By almost any measure that statisticians cook up, more than 40 percent of America’s labor force is employed in small businesses (Go ahead and ask Siri, Alexa or Google). Some of them are managers and more of them are blue collar or office workers. But they are all significantly affected by the climate of economic uncertainty created by Captain Chaos.

In the stub of the Bulwark interview we recently ran, GOP strategist Sarah Longwell noted that a lot of small business owners and employees “understand supply chains…They really understand tariffs…they thought he would be better for their small business in the economy. And those are the people right now who are like, well, this kind of uncertainty makes it impossible for me to run my business…uncertainty is the worst condition for a small business because…you got to order things in advance.”

Democrats would be smart to pounce on this insight and ride it to the midterms with unbridled gusto. Here’s a few recent articles to peruse for ammo:

Small businesses sue Trump administration over authority to impose tariffs by Matthew Kaufman, CNN.

Small business owners speak out about effects of Trump tariffs: ‘Unsustainable‘ by Daniella Genovese, FoxBusiness.

Two-Thirds of Small Business Owners Say Tariffs Will Hurt Their Company  by and at pymnts.com.

A doomsday scenario’: CEO says Trump’s China tariffs could shutter his business ‘within months by Tom Huddleston, Jr. at CNBC.com.

Tariffs create costly chaos for Amazon sellers — including the Trump supporters: Small businesses that depend on overseas suppliers have endured a week of stressful uncertainty by Caroline O’Donovan at The Washington Post.

Do ​Tariffs Mean Raising Prices? The Question For Small Businesses by Rohit Arora at Forbes.

Trump’s China tariffs are slamming small businesses — the heart of our economy and his own voters by The New York Post Editorial Board.

Tariffs have small business in ‘survival mode’ by Kai Ryssdal and Nicholas Guiang at Marketplace.

‘We’re in a New Reality’: Small Business Owners Suffering from Tariffs Are Speaking Out On social media, entrepreneurs are expressing confusion and concern about what import duties mean for their supply chains by Brian Contreras at Inc.

In his first big speech since leaving the white House, former President “Joe Biden accuses Trump and Musk of taking ‘hatchet’ to social security.” So reports Lauren Gambino at The Guardian, and continues: “Joe Biden on Tuesday accused Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Elon Musk, of “taking a hatchet” to the social security administration as they moved at warp-speed to dismantle large swaths of the federal government…In his first public remarks since leaving office, the former president avoided any explicit mention of Trump – his predecessor and successor – but he was sharply critical of the new administration for threatening social security, which Biden called a “sacred promise” that more than 70 million Americans rely on each month…“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said, addressing the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon.”…On Tuesday, Democrats across the country held a day of action to “sound the alarm” over the Trump administration’s plans to downsize the social security administration, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier on Tuesday. Biden referenced the sweeping cuts to the agency’s workforce and its services in his remarks…“In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the social security system, people have always gotten their social security checks,” Biden said. “They’ve gotten them during wartime, during recessions, during a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. But now for the first time ever, that might change. It’d be a calamity for millions of families.” Read on here.

Aging and somnolent Democratic members of congress alert: The younguns are coming for your seat. That’s the gist of “In unprecedented move, DNC official to spend big to take down fellow Democrats” by Elena Schneider at Politico, who writes: “David Hogg, a controversial Democratic National Committee vice chair, is pledging to upend Democratic primaries by funding candidates who will challenge “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats…The move puts Hogg, the now 25-year-old who first gained national stature as an outspoken survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, on a collision course with his own party and some Democratic House members…Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age…“We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.” Some may grumble about ‘ageism.’ But isn’t that what is going on right now, effectively locking out capable young people who want to become Democratic office-holders? In any case, few sentient Dems would doubt that their party could benefit by a makeover featuring a more youthful look, or at least a less ossified one. Hogg is doing something about it, and it looks like he has the smarts do it intelligently. We sure as hell could use more young voters.

“Working-class voters respond to arguments about protecting America from foreign “invaders” because being American is blue-collar people’s strongest boast; it’s the source of their status, so they like politicians who emphasize it,” Joan C. Williams, author of “White Working Class” and the forthcoming “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” writes in “Democrats need to speak to cultural concerns as well as economics” at The Los Angeles Times. She notes further, “A 2020 poll found that being American was an important part of the identity of 79% of Americans with (at most) high school degrees, but only 43% of predominantly college-educated progressive activists. The college-educated, in contrast, prefer to stress their top-of-the-heap membership in a globalized elite. Working-class voters also define their communities geographically, where they have networks based on neighborhood and kinship. By contrast, the “Brahmin Left” (to use Thomas Piketty’s term) see themselves as part of an international community characterized by “feeling rules” that mandate empathy for immigrants and racial minorities but less often for class-disadvantaged citizens of their own countries…People’s values reflect their lives, and their lives reflect their privilege — or lack of it. This is a message progressives, with their acuity about racial and gender privilege, should be able to hear. It could help them come to terms with an uncomfortable fact: Non-college voters of every racial group are less liberal than college grads of the same group…But moderates need to expand their cultural awareness too. When moderates like commentator Ruy Teixeira and the advocacy group Third Way argue that Democrats should throw identity politics under the bus and abandon their strong views on trans rights and climate change, they too are overlooking the cultural dimension of contemporary politics. Just as members of the Brahmin Left need to acknowledge that the logic of their lives differs from the logic of working-class lives, moderates need to acknowledge that progressives won’t just give in on issues like climate change. Those issues are deeply etched into progressives’ identities: The Brahmin Left is truly worried about the end of the world, even as non-elites are more concerned about the end of the month.”

