The Public Hated Comey, So Why is Trump in Trouble?

Republicans are already writing their political obituary in 2018 and basically crediting the Comey firing for ending Trump’s presidency. As is often the case, however, the view from inside the beltway and outside the beltway can be very, very different.

Take this recent poll from March of this year which found that one of the few people in Washington with worse Favorable/Unfavorable numbers than President Trump …. was FBI Director James Comey:

FBI Director James Comey is unpopular across the political spectrum, according to a new poll that finds voters have a negative opinion of Comey by a more than two-to-one margin.

According to data from a Harvard-Harris Poll survey of registered voters provided exclusively to The Hill, only 17 percent have a favorable view of Comey, compared to 35 percent who have a negative view of him.

Forty-one percent of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Comey, with only 12 percent saying they view him positively.

Comey is almost at break-even among Republicans, with 26 percent viewing him positively and 27 percent viewing him negatively.

I’ve been searching for polls on whether voters approve of Trump’s actions in firing Comey, I suspect we’ll get mixed results depending on how the questions are phrased. However, there has been somewhat universal hatred of Comey, even down to the individual voter level, ever since his interference in the election back 2016.

Republicans shouldn’t count on Comey’s bad poll numbers to save them, and it looks like several of them are voicing serious concerns about their 2018 prospects:

“It is a debacle,” said one Republican in constant touch with the West Wing. “They got everything — timing, rationale, reaction — completely wrong.”

And therein lies the problem. Comey might have been disliked by the public, but the public dislikes people in power seeming to act in their own self-interest for the means of self-preservation even more.

I’m sure we’ll see some polls out today by the evening news time about whether the public agrees with the decision to fire Director Comey. I actually bet a plurality of voters may support the firings, despite having reservations about the timing or relation to ongoing investigations. Comey is one person in Washington who unites bipartisan, which is very hard to accomplish.