The Reasonable Majority Is No Longer Silent

I will always believe that in both 2016 and 2024 many voters who cast ballots for the Felon were attracted by his granting a license to be overtly racist and to a lesser extent a desire to "own the libs", if you will. Yes, in both elections concerns a false narrative about economic security were grasp by much of the main stream media as the principal reason for votes cast for the Felon, but one cannot underestimate the racial animus and grievance towards those deemed "other" that motivated many voters to discard morality and decency and cast their vote for the Felon.  Now, that these voters - and those who were too lazy to vote - are seeming the fruits of their ill cast votes/laziness and are not liking what they are seeing.  Inflation and consumer prices are high and increasing while the Felon - someone who has likely never grocery shopped or paid his own utility bills during his lifetime - claims "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. Meanwhile, the brutality and deliberate cruelty by masked ICE thugs on daily display (and the fact that citizens are being threatened and/or abused) has generated revulsion among all but perhaps the most racist of the MAGA base.  Moreover, the obscene grifting and corruption of the Felon and his minions combined with the travesties done by ICE and Felon/GOP jihad against government programs that benefit millions is causing many who have heretofore remained silent to speak out in condemnation of what is happening. Indeed, I have been surprised by friends and acquaintances who I perceived as "conservative" that approvingly read this blog and/or have begun to speak out themselves.  A column in the New York Times looks at the so-called reasonable majority that is signaling that is increasingly unhappy with the Felon and his regime. Here are excerpts:

Believing in democracy does not require faith that majorities are always right. It does mean having confidence that most of your fellow citizens will, over time, approach public questions with a basic reasonableness. Abraham Lincoln, tradition has it, said it more pithily: “You cannot fool all the people all the time.”

A corollary to Lincoln, that you can’t fool all the people who voted for you all the time, explains the sharp decline in President Trump’s approval ratings.

A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach . . . . Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.

Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t. . . . . They may not be glued to every chaotic twist of this presidency, but they do pay attention and have concluded, reasonably, that this is not what they voted for.

How many? Let’s take Mr. Trump’s 49.8 percent of the 2024 popular vote as a base line and compare it with his approval ratings. . . . This suggests that 15 to 25 percent of his voters have changed their minds.

All this is obviously good news for Democrats, who extended their 2025 hot streak by winning the mayoralty in Miami on Tuesday. But it’s more than that. It dispels myths about Mr. Trump’s having magical powers to distract and deceive. It shows that for all the legitimate concerns about the breakdown of our media and information systems, reality can still get through.

The decay of Mr. Trump’s standing is a rebuke to widespread claims a year ago that his victory represented a fundamental realignment in American politics, akin to those led by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s or Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The case for a Trump realignment was built in large part on Republican wishcasting and Democratic despondency, married to a few facts, including substantial Trump gains among Latinos and young men. True, the Republicans secured majorities in the Senate and the House. But the G.O.P. won two fewer seats in the House in 2024 than it did two years earlier — far from the sweeping gains typically yielded by realigning elections.

But a nationwide trend in a single election is not the same as a realignment, and the president’s mercurial extremism squandered whatever opportunity the G.O.P. might have had to expand its map. My hunch is that Republicans will regret what they allowed him to throw away.

The Times again produced those fine county maps for the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia and the recent special House election in Tennessee. But this time, nearly all the arrows were blue, pointing toward the Democrats, and G.O.P. gains among Latinos and young men were largely wiped out. Genuine realignments don’t collapse so quickly.

Another response to 2024 was a backlash against Trump voters. Mr. Trump does better with voters who lack college degrees, and he once declared, “I love the poorly educated.” Some who were aghast at his victory blamed the outcome on the irrationality of low-information voters.

But to view some large share of the electorate as irrational is wrong and ought to be anathema to anyone who claims to hold a democratic worldview. Far more persuasive is the analysis that . . . . voters “actually do reason about parties, candidates and issues.” They draw on “information shortcuts” to “think about who and what political parties stand for” and “what government can and should do.” They engage in “low-information rationality.”

