As Donald Trump’s second term in office roars past the first month, it seems that Trump critics are on a pathway to success. The president has done several controversial acts since he was sworn in last month, whether it be Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency getting its hands on a vast amount of personal information, or Trump’s firing of many Americans working in various posts in the U.S. Government. These controversial acts should be highly unpopular, and the Democrats should be looking forward to elections ahead. But that’s not happening.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s approval among Americans still sits at a positive approval of 48.5%. While this is lower than when he took office, it’s still higher than he received in his first term, and his one-month streak of being in the green in regard to approvals is his all time best. Republicans are also not seeing blowback. According to early polling for the midterms in 2026, the Republicans have won almost every single poll compiled by FiveThirtyEight. Only one poll shows Democrats leading by a percentage point.
How is it that the Democratic party isn’t flourishing in a time of political upheaval among Republicans? To answer, we have to go back to the time Trump began to shake up the political landscape.
The 2016 election was the start of Americans yearning for change, not only with their leader but with the federal government as well. Many Americans had grown tired of the average politics of Washington, and the primaries for both parties represented this well. Donald Trump, despite being a highly controversial figure for many, was starting to become dominant, not because he was the traditional politician, but because he wasn’t. He was crass, offensive, rude and a complete and total outsider. Biggest of all, however, he was like much of the electorate; he was angry with all politicians and angry with what the status quo had become in Washington.
Despite being the incumbents in power, the Democrats were having a similar anti-politician wave, with Bernie Sanders taking the reins of this anti-Washington rhetoric. While he had been on Capitol Hill for over 25 years at that point, he had defined himself as someone who fought for his own beliefs, not the ones that were typical of the time he saw himself in. When it was popular politically to be against gay marriage in the 1990s, Sanders instead rallied for gay rights any chance he could. When almost all of Washington was for sending troops to fight in Iraq during the early stages of the War on Terror, Sanders instead pointed out what the threats of an invasion could be, and the effects on Americans that it could bring. This energy of being fiercely independent from his colleagues fit like a glove in the anti-establishment era of 2016 America, but a glove that higher-ups in the Democratic party did not want placed on them, and a glove that was everything the Democrats’ initial choice of Hillary Clinton was not.
Clinton represented the status quo of Washington. When Sanders was speaking out against the Iraq War in 2003, Clinton was in support of it. When Sanders was supporting gay rights in 1995, Clinton was opposed to them until at least 2008. When Sanders knew what he was supporting was controversial, Clinton supported acts simply because they were politically popular for the time. The biggest caveat against Sanders was that whenever the Republican party didn’t understand how to deal with a shift to the right by Trump, the Democrats did everything in their power to stop Sanders from getting the presidential nomination. While the people’s movement on the right to draft an outsider was heard and eventually allowed by Republicans, the yells by people on the left were ignored by the Democratic party. This safety for political success mindset was the first crack in what has become of the Democratic party today, and why they see themselves in the rut they are in.
The most important thing to know regarding Trump’s rise to power is that it isn’t a cause, but a consequence of “politics as usual.” Whenever people yearned to be heard, Trump, whether genuinely or not, stepped up to that batting position and swung, and despite his many flaws, many still enjoyed him simply because they felt heard by him. This is what the Democrats need now. The thorn in the Democrats’ side comes from the fact that in an era where many in America wish to be heard, the Democrats instead went with an option that was completely deaf to what Americans were yelling. Until the Democrats take from the guidebook of listening to America instead of its politicians which Sanders set almost a decade ago, they will continue to be in this rut, and their electoral success will be fleeting.
Photo courtesy of ABC News.
