Everyone except the die-hard faithful now realizes that Donald Trump’s second presidency is a colossal failure.
asserted
presidency → realize → faithful
The president is doing his best to gin up symbolic, minor controversies in order to activate negative polarization and distract from his spectacular failures on inflation, the Iran War, corruption, racial harmony, and so on.
asserted
president → do → inflation
These include demanding that artificial intelligence be renamed “artificial superintelligence”, bellowing that he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and conducting an execution on live TV.
asserted
he → include → TV
The goal is to get Republicans fighting Democrats over these controversies, in order to trick everyone into focusing on how much they hate the other team instead of how much they hate Trump.
asserted
they → get → Trump
The trick will probably fail, just as Trump’s promise to give every American $5000 for voting Republican backfired.
asserted
promise → fail → Republican
All of these little tempests-in-teapots simply reinforce what a cruel, selfish, petty buffoon Trump is.
asserted
Trump → reinforce → teapots
And Trump’s approval rating just drifts lower and lower:
asserted
rating → drift → ?
Trump will probably lose the midterms, and become a lame duck president, spamming increasingly grandiose, unworkable executive orders while battling a stream of Congressional investigations.
asserted
Trump → lose → investigations
That means the window is closing on my ability to force Democrats to reckon with their failures during the Biden years.
asserted
window → mean → years
If and when Trump loses a national election, there will be far less pressure for soul-searching on the left.
asserted
Trump → lose → left
And once the GOP is no longer in control of all three branches of government, the Democrats will be able to influence actual policy instead of sitting around rebuilding their brand.
asserted
Democrats → influence → brand
So before that happens, I want to summon the last fading scraps of the self-reflection that Democrats and progressives were briefly forced into after Trump thumped Kamala Harris two years ago.
asserted
Trump → happen → Harris
When Trump won, I wrote four blog posts trying to explain where the Democrats had gone wrong:
asserted
Democrats → win → posts
So today I’m going to repost all four parts of my election post-mortem, so that the progressives and Democrats among my readers can take one final moment to reflect on how not to enable the rise of authoritarian rightist leaders in future election cycles.
asserted
progressives → go → cycles
Identity politics isn’t working
asserted
politics → work → ?
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Trump is a terrible choice for America, but there’s no denying that the American people have made their choice.
asserted
people → make → choice
Trump is currently projected to win every single swing state.
asserted
Trump → project → state
He outperformed his 2020 performance in every single county in the country.
asserted
He → outperform → country
He’s projected to win a solid majority of the popular vote — the first time a Republican has done so since 2004.
asserted
Republican → project → 2004
I still don’t like the Electoral College as an institution, but you can’t blame it for this result like you could for 2016.
uncertain
you → like → result
In fact, Trump’s victory was part of a more general Republican landslide — the GOP took the Senate and improved its majority in the House.
asserted
GOP → take → House
A map of political shifts between 2020 and 2024 shows almost solid red.
asserted
map → show → red
I suppose a small silver lining here is that we won’t have to spend the next two months enduring waves of “Stop the Steal” election denials, lawsuits, and threats to repeat January 6th.
asserted
we → suppose → 6th
Democracy delivered Trump a victory, and so Trump has little incentive to attack democracy.
asserted
Trump → deliver → democracy
In fact, that silver lining might extend to the long term too.
uncertain
lining → extend → term
Trump and the GOP won because nonwhite voters and working-class voters — traditional Democratic constituencies — shifted his way.
asserted
voters → win → ?
Dems still won Hispanic, Black, and Asian voters overall, but their margins fell significantly from previous elections, while actually improving with White voters:
In fact, exit polls show Trump winning a solid majority of Hispanic men!
asserted
Trump → win → men
Over at Matt Yglesias’ blog, Jed Kolko shows that heavily Hispanic areas swung harder toward Trump than any other parts of the country:
asserted
areas → show → country
Ronald Reagan’s prophecy that Latinos would become Republicans is coming to pass.
asserted
Latinos → become → ?
Income has realigned as well.
asserted
Income → realign → ?
Democrats are now the party of the educated upper middle and wealthy class, but have lost their appeal to the middle and working classes:
asserted
Democrats → lose → classes
This largely destroys the narrative that nonwhite immigration will demographically drown White Americans under a tide of imported minority votes.
asserted
immigration → destroy → votes
In fact, it vindicates my guest poster Wally Nowinski, who observed that high-turnout elections like this one now help Republicans, because marginal voters — working-class Americans and Hispanic Americans — now lean to the right:
asserted
voters → vindicate → right
At some point, Republicans are going to realize this, and hopefully become less anxious about America’s racial future.
asserted
Republicans → go → future
Hopefully they will also realize that any attempt to make voting harder actually hurts them in the future, because the impact would fall disproportionately on their own base.
asserted
impact → realize → base
I expect these realizations to take some time to sink in, but ultimately their effect could be very salutary for American democracy.
uncertain
effect → expect → democracy
In the days of Nixon and Reagan, Republicans never worried about democracy itself — it was obviously on their side.
asserted
it → worry → side
Even in 2004, Republicans could tell themselves that we lived in a “center-right nation”.
uncertain
we → tell → nation
Now, Trump’s victory, powered by lower-income Americans and Hispanic men, will hopefully convince the GOP that democracy is still a game they can win.
asserted
they → power → GOP
A democracy needs both major parties to believe they can win via persuasion rather than by organized resistance, and 2024 showed that Republicans can still do that — even if the method of persuasion is one that I personally wish hadn’t worked so well.
asserted
I → need → persuasion
…and 526 more, not listed.
The Aporia