That so many swing voters used a Trump vote to express their dissatisfaction with the 2024 status quo has certainly had calamitous consequences. What should hearten friends of democracy is how many voters have weighed what Mr. Trump has done and found him acting, well, unreasonably.

Especially striking are the findings of a Public Religion Research Institute poll this fall that asked whether Mr. Trump had gone “too far” in a variety of his actions. Among respondents, 54 percent said he had gone too far on tariffs, as did 55 percent on cuts to grants to universities and 60 percent on cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. are especially vulnerable on cuts to enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies: A KFF survey last month found that 74 percent of Americans said they should be extended, not eliminated.

Even on immigration, Mr. Trump’s signature issue, his radical approach was unpopular: In the Public Religion Research Institute poll, 65 percent of respondents opposed deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons, 63 percent opposed arresting undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States with no criminal records, and 58 percent said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should not conceal their identities with masks or use unmarked vehicles.

Poll numbers are fickle. But in 2025, Trumpian flimflam hit its limits — even in the G.O.P. when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana State Senate defied the president’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting. His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives to a leader and a movement it has found wanting.

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The Felon's Claim "Affordability" Is a Hoax Falls Flat

The Felon is a malignant narcissist who believes he is smarter and more talented than anyone else.  He was also born to wealth - ill begotten or otherwise - and likely has never grocery shopped for his family or even paid utility bills. In short, he is clueless about the financial struggles most Americans face and the every day stress of trying to pay bills.  During the 2024 election campaign, the Felon depicted the economy under Joe Biden as terrible - it actually wasn't, especially compared to 11 months into the Felon's second regime - and promised voters that he would lower prices "on day one,"   That, of course, has not happened and the Felon's tariffs have only made matters worse by driving up consumer prices and generating so much uncertainty that many businesses are holding off hiring or laying off workers.    A column in the New York Times looks at the reality of tariffs:

For President Trump, the affordability crisis is a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats. For the customer checking out at Costco or Walmart, it’s a rising grocery bill threatening already fragile household finances. . . . . The reality is that Trump does not want the story properly told.

I originally set out to try to put a dollar figure on how much the median family has lost this year as a result of Trump’s tax and spending policies, his tariffs and immigration restrictions and their effects on growth, inflation, wages, taxes and wealth. . . . . when I put it all together for the median household, I came up with an estimated net loss of $2,250 in 2025 spending power.

The median household income after taxes was $72,330 in 2024, according to the census. The $2,250 amounts to a 3.1 percent loss in spending power, more than enough to persuade quite a few voters that the economy under Trump has gone sour, an assessment confirmed by poll after poll. This disenchantment has begun to spread to Trump’s own voters.

As I dug into the research, something far more important than the specific dollar estimate of an average family’s loss emerged: Trump’s economic policies have put the nation on a long-term path of decline, in terms of gross domestic product, employment, capital investment and wage growth. . . . . . The policy mix of the Trump administration feels similar to Brexit to me. It is likely slowing growth down and lowering living standards relative to what would have been achieved without this policy mix.

Despite this reality, the Felon recently gave himself a "A++++" on his handling of the economy even as more and more blame is being laid at the Felon's feet by voters in general and even a growing percentage of MAGA voters.  The Felon is trying to gaslight Americans to get them to disbelieve what they are in fact experiencing.  Hopefully, voters and consumers do not buy into the Felon's latest lies. At piece at Politico looks at new poll results that disprove the Felon's claims:

Americans are struggling with affordability pressures that are squeezing everything from their everyday necessities to their biggest-ticket expenses.

Nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month by Public First. The results paint a grim portrait of spending constraints: More than a quarter, 27 percent, said they have skipped a medical check-up because of costs within the last two years, and 23 percent said they have skipped a prescription dose for the same reason.

