North Koreans are not going to produce a list of everything to do with their nukes and missiles. A report released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on the basis of commercial satellite imagery developed by Joseph Bermudez suggested the scope of the program.

No doubt the Pentagon knew about all that from its own spy satellites, but North Korea has a lot of other sites hidden away in nooks and crannies, caves and tunnels all over the country. The show that Kim has made of seeming to destroy a couple of them has fooled no one.

Not that those realities would deter Trump from saying, fine, I’d be glad to talk to the man. He might even consider signing another joint statement with Kim as they did in Singapore. This time around, it would be a “peace declaration” committing both countries to formally “ending” the Korean War.

But what if Kim avoided agreeing to a listing of anything or making a commitment, a real promise, of CVID? Trump has a lot of other stuff going on. Rather than answer such questions, he would prefer to leave North Korea to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, still looking for another meeting with his North Korean interlocutor, Kim Yong-chol, to talk about the timing and setting for a summit.

No matter, national security adviser John Bolton will have trouble convincing his boss of the need to read up on what North Korea is doing. The president is too busy tweeting about political foes, playing games with the media that he loves to hate, making pronouncements about everyone else’s mistakes.

You think all that’s a sideshow? For Trump, North Korea is the sideshow.

Last June, just five months into his presidency, Donald Trump was underwater with New Hampshire voters by -10 in Morning Consult’s monthly state-by-state polling.

After a year of Mueller investigations, the Stormy Daniels sturm und drang, and Trump’s torrential tweet storms, what’s happened to the president’s approval rating in the Granite State?

They’ve gone from underwater by 10 points to…underwater by 11.  In the updated Morning Consult polling released today, Trump’s popularity (or lack thereof) is virtually unchanged–43 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove–after a year of presidential soap opera and anti-Trump media coverage.

The June number is  a recovery from where Trump was in the winter (-17 in February), but he’s still down over the course of his presidency. It’s hard to remember, but when President Trump first took office, more New Hampshire voters approved of him than disapproved,  45-44 percent.

Is his baseline permanently below 50 percent because he’s a Republican?  Or because voters are just in anti-incumbent mood? Apparently not, based Morning Consult polling of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

Last March, Sununu’s ratings were a solid 57 percent approve, 23 percent disapprove. In March 2018, the most recent update from Morning Consult, Sununu’s approval advantage had grown to 63-21–in a state whose entire D.C. delegation is Democratic and that Hillary carried (albeit narrowly) in 2016.

As a recent Concord Monitor story put it: “Four Months To Election Day, Sununu Has History and Poll Numbers On His Side.”

Donald Trump… not so much.

The good news for Republicans is that Trump doesn’t have to face the New Hampshire voters again for another two years. The bad news is that presidential approval ratings tend to be a significant predictor of midterm performance.

Can Trump narrow this gap between now and November? Absolutely. And if Democrats keep up the extreme rhetoric on issues like abortion, or Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, they may give the GOP a boost.

But when the Trump trend is essentially flat over the previous year, it’s hard to imagine a big 1o-point breakout in the next four months.