While I can hardly claim to be a prophet or anything, it feels like American politics has grown fairly predictable to me in recent decades. There are certain trends which feel consistent, perhaps even inescapable. Here are some which I have noticed:
1. Things will consistently get worse, and with both of the major parties.
2. Americans will elect the seemingly worst possible option for the time as president.
3. Americans will really only come to regret their choice after the fact, when it is obviously too late.
4. Things will not really improve all that much when Americans finally try something different, and so they repeat this cycle (see rule number one).
Sorry if that sounds very pessimistic. But this is what feels like the sad truth in American politics these days.
As I mentioned her before here and elsewhere, the last election felt not only predictable, but inevitable to me for a long, long time. Not that the results went like I wanted them. It felt to me like many Americans - even most Americans - were appalled by Trump's first term. It was filled with ridiculous headlines which embarrassed the nation and compromised it's standing around the world. From his seeming struggle to condemn outright neo-Nazis and blatant, out in the open white supremacists, to being literally laughed at during a speech in front of the United Nations after apparently mistaking it for one of his ridiculous political rallies, to receiving worldwide condemnation for many other unfortunate headlines after pulling out of the Paris Accord, pulling out of a nuclear accord with Iran, dismissing literally dozens of countries in Africa and Latin America as "shithole nations," championing pseudoscience, and then having the gall to use the same national emergency which he had consistently undermined the seriousness of as grounds to try and push back the election in 2020 when it looked unfavorable to him. Plus, there was January 6th, when he directed his crowd to the Capitol building to interfere with the results of a democratic election, since he wound up on the short end of it. And those are only a few of the many, many, many stories which just relentlessly kept coming out of Washington during those four years.
Then, in the four years in between the two Trump presidencies, he ramped up the division and hatred. He also alarmed many people by not backing away from claims that he would be a dictator, claiming that he would indeed become a dictator on "day one," although he claimed that he would give those dictatorial powers up. He also tried to comfort his crowd at a rally by assuring them that they needed to vote this one time for him, and then would never have to vote ever again. Then, as if all of that was not alarming enough, Trump posted on his Truth Social that parts of the Constitution itself might need to be suspended.
So after all of that, of course the country voted him in for a second term this past November. How could they resist taking that plunge once again?
Also just as predictable are the results, which were exactly what Trump's detractors were warning about. His approval ratings are plummeting. Maybe it's that he did not follow through on what most people felt was the most influential campaign promise of lowing the price of groceries and gas, which was something which would have been difficult for anyone to achieve (although Trump himself only admitted this after the election, of course). Or maybe it is how he and his administration dropped all pretense of not being involved or interested in Project 2025 once he was in office and instead have been aggressively pursuing these very policies. Or maybe it's about that glowing economy - which he always uses stock market numbers as irrefutable proof of - just has not taken off since he assumed office and, if anything, has been plummetting as a direct result of his policies? Or maybe it's how unnecessarily hostile he has been to numerous other countries, all allies of the United States (at least before Trump), including Canada (his relentless insistence that it will be the 51st State), or threats of militarily taking over Greenland or the Panama Canal or Gaza, or more recently, his disastrous meeting with Zelensky and withdrawing American military aid to Ukraine. Or perhaps it is how aggressively he and his administration have been trying to grab more power, taking over the purse strings from Congress (not some minor point) and continuing to act like he is above the law and not answerable to courts. In short, how he seems to have become a de facto dictator, just as so many, many people so frequently warned about.
All of this reminded me a bit too much, frankly, of another election two decades ago. Back then, George W. Bush had also given the country four years of pure and utter chaos. As a candidate, Bush had promised to restore order, dignity, and integrity to the White House. Instead, we got numerous major corporate scandals, from Enron to Blackwater to Halliburton to all of those numerous "no bid contracts" during the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Speaking of which, he justified this invasion of a sovereign nation with a whole bunch of lies and misleading statements. After presiding over the biggest national security disaster in American history (9/11) - which occurred eight months into his term, but which his administration blamed the previous administration for - he insisted that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were to blame. He and other prominent members of the administration kept using Hussein and Iraq in the same sentence as the global war on terror and mushroom clouds and all of those things. Bush also insisted that Saddam's Iraq had built a massive arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's), which he fully intended to use. There was even the preposterous claim that Hussein had a 45-minute response time for retaliatory strikes, which would have placed his Iraq as a virtual superpower, even though that did not stop members of the Bush administration from predicting a very quick and decisive victory. Instead, it wound up being one of the longest wars in American history.
