>> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/opinion/democrats-opinion-polls.html

Yeah. Apart from the amazing discovery that screeching personal abuse rarely succeeds against the competent, the citation is full of whataboutism to talk down current achievements. I particularly liked the link to this:

https://twitter.com/SethHanlon/status/954074903447207941

This tweet cleverly equates the Austin good news story where a $35M payout by Austin had Apple agreeing to spend $282M on buildings over the next decade and 3600 additional jobs.

While this is a great success for Austin, it bears no comparison to Apple's 2018 repatriation of $350B that includes a $38B tax check in year 1 (compared to a $35M payout to secure the Austin deal) with a $30B Apple spending program (compared to $282M Austin building program) and 20,000 additional jobs. Apple attributes its 2018 decision to the tax change and publicly hopes that its $36B tax payment can be spent on something positive for America.

Not wanting to belabor- but the 2018 Apple tax check is 100000% of the amount Austin had to shell out, and the spending program is 107000% as big in 2018. That's before you consider the effects of hundreds of billions of dividend payout on the prosperity of restauranteurs, car manfacturers and builders wherever there's an Apple shareholder. For all these beneficiaries, no amount of fake news hides the truth that 20% of a dollar is better than 50% of nothing.

According to your citation, this is actually an example of corporate executives attributing job increases to current policies, not always accurately (sic).

Screaming verbal abuse is one thing. Expecting to fool all the people all the time about amazing stories that dwarf anything else in recent history, is fatal because anybody who "clicks" with numbers like $350B, $36B and $30B is going to wonder why the MSM insists that when it comes to Trump, every silver lining has hundreds of clouds to rain on every parade except the ones involving pink hats.

Here's the problem for the MSM: Friday's WSJ/NBC poll found that those feeling good about the economy include 86% of Republicans, 65% of independents and even 57% of Democrats. So every article about marching and screeching and attacking Trump, is an own goal because (as your article observes) people not only like the trajectory of the economy and will be reluctant to risk change, but they start to feel sympathy that he's subject to this non-stop hate no matter how well he gets things working.