jersey, same thing and the other lesson from 2010, remember, democrats voted against obamacare thinking this is going to be unpopular. i ll say it myself, didn t see much of a difference between the democrats who voted for or against it and there was a national wave against it and maybe those votes don t matter. right now we ve got a generic ballot which is the top-line indicator. it s coming in at 11, 12, 13. it s opened up this week in the polling average. that s been an indication of the direction. and the approval rating. yes, it can go up. but here s the thing, with donald trump, his top number approval this year is 46%. right. his first week in office, his honeymoon, 46 in gallup, that s where he peaked. he d have to get above his presidency to get close to the range where these things don t turn into waves.
districts in a high-tax state where those voters are most likely going to take a hit from this tax bill. they only lost one or two votes in the california delegation which speaks to kevin mccarthy but might open them up to additional exposure. absolutely. california, new york, new jersey, same thing and the other lesson from 2010, remember, democrats voted against obamacare thinking this is going to be unpopular. i ll say it myself, didn t see much of a difference between the democrats who voted for or against it and there was a national wave against it and maybe those votes don t matter. right now we ve got a generic ballot which is the top-line indicator. it s coming in at 11, 12, 13. it s opened up this week in the polli polling average. that s been an indication of the direction. and the approval rating. yes, it can go up. but here s the thing, with donald trump, his top number
deal with me. so i think for that reason, also for his complete destain for values based on foreign policy, i might not have agreed with president obama on a lot of things, but he never, i think, diminished or denigrated the sense that democracy is a good thing and having democratic allies is a good thing. this president couldn t careless. the interesting question, i guess, seems to me the institutions have checked trump quite a lot in the first year. inform and formal institutions, separation of power, the court, the legal system, but federalism. public opinion. the media. but also, inside the government and white house, i think, it s turned out he hasn t been able to do a lot of things he might have instinctively wanted to do or thought he could do. that s been good from my point of view. it s a very interesting question. he s done damage to the institutions and democratic norms but look, this is where i come back to things like the
college-educated white suburbanites, these come into play and then the next tier, trump won but it was a single digit margin. we re talking less than ten points. you could tack on another two dozen. what you have here is in that radius of either trump lost or won by ten points. you re looking at 59. now, obviously to get a 59, that would be historic. it was 54 for republicans in 1984 but that gives you the targets you re looking at here and one thing to note as well, i have to say, there are these 59 potentially these three tiers here, a few out there, ten seats out there that democrats hold that trump won. another piece of that would be defending those seats as well. it s interesting, you re talking about the mother load in california which is where i ve been focused, california s going to get hit. those are relatively affluent