The diagnosis is careful and the data on declining approval is real. The harder question is the one the first commenter raised. Trump won 77.3 million votes in 2024, 49.8 percent of ballots cast, with turnout at 59 percent of the voting-age population. The system that delivered him the presidency over Harris's 75 million was not a majority endorsement. It was an architecture that rewards plurality wins, swing-state geography, and electoral college mathematics that has now produced two minority-popular-vote winners in this century alongside three plurality winners.
This matters for the piece's optimism. If America has proven more resistant to authoritarian populism than feared, the resistance is not coming from the architecture. The architecture delivered Trump. It made him impeachment-proof in 2019 and 2021. It allowed him to return after losing, fill the Supreme Court, and politicise the Department of Justice. What is now correcting his trajectory is not constitutional friction but the consequences of his own choices meeting voters who can be disappointed. That is a much weaker form of resistance than the piece implies.
The Brazilian and Peruvian comparisons in the closing paragraphs quietly admit this. Bolsonaro out, his son in. Fujimori discredited, his daughter advancing. The architecture that produced the original demagogue is still standing, and standing architectures keep producing the figures they were designed around. The midterms may correct Trump. They will not correct the system that produced him, and the next figure who learns from his mistakes will operate inside the same architecture with fewer constraints.
The optimism is premature. The pessimism is not deep enough. The architectural question is the one the piece is reaching for without quite naming.
America is not as helpless and resigned to a certain fate as you seem to think we are. We have a full national history that suggests that our architecture has never created a Trump before.
The architecture is fine. The architecture is resilient. Address the real issue: misinformation thrives as we live in the golden age of information thanks to the global internet.
We have an education problem, not an architecture problem. Education needs to rise to the challenge of interconnectivity and it must confront how easily someone can find validation and community on the internet for an incorrect or immoral viewpoint.
The federal government has surrendered that challenge, but the states have an obligation to fix it still, all on their own.
You will live in an unfree authoritarian regime for a very long time, believe me, I lived in it for 40 years in Czechoslovakia, and it is difficult to remove people like the oppressor Trump and his people from power.
American constitutional architecture has produced figures the system struggled to constrain throughout its history. Andrew Jackson defied a Supreme Court ruling on Cherokee removal and faced no meaningful constitutional consequence. Reconstruction collapsed under regional capture that allowed Jim Crow to nullify the 14th and 15th Amendments for ninety years. Joseph McCarthy was eventually marginalised but not by constitutional friction. Richard Nixon resigned only because his own party still feared accountability, a constraint Trump's party demonstrably no longer feels.
The architecture has accommodated this kind of figure repeatedly. Trump is not unprecedented. He is the most successful application of patterns the system has been producing for two centuries.
Misinformation is real and serious. It is also a downstream problem. The architectural question is whether the system can absorb voters making decisions, however formed, that produce results the architecture itself cannot constrain. The events of 6 January, the Dobbs reversal of fifty years of precedent, the documented refusal of the executive branch to comply with subpoenas and court orders, and the open politicisation of state election administration are all evidence the architecture is being tested in ways it was not designed to withstand. Calling it fine while watching it sway is exactly the optimism the original piece is reaching for.
The pessimism is not despair. It is the recognition that architecture which has produced these figures across two centuries will produce them again unless the architecture itself changes.
A good article, but it surprizinly overlooks the possibility that JD Vance could take up the mantle of the MAGA movement, correcting Trump's errors and excesses.
I think people who view Vance as a grave threat are exaggerating because he certainly has the cunning, but utterly lacks the charisma.
MAGA is a visceral, carnal movement. It is fed through schadenfreude, cruel mockery of their perceived enemies, spite, vindication, vengeance etc. It is extremely reliant on the visuals and harsh rhetoric of their leader. It's not enough to support what MAGA wants, you have to champion them as a people.
Vance is a wet blanket. He's far less popular than Trump and carries an elitist reputation. The GOP would be taking a very real risk to embrace a candidate that can walk the walk, but can't talk the walk, so to speak. Vance is not effortlessly vindictive; He's not absolutely confident in his rage and convictions. He's a chameleon. He doesn't really know who he is. He's forcing himself to be something he is not. He sucks the air out of the room. He's tied at the hip to Trump whether he likes it or not.
This is why I insist that people should not underestimate the influence of Tucker Carlson. He is the true successor to the MAGA movement. Born from humiliation and leads an entire cult of personality around himself. He's a master in the visual age of media, like Trump. He's charismatic. He's cruel and vindictive. He's a loud mouth. His recent rejection of Trump makes him more dangerous, not less. He has his eyes on the presidency in 2028. No question.
If I may insert my two cents here: Trump may go away (please God) but Peter Thiel isn't going anywhere. JD may be a douche bag but Thiel is a force to be reckoned with.
You Americans have taken democracy for granted and stopped defending and cultivating it, the majority preferring consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
Yasha.. I don't know.. you sound to be convinced in your own reasoning. I think Trump is not a washed up in his remaining time. He will spin what happens to his advantage . Many voters are just too fed up and tired with Democratic party and politics in general. Trump is not a politician he doesn't need to operate in that realm.