Maeve Reston writes at msn.com that “Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at the centrist group Third Way, said the size of Sanders’s crowds has been impressive. But he argued they are driven largely by anger about the Trump administration’s policies rather than any sudden embrace of Sanders’s agenda of controversial policies like Medicare-for-all…“The problem with the far left is that they have scored their victories only against other Democrats. They have yet to flip a single House seat, not to mention the Senate,” Bennett said…Bennett said the only way to stop “the absolute catastrophe of Trumpism” is “to win majorities, and the only way to win majorities is with moderates in purple and red districts and states…But Faiz Shakir, a longtime Sanders adviser who ran for Democratic National Committee chair earlier this year, said Sanders is ascendant in this moment because he is channeling the wrath of regular people toward the billionaire class and “the hubris and lack of humanity” in people like Musk. Sanders remains popular at a time when the Democratic brand has hit historic lows because he’s known as “a class-based populist warrior against concentrations of wealth and power,” Shakir said…The Democratic brand, by contrast, Shakir said, is still “unsure of the class prism, far more focused on left versus right, social racial justice issues that are not on the main highway of the thing that millions and millions and millions of people are upset about.”

Like many Americans, I’ve been watching with fascinated horror the Trump administration’s first big steps towards mass deportation, and wrote about the political underpinnings of the issue at New York:

To those who are worried about the threat to the rule of law represented by the first president to enter the White House as a convicted criminal, the brinkmanship being exhibited by Team Trump over court orders involving an erroneously deported immigrant seems ominous.

The Trump administration has been taunting the judiciary via dilatory tactics and obfuscation in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This protected-status immigrant from El Salvador, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has three children, was shipped off to a brutal Salvadorian rent-a-prison without due process, based on a faulty identification.

U.S. district court judge Paula Xinis has ordered the administration to find and return Abrego Garcia so that he can receive due process prior to deportation, and a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court concurred that the order must be obeyed, albeit with some consideration of the complications of the case. But even though Judiciary Department lawyers have admitted in court that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was the result of an error, the White House has stalled in complying with Xinis’s order. And in a bizarre Oval Office meeting with Salvadoran president (and self-described dictator) Nayib Bukele, Trump and his attorney general suggested it was now Bukele’s problem. The Salvadoran leader said he would not “smuggle” a “terrorist” back into the United States. Right there in front of the cameras, White House policy director and infamous nativist Stephen Miller misstated the Supreme Court decision and kept referring to Abrego Garcia as a terrorist, the disputed attribution at the very center of the legal case. It all seemed like an extended mockery of the rule of law.

The administration is clearly playing rope-a-dope on the entire situation. And while it may ultimately comply with the courts, extract Abrego Garcia from prison, and give him a real hearing, the political question is why Team Trump is dragging this out in the glare of global bad publicity. Is this really the ground on which the 47th president will trigger a much-feared constitutional crisis by openly defying the judicial branch of government, including the Supreme Court that has been so very good to him? That’s what a lot of Trump critics believe is happening before our incredulous eyes.

I personally believe the administration will eventually submit to the courts, albeit as minimally as possible. But it’s possible Team Trump thinks the president’s foreign-policy powers, which they claim are at stake in such cases, are strong enough that it’s the Supreme Court that will submit to Trump’s authority to do as he wishes with immigrants.

Politically speaking, this is a fight the administration is eager to take on even if it temporarily loses, because it’s all happening on Trump’s favored turf at the intersection of the immigration and crime issues. At a time when the president is losing popularity steadily thanks to his economic policies, and particularly his tariff policies, it’s probably a relief to get back to the argument that America is succumbing to an “invasion” by criminal immigrants eager to rape, pillage, and eat pets. It seemed to have worked in 2024. Why not in 2025?

