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:

At The New Republic’s Daily Blast Greg Sargent reports “Trump Hit by Brutal New Polls on Econ as GOP Tariff Panic Goes Nuclear,” and writes: “President Donald Trump is set to announce that he’ll impose sweeping new global tariffs on imports, and congressional Republicans are already scrambling wildly to try to shield their states and districts from the fallout. Meanwhile, a Fox News poll finds that Trump is sliding on the economy, with the public turning against tariffs in particular. And an Associated Press survey also has terrible news for Trump on this front. Notably, all these negative consequences kicked in well before the tariffs have even started. We talked to Jared Bernstein, former chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and now a visiting scholar at Stanford, who has a new piece on his Substack predicting the consequences could be dire. He explains why the tariffs are so wrongheaded—and why they’re likely to cause major backlash against Trump and his party. Listen to this episode here. As Bernstein writes at substack.com, “Everyone knows that tariffs are a tax (on imports). I’ve seen scores between $1-2 trillion over ten, so they can potentially raise real revs, but, as I point out to Ms. Claman, they’re taxes on the wrong people. Low-cost imports are a larger part of the market basket of middle- and low-income households. Tariffs are a regressive tax…The serious research that caught my attention this weekend was a new forecast from the Goldman Sachs (GS) macro team, which I follow closely as they’ve been ahead of the crowd in accurately forecasting stronger growth and downplaying recession worries in ‘22-‘23. In advance of “Liberation Day,”—this Wednesday when the next tranche of tariffs will be announced—they’ve taken the real GDP growth forecast for Q1 down to 0.2%. They raised their forecast for core PCE inflation for this year by 0.5% to 3.5% and their unemployment rate forecast by 0.3% to 4.5% “at end-2025 to reflect weaker GDP growth and the effects of federal spending cuts and layoffs. We raised our 12-month recession probability from 20% to 35%, reflecting our lower growth forecast, falling confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain.”…Along with the rest of us, I’m a lot less sure the president is going to make the right choice. I fully expect him to make the wrong one and, like I said, those GS folks have a good track record. If they’re right, the only liberation we’ll get from Liberation Day will be the U.S. economy’s liberation from the ongoing economic expansion the Trump administration inherited, along with consumers’ liberation from paying lower prices on imports.”

In “Of Course Trump Will Tank the Economy. It’s What Republicans Do,” Michael Tomsk writes, also at The New Republic: “Where are we headed? A recent survey of corporate chief financial officers finds 60 percent of them agreeing that we’re headed for a recession this year. Is anyone surprised? This is what Republicans do. They screw up the economy. Later down the line, Democrats get elected and have to fix everything. Then the media characterizes the economic first responders as the tax-and-spend liberal wastrels—lather, rinse, repeat. This has been happening since 1990, and it’s happened three straight times. You’d think the American people might have noticed by now.” Tomasky shares a detailed history of economic meltdowns under Republican presidents, and adds, “The last three Republican presidents wrecked the economy. The last three Democratic presidents had to fix things. One statistic for you. Net jobs created under Clinton and Obama: 33.8 million. Net jobs created under Bush, Bush, and Trump: 1.9 million. That is not a typo…And with Elon Musk’s help, the next time we tot up job gains under recent GOP presidencies, we may look back on that paltry 1.9 million with nostalgia: “Remember when Republicans were merely steaming mediocrities, and not economic arsonists?”…Then there’s the Republican ideology, as being played out in the House and Senate budgets. It has been driving the country to the brink of financial ruin for 35 years. Why should that change?…the next Democratic president will be charged with cleaning up the fourth consecutive Republic economic calamity.”

Erkki Foster’s “CNN Data Guru Gives Damning Verdict on Musk’s Election Fail” provides these observations at The Daily Beast: “CNN data analyst Harry Enten has a warning for Republican candidates: Stay far, far away from First Buddy Elon Musk…“Elon Musk, simply put, is an unpopular guy. He is political poison,” Enten said on Wednesday’s edition of CNN News Central, arguing that the billionaire’s high-profile involvement in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race has backfired on the GOP….Enten highlighted polling that shows Musk’s favorability ratings are deep in the red, sitting at negative 12 points in Wisconsin and negative 17 points nationwide, according to Enten’s aggregate and a Marquette Law survey…Trump, apparently rattled by his senior adviser’s humiliating fail in Wisconsin, told his Cabinet that Musk will be stepping down from DOGE in the next few weeks, Politico reported Wednesday.” Of course, Republican candidates will continue to kiss up to Musk, if only to get some of the billionaire’s money. But don’t expect to see many photo-ops of GOP candidates with Musk.

