***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
With the generic ballot getting tighter and Republican candidates increasingly pulling ahead in some races, the liberal media’s prediction (really more of a promise) of a “blue wave” seemed to be in jeopardy. But during Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC, moderator Chuck Todd was holding out hope for the wave as he kicked off the panel discussion with reams of favorable numbers from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll recently released.
“Presidential job approval connected to seats lost in the first midterm, we go back, here's President Trump sitting at 47 percent. That seems to be an improvement for him. What would 47 percent job rating mean in the past when it comes to a midterm result,” Todd prefaced. His goal was to point out that President Trump could still lose control of the House.
According to their polling data, Obama had a similar approval rating in 2010 and lost the House to the Tea Party. “Bill Clinton in 1994 in this same period of time in October had a 48 percent approval rating and lost 54 seats,” he added. “So, Peggy Noonan, should Republicans feel better or worse this morning when they look at the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll?”
Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist, suggested that “the good news for Republicans” was that the liberal media were not hyping the “blue wave” like they were. “[W]e were talking about a blue wave that we knew was coming and who is going to be very significant. We're not quite talking that way anymore,” she said.
But that admission aside, Noonan wasn’t sure the Republicans were in the clear. She noted that despite “peace and prosperity or economic growth”, Trump was “struggling to get to 50 percent which in the approval polls, which if you can't, is a drag on all of your people.”
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