Recent polls regularly confirm that of all the controversial things Trump has done in the first 11-plus weeks of his second term, his handling of immigration policy is the most popular. This is true in polls that rate his overall job performance negatively (an April 8 Economist–YouGov survey giving him a net minus-seven approval rating overall but a plus-six approval rating on immigration) and positively (an April 10 Harvard–Harris survey giving him a net plus-two approval rating overall but a plus-seven approval rating on immigration). It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that when the full implications of the Trump-Miller immigration agenda become manifest, particularly when legal immigrants and even citizens are affected, this general-public approbation will fade or even head due south. Indeed, pollster G. Elliott Morris has published an analysis arguing that support for Trump’s positions declines steadily as questions about them become more specific:

“[W]hen various pollsters asked if they would support deporting immigrants who have been here more than 10 years (as in the case of Abrego Garcia), U.S. adults said “no” by a 37 percentage point margin; Americans disapprove of deporting immigrants who have broken no laws other than laws governing entry; they oppose deporting U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to foreign jails, such as [El Salvador’s] CECOT, and they oppose housing migrants at Guantanamo Bay while they are processed. All of these are policies the Trump administration has now floated or is actively carrying out.”

So the administration may be guilty of rhetorical overreach on immigration at a time when the mass-deportation program is actually going pretty slowly. But what about all the constitutional fears raised by cases like that of Abrego Garcia? Won’t Americans recoil at those signs of a presidency determined to become imperial? Maybe not.

Team Trump has clearly internalized one of the big lessons of the 2024 presidential election: that threats to “the rule of law” or “the Constitution” or “democracy” don’t mean a lot to persuadable voters who are most concerned about living costs and their own sense of well-being. If what Trump tried to do on January 6, 2021 doesn’t rise to the level of a voting issue for well over half the electorate, then is there any reason to believe that Abrego Garcia’s “due process” rights will matter? What is “due process,” anyway? Like the “presumption of innocence” from which Abrego Garcia should also benefit, it’s a legal concept that an awful lot of regular folks either don’t understand or find problematic, particularly when applied to someone the president of the United States has labeled an alien criminal terrorist.

So Team Trump is happy to defy the rule of law, at least at a level short of overt defiance, in any controversy involving immigrants. It pleases the nativist MAGA base immensely to see the administration run circles around “activist judges” in ridding the country of the people Democrats allegedly brought in to “replace” the country’s historic white majority. And it’s unclear at this point that Democrats and other Trump critics can make smash-and-grab ICE operations that land peaceful American residents in overseas hellholes as frightening as they should be. But as with the increasingly unpopular Trump tariff program, the immigration agenda may lose support the longer, the louder, and the more chaotic it becomes.

Here we have a lucid discussion between two Republican apostates about how to defeat Trump at their website, The Bulwark, which provides a full transcript, a stub of which is cross-posted below. You can also watch the discussion by clicking on this link. 

 Many will recognize the interviewer, Bill Kristol, as a venerable conservative commentator and analyst, who frequently appears news discussion shows. The interviewee, Sarah Longwell is a Republican strategist, who is strongly committed to defeating Trump. Her perceptive insights deserve serious consideration by Democrats.

From “Democrats dislike the ‘chaos’ of Trump’s trade war but are OK with some tariffs” by Josh Boak and Matt Brown at the Associated Press: “Democrats are quick to say that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are horrible, awful, terrible. But Democrats are also stressing that they are not inherently anti-tariff…What Trump’s political opponents say they really dislike is the “chaos” he has unleashed…“Tariffs are an important tool in our economic toolbox,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Trump is creating chaos, and that chaos undercuts our economy and our families, both in the short term and the long term. … He’s just created a worldwide hurricane, and that’s not good for anyone.”…Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Democrats have a consensus around “a unified concept, which is targeted tariffs can work, across the board tariffs are bad.”…“The right targeting is in the eye of the beholder, but nobody on our side thinks zero tariffs ever,” Kaine said…The Democrats’ message is meant to convey that they are reasonable, focused on capable governance and attuned to financial market distress. It’s a pitch toward swing voters who would like to see more manufacturing yet are uncomfortable with the consequences of Trump’s approach to tariffs. The risk is that it also is a nuanced argument at a time when pithy critiques travel faster and spread wider on social media than do measured policy analyses…“Farmers, in particular, who were hit very hard by Trump’s last trade wars, are terrified that this may be existential to their businesses,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. “These are mostly small and medium-sized family farms. Their input costs are going to go up and their export markets are going to close down.”…“I’m a little uninterested in what the Democratic response should be like,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “Trump is intentionally destroying the American economy, and I think we should just say that and not make it very complicated.”

“A growing majority of America’s top executives now expects the U.S. economy to enter a recession in the near future, according to a survey released Monday,” Alex Harring writes in “More than 60% of CEOs expect a recession in the next 6 months as tariff turmoil grows, survey says” at nbcnews.com. “Of the more than 300 CEOs polled in April, 62% said they forecasted a recession or other economic downturn in the next six months, according to Chief Executive, an industry group that runs the survey. That’s up from 48% who said the same in March…Chief Executive’s data underscores the growing concern within corporate America around the future of the U.S. economy. Fears about a forthcoming recession hit a boiling point in the last two weeks, as President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policy ratcheted up volatility in financial markets and stirred panic among some consumers…Indeed, around three-fourths of CEOs surveyed said tariffs would hurt their businesses in 2025. About two-thirds said they did not support Trump’s proposed levies, many of which are currently on pause…just 37% said they believe their companies’ profits will increase. That’s a steep drop from the 76% who gave this response in January.”

