MSNBC Admits It Is Possible for Democrats to Hurt Trump Politically
"Trump is already one of the most unpopular presidents in history, and despite the appearance Republicans tried to paint that he had an overwhelming mandate to implement his agenda, the White House response to polling shows that there are limits to what the regime can get away with.
Now, Democrats just need to get voters to pay attention." --Katelyn Burns, MSNBC
Even with some Democrats still playing the political game of statesmanship abandoned by the GOP thirty years ago, and with a 26% approval rate in Congress, both of which can look, to frustrated constituents, like a deliberate attempt to fail, it seems that Trump's incompetence, insanity, ignorance and demented ineptness will be the best strategy Democrats have looking forward to the midterm elections.
We have some of the most incredibly and unbelieveably unqualified, incompetent individuals running the major departments of our government as we have ever seen in our entire history, and that is saying a lot. We have Kristi Noem running the Department of Homeland Security thinking that a series of campaign television commercials, at taxpayer expense, is the way to keep the country safe from internal security problems. How safe is that making anyone feel? We have Hegseth in charge of the Defense Department, using it more as a platform for pseudo-Christian heretics and religious revivals than as a means of defending the country against its external enemies.
Does anyone really feel safe? If so, that's just because they are ignorant of the real danger, not because we are really safe.
The fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is holding down a government executive leadership post, and not holding down a bed in an insane asylum is, perhaps, the one position in the Trump administration that characterizes its inept incompetence more than any other. The other position which represents a deliberate attempt to engender wholesale disrespect and disregard for government and for the Constitution is having Pam Bondi serve as Attorney General. She is more clueless than Merrick Garland ever was, with a level of incompetence that would be dangerous if she actually showed up for work and did anything.
The biggest personal disappointment in Trump's cabinet is the Secretary of being asleep, formerly the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio who admitted in a congessional hearing that he is the single most clueless person in the government. He was clueless about the fact that a whole group of foreigners were present within the boundaries of the United States to curry the favor of the president with bribes in the form of investing in one of his businesses, completely illegal according to the constitition, completely ignored by the lawless demagogue in the White House.
The Vice-President, who is a clueless moron, is being true to form. Fortunately, he doesn't have any responsibility except to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency. And the only good thing about that is that if it happened, it means there's no Trump. While it would mean that we have an even more incompetent, and clueless idiot in the White House than we already do, it also means that the entire Project 2025 agenda collapses, as self-preservation trumps [couldn't resist] chaos.
Then there is Trump himself. I thought his first term more or less woke this country up from its slumber, with his demonstration of just how much damage one man can do to the government and to the nation, even with minimal legislative support. The fact that this criminal, with indictments for crimes committed against the American people got re-elected, [I'll always believe he cheated] is a sign that the American people may not be as much of the intellectual, political and economic superpower it likes to believe it is.
No, an America that, whatever circumstances brought it about, re-elected Trump, is a dumb and stupid America, an uneducated America, an America in which the majority of the population has lost the essence of democracy, freedom and the core values that once made us a great country. Trump's re-election occurred in an America where MAGA has characterized, and organized the ignorance and bottomless stupidity that has brought us to this place politically.
Our Patriotism Has Significantly Eroded
Over the course of the nearly 240 years since the Constitution came into existence, it has stood the test of time. The fact that a genuine consensus, not just a simple majority, is required to make changes has prevented the various political factions that developed and exist in the country from changing it. Some of those factions, including that of Trump MAGA populism, have tried to find ways around its provisions for consensus, and from time to time experience very limited success. But the checks and balances have largely remained intact.
We were more or less forced out of our isolationism by two world wars that transformed us from being the "Arsenal of Democracy" to becoming the world's only democratic superpower, economically and militarily. And the values that once undergirded and secured the Constitutional Democracy, in the form of the federal republic that was estabished, and which protected the separation of powers from partisan division are being eroded.
Volumes are being written about the root causes of what's happening. One of the problems is the feeding of this ignorance through the plethora of media sources which people now trust to get their news. The core of the free press has been corrupted by corporate financial interests, leading to the isolation of large numbers of people away from facts and truth in "media silos." The fact that an almost billion dollar settlement in a lawsuit against one of the operators in those silos, assessed because they lied, neither convinced most of their audience that they are liars, and did not deter their continued lying is a symptom of this problem.
The settlement, to be effective, should have shut the whole company down, diversted all of its assets and bankrupted every single one of its owners as an example of what happens when media is not responsible to tell the truth. The fact that a billion dollar settlement was not enough to do that is one of the reasons we are seeing our democratic values slip right out of our hands.