So, your friends have all been wrong before, the political pundits have all been wrong, but this time YOU have it nailed—Trump’s political career is over.
Damn. You called it.
So you mean to say that Trump, who can’t run for president again and will be 82 when he leaves office, is done as a President and politician. I mean that is some stellar insight.
Also, you think the Iran war, where we have lost fewer soldiers than in any war in history, where Iran is utterly decimated, and thousands of young people who actually deserve a revolution are waiting to take to the streets and overthrow the last vestiges of this evil radical Islamic regime, and you think that’s what’s going to end Trump as president? The Iran war?
You write: “rump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious; but it seems increasingly unlikely that he will leave behind an America shaped in his own image.” Weakened, cheapened, fractious? Those all sound like apt adjectives to describe Trump’s image. Not his self-image, which of course remains glorious, but he is a weak leader, with cheap taste (see, e.g., designs for the ballroom and arch), and a fractious style. You’re right: these things will not disappear with his decline into irrelevancy. Countering them will be the task of a generation (or more).
Context, context, context...he's whipped the R's into massive tax cuts, dissolved capacities to collect taxes from the 1%, is increasing debt daily with his and Kegsbreath's Iran wanderings while simultaneously seriously destroying the world's economy, on and on. Real debts, real recessions...these phony guys hiding under their blankets have achieved "global cartoons" status for the US. "I'm not a cartoon..." is difficult line to run any further on.
If Trump is replaced, the antipathy will be fueled less by rationalization and more by emotion. Exhaustion animates the electorate, resulting in the embrace of anyone who articulates the malevolent zeitgeist of exasperation and frustration. The quintessential example can be seen in the meteoric rise and embrace of Graham Platner in Maine’s U. S. Senate race. Even as everything about him disqualifies him from high office, it matters not a whit, for he is simply the coming together of a man and a moment. “Throw the bums out” is the moment. “We will deal with whatever follows, but let us not think about that right now in satisfying our discomfort.”
The only reason I ever support Trump is deportation, and instead of making laws requiring E verify and employer sanctions he stages show arrests which only upset people. I'd be much happier with millions more self deportations that no one notices except with rising incomes and decreasing rents.
Collective stupidity will keep him in power, and dictator Trump, with the help of loyal repressive forces, will become even stronger and more dangerous after the November elections.
There is nothing to suggest inflation won't continue to nag either. It will stay high through the midterms and well beyond that. National debt interest will eventually have to be addressed.
The diagnosis is careful and the data on declining approval is real. The harder question is the one the first commenter raised. Trump won 77.3 million votes in 2024, 49.8 percent of ballots cast, with turnout at 59 percent of the voting-age population. The system that delivered him the presidency over Harris's 75 million was not a majority endorsement. It was an architecture that rewards plurality wins, swing-state geography, and electoral college mathematics that has now produced two minority-popular-vote winners in this century alongside three plurality winners.
This matters for the piece's optimism. If America has proven more resistant to authoritarian populism than feared, the resistance is not coming from the architecture. The architecture delivered Trump. It made him impeachment-proof in 2019 and 2021. It allowed him to return after losing, fill the Supreme Court, and politicise the Department of Justice. What is now correcting his trajectory is not constitutional friction but the consequences of his own choices meeting voters who can be disappointed. That is a much weaker form of resistance than the piece implies.
The Brazilian and Peruvian comparisons in the closing paragraphs quietly admit this. Bolsonaro out, his son in. Fujimori discredited, his daughter advancing. The architecture that produced the original demagogue is still standing, and standing architectures keep producing the figures they were designed around. The midterms may correct Trump. They will not correct the system that produced him, and the next figure who learns from his mistakes will operate inside the same architecture with fewer constraints.
The optimism is premature. The pessimism is not deep enough. The architectural question is the one the piece is reaching for without quite naming.
America is not as helpless and resigned to a certain fate as you seem to think we are. We have a full national history that suggests that our architecture has never created a Trump before.
The architecture is fine. The architecture is resilient. Address the real issue: misinformation thrives as we live in the golden age of information thanks to the global internet.
We have an education problem, not an architecture problem. Education needs to rise to the challenge of interconnectivity and it must confront how easily someone can find validation and community on the internet for an incorrect or immoral viewpoint.
The federal government has surrendered that challenge, but the states have an obligation to fix it still, all on their own.
You will live in an unfree authoritarian regime for a very long time, believe me, I lived in it for 40 years in Czechoslovakia, and it is difficult to remove people like the oppressor Trump and his people from power.
American constitutional architecture has produced figures the system struggled to constrain throughout its history. Andrew Jackson defied a Supreme Court ruling on Cherokee removal and faced no meaningful constitutional consequence. Reconstruction collapsed under regional capture that allowed Jim Crow to nullify the 14th and 15th Amendments for ninety years. Joseph McCarthy was eventually marginalised but not by constitutional friction. Richard Nixon resigned only because his own party still feared accountability, a constraint Trump's party demonstrably no longer feels.
The architecture has accommodated this kind of figure repeatedly. Trump is not unprecedented. He is the most successful application of patterns the system has been producing for two centuries.