In “The House: Democrats Favored on What Starts as a Small Battlefield” Kyle Kondix explains at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Electorally, Democrats have been punching above their weight in special elections much like they did in 2017, and they just decisively won the first big statewide election of Trump’s second term, maintaining liberal control of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court last week. Democrats are grappling with some internal strife, as their own voters are starting to express wider dissatisfaction with the party. But fortunately for Democrats, a party’s voters don’t have to love their own party in a midterm context in order to deliver wins—they just have to be motivated enough to turn out against the other guys. For instance, Republicans’ internal issues didn’t prevent them from strong showings in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, although fractious primaries did produce some candidates who kicked away key races, most notably in 2010 Senate contests (the quality of nominees coming out of primaries will be something to monitor during the primary season). Back then, the conventional wisdom was that the smaller midterm electorate had a generic Republican lean. Now that conventional wisdom has been turned on its head, given the migration of higher-turnout voters into the Democratic camp. In a recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show, Democratic consultant David Shor found that Kamala Harris would have beaten Trump in an electorate made up of only 2022 midterm voters, while Trump would have won the popular vote by close to 5 points if all registered voters had cast a ballot. Democrats clearly have some longer-term problems to work through, but that to us is more of a 2028 issue than a 2026 one, at least when it comes to the House…To sum up this preamble, we would just say the following: Democrats became favorites to flip the House as soon as Trump won, and what has happened since then has not really changed that assessment…Our bottom line assessment of the battle for Congress is that Democrats should win the House, and Republicans should win the Senate (as we explained in our initial ratings back in February). One way to track 2025 and 2026 is whether either of these assessments look like they are in danger of being upended—does the race for the House seem like more of a true Toss-up in fall 2026, or does the Senate majority seem to be in doubt?”

From “Trump Opens the Door to More Medicare Advantage Fraud” by Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: “One of the most preposterous narratives about Donald Trump’s second term in office is that his administration is engaged in “cost-cutting.” Elon Musk and his DOGE goons are hacking away randomly at the federal bureaucracy, it’s true, but all the salaries of all federal employees combined come to only about 5 percent of government spending. And many of those layoffs are going to lead to increased spending—for instance, massive cuts to the IRS workforce have already reduced tax revenue by an estimated $500 billion this year, which will require the money to be borrowed instead, thereby automatically increasing spending on interest payments (the fifth-largest category in the federal budget)…Sure enough, as John Green points out, total federal spending has steadily increased this year each month—indeed, faster than it did in 2024. Now it is likely to increase yet more, as Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar military budget, and more importantly, released a new reimbursement schedule for Medicare Advantage (the privatized version of the program). Where the Biden administration had proposed a 2.23 percent increase to that program, Trump officials have proposed more than twice that: 5.06 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal…Under Medicare Advantage—which now covers more than half of the seniors in the program—the government pays private companies to insure Medicare enrollees. As we have covered at the Prospect for years now, the program is, at best, a pointless waste of money, and at worst an outright scam. It was set up back in the 1990s at the height of bipartisan neoliberal hegemony, when virtually everyone in power assumed as a matter of faith that business could always operate more efficiently than government, amen…The problem, of course, is that markets have a lot of perverse incentives when it comes to health insurance. There is every reason to deny coverage to sick people, or cancel their coverage when they are injured, or deny claims out of hand, so as to boost profits. (Before Obamacare, by the way, all three of those tactics were more or less standard practice in the private insurance market.)…So if Medicare Advantage were to pay out a flat fee for every enrollee, for instance, private insurers would scoop up all the youngest and healthiest seniors, stick the government with the sicker and older ones, and cream off fat profits. That’s why CMS operates a gigantic database with individual risk codes for all 67 million Medicare enrollees, indicating how sick they are, and pays Medicare Advantage insurers based on the illness level of their insured population.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,  and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Trump’s “golden age” is presenting Democrats with a golden opportunity. The reason isn’t excesses around DOGE, deportation, DEI, universities, research funding, and the like—though all of these have been problems for the Trump administration. But they pale in comparison to current developments around Trump’s tariff regime and its economic effects. Put simply, while Trump’s populist working-class coalition was certainly animated by issues around cultural leftism, illegal immigration, and government waste, they also believed putting him in office would fix what they viewed as a broken economic system.

That does not appear to be happening. The chaotic rollout of Trump’s tariff regime has simply made voters more nervous about the economy rather than convincing them the economic system is being fixed. Trump’s average net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) on the economy is now -10 points and on inflation it is -13 points. Economic approval ratings were Trump’s great strength in his first term! No more.

