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And a good sunday morning to all of you, we are less than three months before the midterms and our brand new NBC News poll paints a pretty bleak picture.
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Americans are angry, they're disappointed, and they are worried about the future of this country, just 21% of adults say we are heading in the right direction.
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And once again three out of four Americans say we're on the wrong track⁽¹⁾. In fact this number never before in our poll, has this wrong track number been over 70% for this long, it's been nearly a year now.
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58% by the way say America's best years are behind us, that's an all-time high in our poll, so what is behind this rise in pessimism about our country's future?
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Well it starts with this Americans don't like either party? and they don't like anyone in power, take a look at this, both political parties are very unpopular, one slightly more than the other.
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It's a similar story with both the current and former presidents, with the former president's negatives, actually rising a bit faster than we've seen since our last poll.
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The current and former vice presidents also both deeply unpopular almost identical, and even the two politicians who have most publicly stood up to the leaders of their own parties, Joe Manchin and Liz Cheney?
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Well no one likes them either, and with their own parties, they are the most unpopular, so add it all up, and this country now has low confidence in a bunch of institutions, justice department, the supreme court, even our public schools.
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And for the first time ever, when asked what is the most important issue facing this country, the top answer was not an economic issue, it was threats to the democracy, higher than cost of living or jobs or guns or even abortion.
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So this is the environment in which voters are going to the polls this November, they're pretty angry, in a normal year these numbers would forecast electoral doom for the party in power.
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But boy these midterms, they're going to be unlike any we've seen in history, and I'll warn you the old rules of politics, probably don't apply.