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:

The Democrats have Trump right where they want him! Anti-racism didn’t work….anti-fascism didn’t work….so now it’s time for anti-feudalism. No kings! The Democrats are certainly right that anti-feudalism is popular. The June 14 “No Kings” demonstrations were very successful in turning out protestors with nationwide estimates in the 4-6 million range, compared to 3-5 million for the April 5 “Hands Off” protests.

Cue the rapturous “turning the corner” pronouncements from the usual suspects. The honest workers and peasants of America, led by their vanguard party, the (professionals-dominated) Democrats, are rising up to throw off the shackles of oppression! The #Resistance has been reawakened and a wave is gathering to sweep the hated Trump and his MAGA movement into the ashbin of history!

Well…maybe. But why should we believe this isn’t just the latest iteration of a failed strategy? For ten years, since Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, Democrats have tried over and over to turn a political strategy centered around Trump and his terribleness into a successful exorcism of Trump/right populism. It hasn’t worked.

But this time it will, we are assured. This time is different. This time, he’s gone too far. This time, voters will be roused from their stupor and massively reject the Bad Orange Man. If only it were that simple. Here are some reasons why it’s not.

Start with Trump’s and the GOP’s popularity. They’re not popular but then again neither are the Democrats. Trump’s approval has gone down since the beginning of his second term, now sitting at 46.5 percent in the RCP running average (a point lower in Nate Silver’s average). But Trump is still running ahead of his approval rating at this point in his first term. And at this point in his second term, he’s actually running slightly ahead of Obama and Bush at this point in their second terms.

In terms of favorability, Republican Party favorability still significantly outruns Democratic favorability (42 percent vs. 35 percent). The Democrats are a dreadful 24 points underwater (favorable minus unfavorable) while Republicans are net negative by a more modest 11 points. And Trump’s favorability is higher than that of his party and of course way higher than the Democrats’.

That’s a problem. To truly vanquish Trump and his movement, it won’t be enough to rely on their unpopularity; Democrats must work on making themselves much more popular and attractive than they are.

That won’t be easy given the scale of the challenge Democrats face in the current era. David Brooks put it well in a recent column:

For nearly a century, the Democrats have ridden on the grand narratives of previous eras. First, the welfare state narrative…Second, the liberation narrative…Those are noble narratives. They are not sufficient in the age of global populism.

The Democrats’ first core challenge is that we live in an age that is hostile to institutions and Democrats dominate the institutions—the universities, the media, Hollywood, the foundations, the teachers unions, the Civil Service, etc. The second is that we live in an age in which a caste divide has opened up between the educated elite and everybody else, and Democrats are the party of the highly educated.

Democrats recently had an argument about whether they should use the word “oligarchy” to attack Republicans. They are so locked in their old narratives that they are apparently unaware that to many, they are the oligarchy…(emphasis added)

Every society has a recognition order, a diffuse system for doling out attention and respect. When millions of people feel that they and their values are invisible to that order, they rightly feel furious and alienated. Of course they’ll go with the guy—Trump—who says: I see you. I respect you. If Democrats, and the educated class generally, can’t change their values and cultural posture, I doubt any set of economic policies will do them any good. It is just a fact that parties on the left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.

It’s also just a fact that Democrats have done little or nothing to address this problem. To do so would be painful. That would annoy much of the educated class Brooks alludes to, not to mention “the Groups” who exert so much influence over the party. Much easier to just focus on Trump. No kings!

Let’s look at a concrete example: immigration. There’s no doubt Trump’s approach to deportation (as opposed to his program to deport illegal immigrants) has been unpopular. Many of the specific actions his administration has taken on deportations have landed poorlywith voters and given them a sense that many of the deportations are unfair and arbitrary. As a result, while immigration remains Trump’s best issue, he is now underwater in polling averages on the issue.

Voters clearly feel Trump has overreached on the issue and is not doing deportation right. But what about the Democrats? Do Democrats want to deport anyone? Do they have an immigration policy that goes beyond just opposing everything Trump does? Voters can be forgiven for not thinking so. That’s why Democrats have an incredibly abysmal rating on the issue. Trump may be slightly underwater on immigration (4 points in the Nate Silver average) but Democrats are an astonishing 58 points net negative (19 percent positive vs. 77 percent negative) on the issue in a recent poll of battleground districts from Impact Research.

The same could be said for a number of other issues—from DEI and transgender issues to energy policy and government bureaucracy—where Democrats are much more animated by opposing everything Trump and the Republicans stand for than by articulating what theystand for in a way that meets voters, especially working-class voters, where they are. In a profound way, too many voters just aren’t buying what they’re selling. Democrats need to sell voters something new; just yelling at (or in preferred Democratic jargon, “fighting”) Trump all the time and changing little else won’t cut it.

The scale of the challenge is well-illustrated by new data from Nate Silver. Silver took the Catalist data and did something I did a lot in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He calls it using the “net contribution to popular vote margin” or NCPVM to measure election-to-election change; in my earlier analyses I called it the CDM for “contribution to Democratic margin”. But it’s exactly the same concept and math.

The idea is very simple. To calculate the NCPVM/CDM for a given demographic in a given election, multiply the election’s proportion of voters in that demographic group (which reflects both that group’s underlying size and its election-specific turnout rate) by the group’s Democratic margin in that election. These results can then be compared across elections to see how demographic groups change in their contribution to the overall Democratic margin and therefore drive election-to-election margin change.

Silver has helpfully done this for a number of key demographic groups. His aim was to show “how the electoral math flipped against Democrats” and turned a winning coalition into a losing one. I think his results are quite illuminating and do indeed illustrate the startling change in electoral math and the scale of the Democrats’ challenge. (Frankly, I stopped using CDM because I worried it was a bit too arcane for most readers but I am hopeful that Silver’s analysis will help popularize this very useful metric.)