While President Donald Trump gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade on the economy during an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, the poll results underscore that voters’ financial anxieties have become deeply intertwined with their politics, shaping how they evaluate the White House’s response to rising costs.

Trump insists that “prices are all coming down,” as he told Burns, but the results pose a challenge for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms, with even some of the president’s own voters showing signs that their patience with high costs is wearing thin.

POLITICO reporters covering a variety of beats have spent the past few weeks poring over the poll results. We asked some of them to unpack the data for us and tell us what stood out most. Here’s what they said:

TARIFFS

The big observation: Trump has struggled to persuade even parts of his base to accept the idea that tariffs will pay off over time. . . . . What really stood out: Staunch supporters of the president were roughly twice as likely as other Republicans to believe tariffs are a net positive already, although large shares of both groups still said they view them as harmful. . . . . it remains a delicate political issue when a lot of voters may be more concerned about their everyday expenses rather than a broader global calculus.

COLLEGE COSTS

The big observation: The tuition is too damn high. Only a quarter of Americans think college is worth the money, regardless of party, The POLITICO Poll found. Overall, 62 percent of Americans said college isn’t worth it because it either costs too much or doesn’t provide enough benefits — a belief supported most by 18- to 24-year-olds and those aged 65 and up.

The income gap between Americans with college degrees and those with high school degrees widened over the last two decades. And recent research from the U.S. Census Bureau found the median income of households headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher last year was more than double the median income of those with householders with a high school degree but no college.

The Trump administration has pressed universities to control their costs — attempting to tie those efforts to the schools’ access to federal funds — but also shed the student loan forgiveness programs Biden championed.

FOOD PRICES

The big observation: Trump attributed his 2024 victory over Biden partly to his pledge to bring down the cost of everyday goods like eggs. But a year later, Americans are more worried about being able to afford groceries than the rising cost of housing or health care, according to The POLITICO Poll.

Half of those surveyed said they find it difficult to pay for food. And a majority, 55 percent, blame the Trump administration for the high prices — even as the White House emphasizes its focus on affordability and the economy ahead of the midterm.

What really stood out: As affordability increasingly becomes a political flashpoint, with Democrats eager to seize on GOP vulnerabilities, a meaningful share of Trump’s own voters — 22 percent — blame the president for the high grocery costs.

HOUSING

The big observation: Concerns about housing costs — which have represented a major share of inflation in recent years — eclipsed those for health care, utilities, commuting expenses and child care, The POLITICO Poll found.

Only grocery costs bested the issue across more than a dozen expenses when respondents were asked to identify the items they find “the most challenging” to afford. The high cost of housing is also coming through in other metrics: The median age of first-time homebuyers climbed to a record high of 40 this year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

What really stood out: The POLITICO Poll found that homebuying and rental costs were of particular concern for young and Hispanic adults, two constituencies whose support for Trump last year helped Republicans regain control of Washington.

Those surveyed spread the blame for high housing costs across the Trump and Biden administrations, state and local governments and private landlords. But it’s Republicans who have to protect their hold on Washington heading into the midterms while the president generally dismissed affordability this week as “a hoax that was started by Democrats.”

HEALTH CARE COSTS

The big observation: Nearly half of American adults find it difficult to afford health care, according to The POLITICO Poll. Health care ranked as the No. 3 cost concern for respondents.

Democrats are pushing to extend pandemic-era enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year. If they end, prices will skyrocket for many Americans who buy insurance through the Obamacare marketplace. Democrats, who have struggled since Trump’s victory to coalesce around a campaign message, are banking on health care costs and other affordability concerns being a winning issue for them in the midterms.

While poll respondents overall said they were more likely to trust Democrats to bring down health care costs, the overall split may not be concerning to Republicans running for reelection: 42 percent favored Democrats on the issue, compared with 33 percent favoring Republicans. The question becomes whether the non-MAGA Republicans can be persuaded to break ranks, or undecided voters are wooed.