“Two favorite Republican tactics failed, The Working Families Party explains at working families.org.”unrestricted money and fearmongering. Brad Schimel and his enablers couldn’t buy this election and they couldn’t scare Wisconsinites into voting against the things we care about – public safety, reproductive freedom, and affordable healthcare and housing,” said Corinne Rosen, State Director of the Wisconsin Working Families Party. “Wisconsin voters denied Musk’s money in what will be the first in many defeats as voters realize and exercise our people power.”…To meet this challenge, the Wisconsin Working Families Party executed one of its largest field programs ever leading up to the Spring 2025 general election. The Party had more than 25,605 1-on-1 conversations with voters via canvassing and phones on behalf of Judge Susan Crawford. And 703 volunteers sent 36,868 personal postcards to voters about the Supreme Court race. All told, the Party made 661,330 attempts, 44,841 contacts, and 15,408 voters identified for Judge Susan Crawford…“With millions of dollars spent attacking Susan Crawford as ‘soft on crime,’ the GOP turned Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race into a referendum on public safety,” said Insha Rahman, Director of Vera Action. “At the ballot box, Wisconsinites faced a clear choice between Brad Schimel’s tough-on-crime rhetoric or Susan Crawford’s solutions for safety, accountability, and justice. The results speak for themselves. Leading with real solutions, not scare tactics, on what works to prevent crime and break its cycle is both good policy and good politics—and a lesson for Democrats across the country to not stay silent or mimic the GOP’s stale tough-on-crime rhetoric.”…“The Working Families Party’s canvassing events for Susan Crawford were powerful and effective,” said John Drew, Chairperson, UAW Wisconsin State CAP Council. “WFP focused on working class neighborhoods in Milwaukee where its messaging led to meaningful conversations with voters and moved them to take action.”

Cory Booker’s 25-hour Senate speech this week broke all kinds of records, obviously. But it also should make Democrats rethink the idea that some bumper-sticker-length message is the key to beating Trump, as I argued at New York:

My initial take on the news that Cory Booker was going to hold the Senate floor for many hours to dramatize his opposition to Trump 2.0 was a bit despairing: Having demonstrated that they no longer have any leverage over the administration and its supine congressional allies, Senate Democrats would now just talk as long as they could, as the chamber’s rules allowed. It wouldn’t change anything, but what was the harm?

But now that Democrats everywhere are greeting Booker’s historic non-filibuster filibuster with joy, I realize there was a practical benefit to his feat of endurance beyond consigning Strom Thurmond’s 1957 speaking record to the dustbin of history, where it belongs next to the segregationist cause it served. After months of strenuous efforts by Democrats to identify a precise silver-bullet argument against Trump’s agenda and how it was being pursued, Booker showed pretty unmistakably that a general indictment of the administration and its enablers, delivered with passionate intensity, is actually what alarmed Americans are craving.

Booker didn’t concentrate on Trump’s potential Medicaid cuts, illegal deportations, cruelty to public employees, abandonment of Ukraine, violations of civil liberties, reckless tariffs, usurpations of legislative powers, rampant corruption, or thuggish threats to federal judges. He talked about all this and more as a way to dramatize the ongoing assault on both democracy and the well-being of poor and middle-class Americans.

It’s the sheer avalanche of bad policies, bad administration, and bad faith that makes the current situation such an emergency. And forgetting about that in order to identify some single poll-tested nugget of messaging has been a mistake all along. Among other things, the coolly analytical approach of sorting and weighing Trump outrages robs such criticism of the moral outrage circumstances merit. Booker wasn’t just appealing to a rhetorical tradition in treating today’s challenges as a “moral moment” requiring the “good trouble” exhibited by the civil-rights movement. He was calling attention to the fact that the MAGA movement truly has mounted a sustained, comprehensive assault on decades of slow but steady progress toward a wide array of worthy goals involving the health, wealth, liberty, and happiness of the American people, all in pursuit of a hallucinatory, often destructive vision of “American greatness.”

This does not mean other Democrats should emulate Booker by seizing the nearest megaphone and talking for many hours. But it does mean a broad coalition of resistance to Trump 2.0 may require an equally broad message about what’s going on in this country and why it’s urgent to push back. Calling to mind the wide variety of outrages underway could also help Democrats develop a broad, credible agenda for what they intend to do if and when they return to power. Every day, it’s becoming more obvious that just returning to the federal policies and personnel in place on January 19, 2025, won’t be advisable or even possible. Rebuilding an effective set of public institutions and domestic and international relationships will involve the work of many hands, and many words of inspiration from leaders like Cory Booker.