Here are some of Silver’s tables:

And finally:

The final column in Silver’s tables shows the net swing by demographic group 2012-2024. But of course you can use Silver’s data to compare any two elections (e.g., 2020-2024) to enrich the story. But generally the following is true, as Silver says:

[O]verall, Democrats look like a party that took for too much for granted: that Black voters would continue to vote for them at near-unanimous rates, that Hispanics and Asian American voters were solidly in their coalition rather than often being swing voters, that Gen Z voters (particularly Gen Z men) would be as liberal as the Millennials that came of age under Obama, and that the rising share of college-educated voters would offset any other problems. Democrats simply don’t have a coalition that adds up to 50 percent—plus whatever additional margin they need in the Electoral College—any longer. To the extent they see elections as a demographic numbers game, they need to go back to the drawing board.

Back to the drawing board indeed. “No Kings” is not enough; it’s just another Democratic mirage fooling them into thinking a new slogan and more anti-Trump demonstrations will get them to the promised land. It won’t so that land will continue to shimmer tantalizingly in the distance. But wake up Democrats, it’s just a mirage.

Sometimes you have to look a little deeper than the headlines to understand polls, and I did so at New York this week:

A new Reuters-Ipsos poll provides the unsurprising news that rank-and-file Democrats are displeased with their party’s leadership. The numbers are pretty stark:

“Some 62% of self-identified Democrats in the poll agreed with a statement that ‘the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people.’ Only 24% disagreed and the rest said they weren’t sure or didn’t answer.”

Some of the more specific complaints the poll identified are a little strange. “Just 17% of Democrats said allowing transgender people to compete in women and girls’ sports should be a priority, but 28% of Democrats think party leaders see it as such.” This is largely hallucinatory. With the arguable exception of those in Maine, who earlier this year fought with the Trump administration over the power to regulate their own school sports programs, most Democrats in the public eye have given this sub-issue (inflated into gigantic proportions by demagogic ads from the Trump campaign last year) a very wide berth. It’s not a great sign that Democrats are viewing their own party through the malevolent eyes of the opposition.

But beyond that problem, there’s a questionable tendency to assume that changing “the leadership” will address concerns that are really just the product of the party having lost all its power in Washington last November. And to some extent, the alleged “disconnect” between party and leadership is exaggerated by the lurid headlines about the poll. For example, “86% of Democrats said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority, more than the 72% of those surveyed think party leaders make it a top concern.” That’s not a particularly large gap, and, in fact, there are virtually no Democrats in Congress who are not grinding away like cicadas on the message that Republicans are trying to cut taxes on “wealthy Americans and large corporations.”

The more fundamental question may be this: Who, exactly, are the “Democratic leaders” the rank and file wants to replace? It’s not an easy question to answer. I am reasonably confident that a vanishingly small percentage of Democrats could name the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, despite some media stories about turmoil at the DNC since his election.

According to a recent Economist-YouGov survey, 36 percent of self-identified Democrats had no opinion of the “Democratic leader” closest to actual power in Washington, Hakeem Jeffries, who is very likely to become Speaker of the House in 2027. Of those who did have an opinion, 51 percent were favorable toward him and 13 percent were unfavorable, which doesn’t sound much like a mandate for “replacing” him. In the same poll, Jeffries’s Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, had a 48 percent favorable and 28 percent unfavorable rating among Democrats, which is surprisingly positive given the massive negative publicity he earned for botching a confrontation with Republicans over a stopgap spending bill in March. Indeed, the favorability ratios for every named Democrat in that poll are a lot better than you’d expect if the rank and file were really in a “throw the bums out” kind of mood: Bernie Sanders is at 82 percent favorable to 8 percent unfavorable; Pete Buttigieg is at 62 percent favorable to 9 percent unfavorable; Elizabeth Warren is at 67 percent favorable to 12 percent unfavorable; Cory Booker is at 56 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable; Gavin Newsom is at 56 percent favorable to 17 percent unfavorable; and Gretchen Whitmer is at 49 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable.

Democrats obviously don’t have a president to offer unquestioned leadership, but back in the day, losing presidential nominees were often called the “titular leader” of the party until the next nominee was named. Under that definition, the top “Democratic leader” right now is Kamala Harris. Democrats aren’t mad at her, either: Her favorability ratio per Economist-YouGov is a Bernie-esque 84 percent favorable to 10 percent unfavorable. Her 2024 running mate, Tim Walz, comes in at 65 percent favorable and 13 percent unfavorable.

These findings that aren’t consistent with any narrative of a party rank and file in revolt. The source of Democratic unhappiness, it’s reasonably clear, is less about party leaders and more about the party’s dramatic loss of power, even as Donald Trump has asserted the most massive expansion of totally partisan presidential power in U.S. history. No new set of leaders is going to fix that.

Barring a really nasty and divisive nomination contest, the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee will become the unquestioned leader of the party, at least until Election Day. Jeffries, as noted, could enormously raise his profile if Democrats flip the House in 2026, and midterm elections could create new stars. Other Democrats could have big moments like Cory Booker’s after his 26-hour speech deploring Trump’s agenda or Gavin Newsom’s during his toe-to-toe messaging fight with the administration over its assault on his state. But in the end, Democrats on the ground and in the trenches won’t be satisfied until their words can be backed up with real power.

