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.

 

Tiffany Wertheimer reports “What do Americans think of Trump’s foreign policies?” at bbc.com, and writes: “Trump has increased his rhetoric on “getting” Greenland, and Vice-President JD Vance recently took a controversial trip to the Arctic island…But Pew found that most survey respondents (54%) did not think the US should take over the Danish territory. When asked if they think Trump would actually pursue the plan, 23% thought it was extremely likely, but a greater number (34%) said they believed he would not carry through with it..Of those surveyed, 62% of Americans opposed such a move, compared to 15% who favoured it. Opinions were divided as to whether Trump was likely to actually pursue it. Again, the greater number (38%) thought it very or extremely unlikely…Trump signed executive orders to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Paris Agreement on climate change, and said USAID largely would be shut down…45% disapprove of ending USAID programmes (compared with 35% who approve)…46% do not agree with leaving the Paris agreement (32% approve)…52% disapprove of leaving the WHO (32% approve)…The Pew research found 43% of respondents thought Trump favoured Russia too much – a higher number than the 31% who said he was striking the right balance between both sides…Answering a question about whether Trump was favouring Israelis or Palestinians, 31% of those surveyed thought he favoured Israelis too much. Close behind at 29% were those who thought Trump was striking the right balance…Larger than either of these, however, was the group of respondents who were not sure (37%). Just 3% felt he was favouring Palestinians too much…Generally, it is older adults who support Trump’s foreign policy actions, more than younger adults, the research suggested…Pew also asked about tariffs on China, although this research was carried out before the situation escalated sharply into the trade war that is now under way…Generally, more Americans said the tariffs would be bad for them personally, but those who were Republican, or leant more towards that party, believed the tariffs would benefit the US.”

In “Mad King Trump’s War on the Troops: The administration is vindictively hacking away at veterans’ benefits,” Ryan Cooper writes at The American Prospect: “In America, veterans are reliably conservative. In 2024, pre-election polls showed that about 61 percent of them supported Donald Trump, while just 37 percent supported Kamala Harris. In the past, this made some sense, as Republicans traditionally have showered money and benefits on the military, despite the fact that the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department constitute the only fully socialized, cradle-to-grave welfare system in this country. The bargain has gone like this: Give the government several years of your life, potentially putting life and limb at risk, and you will get access to a European-style welfare state…But this time is different. Trump, together with Elon Musk and his DOGE goons, are carrying out sweeping attacks on veterans and soldiers alike, from active-duty troops, to veterans who receive a wide range of benefits, to the hundreds of thousands of veterans in the federal workforce…Probably the most directly impactful cuts are the ones to the VA, particularly research and treatment. As Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early have covered here at the Prospect, the VA has a scientific arm that has developed dozens of medical innovations useful not just to veterans, but all people. Agency scientists were central to the development of advanced prosthetic limbs, the cardiac pacemaker, the liver transplant, the CAT scan, and dozens of important medications…Finally, we have Trump and Musk’s all-out assault on federal government workers and their unions. About 30 percent of federal workers are veterans, thanks to numerous initiatives to give them priority access to federal jobs.”

“Trump’s approval rating is sliding, seemingly down into the low 40s,” Michael Tomasky writes in “The Right-Wing Media Machine Is What’s Saving Donald Trump—for Now,” and notes further:  This is all before we price in the mayhem and disruption that his outlandish tariff scheme brings; it may be months from now before the effects of his decision to blow up the economy are fully felt…Most of his policies are unpopular—it’s basically only on immigration that the public gives him reasonably high marks (which is depressing, yes, but that’s a reality we need to come to grips with if we want to turn it around). On the economy, inflation, the DOGE cuts, Russia-Ukraine, and more, he’s in the red. The American people are beginning to catch the distinct scent that they were conned…What’s keeping him even at 43 percent? At this point, it’s the right-wing media that’s doing the heavy lifting. The disinformation bubble that surrounds and encases and protects him and spins everything he does positively and spins everything his opponents do as corrupt or treasonous—that dread machine is still running at peak capacity. And let’s be honest about how corrupt this corrupt Tilt-a-Whirl really is: If this was a Democratic president pulling these kind of schemes, this same media infrastructure would be apoplectic.”

