REPUBLICAN VULNERABILITIES ARE OBVIOUS, BUT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DOESN'T SEEM TO NOTICE

In April, when Kilmar Abrego Garcia became a household name after the Trump administration wrongly deported him to El Salvador, Peter Baker of The New York Times reported:

This in the view of the president’s team is a political winner with the vast majority of voters, an “80-20 issue,” as his adviser Stephen Miller puts it, referring to theoretical percentages. Mr. Trump bolsters his credentials as a scourge of evil immigrants while asserting that his critics care more about foreign-born murderers and thugs than they do about law-abiding Americans.

But Trump's approval rating on immigration has gone negative since then, and a new Gallup poll says it's reached unprecedented lows:

... [Americans'] evaluation of his work on immigration is mostly negative. Thirty-five percent approve of his handling of the issue, including 21% strongly approving, while 62% disapprove, including 45% strongly.

A 35%-62% rating is shocking on what has been Trump's best issue. And on some aspects of immigration, Republicans are on the wrong side of 80-20 issues (click the image below to enlarge it):

Support for giving Dreamers a path to citizenship was 81% last year, even though Trump was on a path to victory; now it's 85%. And nearly 80% of Americans support a path to citizenship for non-Dreamers.

Also:

When asked if immigration is generally a good thing or bad thing for the country, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults call it a good thing; a record-low 17% see it as a bad thing.

Americans are seeing what the Trump/Miller/GOP immigration policy looks like in the real world, and they're increasingly disillusioned. It's quite possible that many Americans sincerely believed GOP disinformation about immigrants, and are surprised to learn that the majority are hard workers who aren't here to deal drugs or collect welfare.

Meanwhile, the president has turned his attention back to tariffs, and here they come: there's a threatened 50% tariff on Brazil, a threatened 35% tariff on Canada, a planned 50% tariff on copper, tariffs or import taxes on Japan, South Korea, and other nations.... Markets hate Trump's tariffs. Voters hated Trump's tariffs when they seemed imminent in the spring. And while many observers think Trump will back off, Paul Krugman doesn't:

The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off.

... attempting to appease Trump buys you at best a few weeks’ respite before he comes back for more.

... my bet is that the TACO people — Trump always chickens out — are wrong in this case.

And while I still believe that MAGA voters will accept Trump's failure to release new information on the Jeffrey Epstein case, it's likely to alienate more recent Trump converts, including the young podcast bros who voted for him in large numbers last year.

All this is happening as government service cuts are about to worsen, and as questions continue to be asked about the feds' performance in the Texas floods. Meanwhile, at the state level, Republicans continue defying the will of the people:

When Missouri voters were asked last year whether they wanted to increase the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid sick leave, 58 percent of them said yes.

Not long after that vote, the Republicans who control the state government mobilized to unwind those changes. On Thursday, Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, signed into law a bill that limited the voter-approved minimum wage increase and scrapped the paid sick leave requirement altogether.

The new law in Missouri reflects the growing impatience of Republican leaders with left-leaning groups that use state ballot questions to circumvent conservative legislatures and bring policy proposals directly to voters. In Missouri, recent ballot questions have restored abortion rights, expanded Medicaid and legalized marijuana, all causes that Democrats generally support, even as Republicans have won statewide elections in landslides.

A different opposition party might observe this and confidently assert that Republicans are completely out of step with the voting public. But Democrats' message at this time continues to be: We suck. Here's a story from The Hill:

The Democratic Party’s credibility with voters has plummeted even further since the 2024 election, raising alarm bells as the party looks to rebuild ahead of the midterms and the next presidential election, according to a new poll obtained by The Hill.

The poll, which was conducted between May and June by Unite the Country, a Democratic super PAC, showed voters perceived the Democratic Party as “out of touch,” “woke” and “weak.”

The party has seen its support erode with white men, Hispanic men and working-class voters across the board, with approval ratings sitting below 35 percent across those demographics. And enthusiasm within the party continues to wane in the wake of 2024, the poll revealed.

“This is the reality of the perception of us as a party, and until we accept that, it’s going to be hard to move forward,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, who serves as senior adviser to the super PAC. “There’s a perception out there, outside of Democratic elites, and it’s taken hold in not just the MAGA crowd but people that should be with us.”

Here's one reason "enthusiasm within the party continues to wane": Democrats are more timid about rallying voters around popular positions than Republicans are about rallying voters around unpopular positions. And if you're in a state where your ideas are much more popular than Republican ideas, why not try telling voters that if they want a minimum wage increase, paid leave, and abortion rights, they should stop voting for candidates who oppose all of those things and start voting for the party that favors all those things?

Democratic candidates and Democratic groups should not be running to the press every time they find new evidence that their party is unpopular. The perception that the Democratic Party sucks is fed, in part, by Democrats who say the Democratic Party sucks.

Here's an idea: No prominent Democrat should ever tell a reporter that Democrats suck, or spoon-feed the media the results of a private poll that says Democrats suck. In fact, if Democrats are going to say that one of the major parties sucks, it should always be the Republican Party. A crazy idea, I know!

If Democrats want to say right now that Republicans are the ones who suck, they have a large quantity of real-world material to use as evidence. Try it! Working-class voters might actually like the party more if it stops punching itself in the face and begins sticking up for itself.