NFL ratings, the Alabama election & the near-death of healthcare reform - what they all have in common:
Bottom Line: Objectively, yesterday was a bad day for causes perpetuated by President Trump. The news came from both ends of the political spectrum as well. The first bit of especially bad news for the President's causes, most importantly the future of our healthcare, occurred when more than enough GOP opposition to the latest senate healthcare proposal left it effectively dead. While not terribly surprising it's continuing to demonstrate that President Trump hasn't found a way to effectively persuade senators to the most important policy issue as identified by voters.
The second semi-defeat for the President came in the form of the final NFL ratings for the weekend. While it first appeared as though there'd be a third consecutive weekend of ratings declines (following the 8% ratings decline last year), Monday Night Football's ratings were up enough to actually lead to a 3% increase year over year. Through the weekend ratings were off another 4% for the games but a 64% increase in Monday Night Football ratings lead to an overall increase for the week. Ratings are off 10% through the first three weeks this year and while it remains to be seen what happens going forward (were some people tuning in just to see what might happen on the field given all of the controversy or will the NFL be posting gains from here?), the fallout for the President was immediate given his tweets about ratings declines by his critics.
The third loss by the President was his chosen candidate in the Alabama primary race to replace Jeff Sessions. It's no secret the President put a lot of energy and arguably political capital into Luther Strange's candidacy - only to have Alabama's Republican voters opt instead for Roy Moore. It's easy to potentially read too much into the implications of these three unrelated events going forward but the dynamic that might be changing is the notion that the President always wins. Until recently critics and even many of the President's supporters would question why he'd do or say something they deemed inappropriate and the argument could be made that it'd didn't matter because he always came out on top. These are indications that may not always be the case. There's a great deal of political adversity facing the President. That's not news. What happens from here though will be critical to see if these events are outliers or predictive of something more significant.