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Trump 2.0: Mistaking Cruelty and Brutality for Strength

One of the hallmarks of the Felon's second regime is the zeal with which gratuitous cruelty is visited on those disliked by the Felon and/or his principal henchmen and henchwomen. Be it the horrible treatment of mostly brown-skinned undocumented immigrants, the use of the National Guard to intimidate citizens and immigrants alike, or most gruesomely the murder of those on alleged "drug boats" when no documented proof of guilt or actual drug running has yet to be provided.  Part of this cavalcade of cruelty may stem from the Felon's desire to be a strongman/dictator like Vladimir Putin and others while part seemingly stems from the racial hatred of the all too visible white supremacists within the regime. Yet more of this embrace of cruelty, in my view, arises from the Christofascists within the regime and the MAGA base who thrill at seeing their perceived enemies suffer harm like some of the brutality found in the Old Testament (these people are anything but true followers of Christ).  The problem for the Felon and his regime is that a majority of Americans have not walked away from basic morality and view the regime's cruelty and brutality with revulsion. Hence the Felon and his regime's resistance to releasing the unedited video of the second strike against two hapless men struggling in the water and clinging to wreckage after their boat was destroyed by a drone strike.  As a piece in The Atlantic lays out, this confusion of cruelty and brutality for strength has American allies ceasing intelligence sharing and much of the public even less supportive of the Felon's regime:

In the late 19th century, the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley set out on what he believed would be his greatest achievement: the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He imagined himself crossing Africa, rescuing an isolated provincial governor, and returning home to the applause of a grateful empire.

The expedition he led, however, was anything but noble. Stanley’s caravan pillaged some villages for food, burned others that resisted, and killed many Africans who resisted his advance. Disease and starvation claimed many of his own porters. What he saw as necessary resolve looked, even to some of his contemporaries, like something far more troubling.

When Stanley published In Darkest Africa, in 1890, he recounted these episodes with a confidence that now seems astonishing. He assumed the British public, which had initially welcomed him home to great acclaim, would admire his firmness. Instead, they recoiled at his brutality.

Those who had once celebrated imperial adventure now saw needless killing and a man who appeared unmoved by the suffering he caused. Stanley had mistaken brutality for strength, and the public recognition of his error marked the beginning of his fall from national hero to cautionary tale.

I thought about this history as new information emerged about the Trump administration’s campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Under this program, small vessels suspected of carrying drugs were hit with military-grade munitions, often without any attempt to detain or even warn those aboard. In at least one case, the strikes didn’t end when the boat was destroyed. Survivors adrift on the wreckage in open water were killed in a second attack, a “double tap” designed to finish the job.

During my 18 years in the House and Senate, I sat through countless briefings on when and how lethal force could be used. Later, as ambassador to Turkey, I saw how closely the world watches when we choose to honor those limits—or choose not to do so. That perspective makes these boat strikes impossible to wave off as routine. They reflect choices that fall well outside the standards we have long claimed to uphold.

The administration has resisted releasing full video of these incidents, citing national security. But the more plausible concern is political and moral. It knows what the public reaction would be. Americans have strong feelings about drug trafficking, but few believe that killing people as they attempt to stay alive in the ocean fits within the bounds of justifiable force. Once confronted with the footage, most Americans would question not only the legality of the operation but the instinct behind it.

This is the thread that links President Donald Trump to Stanley. Both believed their missions were righteous enough to justify whatever means were employed. Both assumed that the public, deep down, would admire their toughness. But democracies have never fully embraced that logic. Citizens can support firm action while still holding on to their humanity. Death inflicted on the helpless is never an act of strength; it is what remains when strength forgets its purpose.

That recognition seems to exist even among some in the administration. The reluctance to release the footage suggests an awareness of the moral intuition that they fear the public will follow. Americans may disagree on many things, but they still distinguish between necessary force and needless killing.

Stanley misread the public of his time. He thought it would see heroism where it saw cruelty. The question now is whether our own leaders are making the same mistake.

The public deserves the chance to judge for itself. Release the video, Mr. President.

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