New Trump polling shows what Dem voters really want -- and why Gavin Newsom has it all wrong [View all]

Despite President Donald Trump’s attempts to spin his first 100 days as a shining success, he is more unpopular today than at any point in his first term, when his ratings were notoriously dismal. A batch of new polls released this week suggests Trump may be in even more political trouble than Republicans initially feared.

Only 37% of voters approve of how Trump has handled the economy, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey. Worse still, Reuters/Ipsos found that a majority of Americans oppose Trump’s handling of immigration, his signature issue. Trump’s growing unpopularity is fueling a wave of Democratic overperformance in recent special elections. Even Trump-aligned pollster Rasmussen Reports found Democrats now enjoy a 4-point lead in the generic congressional ballot.

None of those gains seem to matter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spent the week bashing the Democratic Party as a directionless mess that should work harder to meet MAGA extremists halfway.

“I don’t know what the party is,” Newsom told The Hill on Monday. “I’m still struggling with that.”

Newsom’s pessimism about Democrats’ future isn’t new, but it is consistently misguided. The governor clearly wants to position himself as a politician willing to speak tough truths to the party ahead of his presumed 2028 presidential campaign. That’s great! Democrats certainly need to have honest conversations about where we struggled in 2024. But those conversations should be based on data and discussions with our voters — not on Newsom’s chats with MAGA influencers like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.

That’s especially true when Newsom’s so-called strategy required Democrats to bash the transgender community and write off Trump’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had protected status to reside in the U.S., as a “distraction” from “real” issues. Newsom seems to think that Democrats can only win in 2026 and 2028 if they abandon the justice principles that are the foundation of our party. The polls say otherwise.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-gavin-newsom-poll-democrat-voters-rcna202810

If he "doesn't know what this partu is", he should either shut up and listen harder, or leave it.