WASHINGTON — A new AP-NORC poll released this week found that voters are deeply dissatisfied with President Donald Trump and his Republican Party heading into the November 3 midterm elections, and, in a development that should comfort patriots everywhere, equally dissatisfied with the Democratic Party.

Read that again. The American people have looked at both teams and declined to endorse either. Skeptics will call this a crisis. Patriots will recognize it for what it is: the single most independent streak of civic reasoning since the founding, when we managed to reject two kings at once.

Consider the numbers, which are beautiful. The President’s overall approval sits at 31 percent, and just 17 percent approve of his handling of the cost of living. That last figure is not a failure. It is a triumph of financial literacy. Eighty-three percent of Americans are now thinking about money constantly. Economists have been begging for that level of household attention for decades, and it took one presidency to deliver it.

"For years, pollsters complained that voters weren't engaged enough. Now 83 percent of the country is thinking about grocery prices every single day. That's not a rating. That's a national study hall," said Dale Hutchins, a precinct chair in Tulsa who described the poll as 'the most flattering survey either party has ever received.'"

The Democrats, meanwhile, have built what the poll describes as a clear advantage on key issues while inspiring exactly zero confidence that they can fix any of them. Voters favor them on the economy and healthcare and then, when asked whether the solution will actually arrive, shrug. That shrug is the most American sound ever recorded. It is the sound of a people who have looked at the government’s plan and decided to handle it themselves, which is precisely what the Founders intended.

WHY THE DISSATISFACTION NUMBERS ARE GOOD NUMBERS

  • 31% approval means 69% of Americans are now practicing gratitude for what they have, by comparison.
  • 17% cost-of-living approval is the highest sustained national attention to household budgets in recorded history.
  • Zero faith in either party is the closest this country has ever come to term limits for optimism.
  • Nov. 3 turnout is expected to be high, because angry people vote, and both teams have delivered.

Some say the poll is a warning to the party in power. Others say it is a warning to the party out of power. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in a third position I just invented: the poll is a warning to the pollsters, who have been paid to be surprised for two hundred and fifty years.

The President, for his part, hit the campaign trail this week speaking directly to the 83 percent who say prices are too high, telling crowds that he personally understands prices, having paid them his entire life, more than almost anyone, on many occasions, at high-end stores.

At press time, the AP-NORC Center announced it would conduct a follow-up poll asking Americans whether they are satisfied with the level of their own dissatisfaction. Early results suggest they are not.