Donald Trump is losing approval in Michigan. Despite winning the state in 2024, support for this “very stable genius” has dropped in the few short months since Trump took office.
“Some Michigan swing voters who backed President Trump have expressed dissatisfaction and confusion with his performance so far, especially when it comes to the economy,” Axios reports.
In a recent focus group, some Michigan voters expressed regret for voting for Trump.
“I thought he was going to change things with affordability and make things cheaper,” a young woman identified as Shannon B. said. “But by putting these tariffs in and terrorizing the world, now things are going to only get more expensive than they already are.”
Shannon also added, “I don’t think anyone would have voted for him if they expected to see what we’re seeing now.”
Except a lot of them did expect to see exactly this. The fact remains that far too many people still support Trump and think he’s either doing a good job or don’t know enough about what he’s actually doing to know that he’s doing a bad job.
It is easy to respond to regretful or disappointed Trump voters with derision. Easy, but not particularly helpful. That said, as someone who pays close attention to politics, it’s difficult to fathom how anyone could be surprised at how Trump II: The Revenge is turning out. We already had a whole term of this cretin bumbling his way through the presidency and then another four years of him lying and crying that President Biden had stolen the 2020 election, and then another presidential campaign in which he more than doubled down on his racist, sexist, anti-everybody who isn’t rich beliefs.
So between 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy for President by making disgusting and racist remarks about Mexicans, to Nov. 2024, we’ve had a good long time to get familiar with who Trump is and what a second Trump term would look like.
Unfortunately, the majority of Americans don’t pay attention to politics. At all. This is a big part of why voter behavior is so hard to predict. People as a whole are irrational AF. And many of them are racist and sexist to boot, a fact that certainly didn’t help Kamala Harris.
If only there had been a readily available guide to what a second Trump presidency would look like put together by people with close ties to Trump. Something called, like, What to Expect When You’re Expecting Fascism. Surely then the media would have thoroughly reported on it and, even if Trump denied it, would have made the obvious connection between what the authors of such a guide wanted and what Trump would inevitably do.
Excuse me while I laugh so hard I cry and then throw up.
Clearly, I’m talking about Project 2025, literally an open-book test that the media totally failed. It was all there, written down. But the largest media outlets mostly ignored Project 2025 and what it would mean for the people they supposedly exist to inform. They also operated as if there was nothing to learn from Trump’s first term.
The first time around, Trump was a terrible president but was also completely unprepared for the job. He did a lot of damage (the COVID pandemic being a glaring one), but couldn’t get a lot of the heinous stuff he wanted to do over the line due to incompetence and the existence of some guardrails. The people he hired for his first administration weren’t great, but at least he had some people who would push back against his lunacy. We also had a functioning court system then.
But no longer. Not only did Trump get to appoint a ton of federal and Supreme Court judges in his first term, shaping the judiciary into one more favorable to him, but now when a judge rules against him his response is, “I can do what I can do.” He does not feel constrained by the courts. At all. And the people he’s hired for his second term are all loyal to Trump, the only real qualification they need to have.
And so here we are. Trump and Elon Musk are hard at work dismantling the federal government to usher in authoritarianism, erasing Black history, demonizing transgender people, and disappearing people like the most corrupt regimes in history. And no one seems to be trying very hard to stop them.
And yes, I’m looking at you, Democrats. It’s alarming that while all of the above is going on the majority of the Democratic Party is cos-playing that meme of Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes.
Has the Democratic Party decided to just sit back and watch Republicans burn down the country, confident that voters will run to them to rebuild it?
Sure looks that way. But don’t worry, as soon as Trump’s approval rating is under 40%, Schumer just knows that Republicans will come around and start working in a bipartisan fashion. You know, the Republicans who have never held Trump accountable for anything and fully support all of the heinous things Trump is doing.
Keep in mind that right now with the American public, the Democratic Party’s approval rating is hovering around 29%. I am not a math major, but 29 is lower than 40.
This strategy is a surefire way to lose. It makes people who usually vote for Democrats lose confidence in the party, and it does not make Democrats more attractive to people who usually vote Republican.
That focus group of Michigan Trump voters I mentioned earlier gave no indication that their dissatisfaction with Trump meant that they were going to switch to supporting Democrats. As Axios put it, “Disapproval of Trump does not automatically translate to support for Democrats.”
Hey Democrats? You up? Because it doesn’t seem like it. Please, for the love of all things holy, prove me wrong.
Keep, or start, bugging your elected officials regardless of party. 5 Calls is an easy way to do it.
Also get outside and get some vitamin D(emocracy). Here a protest, there a protest, everywhere a protest. Find one near you.