Losing the country
Speaking at The New York Times, their actually conservative columnist Ross Douthat said, “I want to tell you a secret. One that most conservatives on the internet don’t want you to know. A year into his second presidency, Donald Trump has lost the country.” You might not want to hear this, but Douthat is right.
Perhaps he is not right on the specific issues, but generally, he is right. Ignore the polls. The polling average is a better indication of where things are and the president is deeply unpopular. The generic ballot continues to show Democrats gaining. In 2018, the generic ballot had Democrats at over eight points. Right now, they are at five and going up.
Republicans have presumed that because Democrats are more unpopular than President Donald Trump, they would be able to keep Congress. But the GOP has forgotten about the majority of Americans willing to throw a middle finger at both parties. Americans may not want to give the Democrats the presidency, but they will gladly sit home and let the Democrats turn out in November to take back legislative power.
Republicans keep making excuses. The Texas State Senate special election was about local issues, a bad candidate and infighting. The Georgia State House special election was about local issues, a bad candidate, infighting and state party incompetence. That is eight state legislative elections the GOP lost in Republican seats. Republicans have lost Republican seats in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and other reliably Republican states.
To tell Republicans this is to be an apostate. They simply do not want to hear it. Like the Democrats before them, Republicans’ dreams of a majority are built now on lies they tell themselves. Did you know, for example, that American steel production has, for the first time in years, surpassed Japanese steel production? It is proof the tariffs are working and American manufacturing capacity is returning. Peter Navarro, the president’s tariff Rasputin, made a big push on this point just last week.
What Navarro did not mention is that American steel production just surpassed Japanese steel production because Japan had to take multiple steel facilities offline for repair. In truth, American manufacturing continues to decline and Americans are now paying most of the tariffs. The president’s team cheered the tariffs on aluminum and steel, but domestic producers then raised their prices. More Americans are in industries directly, negatively impacted by the tariffs than benefit from them.
On immigration, it is increasingly the case that the Department of Homeland Security is regularly lying to Americans, regurgitated by social media fans. One American citizen got detained by immigration authorities twice. After the first time, Homeland Security personnel said the man was detained because he tried to block agents from seizing illegal aliens and was obstructing justice. Then a video came out showing that the man had actually tried to stop agents from entering a construction zone to protect their safety. The man got arrested again at another site.