I'll highlight another reason. The value of separation of church and state, clearly articulated in the establishment clause of the first amendment, which guarantees freedom of concience, has become a major contributor to the political ignorance that fuels the MAGA cult. Trump's interest in conservative Evangelicalism has nothing to do with any personal conviction or belief. He's simply recognized the fact that conservative Evangelicals now make up the largest constituency in the Republican party, and their endorsement is a neccessity in winning the Republican nomination.
He has, in fact, publicly denied having the kind of Christian "conversion" experience that Evangelicals teach as a core principle of their doctrine, which involves the requirement of acknowledging one's own sinful nature, and repenting of it, something that Trump's ego, attested to by family members and friends who know him well, is not capable of doing. So he has invented a version of faith that he can claim he "keeps to himself," and has chosen a prosperity gospel "prophetess", whose basic doctrine is considered heresy by almost all conservative Evangelicals, as his "spiritual advisor." Her presence tells me everything I need to know about Trump's contempt for biblical Christianity or for any acknowledgement of the existence of any being in the universe more important than himself.
Conservative Evangelicalism is not mainstream, biblical Christianity. It is a pseudo-Christian collection of mega-churches and denominational fellowships built around personality cults of leaders who are able to promote themselves by owning their own media outlets and who profit by taking dollars out of church offering plates and receiving it directly from their own followers. It is based on the fundamentalist and Pentecostal doctrine that developed in the 19th century, in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, promoted by a largely untrained and uneducated clergy who were unaware that the Bible was not originally written in King James English.
One of the primary heresies of Evangelicalism surrounds various interpretations concerning the second coming of Jesus, and an event they call "the rapture," based on a gross misinterpretation of the Apostle John's book of Revelation. It's that misinterpretation around which their various versions of Christian nationalism are formed. These people see themselves as superior to the "lost" people of the world, and that justifies their ability to murder them wholesale to make the world a better place in order to usher in the return of Jesus. But there's a measure of having been corrupted by greed in this bunch, too. Money can change church doctrine.
Can Democrats Get People to "Pay Attention"
So, there seems to have been an awakening of Americans who now have "buyer's remorse" because they may have voted to help Trump get back in, and now they are going to pay for it in higher prices because of his ridiculous tariff policy, which he doesn't really have the authority to enforce, and his claims of waste and inefficiency running into the billions of dollars in the federal government, which is really just warmed-over Republican belief that the federal government should not be in the business of helping its people by "redistribution of wealth," which is what they call tax policy to support government programs.
As close as the election in 2024 turned out, looking at turnout and at what the polls are now suggesting is the collective opinion of the electorate, based on that data, Kamala Harris would win the Presidency by around 6-7 percentage points, would carry all of the swing states, and Congress would be narrowly in the hands of the Democrats. That's a general analysis of the first 100 days of Trump's second term.
The question is, can we survive this disaster until the midterms will allegedly turn the tide, based on this polling data, and what will get people to pay attention? What caused the change between 2020, when they paid attention and kicked him out after his first term, and 2024, when so many voters who had supported Biden in 2020 just sat it out at home?
Democrats had a chance to get voters attention between 2020 and the 2022 midterms, and didn't take it. The message was clear, that Trump was an existential threat to American democracy. But the actions of the party's members in Congress and the administration did not convey that they really believed their own rhetoric. An enthusiastic investigation into Trump's direct instigation of the January 6th insurrection turned into one of the most dilatory, lackluster, foot-dragging, ultimately moribund prosecutions in the history of American justice. That didn't say, "We think he is an existential threat" to anything.
So what are Democrats doing now to "get people to pay attention"? The Democrats in the Senate couldn't even hold it together to stop a cloture vote during a filibuster that would have prevented the administration from getting what it wanted attached to a continuing resolution, back when such a move would have said, "We mean business," and when the blame would have fallen squarely on the President.
They're making angry speeches. But the only ones who seem to be getting people's attention are Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and David Hogg at the DNC. And that seems to be making the party's political analysis and pundits mad, because their establishment buddies aren't getting the job done and someone else comes along with some new ideas that seem to be working just fine.
Last month, the approval rating achieved by Democrats in some of those same polls that show Trump in a genuine free-fall was running between 29% and 26%. One more recent poll suggests that might now be about 25%. That's not the direction they need to go to win the midterms.
We are seeing the results of long term problems. In the meantime, the simple goal is to prevent as much of this damage from happening as possible, which will happen when enough people wake up and put pressure on their Senators and representatives. Even Republicans can be swayed, especially if they think they are going to lose their seat. This starts by listening to what those who are having huge success motivating voters are saying. It can't be done without including that element of the electorate, which seems to be increasingly non-partisan, in the plans.
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