At the dark end of the democratic street

Something I’ve been assuming for much of the three and half months since the election, and especially in month since the beginning of Trump’s new term, is that if the election were held again right now, the results would be quite different, given the now undeniably radical, fascistic, and liberal democracy-destroying character of Trump II: The Vengeance Tour.

The only problem with this beautiful dream is that all the evidence is running in exactly the opposite direction:

One thing is even more demoralizing than President Trump’s apparent lawbreaking and kowtowing to Vladimir Putin. It’s that weeks of outrages have not significantly dented Trump’s popularity.

Trump’s favorability ratings ticked down slightly in recent days but remain higher now than when he was elected in November. So let’s acknowledge a painful truth: Now that American voters have actually seen Trump trample the Constitution, pardon violent insurrectionists and side with the Kremlin against our allies, after all this, if the election were held today, Trump might well win by an even wider margin than he did in November.

Democrats have been ineffective so far at holding Trump accountable, and he will do much more damage in the coming years unless we liberals figure out how to regain the public trust.

Maybe Trump’s overreach will catch up with him. But a Quinnipiac poll last month showed the lowest level of approval for Democrats (31 percent) since Quinnipiac began asking the question in 2008.

The curated 538 polling average of Trump’s approval numbers since the beginning of the Biden presidency shows that Trump’s disapproval/approval numbers are better now — indeed much better — than they were over the previous four years. (I’m old enough to remember such LGM Commentariat Greatest Hits as Polls No Longer Mean Anything Because Cellphones. Misty water color memories . . .)

Unfortunately, more than unfortunately, I think commenter DamnYankeesLGM captures the spirit of the moment in this remark in the thread on Trump’s Stalinist purge of the armed forces leadership:

Everyone truly seems to have given up. Not just liberals, but leftists, even normal Republicans. Everyone has given up – it’s like Trump and his movement have been so comically evil and disgusting and crude for so long, and nothing anyone does to oppose them matters, they’ve just beaten everyone. Out of exhaustion.

Yes I realize it’s not “helpful” to have nothing to say about what to do about any of this, because it reveals among other things that the critic has no Inner Resources.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

John Berryman, Dream Song #14