Amy Walter:
Yes, I do think that that’s exactly right. It is checking a lot of the boxes and saying to folks who voted for him, see, I told you I was going to do these things and I’m delivering on it.
What’s interesting, though, as we go into the midterms, we know that getting your base behind you, really important, but you can’t win without at least some independent voters. And there was a poll out this weekend from CBS News, and they asked a question this way, which is, do you agree or like the goals of Donald Trump or dislike what his goals are?
And 90-some percent of Republicans said, love, love it. In other words, he’s checked all the boxes. He’s doing exactly what we wanted it to do. Obviously, Democrats overwhelmingly said, no, we don’t like the goals, but only about 40 percent of independents agreed with the goals.
And this gets to the central challenge as we go into this upcoming election, which is, when I talk to Republicans who believe that, yes, the president was elected in part on improving the economy, but also on a lot of these cultural and social issues. And delivering on those cultural and social issues will be really important for Republicans to talk about as we go into the next election.
However, it is also clear that concerns about the economy are a major drag. And it’s also true that, even on some of the issues where he has put the most emphasis, immigration, for example, or even on crime, he’s not getting the return on that from independent voters.
