I disagree with this. Jan 6th didn’t affect 99% of peoples lives directly. It was clearly bad, but few people saw impacts in their own lives.
Higher prices and a possible recession will affect every person in the country and even globally.
His MAGA base might not blame him, but that’s only like 30-40% of the electorate. The other 60-70% won’t be happy if their lives are negatively impacted.
IMO the only thing that can get through is actual personal consequences for the voter themself
Well, yes. And his approval rating has been steadily declining in tandem with the stock market declines he's caused. If/when prices suddenly skyrocket because of tariffs, you can bet his approval ratings will decline further.
That won't work. WaPo, LAT, etc. have run numerous articles where MAGA voters talk about the consequences of his actions to them or immediate family members (getting laid off, losing medical coverage, deportation, etc.) and they say it's worth the sacrifice because they just know that Trump is actually looking out for them and won't let them suffer for too long.
What exactly on this list is a day to day item that is going to adversely affect the middle class/blue collar Trump voter enough to cause them to flip their alliance? On that list maybe clothes and shoes. But even still those are generally bought only a couple of times a year and any increase will be griped about in the moment, but come election time will be forgotten.
There are only four things that will make a middle class voter feel pain enough to re-align their vote. Fuel/energy costs, general food costs, rent/housing costs, and job insecurity. If these tariffs do not adversely touch those areas, they will have little to no impact on switching votes. Also of note, over the last four years those items are the ones that drove Trump back into the Oval Office.
You may be right here. The tariffs might not directly cause enough pain for the average person to matter.
The big unknown still is the impact on the economy and job market. His actions may reduce competitiveness of American companies globally due to retaliatory tariffs and resentment.
If the tariffs cause a recession, people will punish him for it.
My guess is that the stock market losses will be a greater driver than any cost increases on goods. And stock market losses will not necessarily push the middle class much, but will push GOP politicians into contention with Trump.
Ultimately Trump needs GOP in congress to be friendly…more than he needs the public at this point. He cant (and wont, despite the trolling) run again.
Well he needs the public not to vote in a bunch of democrats in the midterms. And, if his MAGA movement is going to live on in Vance or others after his term, he will need public support.
Middle class people also have to buy new cars, maybe want to treat themselves with some foreign alcohol, they still need furniture, coffee is still one of the most traded commodities in the world and americans guzzle it down.
New cars - They are not purchased very often by the middle class and they will lean domestic if they desire new or buy foreign cars on the used market if they really desire them.
Foreign Alcohol as a treat - If it’s a “treat” it’s already likely a more expensive choice than a domestic equivalent and any cost increase becomes part of the luxury of it being a treat. If your $60 bottle of Italian wine that you occasionally treat yourself with is now $80, you won’t really notice that $20. If you do, maybe you opt for a better domestic instead. If the $20 california wine you daily drink becomes $30, you notice that. But I assert that there is quite a bit of exceptional alcohol produced in the US and the middle class electorate is not going to starve for decent alcohol.
Furniture - Like cars, this is not a regular purchase and frankly not one where a price comparison with a prior purchase of a similar item will really notice any price increase due to tariffs. How often do you replace a dinner table? 10 years? Of course it’s more expensive than the last time you needed one.
Coffee is the one example where you have daily consumption and like I said on my original comment, food is one area that if affected, people will notice.
> It was clearly bad, but few people saw impacts in their own lives.
It did though, they just didn't know how to measure it, and it wasn't felt immediately. It was like the flash of light that dazzles before the pressure wave of the nuclear bomb blasts everything (which in the analogy is this moment, now).
What happened on Jan 6, and in the leadup and response to it, was the erosion of democratic norms. Before Nov 2020 they were stronger, and after Jan 6 they were significantly weakened. Our institutions are essentially built on trust, and Trump in his campaign to overturn the 2020 election spent every waking moment for months attacking those foundations. He purposefully eroded people's trust in Democracy for no reason, because there ultimately the fraud he alleged in that election was not found.
