The laws of political physics still apply

For every act of destruction, there is an equal and opposite act of construction

I mentioned two weeks ago that the tariffs and the subsequent pause of some of them were similar to the four act play we saw plenty of from 2017-2021. Judging by the events of the last week, it looks like we’re in Act 4. That’s the part where Trump caves. We saw that on a few fronts beginning on Tuesday.

One thing I didn’t get to last week in discussing Trump’s multifront effort to wreck everything positive the US has going for it was his attacks on the Fed’s independence. He had hurled insults at Jay Powell on Truth Social and had been discussing firing him behind the scenes for some time. That’s seems to be what caused the big stock market selloff on Monday. The next day, he was singing a very different tune.

He said he has no intention of firing Powell, but still bashed him for not lowering interest rates. At least in part because of his backing off, the stock market surged on Tuesday. It’s best to not pay attention to daily fluctuations. Nobody’s mental health was ever improved that way.

It really just seems like those influencing the stock market’s daily moves are grasping at straws. It’s as if they’re looking for any little bit of information that isn’t catastrophic. The president not firing the Fed Chair for no reason is what passes for good news these days.

Trump says he won’t fire Powell, but nobody knows what the next hour will bring. For now, he has been convinced that even talking about it is spooking markets and risks tanking the economy so he has backed down. I’m no authority on the Fed’s legal status, but from what I’ve read the president can only fire the Fed Chair “for cause.” That phrase does not include disagreeing with the Fed Chair on interest rates.

Even if he did fire Powell, the Fed Chair is just one vote. The Fed makes its decisions based on a vote by the Federal Open Market Committee. It includes several members, each of whom gets one vote. In the worst case scenario, if Trump fired Powell and replaced him with some hack, they would only get one vote and would likely be on the losing end each time. Still, that would be a bad situation and not something we should want to happen.

Trump not only backed down on firing Powell, he has somewhat backed down on imposing tariffs on China. He said the 145% tariffs he imposed aren’t going to happen. Supposedly, they will be reduced to “only” 50-65%. That would still be very high and would cause a lot of damage. Trump claimed he has talked to Xi several times recently, but China has said that never happened.

In typical Trump fashion, he’s proving to be a wuss. He screamed at the top of his lungs about how he was never going to back down and almost immediately did. China, and probably the rest of the world, has noticed and is banking on him backing down further. That is probably why China has said it’s in no rush to bring down some of its retaliatory tariffs. Maybe that’s just talk, but maybe not. China has been preparing for an economic conflict with the US for years and may be better capable of weathering an economic storm.

Trade wars can be won, but it’s not easy, especially against the world’s second largest economy. For the US to win a trade war against China, it would need allies. As I discussed last week, and this piece in The Atlantic does a great job of explaining, Trump has been doing the opposite of what the US should be doing. Pro tip, if you’re going to start a fight, make sure it’s a fight you can win. The US can’t win a trade war against China by itself and certainly not if it has alienated all of its allies.

They aren’t the only reason for it, but the tariffs have taken a toll on Trump’s approval rating. On average, his approval rating is 44% and disapproval rating is 52%. What little honeymoon period he had is over. At this point in their first or second terms, the only president with a lower approval rating than Trump has now is Trump in his first term. At the rate he’s going, he’ll beat that record soon enough.

Without a doubt, the uncertainty he has caused with tariffs has contributed to the gloomy economic sentiment from businesses and consumers. But his approval rating is low on just about everything. The New York Times poll, which is one of the best out there, found his approval rating on every issue tested to be negative. Immigration, which was previously a strength of his, is quickly becoming a weakness. Other polls have found similar results.

How I learned to stop worrying and write cold takes

I apologize in advance, but I’m going to take a bit of a victory lap here. I wrote three election post-mortems in November, a post in February on how Democrats are actually doing fine and another one in March on how Chuck Schumer was right to avoid a shutdown. I would say they are all looking very good right about now.