Misinformation is real and serious. It is also a downstream problem. The architectural question is whether the system can absorb voters making decisions, however formed, that produce results the architecture itself cannot constrain. The events of 6 January, the Dobbs reversal of fifty years of precedent, the documented refusal of the executive branch to comply with subpoenas and court orders, and the open politicisation of state election administration are all evidence the architecture is being tested in ways it was not designed to withstand. Calling it fine while watching it sway is exactly the optimism the original piece is reaching for.
The pessimism is not despair. It is the recognition that architecture which has produced these figures across two centuries will produce them again unless the architecture itself changes.
Another quote: Brazil is NOT a democracy anymore. The Supreme Court , manipulated by Lula, runs the Country.
A good article, but it surprizinly overlooks the possibility that JD Vance could take up the mantle of the MAGA movement, correcting Trump's errors and excesses.
I think people who view Vance as a grave threat are exaggerating because he certainly has the cunning, but utterly lacks the charisma.
MAGA is a visceral, carnal movement. It is fed through schadenfreude, cruel mockery of their perceived enemies, spite, vindication, vengeance etc. It is extremely reliant on the visuals and harsh rhetoric of their leader. It's not enough to support what MAGA wants, you have to champion them as a people.
Vance is a wet blanket. He's far less popular than Trump and carries an elitist reputation. The GOP would be taking a very real risk to embrace a candidate that can walk the walk, but can't talk the walk, so to speak. Vance is not effortlessly vindictive; He's not absolutely confident in his rage and convictions. He's a chameleon. He doesn't really know who he is. He's forcing himself to be something he is not. He sucks the air out of the room. He's tied at the hip to Trump whether he likes it or not.
This is why I insist that people should not underestimate the influence of Tucker Carlson. He is the true successor to the MAGA movement. Born from humiliation and leads an entire cult of personality around himself. He's a master in the visual age of media, like Trump. He's charismatic. He's cruel and vindictive. He's a loud mouth. His recent rejection of Trump makes him more dangerous, not less. He has his eyes on the presidency in 2028. No question.
If I may insert my two cents here: Trump may go away (please God) but Peter Thiel isn't going anywhere. JD may be a douche bag but Thiel is a force to be reckoned with.
You Americans have taken democracy for granted and stopped defending and cultivating it, the majority preferring consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
Just a humble question: How the minority won the elections in 2024? Any clues?
Yasha.. I don't know.. you sound to be convinced in your own reasoning. I think Trump is not a washed up in his remaining time. He will spin what happens to his advantage . Many voters are just too fed up and tired with Democratic party and politics in general. Trump is not a politician he doesn't need to operate in that realm.
So, your friends have all been wrong before, the political pundits have all been wrong, but this time YOU have it nailed—Trump’s political career is over.
Damn. You called it.
So you mean to say that Trump, who can’t run for president again and will be 82 when he leaves office, is done as a President and politician. I mean that is some stellar insight.
Also, you think the Iran war, where we have lost fewer soldiers than in any war in history, where Iran is utterly decimated, and thousands of young people who actually deserve a revolution are waiting to take to the streets and overthrow the last vestiges of this evil radical Islamic regime, and you think that’s what’s going to end Trump as president? The Iran war?
Bro, don’t quit your day job.
You write: “rump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious; but it seems increasingly unlikely that he will leave behind an America shaped in his own image.” Weakened, cheapened, fractious? Those all sound like apt adjectives to describe Trump’s image. Not his self-image, which of course remains glorious, but he is a weak leader, with cheap taste (see, e.g., designs for the ballroom and arch), and a fractious style. You’re right: these things will not disappear with his decline into irrelevancy. Countering them will be the task of a generation (or more).
Context, context, context...he's whipped the R's into massive tax cuts, dissolved capacities to collect taxes from the 1%, is increasing debt daily with his and Kegsbreath's Iran wanderings while simultaneously seriously destroying the world's economy, on and on. Real debts, real recessions...these phony guys hiding under their blankets have achieved "global cartoons" status for the US. "I'm not a cartoon..." is difficult line to run any further on.
If Trump is replaced, the antipathy will be fueled less by rationalization and more by emotion. Exhaustion animates the electorate, resulting in the embrace of anyone who articulates the malevolent zeitgeist of exasperation and frustration. The quintessential example can be seen in the meteoric rise and embrace of Graham Platner in Maine’s U. S. Senate race. Even as everything about him disqualifies him from high office, it matters not a whit, for he is simply the coming together of a man and a moment. “Throw the bums out” is the moment. “We will deal with whatever follows, but let us not think about that right now in satisfying our discomfort.”
The only reason I ever support Trump is deportation, and instead of making laws requiring E verify and employer sanctions he stages show arrests which only upset people. I'd be much happier with millions more self deportations that no one notices except with rising incomes and decreasing rents.
Collective stupidity will keep him in power, and dictator Trump, with the help of loyal repressive forces, will become even stronger and more dangerous after the November elections.
There is nothing to suggest inflation won't continue to nag either. It will stay high through the midterms and well beyond that. National debt interest will eventually have to be addressed.
Yascha, seems you may very well be hoisted by your own petard. We shall see.