Polls shouldn’t matter, but they do to Trump

Public opinion polls shouldn’t really be on the top of politicians’ minds. Unless you’re the president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump told us incessantly during his 2016 presidential campaign how the polls had him up against his Republican primary foes, then against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The man who would become president made polls important.

Now we have this: The RealClearPoliticsĀ  poll of polls — the one that averages all the major polling outfits — shows the president’s standing among Americans is plummeting.

The RCP poll has gone below 40 percent approval among Americans of the job the president is doing.

Ouch, man!

The latest Quinnipiac poll puts Trump’s approval rating at 35 percent. Reuters/Ipsos has Trump at 44 percent. You get the idea. His numbers are all over the place, but all of them combined and averaged out put him at 39.8 percent.

Trump isn’t saying much about the polls these days. Imagine my surprise … not!

Were it not for the candidate himself making such an issue of polls when they were casting him in a positive light, I likely wouldn’t bother with this latest bit of bad poll news.

It’s all your fault, Mr. President.