with increasing explicitness is basically equate himself with his base and argue that any attack on him is really an attempt to suppress them and to roll back the influence that they have grabbed in national politics, as he did in west virginia last week. the problem is, you can't get collected president totally with your most ardent supporters. and if math tells you he won 46% of the vote in 2016, he's polling around 35, 37, 38% approval now, he has lost some of his base. and in fact, in the quinnipiac poll, for example, last week, his approval rating look whites without a college education, his best group, was about 25 points below his vote in 2016. and if you look at adults age 50 to 64, the percentage of those, of people who say they strongly disapprove of his performance is double what it was when he took office. it is not a coincidence that those are two of the groups that would have been the biggest losers in what he spent the first six months trying to do, which is repeal the affordable care act and replace it with the republican alternative.