They Are a Minority

For many politically minded people who are not fascists, the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration have felt like an unstoppable whirlwind of doom. By plowing ahead with plans to shutter entire federal agencies, cut tens of thousands of federal workers, and generally govern by decree in bold defiance of written laws, Trump and his allies are inculcating in their opposition the feeling of being overwhelmed. I have already heard entirely too much despair creeping into the tone of those who should form the backbone of the political opposition to what is happening right now.

Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Trump-Musk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future.

When you brush away the chaotic bombardment of daily outrages and look at the actual base of support for these policies, you will see that that base is a significant minority of the public, and that it is going to shrink as the impact of the policies begins to be felt in the real world. (...)

Rather than allowing yourself to be drowned in frantic headlines, consider what Donald Trump’s base actually looks like. He got about half of the 150 million votes cast in 2024. (Close to 90 million eligible people did not vote.) Out of the half of the population willing to vote for him, a significant portion are more or less traditional Republicans, who view the party’s MAGA turn with some level of distaste, who would be happier with Mitt Romney or George Bush or Ronald Reagan, but who prefer Trump to a Democrat. Of the portion of Trump’s base that are MAGA faithful—the red hat variety of Republicans—a majority or close to a majority are going to bear significant negative material impacts from the actions that Trump is allowing Elon Musk to take. Every Republican voter who receives any form of Medicaid is now at risk, and Social Security and Medicare cuts may well come as well. Everyone who has relied on the federal government for consumer protections or environmental protections is going to be disappointed. Everyone who likes to take their family to national parks is going to find that they are understaffed. People will find that their health care system does not work as well. Multiply this by everyone who is touched by the myriad functions of the federal government which are now being dismantled. The farmers going on Tik Tok to complain about how they voted for Trump and are now being screwed over by USDA budget cuts have become a source of schadenfreude, but they represent one small part of a much bigger constituency: Trump voters who are finding out in very tangible ways that Trump’s presidency is going to be materially bad for them.

This constituency is only going to grow as more and more functions of the federal government are destroyed. There is no way for it not to. And every new person that falls into this category represents a shrinkage of the enthusiastic base of support for Trump’s presidency. This trend will happen not for any ideological reason, but because Trump’s best buddy is systematically breaking things that performed key functions in millions of Americans’ lives, up until now. That will not go unnoticed. [ed. As I've said before, I don't know any engine or piece of machinery that works better once you've removed a good portion of its parts.] 

Now think about Trump’s institutional base. He has the billionaires, and I will give him the business community for now as well—both of these groups are fundamentally agnostic and/ or cowards when it comes to things like “right and wrong,” and they lend their political support to whoever they think has the power to help them, and that will be Trump for the foreseeable future. Money is behind him. (They may regret this support if he, you know, destroys the economy by undermining the dollar and launching idiotic trade wars and smashing the stability of the financial system, but that is a separate matter.) Notably, though, Trump has, in less than a month, pissed off some significant sources of institutional support—groups that may in fact have preferred him in the election, but who are now finding that they themselves are targets of his agenda, rather than beneficiaries. These groups include, but are not limited to:

• Millions of government workers and their families, who may have voted Republican but now find their own livelihoods threatened;

• Veterans who will see the VA decimated;

• Members of the military, who will see austerity imposed upon them;

• Clean cut law and order types at the FBI and the Justice Department who are finding that Trump is actually lawless, and is attacking them;

• Law enforcement types disillusioned by Trump’s pardoning of January 6 protesters who attacked cops;

• Parents of schoolchildren who will find their public schools getting worse and worse;

• Latinos who voted for Trump who will find themselves and their families targeted by his anti-immigration agenda;

• Black people who voted for Trump who will be unhappy with the wave of officially condoned racism he has unleashed;

• Women who voted for Trump who will at some point find themselves or their family personally harmed by the restrictions on reproductive rights;

• Sober small business types who will find that they are, to their surprise, on the losing side of the oligarchy;

It is easy to say “these people deserve what they get!” and it is easy to say “nah, these people are blind dead-ender racists who will ride the Trump Train to hell no matter what!” but both of those sentiments miss what is consequential here. Sure, within all of these groups, it may be the case that most of the people who suffer material harm will grit their teeth and ignore it and continue to back Trump because of unshakeable party affiliation or racism or cultural mores or failure to pay attention or whatever. But I guarantee you that some portion of all of those groups is going to be so pissed or disappointed or disillusioned with what Trump and Musk are doing that they will lose their enthusiasm for Trump. They will lose their will to affirmatively support him. And all of these defections, remember, are coming from a base of less than half of the public to begin with. MAGA is a minority, and the more it carries out its political program, the more it will shrink.

The many people who have already become and the many more who will soon become pissed or disappointed or disillusioned with what is happening will not automatically rush off to register as Democrats. Rather, these people compose and substantial and growing pool of support that is up for grabs. They are the persuadables. Many of them will experience the cognitive dissonance of having their own image of what Trump stands for contradicted by things happening to them or their families or friends personally—things that they cannot deny, because they are living them. When this happens, they will search for explanations. Trump, of course, is always ready with lies about why things are bad: it’s immigrants, it’s Biden, blah blah, you know the things he says. When people are confronted with hard realities, though, the power of lies is weakened. The political opposition—already at least half of the country, and likely more, at least on a policy level—will have this expanding pool of people who have been burned to work with, to talk to, to bring in, to ally with.

