American democrats need a Hungarian-style landslide to overwhelm Trump’s attempts to rig November’s midterm elections, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash
“a landslide defeat for President Donald Trump in November’s midterm elections is exactly what is required if the country is to start reversing his deliberate and rapid erosion of its democracy”
that… seems unlikely to me. I mean, he’s not popular, but his approval ratings aren’t significantly worse than the last time he was president.
They are pretty bad. The scarier thing is how partisan the approval is. It’s been something like 80% approval among republicans and that may have only very recently slipped into the 70’s
Yes, the last time it happened. 2018 happened (when he still had adults in the room to limit his crazier plans), the House was taken back, and he was impeached the first time over tariffs. Not convicted by Senate of course, but it at least sent a message
If we can slip both house and senate this time, the worst case will hopefully be to obstruct all his BS for 2 more years and leave him a lame duck. If we assume Novemeber goes smoothly (it won’t, but how bad it gets will depend on so many factors).
well, my info was horribly wrong. I thought I might have confused one of the failed attempts at impeachment from the first term, but it wasn’t that either.
70s from within your own party, especially Republicans, is pretty freaking bad.
Bad for these hyerpartisans times, yes. But this wasn’t the norm, even as far back as 15 years ago.
But it’s part of why GOP congress is still spineless. A lot of their constituents still think Trump is doing a “good job”. Or at least that’s what they say out loud.
Polling show that Dems are unenthusiastic about voting in general lately.
I guess the question becomes who is angrier at their default party and will now refuse to vote with them: previously-republicans or previously-democrats? The largest registration anymore is “independent”, by a lot.
If I understand your comment, you are framing this as republicans looking to split the dems using propoganda. I think its much more complicated than that. It’s a fact that traditional Dem voters are far past focussing solely on republicans as the root of all of our problems. Dems and republicans have 26-27% of the voter registrations each and independents are 45%. You can only eff Dem voters in the rear and ignore their problems so many times (while committing a massively unpopular genocide for donations) before Dem voters stop considering their party as representing them-- and they’ll sit on the couch when they do.
Its convenient for people to pretend its a dem vs republican fight, but its really dem vs republicans vs couch. Couch is doing really well lately. People are sick of Trump’s idiocy and also sick of the DNC’s incompetence, self interest, and outright treachery. There is no democracy here until we make it happen.
you are framing this as republicans looking to split the dems using propoganda.
Yes, and it’s working. Splitting the vote with couch isn’t as effective as winning over a vote, but still effective for an unpopular party. And when we’re in a low trust society, doing nothing feels more appealing than picking a poison.
The issue is two fold here: 1) you’re mad at 2 poisons to pick at election day but 2) do not want to put the work in primaries or before primaries to make a better pick. Someone like Mamdami doesn’t just appear from the ether. And it feels defeatist an outright lazy that your preferre candidate didn’t make it if you did nothing to support it.
Your lowest effort civic duty is to vote on November, and if you can’t even do that I don’t know why you’re in this country. We tore it apart centuries ago over lack of representation and we want to throw that away? For what? Faux doomerism disguised as perfomative protest? What’s really your goal here?
It’s a fact that traditional Dem voters are far past focussing solely on republicans as the root of all of our problems.
Yes. We can realize that we are in quicksand and focus on getting outselves out while also realizing we later need to stop dinner from burning. But one is clearly more immediate than the other. Dinner will be the least of our worries if we sink here in 2026.
“a landslide defeat for President Donald Trump in November’s midterm elections is exactly what is required if the country is to start reversing his deliberate and rapid erosion of its democracy”
that… seems unlikely to me. I mean, he’s not popular, but his approval ratings aren’t significantly worse than the last time he was president.
He’ll get a landslide victory, mark my words.
If we can slip both house and senate this time, the worst case will hopefully be to obstruct all his BS for 2 more years and leave him a lame duck. If we assume Novemeber goes smoothly (it won’t, but how bad it gets will depend on so many factors).
70s from within your own party, especially Republicans, is pretty freaking bad. He wasn’t impeached over tariffs in 2018.
well, my info was horribly wrong. I thought I might have confused one of the failed attempts at impeachment from the first term, but it wasn’t that either.
Bad for these hyerpartisans times, yes. But this wasn’t the norm, even as far back as 15 years ago.
But it’s part of why GOP congress is still spineless. A lot of their constituents still think Trump is doing a “good job”. Or at least that’s what they say out loud.
Polling show that Dems are unenthusiastic about voting in general lately.
I guess the question becomes who is angrier at their default party and will now refuse to vote with them: previously-republicans or previously-democrats? The largest registration anymore is “independent”, by a lot.
That means the propaganda is working.
If I understand your comment, you are framing this as republicans looking to split the dems using propoganda. I think its much more complicated than that. It’s a fact that traditional Dem voters are far past focussing solely on republicans as the root of all of our problems. Dems and republicans have 26-27% of the voter registrations each and independents are 45%. You can only eff Dem voters in the rear and ignore their problems so many times (while committing a massively unpopular genocide for donations) before Dem voters stop considering their party as representing them-- and they’ll sit on the couch when they do.
Its convenient for people to pretend its a dem vs republican fight, but its really dem vs republicans vs couch. Couch is doing really well lately. People are sick of Trump’s idiocy and also sick of the DNC’s incompetence, self interest, and outright treachery. There is no democracy here until we make it happen.
Yes, and it’s working. Splitting the vote with couch isn’t as effective as winning over a vote, but still effective for an unpopular party. And when we’re in a low trust society, doing nothing feels more appealing than picking a poison.
The issue is two fold here: 1) you’re mad at 2 poisons to pick at election day but 2) do not want to put the work in primaries or before primaries to make a better pick. Someone like Mamdami doesn’t just appear from the ether. And it feels defeatist an outright lazy that your preferre candidate didn’t make it if you did nothing to support it.
Your lowest effort civic duty is to vote on November, and if you can’t even do that I don’t know why you’re in this country. We tore it apart centuries ago over lack of representation and we want to throw that away? For what? Faux doomerism disguised as perfomative protest? What’s really your goal here?
Yes. We can realize that we are in quicksand and focus on getting outselves out while also realizing we later need to stop dinner from burning. But one is clearly more immediate than the other. Dinner will be the least of our worries if we sink here in 2026.