Democrats contend things are not going well for President Trump.

Now in control of the U.S. House, they plan to investigate everything about the president.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is expected to release soon his report on alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016.

Then there's Trump's insistence on funding for border security and the Democrats' refusal to consider it, triggering a government shutdown and possibly another this week.

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Don't forget the dozens of nightly attacks on the president by Hollywood, as documented recently by a study showing that in January alone there were 33 "separate entertainment programs that attack[ed] conservative values and/or President Donald Trump while promoting a hardcore progressive agenda."

So how is it possible that Rasmussen reports in its daily Presidential Tracking Poll on Monday that 52 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of the president's job performance?

A minority 47 percent disapprove.

It was the president's highest level of approval since shortly after his inauguration.

Maybe it's because the Democrats, themselves, have gone a little around the bend.

There was the adoption by Democrats in New York of an abortion-until-birth law that horrified the nation. Then Virginia's governor, considering similar legislation, appeared to endorse infanticide while defending his state's bill in a radio interview.

On top of that is the far-left extremism of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whose "Green New Deal" proposes countless trillions of dollars to fund guaranteed jobs, housing and health care for all, along with phasing out air travel and addressing cow flatulence, among many other things.

Then a Democrat Muslim in Congress, Ihlan Omar, launched an anti-Semitic diatribe Sunday.

The latter two developments followed a State of the Union address from President Trump that drew the approval of 72 percent of Americans in an immediate poll.

The Daily Mail reports his approval was the highest since March 2017, only a few weeks after he took office.

Asked what the new approval rating means, a senior Democratic House aide confided on background: "I don't know yet if it's horrible, but it sure isn't good."

The Mail said Rasmussen's numbers suggest Trump could have a majority of Americans behind him and a leg up on his winning position two years ago.

A Gallup poll Monday found Americans' optimism about their own finances is up, with 69 percent saying they expect to be financially better off "at this time next year."

That's 2 percentage points off the all-time high set March 1998.

"Members of most major demographic groups are more likely in 2019 to say their financial situation has improved in the past year than to say they are worse off – with Democrats the one major exception," the report said.

Rush: 'Washington is beside itself'

Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said Monday: "Washington is beside itself, folks. It doesn’t know what to do with this. It doesn’t understand it."

"As much effort as they have expended in trying to drive Trump out of office by driving his numbers down, they just keep skyrocketing. Does somebody want to tell me the government shutdown hurt Trump? It never does! It never does hurt Republicans. Republicans have yet to learn this. You couple the government shutdown with the State of the Union address and Donald Trump’s sitting there at 52 percent approval," he said.

"And the best guess here is that the Democrats are gonna try to jam Trump up on this 'cause they do not want a wall. The Democrats, I don't care what they say, the Democrats do not want any effort to impede the flow of illegal immigrants into the country. They don't want a wall. They don't want a fence. They don't want new agents. They don't want anything that would interrupt the flow. That is the bottom line. And so there isn't any compromise here, much like there isn't any compromise on much of anything else issue-wise.

"But it's stunning here. I cannot describe for you how the Never Trumpers on our side and the Democrats are looking at this 52 percent approval, and they're beside themselves. I don't know if you will see them actually portray their feelings like this when they visit cable news outlets on their various panels. But I'm just telling you inside their very existence they are frustrated and angry, and they can't believe it."

He explained that for decades the American voter has been moved further and further from the mainstream. Increasingly, the focus has been on global issues.

People, he said, are "deathly afraid of what Trump wants to do here, because Trump wants to destroy globalism."

To reach his obective of making America great again, he's "plowing ahead and he’s ignoring all these critics."

"He's outsmarting them (either instinctively or strategically) every day. And they can't come to grips with this because in their minds they're the smartest people in the room and in the world, and they are the most informed and they're the most qualified and they are the only ones who have the full awareness and knowledge of all going on in the world and what America's purpose in the world should be, what America’s role should be."

He said that explains the "irrational rage and angst and anger. A, that these people have been outmaneuvered. B, that they have been outsmarted. C, by this guy! The orange-headed ogre."

Limbaugh said: "All Trump is doing is taking America back or wants to take America back. Not to the past, not to the fifties, not to a moral fifties of Ward and June Cleaver. But to take it back to a time when the American citizen mattered first! The American citizen was the engine that made this country work, and the American citizen was the focus of policy, the focus of education all for the betterment of the American citizen. That ceased to exist at least decades ago."