The art of governance is equal parts policy and politics. You can’t govern effectively without both. As presidents or parties adopt positions they consider wise and palatable, a significant aspect of the equation is forcing the opposing party to take a stand, to either agree or embrace the opposite: policies that are unwise and unpalatable. Ordinarily, issues tend to favor one side by a small margin. Public opinion on steps to improve the economy, national security, international relations, and a host of other areas generally fall along straight party lines, requiring the majority to carefully and scrupulously calculate how to make policies stick. But Donald Trump has become a glaring exception to the rule – and Democrats are suffering for it.
Democratic Resistance Is Beyond Futile
Joe Biden created a mess on so many fronts, and that has spoiled the 47th president. Why? Because the vast majority of Americans support his actions, including the policies he has swiftly enforced and the barriers to common sense he has torn down. In addition, having already been run through the Washington wringer once and having four years to contemplate how to avoid all the pitfalls placed in his way during his first term, Trump is in a unique position to succeed with his audacious, wide-ranging agenda. Add in the fact that he has a Republican Congress and does not need to worry about re-election, and he has been blessed with enviable latitude not only to do as he pleases but to order fundamental systemic change that few other presidents would dare to contemplate.
And then there is the factor that has crystallized it all and resulted in the highest approval Trump has enjoyed in the ten years since he first descended that golden escalator while Democrats simultaneously sink to their lowest level in decades: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Democrats hated George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and Republicans similarly loathed Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. But leftists’ level of revulsion to the current president is so off the charts that it causes them, instantly and reflexively, to oppose any new Trump policy – simply because it was proposed by a man they detest so much that amateur and professional psychologists have labeled TDS a mental disorder.
Of course, Trump is acutely aware of just how widespread this affliction is within the Democratic Party and is using it for an exceptional political advantage. Other than Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) – few others, if any, come to mind – Democrats are fighting against every action by Trump, even questioning the legitimacy of his second presidency. It's as if they are in a time warp, stuck in 2017 when they considered his victory over Hillary Clinton an unrepeatable fluke and used all their substantial leverage and every trick in their playbook to bring down the novice chief executive.
In doing so, they are falling hard and directly into Trump’s trap. The stunning part is that the president is destroying the Democrats so effortlessly. He is not forced to consider the opposing party in his policy calculations and does not even need to take politics into account, especially since he has been communicating with the public so regularly. He can act with almost total impunity, knowing the Dems will reflexively attack him to their own detriment. They have no answers, no solutions, no counterpoints other than screaming from the rooftops about Trump being a fascist, dictator, etc. Consequently, the Democratic Party’s approval has fallen to a pitiably low 27% in the latest survey by NBC News, which describes the number as an “all-time low” since it began polling in 1990.
Self-Immolating Democrats
Given that Democrats remain stricken by TDS with no relief in sight, forcing themselves to oppose Trump at every turn, they are engaging in unmitigated self-immolation. They are taking a wrecking ball to crucial elements of their credibility, clinging to the 20% or 30% side of Trump policies that 70% to 80% of Americans favor. And that does not even include the view of everyday Americans about the vandalizing, shooting, and firebombing of Tesla dealerships, incredibly cheered on by no less than 2024 vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, among others. Do Democrats even realize that in damaging Tesla, they are losing all credibility on climate change – the issue that most separates them from the GOP? All they are accomplishing, at best, is to demonstrate that politics uber alles is their modus operandi, and, at worst, they are proving that their obsession with climate change is nothing more than the hoax it has been labeled by Donald Trump.
On issue after issue, Trump has painlessly boxed TDS-plagued Democrats into their self-imposed corner. As leftists set fire to dealers of a company they once held up as a beacon in their fight for green energy, they hold demonstrations in opposition to the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse by the federal government, targeting their wrath at not just Trump, but even more so at Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Musk is not being paid a dime to work around the clock identifying one taxpayer-funded boondoggle after another while his companies suffer. The Dems are treating him as Satan incarnate, even as his company, SpaceX, rescues astronauts stranded in space for months, and as he works his technological marvels to help the blind see and the paralyzed walk. Heck, even “moderate” Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), himself an astronaut, bragged in a viral video about ditching his Tesla in favor of a gas-guzzling vehicle that is exactly what the carbon-hating left has been trying to abolish.
Courting Disaster
Unable to win arguments through reason, Democrats have turned to the courts dozens of times to strike down Trump policies. They legislate and shop for judges to protect the rights of illegal aliens who have committed crimes as heinous as rape or murder. They oppose mass deportation of illegals, a policy supported by roughly two-thirds of Americans, a number once unthinkable until Joe Biden opened the border. They voted unanimously against a Senate bill to ban men from women’s sports, a position favored by at least 80% of Americans. They refused to support the Laken Riley Act, which enables federal authorities to detain illegal aliens charged with crimes. Leftists carry on with threatening and blatantly antisemitic protests and then jump to the defense of a Jew-hating man ticketed for deportation. They defend USAID even after revelations of a massive number of publicly funded scams promoting DEI and transgender programs in every continent except Antarctica.
Meanwhile, 44% of Americans now believe the country is on the right track, the largest number in 20 years, according to NBC, and almost 60% higher than in September last year. From stem to stern, Donald Trump has been playing the Democrats like a fiddle, and they have cooperated by defending the indefensible, vehemently opposing policies heavily supported by the public at large. Democrats appear to have no plans beyond attacking every Trump pronouncement. It has been like watching the Super Bowl champions play a high school team: so easy it’s almost unfair.
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