How badly is Trump shooting himself in the foot with his voters?
While those opposed to the new administration should be ready for a long fight, we should also be on the lookout to exploit cracks in Trump's coalition
This piece was originally published at The Hot Screen.
In some ways, not so much a candidate as a fever dream of one clinched the presidency last November. Even as factors like racism, sexism, and generationally high inflation provided tailwinds to Donald Trump’s narrow margin of victory, the way that so many voters ascribed to him magical powers also played a major role. For many swing voters, his false reputation as a canny businessman and dealmaker appealed to those experiencing a topsy-turvy economy beset not just by inflation, but by chronic cost-of-living challenges like the high price of housing and advanced education. And for middle- and working-class Republicans already inclined to vote GOP, right-wing propaganda had replaced memories of the disastrous economy of Trump’s fourth year in office with the idea that Trump should not be held responsible for the economic ravages of covid — or even that all our covid mayhem had actually happened under Joe Biden’s watch. Presto! Trump was a virtual political Houdini, escaping the somber chains that others call “reality.”
Thus, Donald Trump benefited from expectations that could charitably be termed “unrealistic” — and so far, we’ve just been talking about the realm of economics. I think it’s safe to say that most Americans did not elect Trump with the wish or assumption that he’d immediately govern as the most extreme version of himself possible — conducting a de facto war on competent government, on the rule of law, on international order, on a stable economy. Except for some core of MAGA voters, what has happened with Trump II so far is, in substance, not what many expected, or even wanted.
At The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg talks about the “buyer’s remorse” that even some formerly enthusiastic Trump supporters have started to express, whether due to the new president’s insane plan to turn the Gaza Strip into a luxury neighborhood, Elon Musk’s clearly self-serving blitzkrieg against the federal bureaucracy, or simply the president’s bizarre re-naming of the Gulf of Mexico accompanied by insistence that all echo his new choice, or else. Rosenberg notes how the cold water of reality is all the harsher due to Trump’s four years out of office, which meant that “his supporters had the unusual opportunity to spin self-serving—and often mutually exclusive—narratives around the former president’s plans without the inconvenience of having to explain his actual policies.” But now, “With every policy he implements and offhand remark he makes, Trump is falsifying the imaginary versions of himself that inspired many of his supporters [ . . .] Again and again, the fantasies that fueled Trump’s candidacy are colliding with the reality of his presidency, and the result is already dispelling the illusions of many who advocated for him [. . . ] With every disappointment, it will become harder for him to hold together the coalition that delivered him the narrowest popular-vote victory since Richard Nixon’s in 1968.”
At his How Things Work blog, Hamilton Nolan makes some complementary points about the way Trump seems to be slow-walking himself into a political wood chipper due to many voters’ unrealistic conceptions of his second term. Here’s a list of possible disaffected Trump constituencies that he identifies:
Millions of government workers and their families, who may have voted Republican but now find their own livelihoods threatened;
Veterans who will see the VA decimated;
Members of the military, who will see austerity imposed upon them;
Clean cut law and order types at the FBI and the Justice Department who are finding that Trump is actually lawless, and is attacking them;
Law enforcement types disillusioned by Trump’s pardoning of January 6 protesters who attacked cops;
Parents of schoolchildren who will find their public schools getting worse and worse;
Latinos who voted for Trump who will find themselves and their families targeted by his anti-immigration agenda;
Black people who voted for Trump who will be unhappy with the wave of officially condoned racism he has unleashed;
Women who voted for Trump who will at some point find themselves or their family personally harmed by the restrictions on reproductive rights;
Sober small business types who will find that they are, to their surprise, on the losing side of the oligarchy
That’s a lot of possible cracks in Trump’s coalition! To his credit, though, Nolan notes how these disaffected voters aren’t automatic pick-ups for the Demcrats: “The many people who have already become and the many more who will soon become pissed or disappointed or disillusioned with what is happening will not automatically rush off to register as Democrats. Rather, these people compose [a] substantial and growing pool of support that is up for grabs. They are the persuadables.”
And on top of the fact that Democrats will need to work to win these voters, we also should not expect Trump to simply let his coalition wither away. He will doubtless try to find ways to bind his voters to him, such as through gew-gaws like a special “dividend” to taxpayers based on DOGE cuts to government programs, or the prospect of untold wealth unleashed when he pries Greenland from the hands of the rotten Danes, or via sadistic spectacles of punishment against immigrants and the “reward” of a purified nation. Beyond this, we also have to consider that the government he is building is meant to be insulated from public backlash. Culturally, it will seek to reward supporters for their losses through the prize of heightened status; politically, it will seek to subvert elections and the power of the opposition’s votes.
But with these cautions — and bearing in mind the daunting but doable task of the Democrats crafting a vision for the country that can answer and overcome MAGA’s appeal to fascistic “greatness” — Nolan’s spirited conclusion captures key dynamics currently at play: “Recognize that these fuckers are the minority, and that it is impossible for them to carry out their program without isolating more of their base and become more of a minority [. . .] Trump and Elon Musk are like two guys with six-shooters trying to hold a thousand people hostage. They only win if everyone thinks they are too strong to rush.”
I love that last idea about a belligerent minority trying to hold an outraged majority at bay — it speaks to the power of democracy, but also to how our perilous situation is due in part to the psychological warfare the Trump administration is conducting against America: attempting to present illegal acts as faits accomplis; moving so fast on so many fronts that it’s hard to coordinate a defense, let alone think straight; wielding threats of prosecution and violence against a few in order to teach a punitive lesson to the many. Power is not just a tangible thing, the barrel of a gun pointed at your chest; it’s also the perception that you’re powerful.
So with all these sources of possible second thoughts on the part of Trump voters, might we already be seeing the start of a backlash against the president? A group of new polls showing Trump underwater in terms of popularity suggest that, at a minimum, his post-inauguration honeymoon phase is over. Greg Sargent goes a step further, noting that “All these new polls showing majorities disapproving of Trump, and Elon Musk faring even worse, really undermine one of the dumber narratives of the moment: That "disruption" is automatically good for Trump.” And at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall discerns the glimmerings of a backlash that’s manifesting in the unease of Republican elected officials, many of whom are being inundated with constituent concerns about Musk’s dodgy DOGE jihad; he also notes, crucially, that many of the effects of the attack on the federal bureaucracy haven’t even been felt yet. And on the near horizon, he points to debilitating internal GOP conflicts over the upcoming budget negotiations, which will involve trading “your health care coverage for Elon’s tax cuts.”
Indeed, such glimmerings raise a frustrating possibility, apart from the prospect of Trump gradually cultivating a discernible backlash against his misrule over the coming months and (gulp) years: that right now, at a time when so many people see Trump as unstoppable, his power is actually largely rooted in our own disarray and belief in his narrative of omnipotence.