On Earth 2, where the government is shutdown, at a minimum, the attention is not all on Trump and his self-inflicted wounds. He would try to blame Democrats for the damage his tariffs were causing and may have gained some traction. Democrats in Congress and elsewhere owe Schumer a big thanks for saving them from that. I wrote that the anger many Democrats had at him would wear off once the Trump show resumed and, sure enough, that’s what is happening.

In each of my election post-mortems, I gave reasons to be optimistic about the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects. It wasn’t because the party was going to do anything, but because Trump was all but guaranteed to be unpopular. Contrary to what many of those in the politics business believed, I argued that Democrats didn’t need to fundamentally change to win again. Really, all they needed to do was sit tight and wait for Trump to overreach. Lo and behold, that is exactly what is happening.

I don’t have any special insight or predictive talent. As is my MO, I don’t predict much of anything. I just have some advantages and traits that many in the politics business lack. One of the biggest is I remember history, especially recent history (2004 - present) and how quickly post-election hot takes can become obsolete. I understand that each election cycle is different and has its own things going on. Looking at the most recent election and basing everything off of it going forward is just fighting the last battle.

Unlike many others in the politics business, I can separate my personal preferences from what would be the most electorally advantageous. The unsatisfactory truth is what matters a lot to me and many of those who are very politically engaged is completely foreign to those who are not very engaged, i.e., the people who decide elections. Those of us who are the most engaged are not normal people. Anyone reading this is not a normal person and that’s okay, just be aware of it.

Some who are very engaged have a tendency to get animated about culture war fights or the latest he said/she said happening on social media or on podcasts. That’s not necessarily bad and we all have to occupy our time somehow. The problem is when we forget how unusual we are. I wouldn’t say I never do that, but I do a better job of avoiding it than many others.

As a reader of many political writers and a follower on X of many more, I have observed three big mistakes those in the politics business often make that I have tended to avoid. The first is believing the circles you hang out in are representative of everywhere else. Those in the politics business are almost always educated, higher income people who overwhelmingly live in a few small parts of a few cities. Those circles are wildly unrepresentative of even the cities they’re in, to say nothing of the general public.

The second is believing what matters the most to you matters the most to everyone else. Those in the politics business certainly have things they care a lot about, particularly on cultural issues. But those are rarely things anyone outside of their small world even knows about. If you don’t believe me, find the least politically engaged person you know and ask them if they have ever heard the acronym DEI. If they say yes and know what it stands for, let me know and I’ll buy you lunch.

The third is believing your own personal experiences are what everyone else is going through. This is closely related to the second mistake. The example I like to use is wokeness. Just about everyone in the politics business has a strong opinion on it, myself included. Because of where they tend to live and hang out, many if not most of them have personally experienced it. I don’t fault them for having a reaction to it and having strong opinions on it, but what they don’t realize is how odd their situation is.

To make all that more concrete, I’m going to use the example of Bill Maher. I’ve watched his show on-and-off since I was in high school. He usually has great guests and has plenty of good takes. He is rightfully against wokeness, but has become pathologically obsessed with it over the years. He still harps about it even now when it barely has a pulse. From listening to some of his commentary, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s everywhere all the time.

To his credit, unlike some others out there, he has not gone MAGA or lost perspective on which side of the political spectrum poses the biggest threat to small l liberalism. Still, he is very animated by his hatred of wokeness and devotes a huge amount of time to railing against it. He genuinely believes normal people share his concerns and are as obsessed with it as he is. In his telling, that’s why Democrats don’t win all elections. Apparently, if it weren’t for wokeness, there would be no more Republicans or red states.

In his defense, he lives in Beverly Hills, which is full of wealthy, educated left-wingers. That’s exactly the kind of place where wokeness would thrive. The problem is he thinks everyone else is like the people he interacts with. Making that mistake has led him to come up with some of the worst takes I’ve ever heard. Examples include claiming Democrats won’t ever win an election again until wokeness is gone¹ and that Trump won because of it. Last year, he had a long rant about Canada where he attributed Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity mostly to wokeness. Of all the times I’ve heard him complain about Democrats or foreign world leaders, he’s never once mentioned this thing called inflation.

