David Faris, a professor at Roosevelt University, took issue with Democratic Party leadership Monday over what he called its “timid” resistance to the Trump administration, but argued in an analysis that they’d still likely secure a landslide election victory in November regardless, and thanks in large part to President Donald Trump himself.
“The country’s notional opposition party remains content to issue press releases and fundraising pitches that seem composed in some kind of alternate universe where the United States hasn’t suddenly become a dysfunctional gangster state. But the Democrats are a good bet to win anyway,” Faris wrote in an analysis published in The Nation.
“That’s because the president and his party have loudly and aggressively pursued a highly divisive and unpopular agenda that has not only failed to deliver an improvement in the cost of living but has also given all of us front-row seats to a seemingly never-ending circus of laughably evil corruption, ugly authoritarian overreach, unsettlingly strange policymaking, and erratic economic stewardship.”
Indeed, Republicans have grown increasingly worried about an election blowout, with one GOP insider recently predicting the midterms to be a “throw the bums out” election with potentially catastrophic results for the GOP. Trump hasn’t done his party any favors, either, with his second-term low approval ratings dragging down the entire party, leading to some of its members now “waiting for Trump to die or quit.”
“In the face of all this, the president shows no signs of understanding how unpopular he is nor any remote inclination to change course in time to save his party’s congressional majorities,” Faris wrote.
“Nor does the vast corps of MAGA quislings on Capitol Hill seem likely to regain consciousness in time to reassert Congress’s constitutional authority over the rampant abuses of the executive branch. This is Trump’s ship, and they have retired to their quarters hoping that their morally depraved captain has some kind of plan for the ankle-deep water sloshing around their feet other than letting them drown.”