If the predicted big blue wave rolls over Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, it will have a tinge of red.
A not insignificant number of voters who cast ballots for President Donald Trump two years ago — particularly Latinos and young men — has become disillusioned with the president they helped elect. This time around, many of them will either vote for a Democrat or simply not vote at all.
This phenomenon has restored just a tiny bit of my lost faith in the power of reason and rationality.
Since long before he was elected to his first term in 2016, there has been abundant evidence to show Trump’s lack of fitness for the office. In the years since, that evidence has only become more glaring and expansive. Despite that, more than half the country fell for his hucksterism and lies a second time in 2024.
I attribute that to ignorance. Not stupidity, mind you, but ignorance. There is a difference.
Millions of Americans have been ignorant of Trump’s monumental flaws because they were either not paying attention to politics, or they were being misled and brainwashed by Fox News, talk radio and online hackers, bots and conspiracy mongers.
Finally, though, reality has begun to slip through cracks in the wall of disinformation and delusion. In large part this is because Trump has gotten even more blatant in his corruption and incompetence.
His absurd, punitive tariffs on Canada have done real harm to farmers, ranchers and businesses in red states. His catastrophic war with Iran has driven up fuel prices and betrayed his promise to keep the country out of war. His unleashing of a poorly trained, violent gestapo to indiscriminately hunt down immigrants raised alarm among Latino voters and businessmen who depend on migrant workers.
And, once the emperor is revealed not to be wearing fancy new clothes, it becomes easier to see him, not as a charismatic leader fighting for forgotten Americans, but as a charlatan who is growing increasingly weird as each day passes.
Less than a third of voters now believe Trump is doing a good job, and his frequent claims to be greater than any other president, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, are not convincing disillusioned minds.
Trump lives in his own delusion. I believe he actually thinks he is the greatest. That so many Americans, even now, concur with that assessment only proves that, while knowledge can overcome ignorance, you can’t fix stupid.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
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