A CBS News poll taken right before “Liberation Day” (whose aggressive tariffs have only increased economic angst and uncertainty) found that views on whether Trump’s policies are making you financially better or worse off have flipped since January; the percentage believing Trump policies are making them better off has declined by about 20 points and now those who believe Trump’s policies are making them worse off far outnumbers the “better off” group. As for the tariffs specifically an overwhelming 72 percent believe they will make the prices they pay go up rather than down (a mere 5 percent).

And here’s the kicker: by more than 2:1 (64 percent to 31 percent) people believe the administration is not focusing enough on lowering the price of goods and services but the result is reversed for tariffs—they strongly feel the administration is focusing too much on this area. That marks a clear break between Trump and working-class priorities and a big—a golden—opportunity for Democrats.

But can they make the most of it? It seems doubtful at this point. Of course, they will pillory the Trump administration mercilessly for their economic mistakes and the pain and uncertainty voters are experiencing. That’s Politics 101: make the incumbent administration pay when the economy goes south.

The problem, however, is that Democrats are still struggling to find their way in the current populist era where they are the Establishment in the eyes of the working class and their brand therefore extremely unpopular—“toxic” as even many Democrats have put it. By definition, beating up on the Trump administration doesn’t do much to change that brand; you’re simply trying to make the other party more unpopular than you.

What would be better—much better—would be for Democrats to use this opportunity to craft a new image for themselves that connects to the populist zeitgeist. Otherwise their denunciations of Trump and the GOP, however hard-hitting and creative, will strike working-class voters as an implicit defense of the Establishment and the current system.

That’s not what these voters want, even those among them who are disconcerted with Trump’s actions and worry about their economic effects. As David Shor has documented, we live in a country where 78 percent of voters think change is more important than preserving America’s institutions and where delivering a “shock to the system” is preferred to a “return to basic stability.” Democrats need to make their sale in that populist environment not in deep blue, highly-educated America where anti-Trump sentiment easily outruns the populist impulse. Those voters are not the Democrats’ problem.

With that in mind, let’s look at what the Democrats have on offer to take advantage of Trump’s vulnerabilities. I’d put the approaches in three basic buckets:

1. Resist! This is the default option for most Democrats. EverythingTrump does must be resisted all the time. The latest economic problems are just one more manifestation of his unspeakable evil. The important thing is to Fight! Those like Chuck Schumer, who pursue practical compromises, should be pushed aside in favor of leaders who wave the blue flag of resistance high. Cory Booker’s 25-hour filibuster against the administration is precisely the right spirit. The nationwide “Hands Off!” demonstrations on April 5 show that the masses are rallying to the cause, etc.

Implicitly, “hands off” also means hands off all Democrats priorities, programs and interest groups—in other words a return to the status quo ante, which we already know populist working-class voters don’t want. This approach seems well-designed to rally the Democratic faithful going into the midterms but not to change the image of the Democratic Party.

2. Fight the Oligarchy! This is a close cousin of the Resist! approach, which essentially juices it with a heavy dose of naïve economic populism. Basically, not only is Trump doing all these terrible things but he is doing them to enrich the oligarchy and maintain their power. They twirl their moustaches and laugh (bwa-ha-ha) as Trump does their bidding! This approach is particularly popular on the left of the party and is currently on nationwide tour with the redoubtable AOC and the ageless Bernie Sanders. Perhaps coming soon to a theater near you.

I get why this seems like a good idea. As noted, it certainly makes sense that in our current populist era, Democrats need to be responsive to that populist mood. But it makes much less sense that an aggressive economic populist pitch by itself is a sort of get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged. In fact, it’s completely ridiculous, a comforting myth for Democrats who don’t want to make hard choices.

To begin with, Democrats have plenty of oligarchs on their side that they seem much less interested in fighting (remember JB Pritzker, who proudly proclaimed himself a billionaire at the Democratic convention, and the countless other fabulously wealthy individuals in the Democratic orbit). Voters are not unaware of this fact.

They are also painfully aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. To working-class voters, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same—junior oligarchs if you will.

This is a bitter pill for most Democratic elites to swallow. In today’s America, they are the Establishment even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the Man and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are targets of populist anger is a central reason their populist pitch fails—and will fail—to get traction among the working class. Call it the “old wine in new bottles” problem—these voters hear the economic populist words but they sense that behind them is the same old Democratic Party with the same old elites and the same old cultural priorities. So far, the Fight the Oligarchy! crowd has done nothing that would disabuse working class voters of this notion.

3. Abundance Now! This approach is gaining adherents in Democratic circles though it lags far, far behind the first two approaches. But it has the advantage of directly posing an actually different path for Democrats thereby mitigating the old wine in new bottles problem. The central idea of the approach is to radically reduce the barriers, bottlenecks, and regulations that prevent Democratic governance from meeting progressive goals in areas like housing, infrastructure, and public services. Their approach aims to make these things “abundant” and therefore tamp down the widespread anger at Democratic governing failures.

This is promising and, as Derek Thompson has pointed out, a sort of “centrist populism,” where the elites standing in the way of getting things done are targeted, is consistent with an abundance approach. That would speak to the populist moment in a way that is certainly fresher than just bashing the rich, which is well past its sell-by date.

