Salem Political Snark

Why I'm going to look upon Trump's second term as a political experiment

Progressives like me have a choice to make now that Trump has been inaugurated for a second term as president. How do we preserve our sanity during the next four years?

I have Democratic friends who say that they're unable to pay attention to the news anymore, given all the crazy stuff the Trump administration will be doing. This doesn't appeal to me. I believe in staying informed, not ignoring what's going on.

Another option is to remain in a more or less constant state of outrage as Trump dismantles valuable programs and policies from the Biden administration and institutes his own right-wing priorities. This also isn't appealing to me. I've got better things to do than be incessantly irritated.

I've concluded that the healthiest thing for me to do is look upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment. Which, of course, it is.

Last November a majority of American voters embraced a hypothesis: Donald Trump will bring more benefits to the United States than Kamala Harris would. I favored the opposite hypothesis, but I respect the decision of voters to put Trump in charge of federal government policies.

Now we'll see what the outcome of the political experiment that will take place from now until election day in 2028 will be, with interim results being reported in the 2026 midterm election. Every decision that Trump makes during the next four years will have effects, large or small, on our country.

Fairly soon we'll have indications of how key questions will be answered. Here's a few of them.

Is inflation going up or down?
Is the budget deficit increasing or decreasing?
Will deporting undocumented immigrants help or hurt the economy?
Will tariffs on imported goods kick off an unproductive trade war?
Can an end to the Ukraine-Russia war be negotiated that isn't a giveaway to Putin?
Are entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security being protected?
Are other countries more or less willing to support the United States?
Does the stock market look positively upon how things are going?

Causes have effects which then become causes that produce more effects. And so it goes, in politics as in other areas of life.

Trump does his best to deny reality through lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and such. This works for him up to a point. However, reality has a way of coming out on top eventually, because facts are stronger than fictions.

Trump has made a lot of promises. His slew of executive orders that he signed today are a down payment on keeping some of those promises. Many of them will be challenged legally. Others will be implemented only partially, if at all.

Every newly-elected president has a honeymoon period. Trump's has just begun. It will end before too long. Then our country will begin to see the shortcomings in Trumpian programs and policies. His approval rating likely will fall. 

Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Whatever the results of the political experiment Trump's election unleashed upon the United States are, they will be owned by Trump and the Republican Party.

I love science. It's humanity's best way of knowing reality. By looking upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment, rather than a horrible happening, I feel that I'll strike a good balance between ignoring the news and being outraged by the news.

Sure, a scientist wants their hypothesis to be confirmed. My hypothesis is that while Trump will have some clear successes, he will have more failures and limited successes -- leaving the American public dissatisfied with his presidency by the time of the 2026 midterms.

Of course, I may be wrong. A scientist is concerned mainly with getting valid results of the experiment being conducted, not with a particular outcome. By viewing the Trump administration as a political experiment, I'm hoping to be able to look upon his presidency with a certain detachment.

That said, I think Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is unbelievably ridiculous. I'll never stop saying "Gulf of Mexico." My bet is that most Americans will do the same.

Fellow Trump opponents, here's what gives me hope

Election day was really depressing for me. While I knew that the race between Harris and Trump was a toss-up, I expected that Harris would pull out a victory. Heck, maybe even a fairly easy one. At the least, I thought the election would come down to narrow margins in a few swing states.

So when it became evident that Trump was the victor before I went to bed around midnight out here in Oregon, my sleep was fitful. I couldn't stop thinking about the disasters that await our country and the world with another four years of Trump in the White House. 

But with the passage of a few days, my mood has markedly improved. Here's what gives me hope after Harris' disappointing loss.

(1) Let's start with the magnitude of the loss. Nationally, in the 43 non-swing states plus the District of Columbia, Trump gained about 6.7 points from his 2020 performance. However, in the seven swing states, Trump only gained about 3.1 points. So seemingly in the states focused on by the Harris campaign, Harris managed to cut Trump's 2024 over-performance by almost half of what he enjoyed elsewhere.

(2) So what happened on November 5 wasn't the overwhelming mandate from voters Trump is claiming. It was a fairly typical win for a candidate challenging a member of an unpopular president's party. This isn't the beginning of a never-ending upswing for Republicans. The United States frequently bounces back and forth between presidents with a D or R after their name.

(3) While Republicans will control the presidency and Senate, the House is still up for grabs. However the uncalled House races turn out, likely the balance of power will be just a few seats, as it is now. If Republicans control the House, probably they will continue to find passing major legislation to be difficult. This will be a check on Trump even if Johnson remains the Speaker of the House.

(4) If the Republican Party ends up with unified control -- President, Senate, House -- they will unequivocally own what happens to our country and our foreign policy. Given the wacko proposals put forward by Trump, such as deporting 20 million undocumented immigrants and putting a 20% or larger tariff (which amounts to a sales tax) on all imported goods, Americans are going to blame the Trump administration for all kinds of nasty problems that will arise in the next four years.

(5) This assumes that Trump will go down the crazier of two paths, the other being a more moderate presidency. If that restrained version of Trumpism comes to be, this will both be good for the United States and good for Trump (and the Republican Party). But I'm betting that the crazy path comes to be, because that's how Trump rolls.

(6) Sure, 2028 seems far away. That's when our country definitely will be done with Trump as president. So I focus on 2026, the midterms that are a bit under two years away. It seems very likely that Trump's extreme actions will turn off a large share of the American electorate by that time. He believes that his victory over Harris proved that a majority of voters have gone full-on MAGA. Actually, all it proved is that the vice-president to an unpopular president failed to beat an opponent who was saddled with all that people didn't like about the Biden years. In 2026 Trump will learn that now he's the unpopular president.

(7) The party out of power almost always does well in midterm elections. Democrats will be favored to win a majority of House seats, assuming this doesn't happen in the 2024 general election. In the Senate, Republicans will be defending 20 seats and Democrats 13 seats. So the Democratic Party has a good chance of taking control of either the House or Senate, and conceivably both. That would make Trump's last two years in office considerably more difficult.

(8) Public opinion counts. Opponents of Trump already make up about half of the country. Our number probably will grow, not shrink. We have the ability to engage in massive demonstrations if Trump pursues some of his most far-out anti-democracy autocratic schemes. Politicians of both parties are acutely conscious of what's bothering the electorate. Republican officials will stick with Trump so long as they think he is an asset to their re-election chances. When he becomes a detriment, they will begin to desert him.

I realize that things seem politically dark right now. But this won't last. Sunrise follows a sunset. Republicans are gleeful now after Trump's victory. Soon they will discover what many of them already know: embracing Trump means being tied to his erratic authoritarian behavior. When he goes off the rails, the whole Republican Party train will follow.