Thomas B. Edsall shares some revealing revelations in his NYT opinion essay, “Another Group the Democrats Should Stop Taking for Granted,” including: “The cross-pressures within the Latino electorate are evident in an analysis of survey data, “2024 Latino Voters Survey,” by Roberto Suro, a professor of public policy and journalism at the University of Southern California, and José E. Múzquiz, a Ph.D. candidate there…“Latinos who voted for Harris and Trump,” they wrote, “differ markedly in how they see their own identity as Latinos and how that identity relates to their political convictions.”…Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, Suro and Múzquiz found, “overwhelmingly (71 percent) said that the fate of Latinos in general had ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ impact in their lives. In nearly equal measure, 63 percent of Trump voters said the impact was ‘not much’ or ‘not at all.’ …Asked, “Do immigrants bring economic benefits or competition?” Harris voters chose benefits over competition, 61 to 39 percent; Trump voters chose competition over benefits, 70 to 30 percent. Latino voters for Harris and Trump split along the same lines when asked to choose between “Immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don’t want and helping to keep down labor costs so everyone benefits” and “Immigrants are competing with Americans for good jobs and will often accept lower pay…The shifting patterns of Hispanic voting — not just in South Texas but nationwide — raise the basic question: How secure are Republican gains?…Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist at Emory University, argued that the movement toward the Republican Party shows signs of staying power…In a May 2024 paper, “Reversion to the Mean, or Their Version of the Dream? Latino Voting in an Age of Populism,” Fraga and Yamil R. Valez of Columbia University and Emily A. West of the University of Pittsburgh made the case that their analyses of election results and poll data “point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.”

The following article, “House Democrats unveil 35 Republican targets for 2026 midterms” by Mary Ellen McIntire, is cross-posted from Roll Call:

House Democrats on Tuesday rolled out an initial list of 35 Republican-held seats they are targeting next year as the party looks to win control of the chamber.

The list from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee includes traditional swing seats but also districts that Donald Trump carried by up to 18 points in November, underscoring Democrats’ confidence in their chances of flipping the House more than eighteen months out from the midterm elections.

“House Republicans are running scared, and they should be. They’re tanking the economy, gutting Medicaid, abandoning our veterans, and making everything more expensive. In short, they’ve lost the trust of their constituents, and it’s going to cost them the majority,” DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene of Washington said in a statement.

While Democrats lost the White and House and Senate in last year’s elections, they had a net gain of one seat in the House, cutting into Republicans’ narrow majority. The party hopes that sets the scene to flip at least three more seats next year.

“The DCCC is already busy recruiting compelling, authentic candidates in these key districts who will serve their communities, not Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” she added.

Democrats are once again seeking to oust longtime targets such as GOP Reps. David Valadao of California, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Don Bacon of Nebraska. They’re also targeting four freshmen who flipped key seats last year: Michigan’s Tom Barrett, Colorado’s Gabe Evans and Pennsylvania’s Rob Bresnahan Jr. and Ryan Mackenzie.

But the party is also looking to expand its reach into districts that weren’t considered competitive last year. Those include Iowa’s 2nd District, where Republican Ashley Hinson won reelection by 16 points last year and voters backed Trump by 10 points, according to calculations by elections analyst Drew Savicki. Also on the list are Ohio’s 15th District represented by Republican Mike Carey, which Trump won by 9 points; and Kentucky’s 6th District, which Trump won by 15 points and whose GOP congressman, Andy Barr, is considering a Senate run this cycle.