However, the very elites that such a centrist populism might target are by and large Democratic, presenting an awkward problem for abundance Democrats. Are they willing to take on “the Groups” and entrenched interest groups that are likely to fight a drive for deregulation and efficiency tooth and nail? So far, I’m not seeing it. A failure on this front will undercut the whole abundance project and vitiate any populist appeal to working-class voters.

Moreover, the goals of an abundance approach tend to be linked to a concept of abundance that does not line up well with the preferences of actually-existing working-class voters who, quite simply, want to be richer and have more stuff. Abundance Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have in mind a socially liberal ecotopia that is highly appealing to educated, upper middle class liberals but much less so to the working class. As Josh Barro notes Democratic abundance advocates tend to support “policies that would make energy, and the aspirational suburban lifestyle, more expensive.” And that lifestyle, he points out, is what “abundance” means for most ordinary Americans. Arizona Democratic senator Ruben Gallego underscores the issue: “Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck.”

Call it the “big-ass truck problem.” Any abundance approach in a populist era needs to reckon with this problem. Otherwise, like the other Democratic approaches, it will fall short among the populist working class.

Democrats who truly want to find their way in our current populist era need some new approaches. But first they should accept that they’re still lost. That is the beginning of wisdom and renewal.

Chris Matthews reports “Trump tariffs to hit working class the hardest, costing an average family $3,800 a year” at Marketwatch, and writes that “President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into a new phase of his trade war, and this time the economic casualties will be clear, immediate and, for many Americans, painful.” Further,

The new levies, combined with other tariffs already implemented this year, will raise costs for the average American family by $3,800, according to a new report by the Yale Budget Lab.

I realize trade policy has been a very contentious issue among Democrats during the last 30 years or so. But they absolutely must seize the current opportunity to go after Trump’s tariff program, as I argued at New York:

For months, Democratic elected officials have been trying to figure out a compelling message on Donald Trump’s agenda that will gratify the grassroots Democratic demand for vocal and united opposition. At the moment, the headlines are full of extremely high-profile turmoil involving Trump’s “Liberation Day” agenda of tariffs and trade warfare. It is likely getting the attention of not only politically active people but anyone whose investments or 401(k) accounts are affected by equity markets. And there is zero question that rank-and-file Democrats hate what Trump is trying to do with greater unanimity than on any of the other things they hate about Trump 2.0. If you have any doubts about that, check out the very latest, post–Liberation Day findings from Quinnipiac:

“97 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 44 percent of Republicans think the tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy in the short-term. Forty-six percent of Republicans, 19 percent of independents and 2 percent of Democrats think the tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the short-term. …

“95 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of independents and 10 percent of Republicans think the tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy in the long-term. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans, 35 percent of independents and 3 percent of Democrats think the tariffs will help the U.S. economy in the long-term.”

You don’t see polling that conclusive very often, even in this era of hyper-polarization. But beyond the simple fact that the Democratic base instinctively hates Trump’s tariff agenda, this should strike Democratic politicians as a heaven-sent opportunity to expose Trump on an issue of maximum vulnerability: the cost of living. One would think, given the crucial importance of this issue to his victory over Joe Biden last November, that the 47th president would do anything imaginable to avoid a spike in consumer prices anytime soon. But instead, Trump is courting exactly the worst kind of disaster, and voters across the board recognize it:

“Most Americans are bracing for higher prices on a wide range of consumer goods following President Donald Trump’s move to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from most of the world, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

“The three-day poll, which concluded on Sunday, found that 73% of respondents said they thought prices in the next six months would increase for the items they buy every day after the new taxes on almost all imports took effect.”

So in recognition of this potentially earth-shaking own-goal by Trump, the product of his economic ignorance and long-held ideology, Democratic elected officials should be issuing a trumpet call of great volume and total clarity, right?

Check out this description in the Washington Post of a speech by one of the Democratic Party’s brightest stars and see if it reflects the total opposition to Trump’s tariff agenda that is clearly called for at this particular moment:

“Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, sought Wednesday to distinguish herself from fellow Democrats who have been strongly criticizing President Donald Trump and his tariffs, offering a more nuanced assessment during a speech emphasizing bipartisanship in Washington.

“The speech came ahead of a meeting with Trump at the White House, her second since Trump returned to office.

“Whitmer made clear that she disagreed with Trump’s sweeping and abrupt use of tariffs, saying it has been ‘really tough’ on her state and the auto industry that powers its economy. But she withheld more pointed criticism of the president, saying she understands the “motivation” behind his tariffs and agrees that Americans ‘need to make more stuff in America.'”