He doesn’t actually believe wokeness is the cause of every problem on earth, but you could be forgiven for thinking he does. According to him, public schools across the country are teaching it and every university is some kind of woke indoctrination center. Of all his rants against wokeness, those takes irritate me the most.

I’ve written before about the problems at some of our elite universities, but I’m glad they exist and are here. China would kill to have anything like it. The idea that we should burn them all down because of a few jackasses is plain stupid. The notion that because a few loudmouths at elite universities act up that means everyone at every university is like that is as logically sound as saying vaccines cause autism. Anyone who says all universities are woke needs to put away their electronic devices and go take a walk outside. Anyone who says public schools are like that has probably never set foot in one and doesn’t know the first thing about how school districts work.

Believe it or not, most people don’t live in Beverly Hills, Georgetown or Greenwich Village. Most people don’t go to elite universities or have any connection to them. Most people go to public K-12 schools, not Dalton.² Most people who use social media, watch TV and/or listen to podcasts don’t do it to hear about politics. The amount of attention most people devote to politics in any way, shape or form is very low. That is who your typical swing voters is.

The fact that I live in Houston and not in DC, New York or California probably helps me a lot in avoiding making those three mistakes. Almost everyone in the politics business lives in one of those places. Many of them know each other very well and spend plenty of time interacting with each other in person and online. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it has its pitfalls. It’s easy in any situation like that to fall victim to groupthink and to forget how unusual your personal situation is. Since I’m not a part of that crowd I don’t have that problem.

Another way I avoid making those mistakes is by having humility. I know what I don’t know and what I don’t know is almost everything. My area of expertise is US electoral politics. If I ever write that I’m an expert on anything else, you should assume my website has been hacked, I’ve gone insane or I’m being held hostage.

Thank you Trump, Democrats couldn’t have done it without you

In the case of the Democratic Party’s electoral fortunes, Trump is doing 90% of its work for it. According to the Times poll, his approval rating is at 42%. Let’s say that remains true from now until November 2026. If that happens, Democrats are going to do very well no matter what. The only way they could mess it up is if they nominate crackpots in key races, but I’m not worried about that. Of all the pathologies the party’s coalition can have, they tend to be very good about who they nominate.

Another reason for my election post-mortem optimism about the party’s prospects was that its current coalition is well-suited for lower turnout elections. Well, guess what? We’ve had several of those since November and Democrats have done very well. Between now and November 2028, we’re going to have a lot more of them.

As for all the doom and gloom about how Democrats we’re going to become a permanent minority because of the sharp turn among young voters towards Trump, let’s just say that’s looking a bit premature. If polling is anything close to accurate, Trump’s approval rating has fallen the most with voters 18-29. Contrary to the narrative that emerged after the election, young people have not gone MAGA. The boring, but much more sensible explanation for their shift is they were unhappy with the status quo and took it out on the incumbent party.³

It looks like they still feel that way. Now, Trump represents the status quo and Republicans are the incumbent party. It’s no surprise Trump is unpopular and Republicans are poised to lose their support because of it. So much for Gen Z being the most conservative generation ever.

Trying to predict the future electoral landscape is a fool’s errand. So many events happen in such a short time that nobody sees coming and they scramble the electoral map in ways few thought would happen. That’s happened a lot during the last decade and I’m sure it will happen a lot during the next decade. It’s a bad habit to project recent electoral trends onto the future, but it’s especially bad to base predictions of the future off of one election cycle.

For all anyone knows, by the 2030s, we could have blue Kansas and Alaska and red New Jersey. We could have blue Texas and red New York. Maybe New England will be red and the southeast will be blue. I have no idea whether any of that will happen, but anyone who says it’s impossible better have a time machine or they should shut their face.

With respect to the midterms next year, the political discourse seems to be that Democrats have almost no chance of winning back the Senate. It’s true on paper that the map is not great. The only states that didn’t easily go for Trump last year where Republicans are on defense are Maine and North Carolina. Even if Democrats win those races and keep the states they’re defending, that would leave them with 49 seats.

