Let me start by saying that I completely understand that the Republicans intend to try to steal the upcoming mid term elections. This post will assume that they will not be successful in doing so. I know that’s not exactly a safe assumption, but bear with me.
The special elections that have been held since the genius took charge have, by and large, shown a fairly massive shift in voter sentiment. Democrats have won in districts that could fairly be characterized as having been deep red just a year ago. Not only have they won, but they have won by large margins, or lost by smaller margins than would have been the case before the genius came back.
The Republican game plan was, until recently, very effective. They did what they could to benefit their billionaire backers while getting the votes of the people they were screwing by attacking various groups, none of which were causing those people any real harm. They had to attack black folks by implication, rather than directly, but they still got the message across. They had gay folks for a while but that sort of lost its effectiveness when a lot of people came to realize that they knew and liked a lot of gay people. They have since switched to trans folks, but except for the die hard MAGA types, that really doesn’t sell very well. And of course they are attacking immigrants, but in a way that has a) lost them the large portion of the Hispanic vote that had for some reason gone over to them in 2024, and b) lost them a large portion of people who sort of draw the line at government agents murdering people on the streets. It has gained them no votes, because the people who support these Gestapo tactics were already voting for them.
But there’s another thing going on. They are now openly screwing people, rather than doing it in such a way that those people don’t realize it’s happening. A good example is their decision to openly and blatantly deprive millions of people of the subsidies they needed to get health insurance in this, the only advanced nation in the world that does not have free health care for its citizens. There is no way that all of those people voted for Democrats, although they all should have. Had you, in 2024, told those that voted for Trump that he would take away their health care they would no doubt have refused to believe it. Depriving people of health care loses them a lot of votes but gains none. Anyone who favors depriving people of health care is already voting for Republicans.
You can see the same thing happening in issues both big and small. One quite small example is Trump’s recent threat to prevent a bridge connecting Canada and Michigan. It’s an absurd thing to do without doubt, and it gains exactly no votes for Republicans while driving away people who had an interest in seeing that bridge opened. (Found out after the first draft of this post that there’s a billionaire who was behind all this.) Sure, it’s in Michigan, and it’s a blue state, but there are Republican politicians in Michigan and they will lose votes as a result of this sort of thing. Here’s another, and this in a red state (which may be tending blue, at least in spots). The FAA announced that it would close El Paso’s airport for 10 days for “special security reasons”. Bullshit of course, and it backed down quickly. But it’s the sort of thing that pisses off their own voters for no particular reason. They just keep piling this sort of stuff on.
There’s no reason to think any of this will stop. It is merely to be hoped that the Democrats will learn how to take advantage of it, and to pressure the press to report it each time the Republicans choose to screw their base.