Dem
47
GOP
53
Relative to last week, things are relatively quiet on the DOGE front right now. Elon Musk is still tilting at the "five bullet points" windmill, having sent a third mass e-mail making that demand. We are also informed by a couple of readers, who wish to remain anonymous, that the "plan," such as it is, is to require each employee to submit a bullet-points e-mail every single week. It really couldn't be more obvious that the point is to degrade federal employees so much, and to make their working conditions so toxic, that huge numbers of them voluntarily quit.
And speaking of quitting—although quitting of the involuntary sort—the White House has painted itself into a wee bit of a corner when it comes to Musk. In order to avoid background checks, and financial disclosures, and divestment of certain investments and other rules to which full-time federal employees are subject, the administration has confirmed that Musk is what is known as a "special government employee."
We'd agree he's "special," though not in the way that the government means it. In fact, "special government employee" is a precise term that has a precise meaning with a precise set of rules. In brief, because such employees don't have to jump through all the hoops, they are supposed to work no more than 130 days a year. Assuming Musk is taking weekends off, perhaps so he can keep his various baby mamas well supplied with his seed, he'll hit the 130-day mark early this summer. Obviously, Trump and Musk don't think that rules apply to them. Further, it's not at all clear to us how something like this is enforceable; who decides which day is a "day of work" and which day is "two pals hanging out in the Oval Office"? That said, we pass it along because it does give Democrats something concrete to point to and complain about, should they wish to seize the opportunity once June rolls around.
Anyhow, the main reason we decided to write this item was a piece that Politico had yesterday, under the headline: "Dems' DOGE problem may be bigger than they thought: Democratic polling shows Musk is underwater. But the idea of cutting government is more popular." On one hand, like most websites that are trying to keep the lights on, Politico is sometimes prone to clickbait-y headlines. On the other hand, if DOGE is more popular than we perceived, we would want to know that, to avoid writing something stupid and unfounded.
So, of course we clicked on and read the article, and our conclusion is... clickbait. The primary basis for the piece is actually the newest poll from CBS/YouGov. And this quote from the Politico piece makes very clear which data point the two authors (Adam Wren and Elena Schneider) zeroed in on: "[O]ver the weekend, came new polling by CBS News/YouGov that found a majority of respondents, 51 percent, generally approve of Trump's efforts to cut staff at government agencies like USAID."
We have no specific knowledge that Wren and Schneider were being deliberately dishonest. And indeed, they might have thought they found the correct "angle" from which to write. But, boy howdy, do we have two major problems with the way in which they interpret and frame the CBS/YouGov poll. The lesser of the two problems is that the Politico reporting, as readers can see for themselves from the direct quote, seems to suggest that respondents were OK with slashing USAID. As we have written many, many, many times, the wording of poll questions matters A LOT. And the actual question that was asked was: "Do you approve or disapprove of the Trump administration's efforts to reduce the number of people working at federal government agencies?" There is, quite obviously, nothing in there about USAID. And we strongly suspect that if USAID (which is a very specific victim, and one likely to generate some sympathy) had been in there, the numbers would have been different.
That brings us to the second problem, which is both related, and a bit more significant, in our view. Poll respondents are ALWAYS fairly enthusiastic when asked about the "ends." If we were to run a poll, we'd undoubtedly get a sizable majority of "yes" answers in response to questions like these:
The devil, of course, is in the details. Or, to round out the pairing we commenced above, the "means." It's easy to support any and all of these programs. It's much harder when it becomes clear that the trade-off is higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts in other programs, or putting useful people out of work, etc.
We would suggest that the voting public's response to DOGE cannot plausibly be judged until the job cuts have had time to fully manifest. If 500,000 federal employees are terminated, and yet the government still seems to be operating normally, then voters will probably remain supportive of what Elon Musk is doing. On the other hand, if people suddenly can't get the IRS on the phone to answer their tax questions, or their Social Security payments are delayed, or the vacation they planned at a national park has to be canceled because there's no staffing, then some of that 51% is going to flip over to the side of that 49%. The same could be expected to happen if the public develops a sense that DOGE was never about efficiency, and was really about setting up tax breaks for millionaires.
So, we'd say that a wait-and-see approach is called for, here. That said, if you have to make an early guess, we think that 51% is actually a pretty rotten starting point for the administration, given that we're dealing with a generally well-liked idea (cutting government waste) and that no actual consequences have been felt by most people, as yet. (Z)