Trump's unforced error
And the opportunity for Democrats
I said that Trump would overreach, but even I didn’t imagine how quickly he would do so.
The new and former president is repeating the same mistake that he made in his first term, the same mistake that Joe Biden and others have made as well. This mistake is going to doom his presidency, and it was all very predictable.
The mistake is this: When treated to a slim 49 percent win, a 1.5 percent margin of victory, Trump and the Republicans are coming out of the gate acting like a party that has never held power before and never will again. They are like kids in the Executive Order candy store.
What they should be doing is building consensus. What they are doing in reality is alienating the swing voters that sent them to Washington.
Consider that Donald Trump was sent to the White House to do two things:
Get immigration under control
Lower prices
Unfortunately, Trump seems to care about only one of those points, and it is extremely likely that his cure will be worse than the problem for the other.
I’ve pointed out in the past that polling is mixed on the immigration issue. While there is broad agreement that the border needs to be secured, a strong majority also favors a pathway to citizenship (69 percent) but only a plurality (43 percent) supports mass deportations. Guess which policy the Trump Administration ran with?
And I don’t think Americans are going to like the mass deportations when they see them and experience the consequences. Already there are credible reports of immigrants with valid work permits and who are complying with asylum requirements being detained even though they do not have criminal records. And when ICE arrests the noncriminal immigrant mother of five children (who may or may not be US citizens) who is wearing the ankle monitor required by her asylum agreement, who do Trump supporters think the burden of feeding and caring for her minor children will fall to?
There are reports that the Administration has given ICE daily arrest quotas, which will undoubtedly make the problem of targeting law-abiding and legal immigrants worse. Illegals who are violent criminals are more difficult to find than the father who wears his ankle monitor to church. Expect many more stories like this as ICE gathers up the low-hanging fruit to meet its quotas.
Latinos and other immigrants who voted Republican are going to regret their choice as their friends, family, and neighbors fear arrest and deportation even if they aren’t illegal immigrants. It will be interesting to see if Trump’s immigration overreach stems the heretofore rising tide of Hispanic Republicans.
Trump’s war on immigrants (not just the illegal kind as we’ve just discovered) is also at odds with his war on high prices, which seems to have fallen by the wayside. The new president had promised to “immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” but prices, including eggs, coffee, and other consumer goods are going up and the issue no longer seems to be on Trump’s radar.
The immigration raids and the looming tariff wars both have an upward pressure on prices. As it turns out, immigrants, both legal and otherwise, produce a lot of our food, and a lot of the rest, such as coffee beans, are imports that are subject to Trump’s trade taxes. Only one state, Hawaii, produces any coffee at all.
Despite the accolades from MAGA, as you might expect, new polling shows that the upward pressure on prices and other radical moves by the new Administration are having a downward effect on Trump’s popularity. Reuters/Ipsos found that the share of Americans who approve of Trump is already dropping while those who disapprove has risen even more sharply.
There are more looming problems for Republicans as well. The Trump Administration’s on-again-off-again freeze of federal money that briefly impacted Medicaid funding won’t be popular. One of the quickest ways to become a minority is to threaten programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security that even Republicans don’t see as entitlements.
A federal judge slapped down the spending freeze as a Reagan appointee did to Trump’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship. Presidents cannot overrule Congress and refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress just as they cannot unilaterally rewrite or reinterpret the Constitution. Trump should know better since his first impeachment dealt with unlawfully withholding appropriated funds.
It’s early, but the 2026 midterms are already shaping up to be a Republican wipeout. Nevertheless, history has shown that Democrats cannot simply rely on voters to reject bad Republican candidates.
Democrats need to proactively recruit and nominate good candidates. And by good candidates, I mean people that moderate and independent swing voters will think are good candidates. I mean people who won’t make the Paragraph Three mistake that Trump is making now and that the Biden Adminstration made back in 2021.
Americans want a sane, competent, centrist government and they aren’t getting it from either party. That’s why the country keeps veering from progressive left to bat-poop-crazy right every few years. Voters shouldn’t have to choose between rounding up everyone who looks foreign or sex changes for toddlers.
It is especially important for Democrats to find moderates to run in red states. For instance, Georgia is a state with a very important Senate race in 2026. It is also a winnable state for Democrats.
BUT (and this is a big “but”) Democrats don’t have a prayer if they nominate a hard-left progressive who talks about banning assault rifles and transgender rights. Democrats should figure out that you have to tailor the message to your audience (as Republicans did in attacking Biden-Harris’s support of Israel in Arab and Muslim communities) because a red-state electorate is not a good audience for a staunch progressive. That’s especially true if Brian Kemp, Georgia’s popular governor, decides to challenge incumbent Senator Jon Ossof.
Georgia, like many states and districts, is closely divided but the last two or three percent of the vote is a difficult stretch for Democrats. As the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and atom bombs.
Many of us have pointed out that the Republican Party has moved to the left on many issues, but that leaves an opening for Democrats if they are also willing to change to reach out to moderate voters turned off by their hardline stances on issues like guns and abortion. A one-size-fits-all party is going to forfeit a lot of middle-of-the-road red-state voters to Republicans.
Bill Clinton famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was the key to Trump’s victory, but he has already forgotten it. He and Republicans will pay the price in upcoming elections.
Democrats can stay the course and they might well win in 2026 and 2028, but they stand a better chance of a long-term majority if they can shunt aside their radical fringe and win over moderate swing voters in the political middle.
America only has room for one crazy party and Republicans have seized that mantle from the loony left. Democrats can’t out-crazy MAGA so a better strategy is to be the sane, compassionate adults in the room.
Trump is no doubt banking on drill baby drill. When oil and gas starts flowing from places like ANWAR, more offshore sites, and government lands in the interior, that will drive prices down at the pump, which will, in turn, create downward pressure on commodities. Having said that, all of that better take place before the midterms, or, I agree, Trump will be a lame duck much sooner than he would like.