Still, after all of that nonsense, the American people gifted Bush with another term. The prior election, there were all sorts of doubts and question marks regarding Bush's victory, after having failed to win the popular vote, and then having had some questionable advantages in the key state of Florida. That included Jeb Bush, then the sitting Governor of Florida, overseeing the fairness of the election. Also, the Supreme Court being in the pocket of the Bush team. But there were no such controversies in 2004, as the American people rewarded all of those wonderful gifts which Bush had brought to his country with yet another four years in office.
Yay.
The second Bush term was more of the same. Corporate scandals, the badly mishandled wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Also, Bush was blamed for having botched the response to Hurricane Katrina. Finally, as his grand finale of sorts, Bush nearly ran the American economy to the ground.
Americans seemed to finally wise up to how poor a president he was, although even that I tend to question. Just months into his second term, Bush's approval ratings plummeted to historical lows. And they stayed there for the duration of his time in office. Yet even then, just months after Bush left office, there were images of him with "Miss Me Yet"" written underneath. Polls showed that Bush's approval ratings began to sore almost as soon as he was out of office. That says something about both the collective memory and, frankly, intelligence of Americans. In both cases, I suspect that what it says is not flattering to Americans.
So given all of that, do I now rejoice when it seems that finally, Trump's approval ratings are suffering as a result of his transparent unquenchable thirst for more power, or his seemingly making a point of making enemies of friends? Or how his tariffs - which also were unprovoked - likely will hurt the American economy and, if anything, raise the price of goods still more?
Nope. Because I remember that image of the failed Bush following his presidency, when the American people actually began to have amnesia and remembered him as being far more successful and likeable than he really was while president. They allowed Bush to get away with pretty much everything, much as they are and will continue to allow Trump to get away with everything.
Now, here's a simple truth. While the headlines suggest that Trump should be worrying about his supposedly plummeting approval ratings, my own suspicion is that the Trump team just doesn't care. Nor do they have to. After all, he just won the election four months ago. And he is only six or so weeks into a term which will last four years. He's not going anywhere. Hell, even the midterm elections are a couple of years away. What does it matter if the fickle opinion of Americans has grown unfavorable (for now)? Wait a few weeks, see if Trump does not manage to convince many Americans that everything that is going wrong is somehow Biden's fault, which is his usual fallback argument. The American people seem to swallow that up time and time again, don't they?
Let's be honest for a second, though. While his approval numbers are low (not nearly low enough, as far as I am concerned), Americans really seem not to get it, collectively. Oh, sure, there are definitely people - and a growing number of them - who do get that he is a threat to democracy and decency. But they appear not to be motivated enough to show up in strong enough numbers to prevent a man like Trump from obtaining office in the first place. And they still barely constitute roughly half the American population.
As for the other half, there are few ways that anyone can even approach finding some kind of excuse for their rationale. Either they are willfully stupid - it's not like they have not ample warning after a decade of Trump's bullshit - or, far more sinister, they actually desire what Trump wants. My growing suspicion is that, much like people were hesitant to express their support for Trump in the beginning, tens of millions of Americans were hesitant to express their support for a de facto end to American democracy as we know it. But just as Trump supporters came out of the woodwork once he had a real chance of winning, and especially once he had obtained power, more and more MAGA members will come out of the woodwork and champion this new, de facto dictatorship. It is still the early days, so the dictatorship is still fragile and has not yet fully managed to take over. But give them some time, and a growing number of Americans giving them stronger loyalty and support, and it might start to really take stronger root at the expense of the obviously dying American tree of liberty.
Well, it stood for almost 250 years, so it had a good run, right?
Call me cynical, but I feel like we are collectively watching it happen, and with tens of millions of us actually applauding it.
One way or the other, the American people chose this course. I am not even just talking about Trump supporters here, because far too many Trump haters seem to think that everything would magically be right again with the world if Trump simply disappeared. It seems clear to me that Trump is a symptom of what is wrong with the country, and not specifically what ails us. Before Trump, there was much that was going wrong. Without Trump now, there will be plenty that will continue to go wrong. In fact, the problems here run much, much deeper. And since we collectively keep bending over backwards to avoid dealing with our real problems and admitting to our very real limitations, these problems will only continue to grow out of control.
Let's not forget that ultimately, it was Americans who chose this. I agree with the assessment of some that it is average Trump voters who generally will be harmed the most by Trump policies. Again, though, they chose this. Enough of them chose this to have imposed this imperial presidency on the rest of us - twice now! So whatever happens, we Americans collectively chose it and deserve our fate.
Trump’s downward trajectory by Mark Mellman, opinion contributor - 03/05/25 12:
https://thehill.com/opinion/5177042-trump-approval-ratings-falling/
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