HOW WE GOT HERE: Could it be something we Blues have done?

MONDAY, MAY 5, 2025

In some ways, could the answer be yes? As almost everyone knows, Donald J. Trump is in the Oval Office again. 

Over here in Blue America, very few people are happy about that state of affairs. In our view, this lengthy report in the Washington Post describes conduct on the part of President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio which, as an ethical matter, rises to the level of an international war crime.

So it has gone in the first hundred days. Or at least, so it seems to us.

Elsewhere, the conduct of the sitting president is variously disordered, or so it seems to us. To cite one type of example, on yesterday's Meet the Press, there he went again:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (5/4/25): Prices are down for oil. Prices are down for all energy. Prices are down at tremendous numbers for gasoline. And let me tell you, when you have– 

The big thing, what he did, he spent like a stupid person, which he was. But he spent like a very stupid person. And that was bad for inflation. 

But what really killed us with inflation was the price of energy. It went up to $3.90, even $4. And in California, $5 and $6. Right? Okay. I have it down to $1.98 in many states right now. 

When you go that much lower on energy—which is ahead of my prediction because I really thought I could get it down into the $2.50s—we have it down at $1.98 in numerous places. But when you say costs are going up, even mortgage rates are going down. You know, we have mortgage rates—

WELKER: But let me give you some examples. These are—I mean, these are actual examples. So you're saying the prices that are going down. Some prices are going up. Tires, strollers, some clothing in the wake of your tariffs...

While saying, as he constantly does, how stupid President Biden was, President Trump recited claims about the price of gas which everyone (in Blue America) knows to be totally bogus. 

By now, this behavior on this president's part has been thoroughly normalized. It has been normalized to the extent that Kristen Welker simply proceeded as if the bogus claims hadn't been made. 

He made a crazy claim about gas. She responded by citing the price of strollers! 

(Moments later, he was mocking her for focusing on such a trivial product.)

It's now an established part of the way our society functions. The president will make absurdly inaccurate claims, as will high-profile agents such as Elon Musk. 

When they do, the most famous journalists in the land will act like nothing has happened. Given the chaos which ensues when such bogus claims do get challenged, this may even be the most sensible way for a journalist like Welker to proceed.

Over here in Blue America, we the people aren't happy about the prevailing state of play—and sure enough! In yesterday's New York Times, a gloomy report by Ana Swanson appeared beneath this dual headline:

A Tidal Wave of Change Is Headed for the U.S. Economy
American consumers are not yet seeing much evidence of the drastic changes President Trump has made on trade. But they are on their way.

In our view, that dual headline was deceptively anodyne. In print editions, a triple headline on page A1 sat atop that same report. In our view, those headlines came closer to capturing the drift of Swanson's gloomy essay:

THE U.S. ECONOMY GIRDS FOR A SHOCK IN THE TRADE WAR
SHIPPING SLOWS DOWN
Specter of Empty Shelves and a Recession as the Tariffs Land

A recession may be looming, those gloomy headlines said, thereby bringing in the "specter of empty shelves."

As noted, many voters in Blue America have a wide array of such concerns about this sitting president. In Blue America, fears about a mangled economy are only one part of the political moment.

For those reasons, President Trump's approval ratings are very low in Blue America. That said, a second report on the Times' front page outlined the views which prevail in a separate, far distant land. 

That second report came from the warrens of Red America, where assessments of President Trump reman strikingly positive. Headline included, this second report, by Robert Draper, started off like this:

For Trump Supporters, an ‘Exciting’ First 100 Days

For those tens of millions of Americans who regard President Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop decade of political life as a waking nightmare, what may be hardest to fathom is that tens of millions of their fellow citizens have viewed the very same spectacle and have said, in effect, “We are fine with it.”

And so it continues. A hundred days into Mr. Trump’s tumultuous second term, 42 percent of those in a recent New York Times/Siena poll not only approve of the job he is doing as president but describe his time in the White House so far as “exciting.”

True, only 43 percent of voters in the poll view him favorably, compared to 56 percent who view him unfavorably. Mr. Trump is also faring worse in the polls than any other modern president in his first 100 days.