That bullishness follows a pair of special elections for deep-red House seats in Florida last week, in which Democrats’ cut their losing margins by roughly half from November. Party officials have also sharply criticized Trump’s new tariff policies over the past week, which looks poised to be a significant messaging line in the midterm campaign.

Last month, the DCCC named 26 Democratic incumbents to its Frontline program for vulnerable members. That list heavily overlaps with the targeted members rolled out by the National Republican Congressional Committee last month.

Here’s the full list of Republican members included in the DCCC’s “Districts in Play” for 2026:

• Nick Begich of Alaska’s at-large district
• David Schweikert of Arizona’s 1st District
• Eli Crane of Arizona’s 2nd
• Juan Ciscomani of Arizona’s 6th
• David Valadao of California’s 22nd
• Young Kim of California’s 40th
• Ken Calvert of California’s 41st
• Gabe Evans of Colorado’s 8th
• Cory Mills of Florida’s 7th
• Anna Paulina Luna of Florida’s 13th
• María Elvira Salazar of Florida’s 27th
• Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa’s 1st
• Ashley Hinson of Iowa’s 2nd
• Zach Nunn of Iowa’s 3rd
• Andy Barr of Kentucky’s 6th
• Bill Huizenga of Michigan’s 4th
• Tom Barrett of Michigan’s 7th
• Open; Michigan’s 10th District
• Ann Wagner of Missouri’s 2nd
• Don Bacon of Nebraska’s 2nd
• Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey’s 7th
• Mike Lawler of New York’s 17th
• Max Miller of Ohio’s 7th
• Michael R. Turner of Ohio’s 10th
• Mike Carey of Ohio’s 15th
• Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania’s 1st
• Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania’s 7th
• Rob Bresnahan Jr. of Pennsylvania’s 8th
• Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th
• Andy Ogles of Tennessee’s 5th
• Monica De La Cruz of Texas’ 15th
• Rob Wittman of Virginia’s 1st
• Jen Kiggans of Virginia’s 2nd
• Bryan Steil of Wisconsin’s 1st
• Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin’s 3rd

From “It’s Not the Economy, Stupid: The Ideological Foundations of White Working Class Republicanism” subsection “The incredible shrinking white working class and the future of the Democratic Party” by Alan I. Abramowitz at cenerforpolitics.org: “In 2024, as in other recent elections, the large majority of whte voters without a college degree supported Republican candidates from the top of the ballot down to the local level. I have argued, contrary to many other political observers, that the main explanation for the rise of white working class Republicanism is not economic discontent based on the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs due to outsourcing and automation. Rather, the main driver of white working class Republicanism is ideology. The large majority of white working class voters supported Donald Trump and other Republican candidates in 2024 because they agree with the conservative ideological position of Republicans on a wide range of issues…The declining fortunes of Democratic candidates among white working class voters, a group that for many decades made up the largest part of the Democratic voter base, has led to a good deal of soul-searching among Democratic leaders and activists and to potential strategies for trying to increase the party’s fortunes among this group. These proposals often focus on policies to address the economic concerns of white working class voters by providing good-paying jobs for those without college degrees. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, the findings presented in this article suggest that such policies are unlikely to significantly increase the Democratic share of the vote among this group…Despite the fact that white working class voters are unlikely to respond to Democratic efforts to appeal to their economic interests, there are a couple of reasons why Democrats need not despair about the party’s outlook for the future. One is that Democratic decline among white working class voters has been partially offset in recent years by improving Democratic performance among white college graduates, as the data in Figure 1 show. According to national exit polls, between 2016 and 2024, the Democratic share of the vote among white college graduates increased from 45% to 51% to 53% while the Republican share fell from 49% to 48% to 45%.”

