r. nial bradshaw
And Democrats will have to adjust if they want to survive as a political party.In 2024, President Trump and the Republican Party achieved a significant win, largely because the American public viewed the MAGA/GOP as representing the political center, while perceiving the Democrats’ ideas as more disconnected from mainstream views.
Trump and the GOP promised the voters that, if elected, they would enact policies to secure the nation’s borders, reduce inflation, control government spending, ensure affordable and abundant energy, make the “American Dream” accessible to everyone, safeguard fair and honest elections, defend parental rights, and protect free speech.
The MAGA centrist policy goals resonated with Americans. Trump won the Electoral College by a robust 312-226 margin, won the popular vote handily, and swept all seven battleground states. Over the last three presidential election cycles, Trump has moved Ohio and Florida from swing state status to Republican locks.
Newsweek reports that the results of the 2024 election results suggest that five states once reliably Democratic — New Jersey, Virginia, New Mexico, Minnesota, and New Hampshire — now can be regarded as swing states.
The Republicans’ share of most demographic groups increased from 2020. CNN exit polling showed growing support for Trump and GOP candidates among male Latinos, people under 30, moderates, those in rural areas, and younger and new voters. A recent poll showed Trump garnering a 69% approval rating among blacks.
One key indicator of electoral strength, party identification, signals a core realignment around the MAGA agenda. Polls show that for the first time since the 1928 election, more voters identified as Republicans than Democrats.
As the GOP becomes more centrist, the Democrat party has allowed its progressive faction to pull the party farther to the left.
Over the past four years, Democrats have driven up the national debt and sparked sky-high inflation through profligate government spending, especially on “green” projects; sought out global conflicts that could lead to a nuclear war; used the federal government to restrict free speech and shut down entire state economies; defied traditional concepts of human sexuality; and endorsed school curricula that depict America as a fundamentally racist nation in need of radical change.
No wonder a new CNN poll revealed that the Democrat party has reached its lowest approval rating in the last 30 years.
More moderate voices within the party, including James Carville, Bill Clinton, former Hillary adviser Philippe Reines, and liberal figures like Bill Maher are urging the party to shift to the center. This strategy, which helped the Democrats recover from political obscurity starting in the late 1990s, was key to Bill Clinton’s election successes.
However, the Democrat party’s progressive wing rejects the idea that the party’s electoral losses stem from its embrace of extreme positions. Instead, party influencers argue that the Democrats merely failed to effectively “message” their left-leaning platform.
Even if the Democrat party tries to rebrand itself by publicly endorsing pro-worker and Trump-lite economic policies, its efforts will be undermined by the actions of the party’s radical state and local leaders.
Democrats who run state and local governments will continue to tolerate lawless behavior and enact policies such as cashless bail that encourage crime on the streets, in the subways, and in the homes of city inhabitants.
California is set to implement stricter climate change policies that will limit resource use, ban fossil fuel development on state lands, and push residents into electric vehicles they may not want or even encourage them to swap their cars for bicycles.
And when their DIE and environmental policies create the conditions for tragedies of almost biblical proportions, such as the fires that are destroying parts of Los Angeles, to continue unabated, Democrat governors, mayors, and fire chiefs blame not their woke policies, but “climate change.”
Illinois and other states will push back against MAGA’s popular efforts to deport illegal criminal migrants, even going so far as to shield violent gang members from deportation.
Michigan could become a prime example of what voting for Democrats delivers. Under Gov. Whitmer and a Democrat-controlled state government, Michigan became the only state in recent years to raise income tax rates. The state’s Democrats’ “Green New Deal” policies have reportedly burdened residents with $200 billion in higher energy costs, all while service continues to deteriorate.
From now up to the 2026 midterm elections and beyond, Trump and his media influencers will relentlessly spotlight these unpopular Democrat policies on platforms like X, Truth Social, the Real America’s Voice network, and administration-friendly cable channels. Immigration czar Tom Homan will ensure that the public understands that keeping Democrats in power means keeping illegal aliens in the United States.
