Sixty percent.

Sixty goddamn, motherfcking, everloving percent.

Donald Trump's disapproval rating as president* now stands at 60 percent. Lyndon never got there, not even at the depths of his unpopularity. Nixon got there, but it took two years of the Watergate scandal. George W. Bush needed to screw up monumentally for seven years. It took this guy five months.

In ordinary times, this would result in a president's opponents being immensely confident in resisting his policies. In ordinary times, this would result in the members of a president's party scrambling to save themselves from being sunk to the bottom of the abyss. In ordinary times, these dynamics only would be intensified by the fact that the dismal number appeared on the day that the president's attorney general had to go before a Senate committee to deny that he'd perjured himself in his confirmation hearings, and to deny that he'd been involved in meetings with a hostile foreign power.

But these are not ordinary times.

The Republicans in the Senate are preparing to pass a destructive and vastly unpopular bill that will strip healthcare from 23 million Americans. They are preparing to do so almost entirely in secret; they even briefly changed the interview protocols within the U.S. Capitol on the fly to minimize their exposure to questions about how and why they're trying to slip this debacle into law. (After TV folks went wild, that policy was reversed.) In ordinary times, with a president's disapproval rating nudging two-thirds of the people polled, there at least would be a few members of the president's party pushing back against what plainly appears to be a rush to force a suicidal vote.

But these are not ordinary times. And this is not an ordinary president*. And this is not an ordinary Republican party.

What in the hell is everybody afraid of? Why are major American corporations running away from sponsoring a production of Julius Caesar because of the complaints of a few thousand mouthbreathing shut-ins? Why are Democratic congresscritters even debating the political benefits of obstructing this godawful bill by any means necessary? Why are there no Republican congresscritters standing up? The guy has a 60 percent disapproval rating. He is not somebody to fear. Neither are the irreconcilables in his base. These are not ordinary times.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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