Democrats discover how to defeat Trump & Elon

The left accidentally stumbled upon the single most effective way to overcome Republican overreach.

Trump has been following the Steve Bannon model of flooding the zone because he wants to send the media and the Democrats scrambling in ten different directions, and he’s been largely successful. But we’ve just accidentally stumbled upon a strategy to fight back—and unlike most of what Democrats have been trying to do, this one is actually working.

This past week, the House was out of session, which meant that a raft of lawmakers held town halls in their districts. To give you a small sampling of what that looked like, this is Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman’s town hall in Wisconsin’s 6^th congressional district. The district has been solidly Republican since 1967. Not exactly a DEI haven. And yet this is what his town hall looked like:

And we’ve witnessed similar scenes in districts across the country—Republican districts with Republican voters who are lashing out because of Trump and Elon’s overreach. And the polling reflects the same sentiment. Trump had enjoyed net positive support for the first month of his presidency; that number has flipped to net negative based on the most recent polling from Post-Ipsos, Reuters, Quinnipiac, and CNN. Trump is underwater on ending DEI programs in the government, banning trans military members from serving, pardoning January 6 insurrectionists, doing mass firings of federal employees, shutting down USAID which provides humanitarian assistance to low income countries, and blocking health agencies from communicating with the American public.

But Trump is the most underwater on having deputized Elon as his hatchetman. According to The Washington Post:

Musk having a prominent role in the administration is viewed as a “bad thing” (54-28) by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. The Post-Ipsos poll showed Americans disapprove by a similarly wide margin (52-26) of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary.” And Americans said 63 to 34 that they are concerned about Musk’s team getting access to their data, which is the subject of high-profile legal fights. Even 37 percent of Republican-leaning voters said they are at least “somewhat” concerned about Musk getting their data.

Clearly, what Elon is doing is unpopular, Trump allowing him to do it is unpopular, and these Republican lawmakers and Senators allowing Trump and Elon to usurp all of their power is also unpopular. And look, I understand the gamble that these Republican officials made: they don’t want to earn Trump’s scorn because he’d threaten a primary challenge and Elon would fund it, and so they’ll blindly do whatever he wants and stay out of trouble. Noble? No. But logical? Yes.

But what these Republican officials didn’t take into account was that if the voters themselves are lashing out, then that’s a more immediate problem than the prospect of a primary challenge. And mark my words: these elected officials will be responsive to their own voters—certainly more responsive than to a threat by Trump. The answer, then, is to put pressure on these Republican officials, because if they start to see that they’re losing support from the very people responsible for voting them into office, that becomes existential for them in a way that Trump’s threats can’t be.

If you live in these districts, show up at town halls. Call them. Go to their field offices. Go to their DC offices. These are the people we need to lean on. And if one Republican caves in response to the voters, that gives a permission structure for others to do the same. And remember: they’ve only got a three-seat majority in the House. Which means it doesn’t take much to block Trump’s agenda. But it starts by doing exactly what these constituents are doing right now, which is showing up, getting loud, and voicing our dissatisfaction with what’s going on in Washington.