Lean Trump ,but they are really two totally opposite situations. Trump has weak-ish approvals and polling vs. challengers but appears to be on a upward trajectory. Bush 43 looked like he was going to be reelected in a historic landslide at this point in his 1st term, then made a long string of unforced errors for the last ~18 months and only eeked it out by one state.
There's a pretty long history of 2 term presidents being underwater in approvals and losing to challengers in horserace polls 2-3 years into their first term and then rallying back to majority approval and a win by election day. Reagan looked very weak in 1982-83, as did Obama in 2011. Truman was famously written off as a double digit loser until staging a comeback in the last 6 weeks of the 1948 campaign.
Conversely, Carter and Bush 41 looked like strong favorites until the last year of their terms. Bush 43 was basically following that path. The most interesting part is that he still managed to limp over the line and win reelection.
Trump is already offending enough people to have disapproval numbers consistently in the mid-50's or higher. He reeks of corruption and cruelty. If the economy is humming, it is humming only for the super-rich who are on a speculative binge sure to end in a crash.
Reagan was reeling from his economic contraction to put an end to stagflation. His solution was to turn over-educated people into store clerks -- and they were told if they thought the pay inadequate, then supplement the meager pay with another such job. People who dreamed of something else became the best salesclerks we ever had -- educated people hawking housewares and underwear in the shopping malls. That may have strengthened the American economy. People learned that marketing was magic, and ivory-tower idealism futile.
Obama never had disapproval levels as high as those that Trump has consistently had. Maybe he got re-elected over the dead body of Osama bin Laden -- but such is what happens if one has a foreign policy best described as a velvet glove over a mailed fist. It also helps that Obama ran a clean administration.
Donald Trump's America is a landlord's paradise and a nightmare for tenants.
