To put it mildly, Trump is not having a good day.
He is facing challenges from above: The Federal Reserve increased interest rates against his wishes. The Supreme Court ruled against his attempt to limit voting by mail. Judges have thwarted him on such issues as the Kennedy Center and his attempt to ban news outlets from the White House.
Previously loyal Republicans are fleeing now that a Trump endorsement has become a curse. Major far-right media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Joe Rogan have broken with him. Impeachment and corruption charges are looming.
In addition, he is facing discontent from below: His approval ratings are at record lows. According to polls, 65 percent of voters disapprove of Trump, more than twice as many as the 32 percent who approve. His policies are even more unpopular than they have always been, with just 17 percent approving of his handling of the economy.
Increasingly, Trump is seen as self-serving and corrupt, no longer the “outsider” alternative to elite politics. As one Republican pollster puts it, in a guest essay called “The Trump Brand Has Tanked”: “Voters don’t think the economy is working for them, and they think it’s being rigged more and more in favor of a precious few who are cozied up to our nation’s leaders.”
Everyone is asking, “Why is this happening now?” While the answers vary, the universally acknowledged truth is that the war in Iran is the number one culprit, particularly because it is worsening the ongoing affordability crisis.
The economic fallout from the war is impacting everyone through soaring fuel prices and higher costs of living domestically. This impact is on top of the generalized instability and suffering the war has provoked globally.
The U.S. economy has continued to grow because of enormous investment in artificial intelligence, but this has raised fears of a massive crash if and when the AI bubble bursts.
Trump, of course, ran on the promise of ending deeply unpopular “forever wars,” so his exploits abroad are seen as a betrayal by some of his base.
And significantly, sections of that base are turning against him. In a New York Times opinion piece called “Trump’s Luck is Finally Running Out,” Thomas Edsall quotes Charlie Cook: “Over the last 90 days, President Trump’s political standing has transitioned from very unpopular to toxic and now to radioactive.”
Edsall shares this account from Amy Walter of The Cook Report:
Trump’s staying power in our politics — even, astonishingly, despite the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — gave the president the confidence and latitude to pursue unpopular policies and blow off scandals that would have sunk any of his predecessors. But now, the economic consequences of his sweeping tariffs and the war in Iran have done the one thing all the controversies of his first term were never able to do: splinter his coalition and sink his approval ratings to all-time lows.
It is certainly gratifying to see the unbearably arrogant and smug Trump brought down. But this isn’t a moment that we can celebrate. As The Guardian put it in September, “The weaker he gets, the more dangerous he gets: Trump lashes out as his power wanes.”
Trump’s relative weakness has not slowed the ruthless tide of xenophobic, racist, and transphobic scapegoating and attacks. Mass detentions and deportations continue. The recent ICE raid on the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar is a chilling example of how far the forces of reaction are willing to go.
Trump’s fear of losing the elections has led him to extreme attempts to undermine liberal democracy, something that is recognized even by conservative critics of the administration such as the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, who says, “We’re heading in the direction of dictatorship.” With varying levels of success, Trump has tried or threatened gerrymandering, restricting mail-in ballots, stationing federal troops or agents at polling stations, and abusing the voter database to throw people off voter lists.
Right-wing fear-mongering about hordes of noncitizens voting is, of course, unfounded. Trump recently cited Department of Homeland Security estimates of 16,000 noncitizen residents registered to vote in Nevada. A state investigation brought that number down to 185 and then, after further scrutiny, zero.
The Nevada Secretary of State called out such widespread disinformation:
DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence…Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.
Given such extreme efforts to prevent people from voting and undermine the elections, we can anticipate more legal and illegal maneuvers in the face of a Trump loss.
There will likely be further court challenges. As one commentator writes:
The courts have provided mixed verdicts on Mr. Trump’s attempts at vote suppression in advance of the 2026 midterms. But the rulings have handed him an unambiguous gift: a road map for shaping the universe of eligible voters to his liking in the presidential election year of 2028.
Democrats are widely predicted to win the elections in November and may even win majorities in both the House and Senate, but they offer no real alternative to the far-right agenda.
Many Democrats, including some so-called “progressives,” are bending over backward to distance themselves from issues such as Black Lives Matter, trans rights, and Palestinian rights. If they win the election, it will be a vote against Trump, not a vote for the Democratic Party. In fact, 45 percent of voters say their congressional choice is a vote against Trump, including four out of five Democrats and around half of independents.
Charlie Cooke has the perfect metaphor:
While many have long predicted that Democrats will enjoy a “blue wave” election, I think of it more as a “red undertow,” which will pull many Republicans under and significantly trim the margins for many others. A blue wave implies an endorsement or affirmation of Democrats and their policies. But the Democrats’ brand is still in tatters. … Fortunately for Democrats, this election will in most cases not be about them.
If they do get elected, unless Democrats fight for substantial reforms (which they show no inclination to do), they will only disappoint those with raised expectations and lay the ground for the return of an even more radical GOP in 2028 or 2030, continuing the vicious cycle of the two-party system.
Given these realities and the current weakness of movements, it’s understandable that some people are placing their hopes in democratic socialists working within the Democratic Party. A recent message from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez makes the case. Titled “Why I’m feeling hopeful,” it describes her campaigning in upstate NY:
Launching this program and speaking with organizers has filled me with hope that the energy to elect Democrats up and down the ballot is out there if we can channel it into turning people out who may have previously felt left behind or that their vote did not matter. The way we do that is by giving people something worth showing up for: Medicare for All, universal childcare, a living wage, and a government that actually works for them.
That all sounds wonderful. But it’s not what Democrats of any stripe are delivering anywhere. It is not the agenda of mainstream Democrats. And progressives or democratic socialists who get elected face relentless pressure from the system to toe the line.
In the absence of independent mass movements that can act as a counterweight, elected democratic socialists are unable to meet their campaign promises. Rather than pulling the mainstream to the Left, they themselves move to the center and lend weight to mainstream Democrats.
Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist who was elected as mayor of Seattle last year, campaigned on promises of taxing the rich and funding housing. Instead, she has delivered a city budget with massive spending cuts, no new taxes, and more money for the cops. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani’s failure to reign in the police has already disappointed and frustrated many of his supporters.
The failure is not personal, but systemic: Even the best progressives face the harsh reality of being trapped in a rigged and unbending system once they are elected.
This recognition does not mean inaction.
Revolutionary socialists don’t abstain from elections. They are an important part of politics that we often will want to participate in, whether around a particular ballot issue or a candidate attached to a movement. But we recognize that elections are the territory of the ruling class, and we will always be weakest there. So, they should never be prioritized. We don’t put them first. It’s a waste of our time and energy.
We must not drop our criticisms of mainstream or progressive democrats in office—to do so just leaves the field open to the right wing.
We must defend our limited democracy (including civil liberties), but most importantly, we must fight not only for meaningful reforms but also for the transformation of society that will allow genuine and much more expansive democracy.
The Democratic Party is not committed to such a transformation, and even if they were, would not have much room to maneuver in the current political system.
At an otherwise bleak moment, our reason to be hopeful is that a growing number of people on the Left are dissatisfied with the dominant socialist options, whether reformist or campist. They recognize that we need to build a better alternative.
Where we can make a real difference is in movements, campaigns, strikes and struggles on the streets and in the workplace. Collective organizing from below is the only force that has ever won substantial reforms, no matter who is in office. Hundreds of thousands of mostly young people in France, Spain, Belgium and India are currently demonstrating this in mass protests around education, housing and other issues. These are the same forces that have the power to stop the right and revitalize the Left in the U.S.
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Hassan Albadawi, The White House; modified by Tempest.
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