The blitzkrieg of Project 2025 was very much designed to "move fast and break things." They understood, on some level, that there would be a thermostatic reaction to bad and unpopular policies. The idea was to lock in those bad and unpopular policies before resistance could form.
Fundamental to this dynamic would be Trump's approval numbers. For reasons that defy belief, he actually started as fairly popular. Perhaps because - unlike in 2016 - he had an electoral mandate with a plurality of the vote or perhaps because he was suffused in the glow of nostalgia for the pre-2019 economy. As long as he remained popular, they could count on limited friction, especially from otherwise wavering Republicans.
Well, Pew is the latest entry in reputable polling that shows his approval rating collapsing pretty quickly. To be at 59% disapproval before your 100 days are up is a pretty impressive cratering.
What's more, you see this across the board. You have wankers like Nate Silver arguing that Democrats should focus on the economy and ONLY on the economy, because any discussion of immigration or due process rights plays into Trump's strengths. This was true during the campaign, but that's because people assumed Trump would do what they wanted him to do rather than what he was always going to do.
Trump is now underwater on immigration. He's still popular on border control, but his rampant lawlessness - which Silver suggests we ignore to focus on the economy - has soured people on the way he is trampling civil and legal rights. The Reuters/Ipsos poll has 82% of respondents saying Trump should follow court orders, even if he disagrees with them. Pew has the number at 78%, but it rises to 88% if it's the Supreme Court. Even 65% of Republicans say that Trump should stop doing something if a court says it's illegal with that number rising to 82% of Republicans when the Supreme Court says so.
Pew finds that 59% of Americans think Trump and Musk are being "too careless" in their cutting, and that is before people start missing checks from Social Security or the VA.
Authoritarianism is brittle, precisely because it relies on overwhelming brute force. This was the logic of the speed of Project 2025. For all the Very Savvy commentators like Silver saying that Chris Von Hollen steps on core messaging by caring about the due process rights of one of his constituents, the reality is that you do have to oppose everything.
Finding a common language is important. I'd argued that "tyranny" works better than fascism, because it resonates with the 250th anniversary of American independence, but also because it works across so many levels.
Trump is a tyrant for deporting people without due process and joking (or not) that he wants to do the same to American citizens. Trump is a tyrant for leveling tariffs without congressional approval. Trump is a tyrant for gutting agencies and budgets created by the people's Congress and in contravention of all existing law. Trump is a tyrant for enriching himself personally with barely disguised bribes and refusing oversight.
You oppose Trump's tyranny because you oppose tyranny. It couldn't be more American. Shit, MAGAs started out 15 years ago resurrecting the Gadsden flag, because they thought giving more Americans health care was tyranny.
Trump's falling approval ratings are almost certainly linked to his failures on the tariffs. We could be on the verge of the sort of empty shelves that we last saw with Covid. When a president loses the basic support of the people on one thing, he loses it across the board. However, those cracks can appear anywhere.
Keep attacking him. On everything. People are starting to listen.
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