 

“No American ever did more to create an abundant economy that benefited the working class,”Harold Meyerson writes in “The Real Democratic Civil War: It’s not so much about ‘abundance’ as it is about how to reconnect with a justifiably angry working class” at The American Prospect, “or more to regulate the economy in ways that constrained capital and benefited the working class, than Franklin Roosevelt. So, forgive me if I think that the real divisions within today’s Democratic Party aren’t fundamentally those separating the “abundance” crowd and the pro-regulatory crowd. Those divisions are real enough, but I think they are largely stand-ins for a more fundamental set of differences about what the Democrats should do to regain the support of the American working and middle classes….The measure of a first-class mind, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, is the ability to hold two conflicting beliefs and not be paralyzed by the contradictions. In this instance, I don’t even think that the tenets of abundance-ism and those of a critique of American capitalism are necessarily or invariably counterposed. Jon Chait in The Atlantic and Molly Ball in The Wall Street Journal have both written that these differences have led to an intra-Democratic civil war. But that’s only because they’re proxies for the real internecine conflict…Both sides, I think, misunderstand the root causes of the working class’s estrangement from center-left politics, which now defines politics not just in the U.S. but throughout almost every nation with an advanced economy. The anger that the male working class in particular feels toward elites targets both cultural and economic norm-setters, but even as it’s most commonly expressed in cultural and racial antagonisms, its root cause is economic. At bottom, it’s the recognition that manual labor is no longer compensated at levels that can sustain a family or a stable work life, and the fear that this will only grow worse…It would be astonishing if these changes didn’t produce a rage at the established order, which has lost its capacity to provide the kind of broad-based prosperity of the post–World War II economy. As the reality and prospects of a sustainable, non-precarious working-class life have vanished, it’s completely understandable that rage at elites has soared. It’s characteristically been accompanied by a disdain for the liberal orders that are both out of reach economically and culturally alien to some working-class norms. It’s also been accompanied by a cult of hypermasculinity (often faux hypermasculinity, but the appearance can be all) as a form of compensation for the decentering of, and diminished value placed on, manual labor.”

The Daily Kos staff explains why “Why New Jersey primary turnout is a great sign for Democrats”: “Last week, Rep. Mikie Sherrill won New Jersey’s hotly contested Democratic gubernatorial primary with 34% of the vote in a six-way race. New Jersey is one of just two states holding off-year governor’s races in 2025, the other being Virginia…Sherrill immediately pointed to the sky-high Democratic turnout as both the key to her win and a preview of November…“We had almost 800,000 people voting in this primary. That’s unheard of,” she told the Washington Post. “It shows you the passion people have, shows you what’s coming in November here.”…This turnout is especially encouraging given New Jersey’s sharp rightward shift in the 2024 presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris carried the state just 52-46, compared to President Joe Biden’s 57-41 win in 2020—a net 10-point swing to Republicans, largely driven by weak Democratic turnout. That’s clearly been fixed…Holding New Jersey’s governorship—and reclaiming Virginia’s—matters. But what’s really exciting is what this says about the 2026 midterms…Conventional wisdom says that the party in the White House gets shellacked in the midterms—especially with an unpopular president. But Biden and Democrats already broke that rule in 2022. Nothing’s carved in stone…Meanwhile, Republicans got obliterated in Trump’s first term during the 2018 midterms, when Democrats flipped 41 House seats and 7 governor seats. His second term is off to an even worse start, and with these early signs of hyper-engaged Democrats, the vibes are good.”

The notion that those who dislike the Trump administration’s immigration policies are all liberals and progressives is being shredded by management and conservatives almost every day. Paul Wiseman explains how “ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses” at apnews.com: “The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term…One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. “You can’t turn off cows,’’ said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.’’…Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they’re in the country legally or not — have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center…In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards…Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t show up for work.’’

Wiseman continues, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry…“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference…Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars…“The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor — skilled, hardworking people who’ve been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,” says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. “ We’re not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they’ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.”…Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: “ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work … All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.’’

The following article by Democratic political consultant Douglas Schoen, is cross-posted from The Hill:

Immigration may be one of President Trump’s strongest issues, but recent polling data suggests that the administration’s tactics are facing growing opposition, potentially turning one of Trump’s strengths into a vulnerability.

Put another way, as protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts rage in Los Angeles and other cities, Americans increasingly disapprove of Trump’s response, even if they also do not support the civil unrest.

Indeed, a plurality (47 percent) of Americans disapprove of Trump’s decision to deploy the Marines, versus 34 percent who approve, according to YouGov polling.

As it relates to the president’s decision to federalize the California National Guard and deploy them against the protestors, a similar 45 percent of Americans disapprove, while 38 percent approve, the same poll shows.

Those views, combined with the fact that it’s incredibly hard to argue, as the administration has, that the protests pose a credible threat to the United States, make it more likely that support for Trump’s approach will further decline.

After a U.S. District Court ruled that Trump’s use of the National Guard was illegal, an appeals court reversed that decision, letting the order remain in place for now.

To be sure, Americans also take a dim view of the protests themselves, something Axios described as a continuation of a historical trend.

By a 9-point margin (45 percent to 36 percent), Americans disapprove of the protests in Los Angeles, and there is a virtual tie on whether people believe the protests are “mostly peaceful” (38 percent) or “mostly violent” (36 percent).

Predictably, Democrats (58 percent) are more supportive of the protests than Republicans (15 percent), although a plurality of independents (41 percent) disapprove.

In some ways, the administration should have foreseen Americans’ hesitancy when it comes to using the military to enforce immigration policies, even those that had widespread support.

Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, 66 percent of Americans supported deporting illegal migrants, but only 38 percent supported involving the military, according to Ipsos.

To that end, despite mixed feelings over the protests, the administration’s recent hardline rhetoric and policies are beginning to weigh on perceptions of Trump’s handling of immigration more broadly.

In early March, Trump had a plus-13 net approval on immigration (53 percent to 40 percent) according to Economist/YouGov polling.

That same poll, conducted as the situation in Los Angeles deteriorated and Trump federalized the National Guard, shows Trump’s net approval on immigration shrinking to plus-4 (49 percent to 45 percent).

Moreover, the more recent poll reveals that a plurality (47 percent) of Americans, including a 44 percent plurality of independents, believe that Trump’s approach to immigration is “too harsh.”

Other polls are even more negative for the White House.

A recent Quinnipiac poll, also conducted as the protests in Los Angeles began in earnest, shows Trump’s approval on immigration actually underwater, with just 43 percent of registered voters approving, versus a majority (54 percent) disapproving.

