In the year since Democrats lost the 2024 election, with Donald Trump beating then President Biden in all seven swing states, they’ve struggled to admit exactly what went wrong.
It wasn’t one thing. For starters, Biden got precipitously older in the last two years of his presidency, often leading to moments that seemed to concern voters more than it did those closest to Biden and Dems in leadership, who insisted he was in perfect health.
Then there were several problems of their own making. Biden’s decision to end Trump’s Remain-in-Mexico immigration policy opened our borders to millions of asylum-seekers without the resources to match, breeding resentment and fear in cities and towns across the country over the crush of a new population explosion.
Dems’ soft-on-crime policies in cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Portland — from ending cash bail to sentencing reform and defund the police rhetoric — inarguably made voters feel less safe, and resulted in the ouster of numerous Dem mayors and DAs for failing their cities.
Other problems were inherited or unexpected, like a post-COVID economy and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, respectively.
But the biggest problem was that Dems seemed totally out of touch with Americans’ problems. Though voters were telling them over and over again that they were worried about the economy, crime and immigration, Democrats looked them straight in the eye and said: the economy is strong as hell, crime is down, and immigration isn’t a crisis.
It was a recipe for disaster, and disaster is what they got. Republicans now control the courts, the House, the Senate, and the White House, and Trump got a second chance at wrecking our democracy.
Now, with a year before midterm elections that will tell Republicans and Trump in fairly definitive terms what voters think of them, the shoe appears to be on the other foot.
Trump’s obvious cognitive and physical decline — falling asleep in Cabinet meetings, rambling incoherently in press conferences, unexplained medical issues — should be worrisome to Republicans and those in Trump’s inner circle.
Then there are the problems of Republicans’ and Trump’s own making. His definitively dumb tariffs have made the cost of goods more expensive, the cost of operating business more expensive, and unemployment rise. Even as they try to walk tariffs back, the uncertainty he’s created has led to less foreign investment in the U.S., which trickles down to consumers.
Likewise, Trump’s failure to produce the Epstein files, as he promised, has divided MAGA influencers, and has frustrated his base; sloppy and ineffectual DOGE cuts felt unstrategic and pointless; the longest government shutdown in history felt unnecessarily punitive; and Trump’s foreign adventuring — threatening a war with Venezuela, striking Iran’s nukes, bailing out Argentina — felt like anything but America First.
But worst of all, Trump is making Biden’s fatal mistake. He’s telling voters they’re wrong about how they feel.
Polling shows Trump with an abysmal 36% approval rating in the latest Gallup poll, a new second-term low. And even more ominous, a CNN/SSRS poll last month found 61% of Americans believe Trump’s policies “have worsened economic conditions in this country.” Voters, including many of his own, are putting the blame squarely on him.
Trump’s befuddling and dangerous response has been to tell them affordability — the issue they care the most about — is a Democratic “hoax,” “scam,” and “con job.”
During last week’s Cabinet meeting, he sounded a lot like Biden when he insisted, “Our country is wealthy again and secure again.”
His surrogates are similarly brushing off voter concerns. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on one of the Sunday shows, “The economy has been better than we thought,” and “I think, next year, we’re going to move on to prosperity.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said everyone needs to “relax.”
“We are exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be. Steady at the wheel, everybody, it’s going to be fine. Our best days are ahead of us. Americans are going to be feeling a lot better in the early part of next year.”
But the early part of next year is around the corner. And so are midterm elections. If Johnson’s not worried, his members certainly are. And they’re starting to talk openly about the party’s failure to sharpen its messaging.
“If we don’t do that, we would be morons, because the economy is very much on people’s minds,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales.
Other lawmakers worry it’s not just a messaging problem, but a policy problem, and they’re right to.
But Trump seems either oblivious to or unbothered by the pain. And he’s repeating all the mistakes Dems made in 2024. If Republicans don’t turn things around, and quick, they’ll surely suffer the same fate.