An excerpt from, “Democrats trounced Trump with their Musk-focused playbook in Wisconsin” by Liz Crampton, Elena Schneider, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Brampton Booker at Politico:

Democrats just won their biggest electoral victory of the second Trump era. And Elon Musk lost big.

Democratic voters came out in force on Tuesday in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a sign that the once-latent resistance is raring to go. Musk put in a ton of money — but so did Democrats, amping turnout to midterm-level performance and showing the party’s strength outside of low turnout specials elections. And Democrats now have a legal bulwark to defend their positions on abortion rights and congressional maps in the closely divided state.

By defeating Republican-aligned candidate Brad Schimel, Susan Crawford secured a seat on the state’s highest court — and rejuvenated Democrats nationwide as they cast Musk as the No.1 villain of the second Trump era. Democrats framed the result as an explicit rejection of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Schimel.

The following graph is cross-posted from ‘Data for Progress:

At Politico, Elena Schneider writes, “Rep. Greg Casar wants Democrats to “pick villains” in the GOP and drop purity tests in primaries…The Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, a 35-year-old Texas millennial who took over its leadership in December, thinks his party lost its working-class identity, while becoming too cautious and too boring in its fight against Republicans. He’s meeting privately with other members to discuss ways to steer the party toward a more populist economic message — being “known as the party of working people, first and foremost,” Casar said — and he’s mounting an aggressive public relations campaign to push it…Casar, along with Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.) and Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), have been meeting informally with about a dozen Democratic members to talk about how best to shift the party into emphasizing economic populism..“Republican officials have figured out how to elevate social issues that impact only a small number of people and make them the dominant issues in elections,” Casar said. But after “knocking on thousands of doors” in Texas, even the most conservative voters “never opened the door and said, ‘Thank God you’re here. I want to talk to you about the appropriate level of testosterone for somebody to compete in the NCAA [sports].”…”If we’re willing to say…the richest people on the planet want to steal your Social Security check in order to enrich themselves and their friends, well, now you’re cooking with gas,” Casar said. “Be willing to explain that — to win a voter’s trust by telling people we are willing to actually go up against the villains that are screwing them over.”…“There’s a lot of different approaches to the economy that can appeal to working class voters, that involve honoring hard work, ensuring that everybody has an opportunity to earn a good life and that doesn’t involve ‘fighting the oligarchs,” [Third Way Founder Matt] Bennett said. “If that becomes their litmus test, then we’re right back in the same boat.”

 In her “Letters from an American” Substack post for March 30, Heather Cox Richardson notes that “the top seven donors to the 2024 political, cycle together gave almost a billion dollars to Republicans, with Elon Musk alone contributing more than $291 million. The list, compiled by Open Secrets, shows that Democratic donors don’t kick in until number eight on the list, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave slightly more than $64 million to Democrats. George Soros, the Republicans’ supervillain, didn’t make the top 25. As those wealthy donors wish, the Trump administration is shredding the post–World War II government and has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations…Trump is digging into the position that some people are better than others and have the right to rule. Today he told NBC News that he is considering a third presidential term, although that is explicitly unconstitutional. “I’m not joking,” he said, “There are methods which you could do it.”

At The Bulwark, Lauren Egan shares some observations about demographic change that will have a big impact on Democratic strategy in the near future: “Thanks to a decades-long flood of cross-country migration from states like California and New York to states like Texas and Florida, the South has emerged as an economic, political, and cultural powerhouse. Tech companies are relocating to Austin; movies are increasingly being produced in Atlanta; and more students from the Northeast are attending SEC schools—and then staying in the South after graduating—than ever before. The region accounted for more than two-thirds of all job growth across the United States since early 2020, and it now contributes more to the national GDP than the Northeast does…All of that means that the South is on track to make historic gains in the 2030 census. Florida and Texas are projected to gain four or more congressional seats, while North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee could each gain a seat. Meanwhile, reliably blue states like California could lose as many as five; New York might lose three. Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin could also see declines…All told, nearly four in ten Americans could hail from the South by the next census, according to a recent Brennan Center analysis. That not only means the path to a House majority runs through the South—it also means the party’s reliance on the “Blue Wall” will no longer be viable in future presidential elections. (The number of Electoral College votes a state gets is determined by how many congressional districts it has.)”