To be clear, this is not to say that Americans are suddenly against tougher immigration policies. As the data shows, Americans remain broadly supportive of many of Trump’s policies.

For example, there is near-universal support (87 percent) for deporting migrants who commit violent crimes, and a plurality (47 percent) of Americans support deportations for migrants who commit non-violent crimes, per the aforementioned Economist/YouGov poll.

Rather, this is to make the point that when the administration takes an extreme approach or acts hastily, it does so without broader support among American voters.

The same poll reveals widespread opposition to deporting migrants married to U.S. citizens (66 percent) and those brought here as children (61 percent).

A majority (54 percent) of Americans also opposes deporting migrants with young children born in the U.S., even if the parents are in the country illegally.

Similarly, 57 percent believe the administration is making mistakes in who it is deporting, while 74 percent say the government should make sure no mistakes are made in who is deported, even if it drags out the process.

Taken together, the polling data should serve as a warning to both the administration and the Democrats.

For the White House and Trump, heavy-handed deportation policies risk undermining support for what is his strongest issue. They should recalibrate their approach and tailor it narrowly, so that not every single immigrant is in their crosshairs.

Few Americans, outside of the far left, would have an issue if the administration stuck to its policy of deporting migrants who commit crimes, and it would be a losing issue for Democrats to stand in the way.

At the same time, Americans do broadly support many of Trump’s policies, and he was elected in large part because of his promise to remove violent migrants.

Last Summer, a Democratic consulting firm published a survey which noted that, if former President Biden were reelected, the top two concerns Americans had were that the border would be wide open (51 percent), and crime would be out of control, threatening police and businesses (50 percent).

Instead of blindly opposing all of Trump’s immigration policies, Democrats should consider this their “Sister Souljah” moment. They can affirm their support for deporting violent criminals, advance their own pathway to citizenship for some migrants, and double down on support for law and order.

Ultimately, given the salience of this issue, it is likely that whichever side internalizes the polling data and adjusts its approach first stands to benefit politically. It just remains to be seen whether Trump or Democrats are willing to do so.

Keeping up with the norms being violated by the second Trump administration is tough, but I did write about an important one this week at New York:

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have an arithmetic problem with their mass-deportation initiative. They appear frantic to ramp up deportations. Miller reportedly chewed out ICE brass (“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?”) on the numbers not long before the agency launched its fateful raids in Los Angeles. But at the same time, the administration has been getting major heat from certain industries — particularly agriculture and hospitality — that going after their workforces would be a really bad idea. Indeed, according to the New York Times, Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins lobbied her boss to ease up on farmworkers. Then, suddenly, Trump was expressing a change of heart on Truth Social. He wrote on June 12:

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

This wasn’t just loose talk. While border czar Tom Homan denied that any policy change on deportation targeting was underway, ICE itself took the hint, as Axios reported:

“Tatum King, a senior ICE official, sent an email to agency officials nationwide, telling them to ‘please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.’”

So what’s the focus now? Trump made no bones about it in a Truth Social post on June 15:

“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

There you have it: The president of the United States is very clearly telling his deportation shock troops to wage partisan war on cities that are the “Democrat Power Center,” based on the hallucinatory idea — a MAGA staple — that “Radical Left Democrats” are herding millions of undocumented workers to the polls to “cheat in Elections and grow the Welfare State.” It’s all a crock, but reflects a distinctly Trumpian mash-up of the “great replacement theory” and crime-wave myths. And the targeting of blue cities seems to have already taken place, Axios recently reported, especially in red states where state law-enforcement officials have encouraged maximum cooperation with ICE:

“Efforts to arrest and remove unauthorized immigrants appear most aggressive in five southern states with Democratic-leaning cities, while deeply red, rural states are seeing less activity, according to an Axios analysis. …

“[L]ocal law enforcement agencies in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have been most cooperative with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through deals known as 287 (g) agreements. There are 629 such agreements now in place across the country. About 43% of them are in Florida, followed by 14% in Texas and 5% in Georgia.

“The GOP-led state governments in Florida, Texas and Virginia also have made a point of pushing local agencies to partner with federal agents, leading to a series of high-profile, mass raids in those states.”

In effect, Republican state administrations are working with the Feds to come down on Democratic-run cities to scourge immigrant populations. And in blue states like California, the mass deportations feel more like all-out partisan war. Certainly the federalization of National Guard units and planned deployment of Marines to Los Angeles — a place Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called a “city of criminals” that the administration would “liberate” from its “socialist” elected leadership — signaled an armed takeover more than any sort of law-enforcement initiative. And now Trump is making the partisanship behind it all too explicit for anyone to miss or deny. While this overt politicization of mass deportation may please Trump’s MAGA base, it will likely erode his popularity more generally.

For now, Trump-friendly industries in Trump-friendly parts of the country need not worry so much, but all those radical-left hellholes better prepare for the onset of fire and ICE. After all, Stephen Miller has quotas to meet.

In his essay, “A bad parade is a good sign” at The.Ink, Anand Giridharadas shares a hopeful idea: “The country that invented jazz was never going to be good at putting on a military parade. It was never going to be us…In the wake of Donald Trump’s flaccid, chaotic, lightly attended, and generally awkward military parade, a meme began doing the rounds. Its basic format was the juxtaposition of images of the kinds of parades Trump presumably wanted with the parade he actually got…Trump’s biggest mistake was wanting a military parade in the first place. The United States military is not a birthday party rental company. Any therapist will tell you that no number of green tanks on the street is enough to heal the deep void left by a father’s withheld love…But, setting aside the wisdom of wanting a military parade, there is the issue of execution. Even if you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it well. Do it with flair. With the most powerful military in history at his disposal, Trump couldn’t even pull off a decent parade…it’s not his fault alone. It’s hard to wring a military parade of the kind he dreamed of from a people free in their bones…No matter how much money and effort you throw at the parade, you cannot escape the fact that America is not the country of North Korean unity. We’re the country of Korean tacos…America is not the country of perfectly synced swinging arms. It’s the country of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” That song, by the legendary Duke Ellington, belongs to a genre of music that could only have been invented in America — jazz…it seems to me societies that have the thing Trump wanted in his parade don’t got that swing, and societies that got that swing don’t have the thing he craved…Trump, in one regard, at least, faces steep odds. His project depends on turning Americans into something we are deeply not: uniform, cohesive, disciplined, in lockstep…But we are more hotsteppers than locksteppers. We are more improvised solo than phalanx. We are more unruly than rule-following…We don’t march shoulder to shoulder. We shimmy.”