An indication that the MAGA-dominated Republican Party is seen as representing the political mainstream is the flood of goodwill toward Trump, expressed through visits to Mar-a-Lago and congratulatory phone calls from politicians and global business leaders. In the past two months, tech moguls and political powerhouses, including Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have paid visits to Trump at his Florida estate.
One might wonder why a man who will be president for only four years commands such loyalty from the world’s elite. One could logically conclude that the elites recognize that they must make peace not only with President Trump, but also with a movement they believe has emerged as the new political center, one that could shape national politics for years to come.
Recent congressional races suggest as much. In the 2022 midterms, two years before Trump’s stunning victory, the Republican Party won the national popular vote by three million and managed to grab control of the House. In 2024, Republican candidates garnered a total of 74.8 million votes, the Democrats 70.8 million, a four-million-vote margin.
Democrats should be wary of the political ramifications of these numbers.
They should also take note of polls that portend a MAGA-GOP supermajority. One such survey conducted a few years ago by Harvard/Harris found that a vast majority of Americans agreed with the values espoused MAGA and then-president Trump,
According to the poll results, 60 to 75% of the American people agreed with America First/MAGA values like controlling our country’s borders, restricting immigration, and strictly limiting foreign intervention. A recent TIPP poll revealed an overwhelming support for Trump’s fossil fuel–driven energy policy. Rasmussen polls show that Americans favor mass deportation of criminal aliens.
These poll numbers indicate a nascent MAGA supermajority that has yet to show up in voting behavior. Although the MAGA GOP base is currently roughly half the country, the potential MAGA support numbers are daunting.
Does President Trump sense the existence of such a supermajority? A few months ago, Trump on the campaign stump had a curious response to Biden labeling Trump supporters as “garbage” in a campaign speech for Kamala Harris.
Trump retorted, “I have to begin by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage.” This is an odd number to pull out of a hat at a campaign speech, but as pundits have learned, Trump’s supposedly offhand comments are often scripted, a subtle form of messaging with more than a modicum of truth at its core.
The 250 million number would align roughly with the 65–75% of poll respondents who voice agreement with many America First principles.
Currently, congressional Republicans hold a solid 51-44% lead over Democrats as we approach the 2026 midterm elections. New voter registrations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are overwhelmingly Republican, marking an unprecedented level of popularity for the party. Much of this surge can be credited to the appeal of the MAGA movement.
Even Mitt Romney, hardly a Trump/MAGA-supporter, admitted in a national TV interview that the Republican party is now the party of MAGA.
“The Republican Party has become the party of the working-class, middle-class voter,” said the Utah senator. He attributes this shift to Trump, who has drawn these groups away from the Democrats. However, it’s not just the economy driving this political transformation; there’s also a social divide. According to Senator Romney, Americans now view the Democrats as a party of “college professors and woke ‘scolds.’”
And he didn’t just connect this movement’s success to Donald Trump. “If you ask me who will be the candidate of the Republican party in 2028, I would say J.D. Vance,” Romney said. “Smart. Well spoken. Part of the MAGA movement.”
Clearly, to retain their growing base, the Republican party must continue championing the commonsense values of reducing inflation, securing the nation’s borders, limiting foreign military adventurism, and maintaining safety on the streets.
To reinforce that notion, Donald J. Trump in his inaugural address called for a “revolution of common sense.”
Of course, ideology alone isn’t sufficient. The Trump administration must primarily focus on maintaining a strong, if not thriving, economy while fulfilling its promises to secure the border, deport criminal aliens, and lower prices.
Accomplishing that mission will help Republicans keep the House and Senate in 2026 and Vance to win in 2028. Two terms of J.D. Vance will solidify the centrist America First principles as the solid core of the American political culture.
With MAGA ascending, Democrats will have to eschew radical progressivism and adopt a MAGA-lite program to survive as a viable opposition party. When that happens, the transformation of the nation’s underlying political value system will be complete.
Sociologist Michael G. Zey, Ph.D. is the author of Ageless Nation, Seizing the Future, and The Future Factor, professor, Montclair State University (retired). www.zey.com. twitter.com/futurist3000.
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