At The Guardian, Steven Greenhouse sketches a disturbing future for the U.S. economy under Trump’s ‘leadership.’: “It would be generous to say it’s the one-eyed leading the blind. Rather, it’s an economically blind, impetuous president leading a mum, intimidated Republican-controlled Congress. One of the tragedies here is that many congressional Republicans see the grievous damage Trump is doing, but they’re too craven to speak out and risk Trump’s and Elon Musk’s social media wrath…Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is predicting disaster. He says that as a result of Trump’s tariffs a recession “will hit imminently  and extend until next year”. Zandi says that economic growth could fall by 2 percentage points, while the jobless rate could leap to a very painful 7.5%. On Friday, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, also sounded the alarm, saying that Trump’s tariffs could cause even slower economic growth and higher inflation than originally expected…Unfortunately, Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs are not a scalpel designed to help specific industries, but rather a blunderbuss mess, hitting everyone and everything, including US consumers and industries…The tariffs that Trump is imposing are even greater than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely seen as having worsened the Great Depression. Krugman noted that Trump’s tariffs could also do serious damage because “imports as a share of the [US] economy are three times what they were in the 1920s”

In “Republicans can end Trump’s tariffs. Democrats can exploit that,” James Downie reports at msnbcnews.com, via Yahoo! News: “After President Donald Trump “liberated” Americans from a strong economy Wednesday, the Senate held an extraordinary vote. By 51-48, the chamber passed a privileged resolution authored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia that would revoke the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada earlier this year. Four Republicans — Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted with every Democrat to rebuke the president’s trade policy…But the Senate vote, one of the first significant legislative losses of Trump’s second term, highlights an opening for Democrats with ramifications beyond even the global economy…Trump’s new tariffs create more chances for Democrats in Congress to jam up their GOP counterparts. The president’s handling of the economy already polls poorly, and most Americans are skeptical of his tariff policies in particular. They have good reason to be: The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the price increases from all of Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to “average per household consumer loss of $3,800,” with lower-income households hurt most…But Republican lawmakers can’t just blame Trump. Though the executive branch typically controls tariff policy nowadays, the Constitution grants Congress the tariff power..Most significantly, on Thursday Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to introduce a bill to require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing new tariffs. Congress would have to ratify the new tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would vote for the bill, becoming the sixth Republican to break with Trump’s tariff policy. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he was against imposing “high tariffs in perpetuity.”…For Democrats, these votes are win-win situations. The more Republicans block these bills, the easier it is for Democratic challengers to hang those votes around GOP necks next fall. On the other hand, if these votes can make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular, that will complicate Republican policymaking enormously…If his grip weakens even slightly, Johnson and Thune can’t rely as easily on Trump’s bully pulpit to smooth over intraparty disputes. Longer negotiations mean fewer bills and less damage the GOP majority can cause the country.”

In the concluding paragraphs of “Liberals’ ‘Abundance Discourse Is Good for Trump and Musk – and Bad for Dems,” David Sirota and Aaron Regunberg write at Rolling Stone that “the Abundance Agenda presents an electoral danger to the Democratic Party… In 2024, Kamala Harris rejected a populist message and was lauded by Washington media for specifically running on an Abundance Agenda. Voters who’ve seen this kind of Democratic bait and switch before ended up trusting Trump more on economic issues — and handed him the presidency. Only months later, Abundance now aims to suppress Democrats’ renewed populist zeitgeist, despite how necessary it is for the fight against Trump and Musk…Right now, the Democratic Party is facing off against the most corrupt administration in history — a government of, by, and for billionaires that is using the rhetoric of “government efficiency” to dismantle popular social programs, fire veterans, let corporations run roughshod over working people, and slash taxes for oligarchs… Ask yourself: Does it make more sense for Democrats to rebrand as the “fighting the oligarchs” party against corporate-created scarcity, highlighting a clear contrast with the Trump administration’s top political vulnerabilities?… Or should they focus instead on the need to streamline bureaucracies and pare down red tape — a message that reifies Trump and Musk’s own rhetoric around waste, fraud, and abuse?……The answer should be abundantly clear.”