Americans in general and the political commentariat in particular don’t pay enough attention to what is going on in the state legislatures, including the heroic contributions of the most productive members of those policy-making bodies. But there are exceptions, and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. once again leads the way with his column, “Melissa Hortman’s legacy is a ‘Minnesota Miracle’: Slain former state House speaker delivered big policy victories for Democrats,” in which he writes: “Hortman lived her highly constructive life in politics in the knowledge that achieving change democratically requires painstaking work: planning, coalition-building, persuasion, conciliation, vote-counting. She achieved far more using these humble, but ultimately exhilarating, tools of self-government than any violent fanatic ever will…I can’t do full justice here to all that Hortman and her colleagues achieved, but a lengthy partial list can give you a sense of just how much they got done. The miracle included legislation for paid family and medical leave, sick leave, transgender rights protections, driver’s licenses for undocumented residents, abortion rights and voting rights…Also on the list were background checks for private gun transfers, red flag laws, legalized recreational marijuana, expanded education funding, investment in affordable housing, big steps toward a carbon-free electric grid by 2040, new reading curriculums based on phonics, a $2.58 billion capital construction package, laws strengthening workers’ rights, unemployment insurance for hourly workers, a refundable child credit for lower-income Minnesotans; and free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota K-12 students…She thus worked to bring together Democratic legislators from the metro Twin Cities, many on the left, and those closer to the center from rural and small-town areas. Preparing for efforts to enact progressive tax reform, Hortman told me, she appointed a staunch progressive from Minneapolis to chair one of the House’s tax committees and a moderate from the increasingly conservative Iron Range to chair the other. “If we couldn’t get both of them on board, then it wouldn’t be something our caucus could do.” That’s a practical politician speaking.”

“In the five months Trump has held office in his second term,” Thomas B. Edsall writes in “Trump Is Daring Us to Impeach Him Again” at the NYT, “the number of impeachable offenses legal scholars estimate that he has already committed range from three to eight or more…This is not to say Trump will be impeached. The current Republican-controlled House is far too subservient to even consider it…In pursuit of his agenda, Trump has sacrificed due process, gutted congressional authority, politicized the administration of justiceand run roughshod over the First Amendment.” Edsall quotes several legal experts who provide a long list of impeachable offenses and adds, “Winning a Senate conviction of Trump on House-approved impeachment charges, which requires 67 senators, would be a much tougher hill to climb, possible only if Trump suffers debilitating political setbacks over the next three years…A failure to achieve a Senate conviction does not, however, guarantee that Trump gets off the hook. A number of the impeachable offenses cited above would justify criminal inquiries, especially Trump’s cryptocurrency profiteering. The president’s ventures into digital currency clearly fall outside the standard of “official acts” that the Supreme Court exempted from criminal prosecution in its 2024 decision, Trump v. United States…So the man who once boasted “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” may one day get his comeuppance. There is no guarantee that will happen, of course, but it may turn out that some sense of justice has survived Trumps multipronged assault on our legal system…If Trump does go scot free, untouched by either a third impeachment or criminal prosecution, it will be an extraordinary miscarriage of justice. Even so, if he is allowed to retire peacefully to enjoy his cryptocurrency wealth, his presidency will still go down in history as the embodiment of injustice, malfeasance, cruelty and transgression.”

Some observations from “Donald Trump’s Dirty Self-Dealing: The Audacity of His Rapacity: The first term was historically corrupt. But this time Trump has grabbed billions already—and by the time he’s done, he may make off with tens of billions” by Joe Conason at The New Republic: “The Trump family’s return to power turbocharged their drive for profit with the immense influence wielded by the president, who stood to benefit directly despite the nominal control of the Trump Organization and related entities by Eric and Don Jr. To describe their flurry of real estate deals, corporate startups, cryptocurrency ventures, and media shakedowns as “frantic” would grossly understate the pace and scale of Trump family dealmaking in the initial months of his second term. It’s hard to think of anything even remotely resembling their grab for cash in the history of U.S. government, not even when they first came to power…Tracking the conflicts of interest and coercive profiteering that have erupted in Trump’s orbit over the past several months is a massive challenge for media organizations and public interest groups. Nearly every day, a new and preposterous grift seems to materialize, especially since he and his family have inserted themselves so forcefully into the crypto industry. Many of these schemes emit a strong stench of bribery, extortion, or blatantly violate the emoluments clause, or both…In addition to Musk, whose hundreds of millions in campaign donations were rewarded with unprecedented authority to reshape government agencies that regulate his businesses (and that might award contracts to them), several of the world’s biggest corporate entities have delivered payoffs to Trump and his family since last November.”

The following article, “No Kings Day” protests turn out millions, rebuking Trump: Our unofficial estimate is that around 4-6 million people attended a protest event yesterday. Anti-Trump resistance is outpacing 2017″ by G. Elliot Morris, is cross-posted from gelliotmorris.com:

Dear readers,

The “No Kings Day” nationwide rallies against Donald Trump/for democracy on Saturday turned out millions of people.

That’s per a collective crowdsourcing effort led by Strength In Numbers, and involving many members of the independent data journalism community. We systematized reports from official sources, accounts from the media, and self-reported attendance from thousands of social media posts into a single spreadsheet. (Researchers, please take our data!)

