America has a conservative establishment. Its formal name is the Democratic party. Whether it be the federal government, universities, welfare or the regulatory state, Democrats fight to preserve the world as it is or was. “America is already great,” liberals cry, which is another way of saying that things were fine until Donald Trump came along. Their lodestar was Joe Biden, who personified nostalgia. Much of the party is now nostalgic for Biden. You have to be imprisoned in old ways of thinking to believe this is how US liberalism will rebound.
An invigorated US opposition would now be making hay. Trump’s team maintains a “promises kept” tally sheet. To be sure, he has in effect closed the border, demolished DEI quota culture, assaulted the deep state and launched trade wars against the rest of the world. But a big chunk of those who voted for Maga saw these moves as the means of lifting their economic prospects. The opposite is happening, which is why Trump’s numbers are in steady decline. Yet the fall in Democrats’ approval rating is even steeper. In relative terms, Trump’s political dominance has thus grown. Do not bet on a weakening economy changing that picture.
Trump’s genius is to keep pushing Democrats into reactive conservatism. That, plus the average age of the party’s leadership, makes Democrats look like permanently outraged grandparents. Trump’s assaults on pretty much every constitutional norm are indeed terrifying and outrageous. But they are remarkably inoculated against political backlash. To all intents and purposes, opposition to Trump has been reduced to a default outrage machine.