For his supporters, his victory in November represented something similar. During Trump’s first term in office, the mainstream was defined by a near monolithic resistance to his administration; his supporters, by contrast, were treated like a subculture when they weren’t shunned outright. For many, a red MAGA hat was not just a show of support for Trump, but proof of one’s irredeemability: a racist, misogynistic symbol of hate. But Trump’s new victory adds a new shade. Trump didn’t just win the popular vote, he built a coalition, wrought from new Black and Latino support as well as the young-and-disaffected men and political outcasts like anti-vaxxers and libertarians that he wooed to his side via alliances and offbeat media appearances. Trump’s victory was redemptive; it showed they were not deplorable. In the days following the election, a dam seemed to break: Professional athletes danced like Trump, proving that there was no longer a stigma against publicly supporting him. His victory, moreover, showed that they—not cable news talking heads or Hollywood actors—were the real mainstream.
Not that this comes as a surprise. The one constant connecting Trump’s life as a playboy billionaire in the 1980s to his emergence as the country’s foremost nativist is his steadfast insistence that everything he does is huge, authoritative, unmistakable proof of his own greatness. This unyielding insistence on his own magnificence is both a core part of his appeal and what millions detest about him. There’s a reason that people have been calling Trump a liar, a con artist, and a narcissist for decades: He is all of those things.
Today, that movement—the Resistance—has all but disappeared. Trump’s second inauguration was met by smatterings of sparsely attended protests. The Democrats, meanwhile, have not only largely dropped the antagonistic posture but have arguably become cooperative, particularly when it comes to Trump’s draconian immigration policies.
This is a bleak moment for Democrats, anti-Trumpers, and anyone who fears for the future of American democracy. After nearly a decade of practically unceasing scandal, a coup attempt, a deadly pandemic, and four years of incompetent and chaotic governance, Trump is, somehow, stronger than ever before. He is not, however, unstoppable or, for that matter, inevitable. The unwieldy coalition that brought him back into power is bound to fray and may ultimately collapse. With the Resistance in shambles and the Democratic Party in the middle of another one of its perennially torturous identity crises, accelerating the collapse of that coalition is the only viable path to halting the momentum Trump enjoys as he returns to the White House. But it may not be that hard to fracture—in fact, it may fall apart on its own.
During his first presidential campaign, the term “populist” was broadly accurate. Trump’s rapid rise in the Republican Party and his 2016 victory both stemmed in part from his break from the dogmas that had long defined the Republican Party: He lambasted the warmongering neoconservatives; he also pledged to protect entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
His deepening alliance with Elon Musk, moreover, has only made him seem more like the Republicans he railed against in 2016. The tech mogul has pledged to cut $2 trillion in spending via a task force he will lead in the Trump White House. Its name—DOGE, a reference to a dated internet meme—is pure Musk. But the concept could have been concocted by Grover Norquist. Frankly, DOGE may simply be a much weirder version of the deficit commissions that President Barack Obama was forever trying to impanel.
On one side, you have Trump’s popular base, which sees him as a strongman who can, through sheer force of will, via immigration and trade policy, return the country to an Edenic era of widespread middle-class prosperity. On the other, you have his power base, a group of some of the wealthiest people in the history of the world, who simply see him as a tool to make them richer. In December, we got a preview of where the biggest fault lines lay: Trump’s aura of indefatigability was punctured as rival camps duked it out over immigration policy.
Over the ensuing weeks, that feud has continued to simmer. Last week, Musk cast doubt on a $500 billion artificial intelligence deal Trump had announced with one of Musk’s archrivals, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, tweeting that he had it on “good authority” that only a tiny fraction of that funding had actually been secured. For Bannon, eager to pry Musk from his position at Trump’s side, this was an opportunity. “There’s something fundamentally wrong here about the structure and about his understanding of the structure.” Bannon said about the breach of decorum. “This is not Silicon Valley. This is not tech bros.”
Trump’s political approach to this fraught coalition threatens it as much as the ideological disputes that have already arisen. When RFK Jr. offered to back whichever candidate presented him with the best offer, Trump leapt at the opportunity to win over his small but loyal base of vaccine skeptics and other weirdos. When he won, RFK Jr. got the prize he wanted: Trump nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, where he will have considerable influence over vaccines and public health.
Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump tapped to serve as his director of national intelligence, presents a similar problem. Gabbard’s endorsement was attractive because, like RFK Jr., she was a former Democratic presidential candidate who had recently emerged as a fierce critic of the party, with a particular focus on its foreign policy, especially its support for Ukraine. Her support bolstered Trump’s (exaggerated) antiwar bona fides during the election and now will likely cause headaches as her admiration for several current and former dictators, including Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al Assad, faces scrutiny. If confirmed, which is far from guaranteed, she will undoubtedly spar with other figures in Trump’s national security team.
In a similar vein, there are compelling reasons to doubt the sturdiness of the voter coalition Trump forged in November. The gains he made with Black, Latino, and young men have many Democrats panicking. But time will tell if this is a lasting shift or one specific to unique circumstances, in this case a term-limited candidate and an election that followed an extended period of record inflation. Trump, meanwhile, is a singular politician, but he is hardly invulnerable. During his first term, he was subject to public opinion shifts that have only grown more thermostatic, with voters seemingly primed to quickly sour on incumbents. The fickle electorate that turned on him during his first term helped him win in 2024, but there’s no reason to believe they won’t turn on him again if he can’t deliver on his promises.
The contrast is stark. From the moment he was sworn in in 2016, Democrats were teeming and unrelenting. They highlighted his chaotic style of governance, his incompetent handling of the pandemic, his questionable ties to foreign adversaries, and his general boorishness. If a Democrat, anywhere in the world, was getting public attention—be it in a hearing, a television appearance, a stump speech, an Instagram reel, etc.,—then the focus was on Trump’s fundamental unsuitability for leadership and the danger he posed. It greatly aided the Democrats’ cause. Voters never really gave him a chance; his favorability numbers were underwater for the entirety of his presidency. A fighting spirit led Democrats to victories in 2018 and 2020 and helped defeat the typical anti-incumbent mood of the 2022 midterms.
Now that he has been reelected, Democrats are questioning this approach, believing that it backfired last November. Trump may be a fascist and an existential threat, but it’s clear that many Democrats are suddenly ready to dismiss those claims as overheated political rhetoric, or don’t care. Given how successful their attacks on Trump were during his first term, the fact that they have been unable to settle on a new strategy is a big problem that must be addressed. Luckily for them, while they figure it out, Trump will be dealing with a problem of his own: holding together the fractious coalition that won him the White House but could now destroy his presidency.
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