Now, as it happens, Whitmer made her mixed message immeasurably worse by immediately going into a private Oval Office meeting with Trump that the president (either craftily or fortuitously) turned into a photo op in which the Michigan governor stood there while he signed some particularly obnoxious executive orders. It’s not exactly the picture of vicious hand-to-hand combat with the authoritarian of the White House that grassroots Democrats have been demanding. But Whitmer’s not alone in struggling to bring herself to blast Trump’s tariffs entirely, as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out at The Atlantic:

“Two days after President Donald Trump’s shambolic “Liberation Day” announcement, which set off a full-scale economic meltdown, House Democrats released a video response. It was oddly sedate, almost academic in its nuance. The video featured Representative Chris Deluzio, from western Pennsylvania, who calmly intoned, ‘A wrong-for-decades consensus on “free trade” has been a race to the bottom’ and ‘Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can be used strategically, or they can be misused.’

“As the American public was screaming, ‘Please, God, no!’ the Democrats were calmly whispering, ‘Yes, but.’”

From a purely historical perspective, this anti-anti-protectionism is astounding. Until very recently, basic support for free trade (albeit sometimes with exceptions) was the oldest continuing policy tradition of the Democratic Party. Every Democratic president from Martin Van Buren to Barack Obama favored expanded global trade to create new markets and reduce consumer prices. But, as Chait observed, that changed with Joe Biden, who embraced “a decade-old strategy designed to co-opt Trump’s appeal to working-class voters by backing away from the party’s general support for free trade under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama” (and, I’d add, under Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Carter). This reversal was reinforced by multiple factors, including the longtime protectionism of manufacturing unions, the hostility to globalization among progressive activists, and the pivotal role Rust Belt swing states have played in the politics of the Trump era. It’s no coincidence that Whitmer represents one of those states, and one in which Democrats have long embraced trade restrictions.

In the current Trump 2.0 emergency, maintaining an anti-anti-protectionist position is incredibly shortsighted. Democrats do not need to declare themselves 100 percent free traders in order to 100 percent deplore what Trump is doing, instead of tut-tutting that he’s doing a good thing in a bad way. Trump’s innate 19th-century protectionist instincts will always create enormous pressures for falling economic growth and rising consumer prices; indeed, the ultimate economic nightmare of stagflation is precisely what some economists consider the most likely consequence of a MAGA trade war.

If Democrats believe half of what they are saying about the threat to democracy Trump 2.0 represents, they’ll recognize that a strong pushback against Trump’s tariffs is absolutely the best way to undermine his political position and divide Republicans, a majority of whose elected officials are stone free traders in the Reagan-Bush tradition. Democrat thinkers and political practitioners have plenty of time to figure out exactly what their own international economic policies will be if they regain the White House in 2028. But if they don’t take full advantage of the present opportunity to unite grassroots Democrats and inflation-hating voters generally and exploit Trump’s unforced errors on trade policy, they will have nobody but themselves to blame if power continues to remain elusive.

In the wake of Trump’s never-ending vacillations on tariffs, here are some excerpts from “Shawn Fain Is Right. America Needs to Rethink Trade” by Dustin Guastella at The Nation:

“United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain has many liberals scratching their heads. The longtime critic of Donald Trump who wore a “TRUMP IS A SCAB” T-shirt at the Democratic National Convention last year has come out in support of the president’s favorite economic policy: tariffs. Despite the fact that other leading progressives have expressed extreme alarm at Trump’s plans, Fain has insisted that tariffs are “a tool in the toolbox…to bring jobs back here, and, you know, invest in the American workers.

He’s right, and he’s not alone in thinking this. A group of self-proclaimed “economic patriots” on the left are making a similar case in Congress. Representative Chris Deluzio, a Democrat from Western Pennsylvania who won election in the state’s most competitive district, recently took to The New York Times to plead with his party not to embrace “anti-tariff absolutism” as a response to Trump’s policies. And Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat from a rural Trump-leaning district in Maine, recently made a similar case, arguing, “Tariffs are a first step in rewriting a rigged trade system.”

…Of course, Trump’s tariffs are erratic, and their intended purpose is unclear. They will likely do more harm than good. But that doesn’t mean protectionism is inherently a bad idea. In fact, if the left cannot offer a compelling exit from neoliberal globalization, it will be unable to effectively combat the GOP’s national populism with a social populism of its own. Rethinking trade must be a central part of a pro-worker agenda.

For many union members, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) marks the beginning of US decline. The agreement made it so that money, goods, and labor could flow more freely across the continent. Since it was enthusiastically signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993, manufacturing jobs have drained out of the United States to lower-wage corners of the globe. And NAFTA wasn’t even the worst of it; a succession of trade deals followed, including the admission of China into the World Trade Organization. This led to a collapse of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

In the 30 years since, around 90,000 US manufacturing plants have been shuttered. The impact on the labor movement has been disastrous. In 1990, around 20 percent of workers in the US belonged to a union; by 2024 that rate had plummeted to around 9 percent, a record low. The decline of manufacturing and union density combined with looser border restrictions that invited hyper-exploited foreign-born workers into the United States have crushed wages, which have been stagnant for non-college-educated workers.

