Democrats have been looking for signs that the tide is beginning to turn against President Donald Trump ever since he returned to the White House over a month ago, with a few recent possibilities emerging.
The first is the polls, which, in some cases, have begun to move against Trump. But the polling hasn’t been consistent, with a new Harvard-Harris poll showing Trump more popular than ever and the Real Clear Politics polling average showing him above water in job approval rating even as an analysis of “nearly 300 poll questions” published by ABC News concluded Trump’s agenda, if not the president himself, was unpopular.
A second opportunity for Democrats comes in the form of protests against Republican lawmakers back home in their districts, many of them focused on Elon Musk’s government-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency. But there is at least some evidence that these outbreaks of anger at congressional offices and town hall meetings are being organized by the Left, sometimes including activists from outside the members’ districts.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Tea Party groups and anti-Obamacare protests of more than a decade ago were also said to be “astroturfed” by wealthy conservatives and libertarians. 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 were still indicative of at least some organic discontent and presaged a disastrous midterm election for Obama — a “shellacking,” as he put it — in which Democrats lost 63 House seats.
Back then, Republicans were better at turning out their voters in non-presidential election years, while many Democrats stayed home. That’s why 2010 and 2014 were bad for Democrats downballot while Obama won a second term during the election in between. Now, Democrats outperform expectations in these elections, including the 2022 midterm elections when 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 avoid repeating midterm election history just like the Democrats did three years ago, in part because “wave elections” may be a thing of the past. 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. “Because of gerrymandering and redistricting, the number of actual swing seats in the country has dwindled to a small number. It is anticipated for the days ahead that whomever is in the majority, it will be a small majority.”
Johnson predicted the best Republicans could do in a good election cycle was a 10- to 15-seat majority. Despite winning both the presidential and House popular vote last year, Republicans currently hold 218 seats in the lower chamber to the Democrats’ 215. The GOP’s Senate majority is a bit larger at 53-47.
Democrats gained 40 House seats in the midterm elections when Trump was last president, though they experienced a net loss of two Senate seats as four red-state Democratic incumbents fell to Republican challengers.
Regardless of whether anything of this scale is doable during the second Trump term, Democrats are focusing on Musk as much as the president himself. They hope this will at a minimum pay dividends in the Virginia statewide elections this November if the northern part of the state is hit hard by federal jobs cuts.
Democrats mostly hope to follow the same playbook as other out-of–power parties in the era of polarization that has prevailed since at least 2000: keep their own course correction to a minimum while waiting for the party in power to overreach. 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. But some of Trump’s tendencies that caused problems the last time remain, the Republicans’ House majority is dangerously small, and the Resistance may be finally picking up steam again.
Trump is beginning to spend the political capital he accumulated on his path back to the Oval Office. What he, and the Democrats, are left with afterward remains to be seen.