The opposition is the majority.

by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work |  Read more:

Image: Unpopular people/Getty
[ed. Actually, the majority should be all rational people, Republican or Democrat, who love their country and hate seeing it disassembled before their very eyes. As Ezra Klein notes in his recent podcast Congress has become NPCs (so-called nonplayer characters in video games): "Agreement with Trump’s policy aims need not mean agreement with his power grab. But the most powerful branch of government — the branch with the power to check the others — is supine. It is not that it can’t act to protect its power. It’s that it will not act to protect its power. This is a nonplayer Congress... What a strange life to rise as far as they have in politics and be as afraid as they are to use their power and judgment... This is the NPC problem we actually face: a nonplayer Congress, driven by Republicans who serve Trump’s ambitions first. We are left relying on the courts, and that may work. But this is not the system working. It is the system failing." See also: The Business Community is Extraordinarily Stupid (HTW):]

"If you follow American politics, you may think of a “pro-business” platform as something that consists of the things that business interests often lobby for: lower taxes, less regulation period, less oversight, less protection for labor, less responsibility of all sorts to anyone other than their own shareholders. Yet all these things that they seek (for the purpose of increasing short term profits) are things that they assume will exist within the context of the basic principles outlined above. Businesses want lower taxes, but they still want well-maintained roads. They want weaker labor protections, but they still want a healthy and well educated workforce. They want less regulation, but they still want transparent laws and functional enforcement. Their short term greed, unwise and distasteful as it may be, is only something they fight for because they assume that the big, fundamental pillars of society and government that allow them to operate freely will always be in place. [ed. emphasis added]

Dictatorial strongman governments in which the rule of law is subsumed by the whims of the lone unaccountable leader are not ideal for business. Sure, some businesses can flourish by flattering the leader enough to be granted special privileges. The oligarchs flatter Putin, and in return they are allowed to loot the country. That’s good for the net worth of the oligarchs. But is it good for business? No, because it will always be a minority of businessmen who are blessed by the strongman, and a majority of businesses will remain subject to unpredictable lawless rule. You cannot make long term investments if you can’t trust that contracts will be enforced fairly. You can’t grow your business if you can’t find adequate workers because the public school system has been decimated and too many people have medical issues because the health care system has been privatized for profit. You can’t feel confident reinvesting your profits in research and development if you have little idea which regulatory agencies will exist, or whether the strongman will launch a war in a fit of pique, or whether your own business may become food for one of your more politically favored competitors. A stable, democratic, well-governed society is good for business. An unstable, undemocratic, wildly governed society is bad for business. The business lobby’s many years of ceaselessly trying to nibble away at the foundations of stability and democracy and fairness for their own immediate gains have now brought us to the brink of a strongman government that will, I assure you, be very bad for business.

Unpredictable trade wars are bad for business. Eroding confidence in the US dollar because you want to prop up crypto scams for your donors is bad for business. Letting religious zealots control public education is bad for business. Destroying access to contraception and abortion is bad for business. Constantly toying with provoking wars is bad for business. Allowing the environment to become polluted is bad for business. Even enormous wealth inequality is bad for business, because it means a few people have all the money, instead of all your customers having plenty of money to spend with your business.... The tech oligarchs who sat on stage with Trump at his inauguration were not there because he is good for business—they were there because being there, right there on the inside, is the only way to flourish.

Let me distinguish what I am saying from some common criticisms of the way business interests act in the political realm. People often criticize business as greedy. Yes. It is greedy, as water is wet. Understanding corporations as anything other than soulless robots seeking profit is a mistake. This is why it is wise to tightly regulate them and unwise to allow them to do whatever they want. In a related sense, people often say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be in the self-interest of business to pay more taxes and subject themselves to more regulations and and generally push for more progressive values because it would help to create the stable and happy society outlined above, which is good for business in the long run?” Well, sure, but this question misunderstands the fact that the political actions of the business lobby assume that they will always be pushing against some force that is pushing back, and that the progressive forces they are pushing against will be enough to protect the basic structure of democratic society, even as businesses try to undermine it just enough to put money in their own pockets. Businesses want to pick up pennies in front of the steamroller, but they don’t want the steamroller to run them over.

Well fuckers, you have miscalculated. You rats. (...)

The business lobby’s many years of selfish conduct and support for deleterious public policies have produced so much inequality and undermined our democratic institutions so successfully that we are now watching a strongman seize control of our government... Your efforts have gotten us here. All the Koch Brother/ Federalist Society types who invested so much money in capturing the courts for the right wing have gotten us here. All the nice Chamber of Commerce types who supported the Republican Party even as it radicalized further and further because they wanted those tax cuts have gotten us here. Some of these people still anticipate that the second Trump administration will be a prosperous time for business. They are wrong. Putting zealots and incompetents and outright grifters in positions of great power in the government does not produce the stability and social health inherent to business growth. We, the people, will not like oligarchy, but neither—I assure you—will all the businessmen who are not, themselves, oligarchs. Watch and see."