First: Do No Harm

 One of the many disappointing aspects of Trump's election in 2024 was the surge he had among young men and Hispanic voters. I remain convinced that a lot of this is a latent (or not so latent) refusal among these groups to vote for a woman. It might be culturally insensitive to say this about Hispanic voters, but I think there's merit in this argument.

Still, we have some solid evidence that this has reversed itself after just a half a year of Trump being Trump.

According the Economist/YouGov poll, Trump's approval rating has fallen to 40%, with 56% disapproving. Dig deeper and it gets worse for him. About 57% disapprove of his attacks on universities; only 13% want to see funding for research decreased.

If you dig into the crosstabs, you see the following. Hispanics approval has fallen to 28%; 18-29 year olds have fallen to 29%. His numbers are bolstered a bit by his economic approval numbers, where those two groups are 35 and 34% respectively, yet the numbers on inflation are in line with his overall numbers. 

What's more is where Trump's approval ratings were with these groups back in January: among Hispanics he was 42-47 and among under thirty year olds he was 48-43. Black support has dropped from 29-60 to 8-85. Independents dropped from 38-41 to 20-68.

All of this is before the real impact of his terrible economic policies have really sunk in. 

As Krugman notes (and I've been saying), deportations are inherently inflationary. Aside from AI, most sectors of the economy are at least in stasis, if not retreat, in the face of his chaotic whipsawing of tariffs and other bad ideas. The very reason he's trying to gin up more authoritarian shit from Texas to DC is because he - or at least his political team - see the coming electoral catastrophe. 

So, for Democrats, all the hand wringing about "How will we win the trust of Hispanics?" and "What can we do about young men?" can basically be resolved by Trump being Trump. Yes, push back everywhere. Yes, stymie and thwart his agenda using the levers of federalism.

But the only thing Democrats need to worry about when it comes to 2026 is making sure the elections are free and fair. They don't need a Project 2026; they just need not to be Trump.