Democrats have been looking for indications that President Donald Trump is beginning to turn around since his return to power over the course of a quarter, with some new possibilities emerging.
Democrats have another chance to protest Republican lawmakers in their districts, many of which focused on Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency-related government-cutting work. However, there is at least some proof that these town hall meetings and outbursts of anger are being planned by the Left, occasionally even by activists from outside the people ‘ towns.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Tea Party parties and anti-Obamacare demonstrations of more than a decade before were also said to be “astroturfed” by powerful liberals and libertarian. These events also mostly, though not exclusively, activated people who were already Republicans, following an election Barack Obama won by a bigger margin than Trump did last year. They pretended to be a disastrous midterm election for Obama, or” shellacking,” as he called it, and gave rise to a” shellacking” in which Democrats lost 63 House seats.
In non-presidential election years, Republicans were better at electing their voters, while many Democrats stayed in. That’s why 2010 and 2014 were bad for Democrats in the downballot while Obama won a second term during the election in between. Democrats now outperform expectations in these elections, including the 2022 midterm elections, where Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House, while Trump helped deliver the GOP trifecta last year by relying on low-propensity voters.
Some senior Republicans believe they can prevent repeating midterm election history, as the Democrats did three years ago, in part because “wave elections” may no longer be relevant. The two major parties remain highly polarized, and the number of swing seats is declining, as Republicans picked most of the low-hanging fruit in 1994 and 2010, while Democrats did the same in 2006 and 2018.
” I don’t foresee anytime soon here where you have a 30- or 35-seat majority”, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA ) told the Washington Examiner last year. The number of actual swing seats in the country has decreased significantly due to gerrymandering and redistricting. Whoever is in the majority will be a small majority, according to forecasts for the days ahead.
A 10-to-15-seat majority, according to Johnson, would be the best thing Republicans could do in a successful election cycle. Republicans currently control 218 seats in the lower chamber, compared to 215 in the Democrats ‘ 215, despite winning both the popular vote for president and the House last year. The GOP’s Senate majority is slightly larger, 53-47.
Democrats won 40 House seats in the midterm elections under Trump’s leadership, but they lost two Senate seats as four red-state Democratic incumbents lost to Republican challengers.  ,
Democrats are focusing on Musk just as much as the president himself, regardless of whether anything on this scale can be accomplished during the second Trump term. If the northern region of Virginia is severely affected by federal job cuts, they hope this will at least pay off in the state’s November statewide elections.
Democrats largely hope to adopt the same strategy as other out-of-power parties in the polarization that has persisted since at least 2000: keep their own course correction to a minimum while awaiting an overreach from the party in power. They are hoping Trump has already overreached with Musk, DOGE, Ukraine, and other issues.
LIST: THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, ACTIONS, AND PROCLAMATIONS TRUMP HAS MADE AS PRESIDENT
Trump 2.0 has been better organized, more decisive in its use of political power, and more unified internally, while the Democrats remain mostly leaderless and rudderless. However, some of Trump’s tendencies still exist, and the Republicans ‘ House majority is dangerously small, and the Resistance may be regaining some of its momentum.
Trump is beginning to use the political resources he has accumulated while returning to the Oval Office. What he, and the Democrats, are left with afterward remains to be seen.
