It’s hard for a Democrat not to feel optimistic, even giddy, at the prospects for November’s midterm elections. President Trump’s approval ratings are at a record low, and nearly all of his policies are wildly unpopular with the majority of Americans. All that, combined with the usual backlash against the President’s party after two years in office, means the outlook is bright for retaking the House, and maybe even the Senate.
Better yet, Trump brought it on himself. Amid all the bluster and blunders of his second term in the White House, one key factor in his reversal of fortune, I think, has been largely overlooked. Let me explain.
Trump has always been the ultimate instant-gratification politician. He will say or do or promise anything to get through the moment — to get cheers from a rally crowd, fend off a reporter’s tough question, or react to a bad news story. Never mind if he doesn’t follow through (his “great” health-care plan is still just two weeks away), contradicts himself the next day, or simply denies that he ever said it. Whatever gets you through the news cycle.
And so, throughout most of his first term and three presidential campaigns, Trump has been Mr. Promise Them Anything. I’ll bring down inflation on day one. Closing the border and deporting illegal immigrants will rid the country of crime. No tax on tips. As dubious or misguided as these promises were, it was shrewd political strategy. Voters bought it.
The instant-gratification approach explains a lot of Trump’s actions and policies. Tax cuts? Never mind that they will only exacerbate the country’s mounting national debt; it means more money in your pocket right now (though disproportionately more if you’re rich). Denying climate change, shutting down wind farms, and pushing for more oil and gas drilling? The environmental damage won’t be fully apparent for years — when Trump is long out of office. Maybe dead.
But look at how things have changed. Start with the signature policy initiative of Trump’s second term: the tariffs. One can make a plausible argument, I suppose, that hiking the cost of imported goods will ultimately bring more jobs back to the U.S. But if so, it will take years. Right now, it only means higher prices, a disruption in global trade, and months of business confusion. Short-term pain for some theoretical long-term gain. No surprise that Americans aren’t buying it.
Or take the hot-button issue of AI, and the data centers being built to power it. Trump is a big booster, touting the need to win the AI race against China. He may well be right in the long run. But in the short term, he’s bucking a groundswell of local opposition to the mammoth, energy-guzzling data centers invading local communities across the country. Again, Trump is on the wrong side of an issue that affects people right now.
The prime example, of course, is the war in Iran. Trump’s misguided “war of choice” has driven up gas prices, drained the military’s resources, killed American service members, and bogged the country down in another fruitless war with no clear end in sight. Trump’s response? Take a little pain at the gas pump now; the important thing is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Sometime in the future. Maybe.
Just how did Trump betray his own political instincts and allow this to happen? Part of it is sheer ego: the confidence of a con man who thinks that he can talk his way out of any adversity. Part of it, surely, is the lack of any honest advice; he’s surrounded himself with yes-men and -women, whose primary skill seems to be buttering him up at televised cabinet meetings. And part of it is sheer greed: Trump is now catering to his big-tech donors and crypto pals, rather than to the voters he used to court so skillfully.
Or maybe it’s simply that, as he enters his 80s, Trump can no longer control his impulses. The country is suffering greatly, maybe even irretrievably, for it. But at least he’s given Democrats a chance to seize the moment and finally mete out the political punishment that is long overdue.
Richard Zoglin 