A Pause From Doom-Scrolling

Trump's deepening disapproval means something.

I’m content to doom scroll with anyone who wants to go there. This country is obviously in a lot of trouble, as this corrupt, self-dealing, unchecked president is barely half-way through a term that’s unleashed murderous xenophobia, war, and—a key subject of this ‘Stack—terrible economic policy.

But I’m not immune to hope, which I keep seeing in a variety of places. In a word, that terrible policy record has not gone unnoticed by the majority of the American people/electorate. Ergo, Trump’s approval rating is tanking. Here’s a good summary.

Yes, he’ll always have MAGA, but the NYT tells us that, at least in terms of media interest, they too may be lagging.

FTR, I wouldn’t make too much of this. Given the strength of their psychological bond (discussed below), I would never count on MAGA turning on Trump. But, electorally speaking, MAGA’s too small to do much by itself. At least in a national sense, and increasingly at the state level too, it needs the numbers from the larger swing coalition that’s largely motivated by affordability concerns and is happy to cycle through incumbents until someone actually helps them.

Bottom line, even with Trump off the ballot, the Rs have a midterm problem. And, if that holds, it’s just plain good news for America.

Then there’s the fact that some spineless Rs, like Sen. Cornyn, now that they’re out of the running, are standing up to some of Trump’s most egregious actions and nominations. FTR, I have zero sympathy for these lame ducks. They repeatedly betrayed their oaths to enforce the Constitution, until doing so become costless. And Cornyn, e.g., has an awful record: anti-choice, tax cuts for the rich, terrible SCOTUS votes, etc.

My point, however, is that he’s just the typical establishment R that proliferated before Trump took over, and as soon as that constraint was lifted, he snapped back to his old self. And I doubt he’s alone. That’s not particularly comforting, I grant you, but it signals that Trumpian damage—his “ownership of the party”—though it will absolutely postdate Trump, is not permanent.

Will the Ds be the beneficiaries of this discontent with Trump and the Rs? Certainly in the narrow midterm sense of the incumbent party doing badly, especially when the country’s dominant mood is this negative, and, at least as far as winning back the House is concerned, polling and betting markets suggest those odds are favorable.

But there’s a big difference between benefitting from anti-incumbency and lasting, foundational support. That requires delivering. And here’s where I think some of the Democratic Socialist (DSA) candidates have an interesting edge (“some” is doing important lifting here—the DSA candidates more focused on tearing down the establishment than helping constituents could prove to be electorally problematic in many districts).

Polls show voters expressing more favorable views re socialism. As I’ve written before, there are many reasons for that, largely born of a sense that establishment Ds have failed to deliver or to hold Israel to account for its actions in Gaza. In essence, people are looking for a new political force that looks like it might genuinely fight on their behalf, while reinstituting basic human rights that have long been violated. That certainly defines Mayor Mamdani’s success, and the fact that he’s starting to deliver further seals the deal.

There was a time when Trump and MAGA played this role (the fight-for-you part, not the human rights part, of course), but that was never going to work. Trump’s a fraud who never intended to deliver on his affordability promises. I’ll admit to being surprised that he’s so energetically turned that dial the wrong way—his policies are currently adding at least a point to inflation!—but as his polling shows, a lot of people looking for economic relief realize they bet on the wrong pony.

But second, MAGA and DSA motivations are fundamentally different. MAGA is, at root, a psychological movement, motivated by retribution against a world that’s always looked down on them. This is why Trump is such an effective standard bearer for them. He links to them though a titanium-strength chain of genuine empathy, because he too resents the fact that he’s always been viewed as a carnival-barking fool by elites.

DSA—and I’d put the labor-oriented Ds of old in the same bucket—is at root motivated by economic justice. Their theory of the case is not anti-market, which is why I don’t think the commie spitballs will stick. It’s that the benefits of market outcomes are not reaching enough of the folks who generated those outcomes. The bakers aren’t getting a fair slice of the pie they’re helping to bake (technically, this shows up as imbalanced factor shares—labor share down, profit share up).

Bottom line, this is all pretty simple. A decisive group of swing voters that tend to determine many electoral outcomes these days is looking for economic help from whomever they believe will deliver it. Trump has failed to do so, so they’re looking elsewhere. Half the battle for the Ds is convincing them they can make a positive difference in their lives. The other half is doing so.