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 concept that Democrats have delusions about their current situation—that they are in denial about the implications of the 2024 election and other trends—is having a moment. No less a discourse arbiter than the Gray Lady has weighed in on the side that, yes, this is a thing. In an op-ed by the New York Times’ Editorial Board, the paper’s distinguished journalists lament:

In the aftermath of this comprehensive defeat [in the 2024 election], many party leaders have decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message. They have instead settled on a convenient explanation for their plight.

That explanation starts with the notion that Democrats were merely the unlucky victims of postpandemic inflation and that their party is more popular than it seems: If Democrats could only communicate better, particularly on social media and podcasts, the party would be fine. “We’ve got the right message,” Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said while campaigning for the job. “What we need to do is connect it back with the voters.

This is indeed delusional. The scale of the delusion is underscored by data just released by David Shor and Blue Rose Research (see also the interviews with Shor by Ezra Klein and Eric Levitz). How anyone can go through these findings and conclude anything other than that Democrats need a radical course correction is beyond me.

In that spirit, the Times’ Editorial Board and Shor do urge Democrats to cast off their delusions and offer some suggestions for such a course correction. I mostly agree with their suggestions—indeed, I’d urge the need for even stronger medicine. But I think it’s important to be clear-eyed about the various factors that will make it all too easy for Democrats to ignore or soft-pedal the need for a decisive reckoning with their “toxic brand.” Their delusions, it is likely, will prove quite difficult to get rid of.

Here’s why.

1. The fool’s gold of Democrats’ low turnout advantage. The dirty little secret of Democrats’ current coalition is that it’s extremely well-engineered for low turnout elections. Democrats used to argue that they wanted really high turnout—ideally everyone voting—in elections because high voter participation is a civic good in democratic societies and because they believed that higher turnout would bring in masses of less engaged, pro-Democratic voters (younger, less educated, less affluent, nonwhite) that would benefit them politically.

No more. Now that the Democratic coalition is skewed toward the most educated, most engaged, high information voters, Democrats actually benefit when turnout is low and the voting pool is dominated by their highly engaged voters. Correspondingly, the more voters that show up, the worse it is for the Democrats. As a result, Democrats have become increasingly quiet about their commitment to high turnout and don’t talk much these days about the civic benefits of everyone voting. Maybe it’s not so bad if only the most interested citizens bother to vote!

You can’t blame Democrats from enjoying the electoral benefits of their current coalition. If they have a better chance of winning in relatively low turnout elections, they’ll gladly take it—and crow about their victories. But this presents a problem if Democrats do indeed need to get rid of their delusions and reform their party. Every time Democrats overperform in low turnout electoral contexts, that stiffens the spines of those who are resisting substantial change. Look at special elections X and Y, they’ll say, and how well Democrats did, vastly outrunning the underlying partisan lean of the state or district. There’s no need for big changes—we’re doing great!

You can see this dynamic playing out in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s special elections for a Wisconsin State Supreme Court seat and for filling House seats in Florida’s 1^st and 6^th congressional districts. Democrats did indeed overperform and the kvelling in Democratic circles was immediate and loud, especially about the victory of liberal Susan Crawford in the Wisconsin race by 10 points over her conservative opponent, preserving a 4-3 liberal majority on the court. That’s a good result for Democrats but it’s worth noting that last two Wisconsin State Supreme Court races in 2023 and 2020 were won by the liberal candidates with almost identical margins.

There may be less here than meets the eye. As Nate Cohn remarkedon the day these elections were held:

Nothing about today’s results will change that the Democratic Party has major problems, from big-picture messaging and policy questions to its struggles among specific demographic groups, like young men and nonwhite voters.

But even if the results don’t do much about these major problems, it is likely to divert Democrats’ attention from doing anything about them. Indeed, they are likely to focus instead on how their overperformance in Tuesday’s and earlier specials augurs well for their quest to take back the House in 2026.