By swapping high-wage often union jobs in manufacturing, for low-wage nonunion jobs in services, free trade has effectively robbed the working class of its social, political, and economic power.

Few industrial unions have been as affected as the UAW. Since the 1990s, the autoworkers have witnessed over 60 major plant closures among the Big Three automakers. Membership in the union peaked at around 1.5 million in 1979. Today, the UAW has around 390,000 members—a 74 percent decrease. Worse, even when the union manages to make inroads in new plants, companies always have an exit option. They can pack up and relocate to places where labor is cheaper.

…By 2016, the populist backlash had arrived. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders slammed the establishment for disastrous trade deals. And both won a larger share of working-class voters than their establishment counterparts. And the United States wasn’t alone. A recent meta-analysis by political scientists, led by Gábor Scheiring at Georgetown University, found that the surge in populism all over the world is driven by a reaction against the insecurity induced by globalization. While debate remains over whether workers were driven away from the left because of economic issues or cultural ones, with globalization the two phenomena are linked—the same market forces that drove manufacturing to extinction also helped to drive the increasing pace of cultural churn.

…Fain is right when he argues that auto manufacturers can afford to eat the tariffs without passing on price hikes. Consider that, despite labor-saving automation, manufacturers were charging record prices for a new car before tariffs—in some cases 10 points above the general inflation rate. Where is that money going? Into auto-industry profits that have grown over 50 percent since 2019—despite depressed sales. Fain is right that the industry has “excess capacity” and that tariffs “could bring work back in very short order” by reopening recently closed or underutilized plants. And he’s right that tariffs, combined with an effective industrial policy, could boost workers’ wages, not just in the auto industry but across the board. But more than all of this, Fain is right that we need to restore democratic sovereignty over our economy.

…Too many liberals are now rejoicing at Wall Street’s rejection of the tariffs as if “the markets” are a substitute for democratic input. But plunging stocks only prove what we already knew: that high finance is loath to get off the free-trade gravy train…

but the left can’t fall into the trap of letting Wall Street set the terms of the debate. To match Trump’s national populism, we need a social populism of our own. We should not retreat to advocating for free trade as a response to stock market panic but advance to a conversation about industrial planning. We need a program that seeks to repatriate American finance, claw back the trillions in taxes lost to offshore banking, and reinvest in US jobs.

The tariff is one of the tools we need to rebuild the economy in favor of the working class.”

Click here to read more of Guastella’s article in the Nation.

Taking a closer look at some of the 2024 trends that have alarmed Democrats, it’s possible to see some silver linings, and I wrote about a couple of them at New York:

In the 2024 presidential election, Republicans performed better among marginal voters than the opposition, which meant that a boost in turnout would improve their percentage of the vote, reversing a longtime Democratic advantage. A second and even-better-known development was a significant boost in the Republican vote among Democratic “base” constituencies, particularly Latinos and Gen-Z voters.

These are both good long-term signs for the GOP. But in the very short term, as in the elections between now and 2028, they could portend underwhelming results for Republicans. For one thing, their new success among marginal voters in a high-turnout presidential election will not matter much in special, off-year, or midterm elections, when the voters Democrats now rely on are relatively sure to show up, particularly given the current panic over Trump 2.0’s radical early shape. And as Politico notes, right there in the 2024 returns are signs that the GOP’s overperformance among Democratic base voters probably won’t carry over to non-presidential elections. That’s because there was a lot of ticket-splitting last November, notably among Latinos:

“Underlying the 2024 election results was a subtle trend that could signal a dramatic reshaping of the electorate: a surge in ticket-splitting among Latino voters who shifted sharply toward Donald Trump but also supported Democratic House and Senate candidates.”

This helps explain why Democrats managed to win Senate races in four states Trump carried (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin) and no less than 13 House races in districts carried by Trump. It seems entirely probable that downballot Democratic strength will carry over to the midterm congressional elections of 2026, as Politico suggests — unless, of course, 2024 reflected a more fundamental shift that will intensify even without Trump on the ballot:

“Heavily Hispanic and Latino areas that saw significant ticket-splitting are key to many swing districts and battleground states. The party that can win over those voters — Republicans converting Trump supporters into reliable GOP voters, or Democrats bringing them back into the fold more firmly — will have a clear electoral advantage in the years ahead.”

I wouldn’t count on long-term trends toward the GOP mattering much in the midterms, particularly given the other dynamic we are likely to see in 2026: an almost invariable loss of support by the party controlling the White House. One leading indicator: Of the 13 House districts that went for both Trump and a congressional Democrat in 2024, six have electorates that are at least 40 percent Latino. Democrats in those districts should do pretty well without a presidential candidate dragging them down.

Right now, I don’t think many Democrats are all that worried about how they’ll do in 2028 or 2032 or 2036. A comeback right away would be most welcome both in boosting Democratic morale and warning Republicans that all the over-the-top triumphalism we’re hearing from MAGA folk is built on a fragile foundation.