With the midterms fast approaching, three things are happening all at once. Donald Trump is escalating his war in Iran, the ICE killings have started up, and Trump just unleashed a huge wave of new global tariffs. All this comes amid another unappreciated dynamic. Due to Trump, the GOP has squandered its traditional advantages on three fronts: national security, immigration, and the economy. And everything Trump is doing right now seems likely to only exacerbate that.
Overwhelmingly, the swing voters who chose Republicans in 2024 did so because they were promised inflation would go down, and because they were promised this chaos and violence in the world would also be reduced. It’s not that these people were signing a contract that they were going to worship the MyPillow guy or anything like that. It’s that they had practical needs.
And when you see a president do things like prioritize a ballroom one day and then the next day actively raise your prices, you want to see your member of Congress stand up against it. And too many of these Republicans are in a cowed place where they aren’t doing it. But a lot of them are really going to wish that they had.
2 Comments
grue@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 7d
The Republicans never had an advantage on at least two of those to begin with, and the third was only an advantage in the eyes of racists.
The only actual advantages Republicans have is their superior skill at spreading disinformation and swindling idiots.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 7d
It's not just the Republicans, the MSM has endlessly repeated their claims for years despite evidence to the contrary.
I had a right-wing acquaintance who claimed that only Republicans bring the deficit down. When presented with factual evidence that Republicans consistently increase the deficit and Democrats decrease it he came up with an absurd explanation: Republicans increase the deficit because they're fixing the things previous Democrats broke. He insisted that was even the case with 2 term Republicans and no direct, statistical evidence could change his mind.
Unfortunately these people vote.