And yet in the midst of the second-term chaos, Mr. Trump has suffered only a modest decline from the 48 percent of voters who viewed him favorably in the final Times/Siena poll before the November election. The numbers underscore that the durability of his appeal for his base cannot be ignored any more than Mr. Trump himself.

So says Draper, reporting to readers in Blue America from a substantially different land.

Just for the record, it's true! According to an array of recent surveys, President Trump is "faring worse in the polls than any other modern president in his first 100 days." 

It's true! In that most recent New York Times / Siena survey, the president was viewed favorably by only 42 or 43 percent of respondents. In other surveys, the president's "job approval" number has dropped as low as 39 percent.

Something else is true. It's true that President Trump's "favorability / approval" ratings dropped during his first hundred days. But it's might also be said, as Draper explicitly does, that the decline has been "modest:"

Full disclosure! Tens of millions of American citizens approve of what President Trump has done in his first hundred days. Blue America's voters are angry, upset—but over in Red America, tens of millions of other Americans think his approach has been "awesome."

(So says one of the voters Draper quotes in his piece.)

Blue voters are disturbed by this president's conduct. That said, it seems to us that a basic question has never been asked or answered in the course of the past hundred days, or in the course of the past six months, dating to last November.

An extremely basic question hasn't yet been asked or answered. That question would go like this:

How in the world did we ever get here? How did this guy ever get re-elected? Why are so many fellow citizens "excited" by what they see? 

How in the world did we get here? That strikes us as an obvious question—but in our view, a related question might go something like this:

Are there things we Blues have done which helped return this man to power? Are there things we continue to do which help him maintain his level of support?

Are there things Blue America did which helped Candidate Trump get elected? Is Blue America still doing things which may be helping President Trump maintain his approval ratings?

In our view, the answer to those questions is yes. What could we mean by that?

In a scathing editorial in yesterday's print editions, the New York Times editorial board savaged President Trump's behaviors in his first hundred days. The editors voiced a long list of indictments, but they also offered this:

There Is a Way Forward: How to Defeat Trump’s Power Grab

[...]

The patriotic response to today’s threat is to oppose Mr. Trump. But it is to do so soberly and strategically, not reflexively or performatively. It is to build a coalition of Americans who disagree about many other subjects—who span conservative and progressive, internationalist and isolationist, religious and secular, business-friendly and labor-friendly, pro-immigration and restrictionist, laissez-faire and pro-government, pro-life and pro-choice—yet who believe that these subjects must be decided through democratic debate and constitutional processes rather than the dictates of a single man.

The building of this coalition should start with an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump is the legitimate president and many of his actions are legal. Some may even prove effective. He won the presidency fairly last year, by a narrow margin in the popular vote and a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. On several key issues, his views were closer to public opinion than those of Democrats. Since taking office, he has largely closed the southern border, and many of his immigration policies are both legal and popular. He has reoriented federal programs to focus less on race, which many voters support. He has pressured Western Europe to stop billing American taxpayers for its defense...

Oof! Large chunks of that editorial read like the long list of accusations aimed at King George III in the Declaration of Independence. But the editors also note a few of the ways president retains a significant amount of approval—and we think the editors were barely scratching the surface of this problem.

This president is entitled to his views and to his policy proposals. As the editors note, he did win the last election, possibly with a bit of help from those of us who aren't his political friends.

It's also true that American voters are entitled to their views concerning what he has proposed and done in his first hundred days. That said, those of us in Blue America have been very slow to come to terms with some basic realities:

We Blues aren't the infallible people we've sometimes seemed to think we are—and in our inevitable lack of perfect wisdom, we've done quite a few things which have helped this man regain (and retain) his current massive amount of power.

We did this too, President Lincoln once seemed to say. All this week, we'll explore the ways our own imperfect judgment as Blue Americans may help explain how we got here, and may help explain why the current state of affairs may be hard to escape.

We Blues sometimes seem puzzled by President Trump's ascent. How did we get here? we may sometimes ask:

Could it something we Blues have done? In some ways, could the answer be yes?

Tomorrow: Why it's hard for Fox News to be (totally) wrong