For Democrats to win back the Senate, there would need to be a blue wave, but that still would not be enough. According to much of the discourse I’ve read, Democrats would need to recruit candidates who are different from the perceived national party on some key issues. But nobody in the party seems to want to do that and so winning the Senate next year is hopeless. Running such candidates would upset advocacy groups and nobody wants to do that so they’d rather not even try.

Maybe that turns out to be right, but it’s way too early to be writing things off. We have 18 months to go and a lot will happen between now and then. Each state has its own filing deadline and we’re a long way from any of them.

Because some states like Ohio and Iowa have recently gone red, it’s assumed by many that they won’t revert back. States like Alaska, Texas and Kansas have never been blue and are seen as hopeless. That could be right, but we really don’t know. But we should at least consider some possibilities.

One is that the Trump show comes crashing down. Trump has never been a popular figure, but he has had one big thing going for him: the economy. His approval rating on the economy was always positive during his first term and was his best issue last year. That’s no longer true. His approval rating on the economy is underwater and the effects of his tariffs have barely been felt yet. Unless they are all undone soon, businesses and consumers are going to get hit hard.

If he tanks the economy, rest assured, the bottom will fall out. His approval rating now may be 44%, but it could easily be 34% if things go south. Should that happen, it will open a whole lot of doors. Funny enough, the states that are most likely to get hit the hardest by the tariffs are the ones that went for him. I’m not saying they’re all going to go blue, they aren’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Democrats win on some hostile terrain.

Another possibility is a lot of states that look red are only like that because of Trump. It may be that Trump has a unique connection with voters in places like Iowa that doesn’t carry over to other Republicans. If you think that won’t happen, just remember that’s exactly what happened with Obama. He had a strong appeal with many voters, particular in the midwest, but it didn’t carry over to anyone else.

Even Trump’s appeal may start to wear off now that he’s a lame duck. By the time the midterms roll around, he will be in his sixth year. Since Reconstruction, every two term president other than Clinton has experienced what is known as the six-year itch. What it refers to is a recurring pattern where presidents in their second term run into problems and their party suffers at the polls because of it. The sample size is not big, but call me skeptical Trump of all people will avoid that outcome.

Come November 2026, Trump’s act may have worn thin. Some of his supporters may feel demoralized and not vote. Others may have regrets about voting for him and may vote for Democrats as a check on him. Harris voters are likely to be turbocharged and eager to vote out Republicans. Combine that with Trump’s coalition being heavily reliant on low propensity voters and Democrats could win in all kinds of places nobody is thinking of today.

Something else to remember is we don’t always know who will be a great candidate. Just look at Georgia’s two senators. On paper, neither of them looked like senators in 2019 and no DC figures sought them out. Despite their low to non-existent name recognition and having never held elected office before, they both ran A+ level campaigns and beat the odds. Someone looking to run in a red state right now may not seem formidable, but could turn out to be a force.

The idea that good candidates will only run if they’re recruited by people from DC is false. Good candidates can be recruited, but often times they will run on their own initiative. If Trump continues to remain unpopular, potential candidates in red states will take a hard look at running, regardless of whether anyone in DC is asking them to.

1. Maybe I imagined the whole thing, but I’m pretty sure there was a big election in Wisconsin recently and Democrats won it in a rout. Not bad for a party that’s never going to win another election again.

2. According to some in the anti-woke crowd, I’m supposed to be outraged over what a $60,000 a year private K-12 school is teaching. Sorry to disappoint, but I couldn’t care any less. My sympathy for anyone sending their kids to a place like that is less than zero. If you’re sending your kids there, congratulations, you’re doing very well and you have plenty of other options. God forbid you send your kids to a public school and they have to interact with commoners.

3. Per a Pew Research Center poll, Trump’s approval rating with Hispanics is 27%. That number is probably an outlier, but directionally it’s right. That was another post-election hot take that’s not looking so good. Maybe, just maybe people were mad about inflation and voted against the incumbent party and it wasn’t an endorsement of MAGA. Just as there was no emerging Democratic majority after 2008, there is no emerging Republican majority now.