“Once upon a time—of all the good days of the year, on Christmas Eve—President Donald Trump sat at Mar-a-Lago, counting his grievances,” as The Atlantic is reporting.
“The president began this morning, like most mornings, by watching Fox News, and sharing his thoughts on Twitter. He redoubled his attacks on the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, insinuating that he had behaved unethically—in the process, again mangling the details of the case.
“He proceeded to retweet an image from a follower, showing Trump in the backseat of a limo talking on the phone, a figure labeled ‘CNN’ reduced to a bloody splotch on the sole of his upturned shoe.
“There’s no question that many of Trump’s most loyal voters have stuck by him. They agree that his treatment at the hands of the news media has been unfair, share his suspicions that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has devolved into a partisan witch hunt, and join him in disregarding negative stories and polls.
“The trouble for the president and his party may be that, although his base has indeed stuck with him, it appears neither big enough to secure electoral victories, not strong enough to resist the constant barrage of negative news without eroding.
“A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll recently found that 24 percent of respondents strongly approved of Trump’s performance in office, and another 17 percent somewhat approved; 56 percent strongly or somewhat disapproved. (Those numbers are roughly in line with the average of other recent polls.) Ratings that tilt so far negative usually presage electoral setbacks for the president’s party—and indeed, the past year has seen Republican candidates underperform at the polls, on average, by wide margins.
“But the more worrisome finding in that same poll may be the question that Trump himself most cares about: Would respondents vote for Trump if he runs for reelection? Fifty-two percent indicated they’d support a generic Democrat; just 36 percent backed Trump, and only 18 percent said they’d definitely vote for him.
“Those findings, taken together, suggest that at least a quarter of those who tell pollsters they strongly approve of his performance aren’t certain they’ll vote for him next time around; at least one in eight of those with positive views aren’t even willing to affirm that they will probably vote for him.”
The rest of the article is here.
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
We certainly live in a parallel universe. The weary old troglodyte Todd has posted a list of Trump “accomplishments”. To most rational people, the things on that list would be reasons to desperately find a replacement, AND to immediately jump start the impeachment process while looking for said replacement. Todd belongs in a cage.
I glanced at Todd’s list and noticed he listed the pardoning of Joe Arpaio as one of Trump’s accomplishments. You can’t make this stuff up!
Donald Trump is spending Christmas at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, or as he calls it, “The Winter White House.”
Being in sunny Florida did not stop Trump from reaching out to hundreds of members of the armed service around the globe, some in active war zones. Trump spoke via video teleconference to rooms packed full of service members stationed in Qatar, Kuwait, Guantanamo Bay and the USS Sampson in 5th Fleet OPS Underway, according to the pool report.
Trump spoke to five deployed units, one from each branch.
Trump “camped out” in his highly ornate multimillion-dollar mansion, addressing the troops via video and reading verbatim from a prepared script in a wooden tone of voice. He also told his Mar-A-Lago friends: “You all just got a lot richer.” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/12/trump-celebrates-tax-bill-with-mar-a-lago-friends-you-all-just-got-a-lot-richer.html And he played a round of golf (something he criticized Obama for).
By contrast, President Obama left his vacation home on Christmas Day and personally and repeatedly visited military troops. He also paid surprise visits to the troops in Afghanistan. Trump has never done that; he sent the VP once. On Thanksgiving, Obama personally served Thanksgiving dinner to homeless and vets, urging unity. Trump holed up at his mansion on Thanksgiving Day, speaking to the troops again via video from a lavish room. He sat down to an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner of oysters on the half shell, Florida Stone crabs, jumbo shrimp, and Chilean sea bass (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/sustainably-caught-chilean-sea-bass-maybe-not/).
I didn’t vote for him before and will not vote for him if he ran for re-election. Understandably it did upset his groupies who cackled to me and others that he was getting our votes. Bullies don’t like to lose control over others. Ron Lowe had a good letter to the editor in the Union