Your "underwater" tactic is just a game you play. As far as job approval or issue polling, let's say any president from either party in recent decades (since politics has become so polarized) has approval polling above 50% and disapproval polling below 50%. That would be highly unusual or even extraordinarily high, outside of the initial weeks of a presidency. It wouldn't be average or barely above water and it would be deliberately disingenuous and purposely misleading to refer to it as such.
For example, if a president had 49% approval in the middle of his presidency or had 49% approval on the economy anytime - by your repeated narrative, they'd be underwater. Yet, if put in any reasonable full context, that would be an excellent rating, not one to be negatively portrayed as underwater, as you (and, I'll add, ElChupacabra) are regularly trying to do.
Let me give you a clear example because RCP has an extended chart, since 2008, for direction of country, regardless of party and president. Direction of country ratings have NEVER reached 50% or higher even once in 17 years. Yet in that long timeframe, we can see that direction of country polling of 40% or above is very good (in context), polling from 30-40% happens the majority of the time, and polling below 30% is quite bad (again in context). So, to discuss that topic at a time when the ranking is (say, for the sake of this conversation, 43%) and deliberately portray and bash it as underwater, is a gimmick which is BS. Full context is both honest and essential to any reasonable conversation.
That's exactly why I provide Biden/Obama/Bush context when you repeatedly talk about Trump's polling tanking. These comparisons provide important context if one wants to have a sincere conversation and not just play biased gimmick games about "negative numbers" and "underwater". Are the numbers under 50%, yes.
But, in some instances, those numbers reflect both high end and good polling, even if under 50.
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