As of midnight on Sunday, June 15, we have data from about 40% of No Kings Day events held yesterday, accounting for over 2.6m attendees. According to our back-of-the-envelope math, that puts total attendance somewhere in the 4-6 million people range. That means roughly 1.2-1.8% of the U.S. population attended a No Kings Day event somewhere in the country yesterday. Organizers say 5m turned out, but don’t release public event-by-event numbers.

Of course, crowdsourcing data isn’t perfect; some local reports may be inflated, and others undercounted. And the formula we use to project attendance in places where we don’t have data assumes they are similar to the places where we do. That’s a necessary assumption, but an assumption nonetheless.

So this is by no means an official tally. But we do think it’s the most comprehensive tally currently available. Hundreds of data-gatherers have been compiling accounts of event attendance and checking them against available sources since Saturday morning. From a journalism perspective, this approach at least standardizes measurement and provides references to check our math, even if it doesn’t completely avoid the usual pitfalls of estimating crowd size (or the assumptions above). But in this case, we’re interested in speed and thoroughness, not perfection.

According to organizers, over 2,100 events were held under the No Kings Day banner on June 14. Some events appear to have had well over 250,000 people in attendance. Officials report 1m people in downtown Boston yesterday, but some of those were attending pride festivities. There are reports of nearly 100,000 attendees in both San Diego and Minneapolis-St. Paul, and multiple hundreds of thousands in New York.

While no one can produce official data on the number of people attending yesterday’s protests (that would require some sort of controlled entry and check-in system), we do have nearly official counts of the number of protests being held.

We have that information for yesterday, and we also have it for every day since January 1, 2017. That’s thanks to data gathered and published regularly by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut.

According to the CCC, there have been over 15,000 political protests since Donald Trump’s second inauguration this January. Over the same period in 2017, during Trump’s first term, there were barely over 5,000 protests.

Protests have been broad, and large.

With our preliminary counting, the turnout at yesterday’s No Kings Day events nationwide rivals, and may exceed, turnout for the 2017 Women’s March. The 2017 Women’s March drew between 3.3 and 5.6 million people, depending on the estimate, making it the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Our early numbers suggest No Kings Day may be in that range.

Total turnout in the No Kings Day protests is likely to fall short of the famous 3.5% population threshold for forcing action via mass protest. But the cool thing about that work is that the scholars find that smaller mobilizations of 1-1.5% of the population still have a 40-60% chance of accomplishing their goals.

Both the number of protests and their massive size are warnings for the Trump administration, which has routinely trampled the limits of public opinion during the president’s second term. On immigration, deportations, Medicaid/social spending, and democracy, the president has pushed policy much farther right than sanctioned by the U.S. public. The mobilized resistance across the country on Saturday is a real-world sign of backlash to his unpopular agenda.

Trump’s approval in our polling average is 44% today, the worst for any president at this point in their term (except Trump during his first term) going back to 1935.

If this is what resistance to Trump looks like now, not even 5 months into his term, he’s in for a world of hurt in next year’s midterms.

Thanks to everyone who helped us collect the initial data for our tracking and estimates. Like I said, they are free for anyone to use, and I hope they are helpful to people doing formal research on this subject.

Elliott

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:

As the riots in Los Angeles developed, one question kept going through my brain: Have Democrats learned anything?

The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder. Yet their most visible response to the anti-deportation riots in Los Angeles has been to denounce President Trump for sending National Guard troops to quell the riots. The situation, they insist, is under control—or at least it was, until Trump intervened.

This view is not shared by some in charge of actually doing the quelling. As Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell admitted at a Sunday evening press conference:

We are overwhelmed…Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers…that can kill you…They’ll take backpacks filled with cinder blocks and hammers, break the blocks, and pass the pieces around to throw at officers and cars, and even at other people.

Meanwhile, California governor Gavin Newsom waved the bloody shirt of January 6, arguing that that was when the National Guard was needed and that therefore Trump is a hypocrite to call them in now. The state is now suing to stop the deployment while Newsom exchanges insults with Trump and White House “border czar” Tom Homan.

New Jersey senator Cory Booker echoed Newsom on Sunday, calling the protests “peaceful” while blaming Trump for “sowing chaos.” And Democratic commentators like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich saw the use of the National Guard as ushering in “the first stages of a Trump police state.” Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) declared that Trump’s actions were “unlawful” and that they constituted “impeachable offenses.”

In lonely contrast to these voices, John Fetterman, the maverick Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania channeled the normie voter reaction to violent street demonstrations:

My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement…I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that…This is anarchy and true chaos.

The fact that he is virtually the only prominent Democrat to say something like this speaks volumes.

There might very well be a universe where it makes sense for Democrats—already saddled with a dreadful image on crime and immigration—to train their fire on Trump and the National Guard instead of anti-deportation rioters. However, it is not the universe we currently inhabit.

As David Ignatius, a pro-Democratic but moderate Washington Postcolumnist, notes:

Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice. The latest chapter—in which violent protesters could be helping President Donald Trump create a military confrontation he’s almost begging for as a distraction from his other problems—may prove the most dangerous yet.

When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These “protesters” are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.

The Democrats’ own goals on the L.A. disorder are the mirror image of the mistakes made by the president himself in recent months. Just as Trump has overread his electoral mandate—going further and faster than many of his voters wanted and pursuing many unpopular policies—now the Democrats have assumed they have an “anti-mandate” to oppose more or less everything the president does.

Democrats do not have to cheer on every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality on the ground of violent protests.

Missing from their calculus is how popular many of the president’s policies remain. And that’s especially true on the two issues in question on the streets of L.A.: law and order, and illegal immigration.

Sure, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has declined some, and many of the things he has done are very unpopular. But the public still generally approves of Trump’s deportation program for illegal immigrants. Support is overwhelming when the focus is narrowed to those who have committed violent crimes. And the Republican Party is still preferred to the Democrats on crime, policing, and immigration, with particularly wide margins among the working class.

The Democrats risk going back to square one on the key issues undermining their brand. Recall that in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide movement sparked by it, the climate for police and criminal justice reform was highly favorable. But Democrats, taking their cue from progressive activists, blew it by allowing the party to be associated with toxic movement slogans like “defund the police.” Meanwhile, many Democratic officials declined to prosecute lesser crimes, degrading the quality of life in many cities under Democratic control.

It’s also worth recalling that prior to the election, a Democracy Corps survey asked voters what they would worry about the most if Biden won the election. Topping the list was “the border being wide open to millions of impoverished immigrants, many are criminals and drug dealers who are overwhelming America’s cities.”

But a very close second—just a point behind—was “crime and homelessness being out of control in cities and the violence killing small businesses and the police.” Among black, Hispanic, and Asian voters—as well as among white millennials, moderate Democrats, and political independents—crime and homelessness worries actually topped the list.

Since that low point in the immediate post-Floyd period, Democrats have made some modest progress in rehabilitating their image. They’ve had a big assist from the voters in this regard, particularly those in deep-blue municipalities like San Francisco, where excessively lenient progressives, like prosecutor Chesa Boudin, have been replaced with more moderate Democrats who are more willing to enforce the law.

But most Democrats are still reluctant to embrace an unapologetic law-and-order stance, as their reaction to the Los Angeles unrest demonstrates. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, while trying to rehabilitate his Labour Party at a time when voters saw it as implacably and hopelessly leftist, used to talk about being “tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime.” Something along those lines would be a good Democratic mantra at the moment, as voters are still suspicious that the party is truly serious about tackling crime and quality-of-life issues.

The events in California are only accentuating those suspicions. Again, Democrats do not have to support every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality of violent protests.

Politico recently noted that “ambitious Democrats…are in the middle of a slow-motion Sister Souljah moment,” a reference to President Bill Clinton’s famous repudiation of his party’s left during the 1992 campaign. The Politico article cited gestures like that of Maryland governor Wes Moore’s veto of a reparations bill and Newsom’s admission that it seemed “unfair” for trans-identified boys to participate in girls’ sports. Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel cut to the chase and characterized the Democrats as generally “weak and woke.”

All of these men are likely contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 and are making modest gestures to the center because of that. But what’s unfolding in California should make it glaringly obvious that Democrats aren’t yet ready for a real reckoning with the party’s toxic brand on immigration, crime, and public order and the fight with the party’s left that would inevitably produce. Voters are noticing and will penalize the Democrats accordingly.

If you were wondering what is going on in regard to the venerable tradition of political gerrymandering, read Kyle Kondik’s post, “A re-gerrymander of Texas?” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, in which he writes: “Republicans will need a lot of breaks to hold their House majority next year. New gerrymanders could be their way of making their own breaks…Ohio is already slated to have a new congressional map next year, and Republicans should have the ability to produce a better map for themselves there than the one currently in place, which has produced a 10-5 Republican edge statewide in its two cycles of use. We might get more clarity on Ohio in August and September, per a report Tuesday from Gongwer, a publication that covers state government…Beyond that, J. David Goodman and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times reported on Monday night that the Trump White House is leaning on Texas Republicans to pick up the pen and more aggressively gerrymander their state. The Times reported that the Republicans hope to squeeze an extra 4-5 seats out of Texas. In a House where the majority party has only gotten a few seats over the majority-making line of 218 the past three cycles, one could see how an aggressive Republican remap in Texas that succeeds in its aims could decide the House in 2026…Mid-decade redistrictings—which occur when U.S. House district maps are drawn in cycles other than post-census national redistricting years—are a common feature of American politics. However, such remaps in recent years have typically come in response to court rulings: That was the case, to varying degrees, for the five states that drew new maps between 2022 and 2024 (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, and North Carolina)…Frequent gerrymandering was a feature of late 1800s House politics, according to scholar Erik Engstrom in his history of partisan gerrymandering: Ohio had six different House maps from 1878-1890, and a Pennsylvania gerrymander helped Republicans win the House in 1888. There is no federal prohibition on mid-decade congressional redistricting, although some states do not allow it.” Read more here.

Americans probably don’t pay enough attention to the cost of Trump’s misguided leadership worldwide. But Oliver Willis does in “US approval plummets around the world thanks to Trump” at Daily Kos. As Willis explains, “Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, approval of the United States has fallen by double-digit percentage points in multiple countries, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Wednesday…The drop in global support follows Trump’s decision to insult multiple nations by imposing tariffs on allies—and even threatening military action…In total, support for the United States fell in 19 of the 24 countries that Pew surveyed… “Majorities in most countries also express little or no confidence in Trump’s ability to handle specific issues, including immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S.-China relations, global economic problems, conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, and climate change,” the Pew report summarized…Support for the United States significantly declines from Pew’s 2024 poll, when President Joe Biden was in office. Notable declines occurred among the closest U.S. allies, including a 32% decrease in Mexico, 20% in Canada, 10% in France, 15% in Japan, and 16% in Germany…Only three nations view the United States more favorably than they did in 2024: Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey. Though support increased by just 7% or less…This loss of global support comes after Trump decided to unilaterally impose tariffs on a host of nations, increasing the costs for businesses worldwide.” But the real cost of Trump’s chaotic policies will come in the months ahead. Stay tuned.

Andrew Gumbel reports that “Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: ‘Morale is not great’” at The Guardian, and writes: “California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join…Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions…“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans…“Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”…Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, whose stated mission is to “mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy”, said he had heard similar things from half a dozen national guard members. “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said.”

