Trump stumbles and bumbles in the wake of Democratic wins

There are multiple reasons why Democrats won landslide victories in Tuesday s off-year elections not the least of which is that the party out of power usually wins in such circumstances None of the polls revealed Republicans poised to produce an upset But none predicted that Democrats would receive such huge margins or that the party would win down ballot in places where Republicans have long dominated In other words it was a much better consequence than Democrats had even hoped and a much worse outcome for the GOP You could see how bad it was by observing President Donald Trump s drawn features and low resource appearances throughout the week He even seemed to doze off at one point in the middle of a presentation by Dr Mehmet Oz who runs Medicare and Medicaid in the Oval Office For specific time now Trump has appeared to be living in a bubble convinced of his invincibility and so sure of his own instincts and impulses that he hasn t been paying attention to what s really happening So far his second term has been a chaotic mess Trump pursues revenge against his enemies and gives favors to his friends and in every workable instance he creates opportunities for his family to profit So far his second term has been a chaotic mess Trump pursues revenge against his enemies and gives favors to his friends and in every practicable instance he creates opportunities for his family to profit To the extent that he s focused on the actual job of being president it has mostly been on foreign procedures where he s enjoying the pageantry and flattery he receives from foreign leaders his immigration crackdown which thrills his hardcore base and his precious tariff regime But as Tuesday s electoral contest results show all of that comes with a big political price Trump s forays into foreign guidelines have been embarrassing at best The good news for him is that except for the Israel-Gaza peace deal which he has himself portrayed as an opportunity to ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to build a resort nobody is paying much attention They are consumed with the other two issues which form the basis of the resistance to his agenda as well as the electoral losses the GOP just suffered Voters are appalled by his authoritarian immigration agenda particularly the Hispanic society which had been trending more Republican for the last scarce cycles but is showing signs of reverting sharply to Democrats This is a big matter for the GOP Republicans were so sure they had permanently captured the Latino vote that they began racially profiling and brutalizing immigrants in the streets of American cities and believing Latinos would still turn out for GOP candidates They gerrymandered five seats in Texas under that assumption and now they might end up losing them as well as other seats they weakened in the process Related Zohran Mamdani took on the entire political establishment and won Mostly though the American people are upset about the business sector specifically inflation and affordability which every Democrat elected on Tuesday ran on in one way or another Trump promised to fix the commercial sector on day one and clearly that has not happened Voters are beginning to blame the president and his tariffs for making it worse His first reaction on the morning after the voting process was to blame the GOP losses on the shutdown after he had pretty much ignored the issue since the executive closed on Oct Then he demanded that the Senate nuke the filibuster to pass the rest of his unpopular agenda Republican senators had been resistant to the so-called nuclear option before the elections and after the party s shocking losses they came back with a hard no Trump did have an unique moment of clarity They have this new word called affordability and Republicans don t talk about it enough he stated Democrats did This was progress for the president he seemed ready to admit that people were not happy with the financial sector But that coherence only lasted a day By Thursday Trump was saying I don t want to hear about affordability after a misleading Walmart comment reported that Thanksgiving meals would be less expensive this year than last The company replaced brand name goods with lower quality options while leaving out the pie cranberry sauce sweet potatoes onions cornbread and whipped cream It s a real bargain Trump was on a roll from there claiming that only the price of beef had gone up disputing that any cost increases add up to much and defending his decision to withhold Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Initiative SNAP benefits Our country has to remain very liquid because problems catastrophes wars it could be anything he commented We have to remain liquid We can t give everything away The U S controls its own currency Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts But Trump got various other bad news On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard a challenge to his urgency use of tariffs and the bulk of the judges even those appointed by the president himself didn t seem convinced Even he seemed to recognize a defeat could be in the offing saying that he ll have to develop a battle two plan and letting it slip that average Americans might be paying something Trump tried to pivot to a national prevention argument but it was so fatuous that it s hard to believe anyone would buy it Look I m ending wars because of these tariffs he noted Americans would have to fight in several of these wars On Thursday Challenger Gray and Christmas a firm that tracks workplace reductions circulated a comprehensive summary showing that layoffs surged to recessionary levels in October The company calculated that million jobs have been lost so far in resulting in the worst October for layoffs since With inflation still stubborn and people smarting from the higher prices induced by the president s tariffs the market is on shaky ground And that s before skyrocketing soundness care premiums and electricity prices start hitting this month Trump is set to have a serious dilemma on his hands and it doesn t appear he has the slightest idea what to do about it except what he usually does Double down and blame someone else We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to aid Heather Digby Parton s commentary This week s referendum results have shown Republican leaders that voters are paying attention to what s happening in Washington D C and they don t like what they see The gadflies and Trump fans who only come out to vote for him have not been converted to loyal party members and several of the non-white and younger voters who gave him an edge in fled to the Democrats The development Trump has been pushed into early lame duck status He promised to lower prices and instead they are going up He promised a thriving financial system and the job industry appears to be cratering He vowed to deport gang members and criminals and instead it s his federal agents who are marauding through the streets When petitioned if he thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have gone too far Trump explained they haven t gone far enough reiterating his commitment to a violently anti-immigrant undertaking There is no reason to believe that he has any intention of changing program The president might get lucky he has before Maybe all of this will calm down and by next November it will be morning in America Republicans though would be foolish to count on that happening Trump is causing massive trauma across this country and people are angry about it The sooner Republicans wake up and treat him like the rabid lame duck he is the better off they and the country will be The only question is whether they can muster the courage to do it Read more about this topic At Yale University things are getting Orwellian Democrats keep missing the message Mamdani didn t Trump s war on comedy threatens free speech for all The post Trump stumbles and bumbles in the wake of Democratic wins appeared first on Salon com