And that could be a further problem. David Shor pointed out in his interview with Ezra Klein:

If Democrats do nothing, they’ll probably be OK in 2026. All of these voters who get their news from TikTok, who don’t care about politics—voters under 25—just aren’t going to turn out in the midterms.

But if we don’t fix this problem, then four years from now, we could be facing the same trust deficit on all these core issues. And the voters who didn’t turn out in 2026 will come back — but this time, we might be running against a candidate who is a lot less unpopular than Trump. And that could be a real pickle.”

A pickle indeed. This table from Shor illustrates how the dynamic for Democrats changes in a high turnout environment.

That should concentrate the mind.

2. The comfort food of thermostatic reaction against the GOP. It was predictable that Trump and the GOP would go too far in some respects after he got re-elected. Parties these days do tend to over-read their “mandates” and Trump is, well, Trump and inclined to do things to excess. I think it’s safe to say that he has exceeded expectations in this respect. As a result, the thermostatic reaction is setting in, as voters seek to turn the policy thermostat down to a more comfortable setting.

They are not happy with the antics of Elon Musk, how far the cuts in government have gone and their haphazard nature, the lack of attention to lowering prices and the chaotic pursuit of a tariff regime that may raise prices as well as having other negative economic effects. Voters’ discontent is a boon to the Democrats of course and Democrats do not have to change their party much, if at all, to reap the benefits. This is another factor militating against Democrats’ willingness to jettison their delusions. After all if Trump is so terrible and is royally screwing things up, why go to the big trouble of confronting fundamental problems when simply being not-Trump should allow the party to connect to thermostatic reaction? It’s a tempting—and comfortable—strategy.

3. The siren call of economic determinism. It’s no secret that economic issues loomed large in the last election and that Democrats were disadvantaged by that. It’s fair to say that economic issues will continue to be central to the party’s fate in the future.

But economic issues are not the only issues. Cultural issues are also hugely important to voters’ views of a political party and how likely that party’s actions are to be consistent with their interests and values. It is not the case that economic factors and issues will necessarily determine voters’ political preferences if only the proper approach can be found. Cultural inclinations are not so easily overruled.

But in truth this is what most Democrats seem to believe. They are culture denialists. That is, they do not consider cultural issues realissues. They are typically viewed as politically motivated distractions or as expressions of something else entirely (i.e., racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, etc.) They are not treated as issues that need to be dealt with on their own terms, with the corresponding need to potentially change party positions to accord with popular, particular working-class, preferences.

I see the hand of economic determinism in much of what Democrats have offered since the 2024 election. Bernie Sanders and AOC think Democrats should talk more about the “billionaire class” and “fighting oligarchy.” Ro Khanna proposes a “New Economic Patriotism” that would emphasize promotion of American manufacturing and hi-tech development across all regions of the country. Chris Murphy thinks the key to a Democratic revival is advocating the breakup of corporate power. Other Democrats suggest a relentless focus on “kitchen-table” issues (ah, what would Democrats do without that fabled kitchen table…). Even the new kid on the block, the “abundance” liberals, who have more interesting ideas, still leave cultural issues completely out of their framework. The general idea across these approaches is that focusing on economic issues will win back the working class and obviate the need to change anything else.

This attempt to magic away the influence of culture has not worked and will not work. To borrow a term from the Marxists, culture is not a part of the “superstructure” which is subservient to the “base.” Culture has a mind and dynamic of its own as Democrats should have learned by now, considering how much it’s hurt the party politically. But the siren call of economic determinism is powerful and remains a key obstacle preventing Democrats from casting off their delusions.

For all these reasons, it seems likely that Democratic delusions and, consequently, their “toxic brand” will be with us for quite some time. Those seeking to reform the party have their work cut out for them.

