
As a three-time Trump voter with no regrets, I don’t like this message any more than most of you. So don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger.
The message is the Republicans in next fall’s midterm elections will lose the House, bigly, and probably the Senate.
If politics is indeed “war by other means,” expect the political war next fall to be bloody. Think Battle of the Little Bighorn. Think Stalingrad. Think Pickett’s Charge. Think the Battle of Midway. Think Waterloo. It will be one-sided.
Oh, I know the President has done some terrific things – at great personal risk to himself, by the way – even if they were sometimes done unartfully.
Stopping illegal immigration is near the top of the list. His crude methods were probably by design but might have been by fortuitous accident. Either way, he sent a message that transcended language barriers: The United States of America doesn’t welcome illegal immigrants anymore, and illegals who come anyway may find themselves on a one-way flight to West Africa. Due process? Mayyyybe . . . .
As a result, illegal immigration is at the lowest point in decades. The southern border in particular is more like, well, a nation’s border. All this has produced some human pain. Fixing big problems that politicians tolerated and sometimes encouraged often has that effect.
In the Middle East, the President let the Israelis beat and batter the barbarians of Hamas and then brokered a quasi-peace between the two. Even better, he prevented a nuclear Iran/Israel war by handing the Persians their biggest defeat since the Battle of Marathon two and a half millennia ago.
On tariffs, however, the President got out of his depth. His tariffs were defensible as an economic matter, maybe, but not as a legal matter. He will lose when the Supreme Court issues its decision next Spring – perhaps in a 9-0 decision – and the Court signaled as much in oral arguments a couple of weeks ago. At best, the decision will be 7-2 against the President.
The unravelling of those tariffs, which will have been in effect illegally for as much as a year, will be messy and embarrassing for the administration.
Intangibles are the most notable things on the score card for this administration. On the plus side, the President has made “woke” a four-letter word. That’s more than a stylistic change. Wokeness and all that it entails – abolition of merit, obsession with skin color and sexual preferences, the euphemizing of language, ubiquitous victimization – was highly destructive to America and the world.
On the minus side, the President has shown a tendency to say or tweet what he thinks in a way that often and needlessly offends. The most recent example was when a reporter persisted in asking yet another follow-up question during a press conference. Most reporters are loathsome creatures, but they paid to ask – nay, shout – questions in that manner.
The President could have ignored the reporter, or rebuked her with something like “let’s move on.”
Instead, he barked “Quiet, piggy!”
That may not bother you but it does bother millions of Americans, particularly women. Such people vote.
Right now, approval surveys suggest that many of them are sufficiently turned off by these sorts of crude insults that their vote will be against the GOP next fall. The outcome of the special elections around the country a few weeks ago supports that conclusion.
Forget about peace in the Middle East, the solving of the immigration debacle, and the mixed outcome on tariffs. Because the people will forget about those things.
What many of them will remember is that they dislike the President on a personal level. People vote against people they dislike. Right now, a large and growing number of people dislike the President.
That’s a fundamental flaw in representative democracy, but it’s an unavoidable aspect of human nature. We’ll see the results next fall.
Now, before you bark “Quiet, piggy!” at me, remember: I’m just the messenger and just doing my job. (And in case you think it’s relevant, I’m 6’ tall and weigh 160 pounds.)