That impacts everyone. They just don't feel it in the supermarket; they just have no "democracy meter" that they can use to gauge how healthy their representation is in government. But the reason he's able to do what he's doing now is he because he laid the foundation in 2020.
What in your mind should have happened differently in response to Jan 6?
No widespread fraud was ever proven that could have swayed the election.
Should we have pretended there were major flaws with our voting system just to help you with your feelings?
Or maybe we should have let Trump be president again for no reason just because you were really upset about it.
And did you ever wonder why, if Democrats were able to magically steal the election in even red states like Georgia and Arizona in 2020, they didn’t bother to try it again in 2024?
The elite reaction to January 6th was just raw hostility towards the American nation.
I don't claim to have access to secret knowledge about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the elections. My view on the actual election fraud claims is agnosticism. I have no access to information that would allow me to independently come to any conclusion on the matter.
However, a large volume of very plausible evidence was put forward. And, instead of honest engagement with those concerns, we got extreme censorship, gas lighting, and a violent crack-down on everyone involved.
We cannot allow people that have this attitude towards us to continue to rule over us.
A violent crackdown against who? The people who stormed the capital and assaulted police officers?
Even AG Barr said there was no evidence of widespread fraud. The “plausible evidence” you speak of was a firestorm of unsubstantiated claims on social media that incited a violent attack on the capital.
Yes. Put your actual decision makers on social media, and have them engage openly with the people making unsubstantiated claims.
> Even AG Barr said
Almost all of the information that was put forward that seemed plausible was deleted from the internet, and never addressed.
We can figure out what happened after we get rid of everyone that played a role in that; once we have a truth-finding apparatus that is made up of friendlies.
The only thing that matters from all of this is that unfriendly people are in power, and the only solution to that is to get rid of them and replace them with friendly people.
Trump, for all of his many flaws, at least pretends to be friendly.
At the end of the day we either live in a world where laws, process, and provable facts prevail - democracy; or we live in a world where conjecture, conspiracy, and opinions and ad hoc decision making rule the day - anarchy.
I prefer to live in democracy, where we follow a process to redress grievances. In 2020, President Trump's claims were given great deference. He was given the opportunity to prove them in court. He was heard by state legislatures and governors. The vice president weighed his claims. The Congress did as well. Even after the election states like Arizona handed over their voting machines to groups like the "Cyber Ninjas" who attempted to prove claims that ballots were tampered with in that state.
Nobody found the evidence Trump claimed.
Because it doesn't exist, it never did.
Because the alleged fraud did not happen.
What happened was a man lost a close but fair election. That's what the facts show, despite any threads you feel are "seemingly plausible", it was the most audited election in history. Eventually if you can't put up, you really have to shut up. It's that simple when it comes to a) living in a democracy and b) being an adult. Sometimes you don't get your way, and the response to that cannot be to burn down the entire system.
That's what I mean when I said that this impacted everyone - when childish temper tantrums like Jan 6 are allowed to stand, when the people who acted that way are pardoned and the person who instigated that event is reelected.... well that to me means we are trending away from democracy and toward a different way of dealing with reality.
Great idea, I’m sure that would have helped. Maybe they also could have had Anthony Fauci personally reply to antivax conspiracy theories on Twitter. That would have won hearts and minds.
You think Trump is “friendly” and of course he is. He is the primary beneficiary and spreader of lies about the 2020 election, so why wouldn’t he also be the best arbiter of truth on the subject?
Don't expect much. Modi's overnight demonetization of Rs. 1,000 bills back in 2016, caused a lot of inconvenience to almost all the Indians for 3/4 months at-least. Demonetization and flawed implementation of GST caused many small scale companies to shut doors.
With media in their pockets they can get away with anything.
Higher prices and a possible recession will affect every person in the country and even globally.
His MAGA base might not blame him, but that’s only like 30-40% of the electorate. The other 60-70% won’t be happy if their lives are negatively impacted.