This week’s election results in Wisconsin had a pretty clear message for Democrats, as I explained at New York:

The most tiresome intra-Democratic debate of them all soon reached crisis levels after Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory. Should the “party of the people” focus on the threat to democratic institutions MAGA authoritarians most definitely pose? Or should they instead pursue lost non-college-educated voters via the ancient “populist” formula of class warfare over purely economic issues? The debate has often become very personal, with “populists” tending to dismiss arguments about democracy as elitist mumbo jumbo unintelligible to working stiffs who just want to see the money, and people frightened about fascism worrying that Americans will cheerfully sell out our heritage of liberty for $2 a gallon gas.

Fortunately, and just in the nick of time, a figure has emerged at the highest levels of government who can instantly unite “populists” and “defenders of democracy.” That would be Elon Musk, who is simultaneously the richest man on earth (and in modern history) and an even greater threat to democratic institutions than Trump. He is, moreover, via the DOGE initiative, waging aggressive war on public-sector programs that restrain his tiny class of corporate predators and benefit the general public while violating every constitutional norm imaginable. And suffusing this entire assault on the people and the institutions to which Democrats should feel loyalty is a nihilistic personality exhibiting some of the worst impulses of the human race: narcissism, messianism, ethnocentrism, worship of power and technology, and a testosterone-poisoned lust for combat and destruction. It’s as though Bruce Wayne had decided to become the Joker instead of Batman.

Terrifying as Musk is, Democrats should thank their lucky stars that he doesn’t simply operate in the background of the MAGA movement, financing Trump’s antics but otherwise remaining anonymous. No: He has insisted on a very public place on the stages of politics, commerce, and culture, rivaled only by his benefactor and enabler in the White House. And the more people see of him, the less they seem to like him.

This week’s judicial election in Wisconsin shows what happens when this peculiar man makes himself the center of attention in a popularity contest not limited to his sycophants on X. The most polarized electorate in the entire nation fed by the most expensive campaign ever to revolve around judges decided by a healthy margin that they did not want Elon Musk in charge of their destiny (much less the “destiny of humanity” he so fatuously claimed was at stake). And better yet, the dispirited ranks of Democrats turned out disproportionately at the polls in the first electoral test since last November’s disaster.

It’s now clear that so long as Musk is the most powerful figure in the administration and the living symbol of Trump 2.0, Democrats should make Musk-bashing even more of a daily preoccupation than it has already become. Populists can draw fresh attention to the very real class implications of DOGE’s assault on corporate regulation and on practical services like Social Security offices accessible to old folks and medical facilities that can keep middle-class people alive. Defenders of democratic institutions can continue to expose (and attack in courts) the arrogant pretense that self-appointed engineers who brag about their destructive intentions should be entrusted with “reforming” government. And everyone can keep exposing the deeply sinister tech-bro worldview Musk and his accomplices exemplify, aimed at converting the United States of America into a privately held corporate oligarchy governed by insanely wealthy elites deploying AI at will and treating life itself as a video game in which the losers are the rest of us.

Musk-bashing won’t solve all the problems facing Democrats. They still need to regain public trust about their own values and competence. For one thing, DOGE’s very existence remains a terrible indictment of the contempt for government that is now so epidemic, and that Democrats have for so long either ignored or tried to buy off with popular benefits; they need their own credible “government reform” agenda and the determination to carry it out.

But make no mistake: Elon Musk is a political gift, particularly if his ego and Trump’s reliance on his support mean he will insist on keeping himself front and center, showing up at Cabinet meetings and MAGA rallies alike while indulging his endless glossolalia on X. So long as he remains the face of Trump 2.0, Democrats would be wise to make sure that face is the first thing Americans think of when they survey the political landscape. If Musk and DOGE crash or are subdued by the jealous god in the Oval Office (as some reports suggest Trump has signaled may happen), that is a very good thing in itself and a worthy goal for the opposition.

 

If you were looking for a solid indictment of the Trump Administration’s disastrous policies, which can also serve as a template for writing a first-rate opinion column about current politics, E. J. Dionne, Jr. has it in “The night the tide turned against Trump and Musk,” cross-posted here from The Washington Post: