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highplainsdem

(59,949 posts)
Sat Dec 13, 2025, 11:22 AM Dec 13

The Reasonable Majority Is No Longer Silent (E.J. Dionne, NYT)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/opinion/trump-swing-voters-approval-rating.html

-snip-

A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach, even when they sympathize with his objectives. Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.

Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t.

-snip-

I think of these shifts as the triumph of reasonableness — and not because I agree with where these fellow citizens have landed (although I do). I’m buoyed by the capacity of citizens to absorb new facts and take in information even when it challenges decisions they previously made. It turns out that swing voters are what their label implies. The evidence of their own lives and from their own eyes matters.

All this is obviously good news for Democrats, who extended their 2025 hot streak by winning the mayoralty in Miami on Tuesday. But it’s more than that. It dispels myths about Mr. Trump’s having magical powers to distract and deceive. It shows that for all the legitimate concerns about the breakdown of our media and information systems, reality can still get through.

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The Reasonable Majority Is No Longer Silent (E.J. Dionne, NYT) (Original Post) highplainsdem Dec 13 OP
Viral post blm Dec 13 #1
And aging dictators tend to become more dictatorial, not less dalton99a Dec 13 #2
So wonderful to see many TSF supporters entering detox and rehab. Sneederbunk Dec 13 #3

blm

(114,420 posts)
1. Viral post
Sat Dec 13, 2025, 11:28 AM
Dec 13

Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.
Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/opinion/trump-swing-voters-approval-rating.html

dalton99a

(92,067 posts)
2. And aging dictators tend to become more dictatorial, not less
Sat Dec 13, 2025, 11:29 AM
Dec 13
Especially striking are the findings of a Public Religion Research Institute poll this fall that asked whether Mr. Trump had gone “too far” in a variety of his actions. Among respondents, 54 percent said he had gone too far on tariffs, as did 55 percent on cuts to grants to universities and 60 percent on cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. are especially vulnerable on cuts to enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies: A KFF survey last month found that 74 percent of Americans said they should be extended, not eliminated.

Even on immigration, Mr. Trump’s signature issue, his radical approach was unpopular: In the Public Religion Research Institute poll, 65 percent of respondents opposed deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons, 63 percent opposed arresting undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States with no criminal records, and 58 percent said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should not conceal their identities with masks or use unmarked vehicles.

Mr. Trump’s opponents have no cause for complacency. In the wake of the 2008 financial implosion, the pandemic and postpandemic inflation, volatility and unhappiness have been hallmarks of public opinion. Poll numbers are fickle.

But in 2025, Trumpian flimflam hit its limits — even in the G.O.P. when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana State Senate defied the president’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting. His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives to a leader and a movement it has found wanting.
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