“Compared to other states, North Carolina Democrats had a pretty good election cycle in 2024,” Thomas Mill writes in “Who’s voting and who’s not in North Carolina” at PoliticsNC. “While Kamala Harris lost the state by about three percent, the party won five of ten Council of State seats, including the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. They broke the veto-proof majority in the state house despite the heavily gerrymandered districts, and they held a Supreme Court seat despite Republican attempts to steal it…However, Democrats face structural problems that prevent them from becoming a stronger party. Turnout statistics show that they have difficulty turning out their base voters and their share of registered voters is shrinking. They will need to fix these issues if they want to make the state a bluer shade of purple…Overall, turnout was down very slightly from the 2020 presidential turnout of 75%. Just under 74% of registered voters showed up last November. For the first time in a presidential cycle in over a 125 years, more registered Republicans voted than registered Democrats. For the first time in North Carolina history, unaffiliated voters made up a larger portion than either major party…Turnout among Democrats was 73% while almost 80% of Republicans voted. Despite having the largest block of voters, unaffiliated turnout was only 67%…A look at demographics reveals the structural problems holding Democrats back. Turnout among African American voters, Democrats’ most consistent supporters, dropped two percent from 2020, despite having a Black woman at the top of the ticket. They made up less than 18% of the electorate, down to pre-Obama levels…Republican voters maintained their high presidential year turnout. Turnout among White voters was over 78%, close to their 2020 turnout of 79%. Voters over 65 years old turned out at a rate of more than 83%. Rural counties in the piedmont and west, areas that are predominantly white and older, had the highest turnout in the state with most seeing turnout between 75% and 80%. Most supported Republicans by double digits.”

Vivek Ramaswamy is too young to remember George Wallace. I remember him well, which is why Ramaswamy’s snarky effort to compare Gavin Newsom to him drove me to a refutation at New York:

The last time tech bro turned politician Vivek Ramaswamy waded into American political history, he was touting Richard Nixon as the inspiration for his own foreign-policy thinking, so to speak. Unfortunately, he betrayed a pretty thorough misunderstanding of what Nixon actually did in office, not to mention somehow missing the Tricky One’s own role model, the liberal internationalist Woodrow Wilson.

Now the freshly minted candidate for governor of Ohio is at it again with an analogy aimed at Gavin Newsom that nicely illustrates the adage from This Is Spinal Tap that “there’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” He made this comparison on social media and on Fox News:

“I actually like Gavin Newsom as a person, but he won’t like this: there’s another Democrat Governor from U.S. history that he’s starting to resemble – George Wallace, the governor of Alabama who famously resisted the U.S. government’s efforts at desegregation. In 1963, JFK had to deputize the Alabama National Guard to get the job done, just like President Trump is doing now: – George Wallace fought against federal desegregation; Gavin Newsom now fights against federal deportations. – George Wallace wanted segregated cities; Gavin Newsom now wants for sanctuary cities. – George Wallace blocked school doors; Gavin Newsom blocks ICE vans. It’s the same playbook all over again: dodge the feds, rally the radicals, & do it in front of the cameras to pander to their base to carve out a lane for their presidential goals. And mark my words: Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions will end the same way George Wallace’s did – in the dustbins of history.”

Putting aside for a moment Ramaswamy’s dumb little quip about Newsom and George Wallace representing the same “Democrat governor playbook” (it would take all day simply to list the wild differences between these two men and the states and state parties they governed), his facile comparison of their stances toward the exercise of presidential power doesn’t bear any scrutiny at all. When George Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” to block the enrollment of two Black students at the University of Alabama, he was defying a nine-year-old Supreme Court decision, an untold number of subsequent lower-court decisions, and ultimately the 14th Amendment, on which Brown v. Board of Education was based. He wasn’t opposing the means by which the federal government sought to impose desegregation, but desegregation itself, and had deployed his own law-enforcement assets not only to obstruct desegregation orders, but to oppress and violently assault peaceful civil-rights protesters. That’s why President John F. Kennedy was forced to either federalize the National Guard to integrate the University of Alabama or abandon desegregation efforts altogether.

By contrast, Newsom isn’t standing in any doors or “blocking ICE vans.” The deportation raids he has criticized (not stopped or in any way inhibited) are the product of a wildly improvised and deliberately provocative initiative by an administration that’s been in office for only a few months, not the sort of massive legal and moral edifice that gradually wore down Jim Crow. And speaking of morality, how about the chutzpah of Ramaswamy in comparing Trump’s mass-deportation plans to the civil-rights movement? Even if you favor Trump’s policies, they represent by even the friendliest accounting a distasteful plan of action to redress excessively lax immigration enforcement in the past, not some vindication of bedrock American principles. No one is going to build monuments to Tom Homan and Kristi Noem for busting up families and sending immigrants who were protected by law five minutes ago off to foreign prisons.

As he made clear in his speech last night, Newsom objects to Trump’s federalization of Guard units and planned deployment of Marines on grounds that they are unnecessary abrogations of state and local authority transparently designed to expand presidential authority as an end in itself. George Wallace made defiance of the federal government under either party’s leadership his trademark. John F. Kennedy wasn’t spitting insults at him as Trump is at Newsom; he and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, negotiated constantly behind the scenes to avoid the ultimate confrontation with Wallace. There’s been nothing like that from Trump, who has all but declared war on California and then sent in the troops to run Los Angeles.

Beyond all the specifics, you can’t help but wonder why the very name “George Wallace” doesn’t curdle in Ramaswamy’s mouth. If there is any 21st-century politician who has emulated the ideology, the tactics, the rallies, the media-baiting, the casual racism, and the sheer cruelty of George Wallace, it’s not Gavin Newsom but Donald Trump. I understand Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t old enough to remember Wallace and his proto-MAGA message and appeal, but I am, and there’s not much question that if the Fighting Little Judge of 1963 was reincarnated and placed on this Earth today, he’d be wearing a red hat and cheering Trump’s assaults on what he described as the “anarchists … the liberals and left wingers, the he who looks like a she” and the professors and newspapers that “looked down their nose at the average man on the street.”