What a week it's been, and it's not even Friday.
Joe Biden is gone. Hallelujah. And -- thus far -- Donald Trump's return to the White House has been impressive. Between his executive orders restoring sanity to the federal government, to the mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens getting underway, and his first confirmed and sworn-in Cabinet appointment (Secretary of State Marco Rubio), I'm optimistic for the future.
Democrats, on the other hand, are foundering. They've been reduced to screaming 'Elon Musk is a Nazi!' over an innocuous hand-gesture at the post-inauguration rally and lecturing Americans on what it does and doesn't mean to be Christian (hint: illegal immigrants good, banning abortion bad).
What they need to do is engage in some serious soul-searching and reflection on how they lost to Donald Trump -- the guy they called LITERAL HITLER -- for the better part of a decade.
Or, the could just listen to Will Stancil here:
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If you're a Democrat, your mission over the next four years can be easily condensed to a single line: make sure every single thing Americans hear about their federal government, and the state of the country, is bad.
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) January 20, 2025
What could possibly go wrong?
That means:
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) January 20, 2025
-don't let MAGA take over media outlets (because then people will hear good things)
-don't help MAGA pass laws (because then people will hear good things)
-don't do cozy bipartisanship (because then people will hear good things)
Not only is this a tactic admission that Democratic policies are unpopular, untenable, and downright bad, it ignores the very reason Kamala Harris lost: it doesn't matter what people hear, it matters what people experience.
Media spent the entirety of the Biden years telling us the economy was great. Kamala Harris herself told us multiple times that 'Bidenomics is working' (for who, she didn't elaborate, but it wasn't the average American. Days before the inauguration, Joe Biden took to X to brag about the jobs numbers created and got bit by reality. Media, for their part, spun abysmal jobs numbers -- like the 12,000 created in October -- as 'temporary' (while they called 661,000 jobs created under trump 'bad news'). They also tried to tell us, repeatedly, that inflation was slowing down and that we were just too stupid to understand the economy was doing great (if you ignored the price of food, housing, and gas).
Yet no matter how much they bloviated about the great economy, Americans never bought it. Because the reality was things were expensive. Jobs weren't being created. Economic concerns were the top priority for voters this election cycle, and Biden left office with most Americans thinking his policies did them more more harm than good and the lowest approval rating of his term. Trump gained ground with voters on the economy after his debate with Kamala, because his message matched people's reality.
It's not just the economy. Americans feel the same way about crime. No matter how many times media says crime rates are down (they're not), Americans who live in places like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York see the daily shootings, subway stabbings, looting mobs. The AP tried playing this 'crime is down, you're just imagining things' last weekend.
I can't forget illegal immigration. Despite media's best efforts to stifle the border invasion, Americans see the harm done across the nation: whether Venezuelan gangs in Colorado or the murder of Laken Riley in Georgia. Democrats couldn't keep a lid on social media exposing the damage their negligent open-borders policies caused. So now they're going to pull out the crocodile tears about 'separated families' and Americans aren't going to believe them.
People voted for Donald Trump because they remembered how much gas and groceries cost 2017-2020. Knowing full well Trump's plans for pardoning the January 6 defendants, deporting illegal aliens, possible tariffs against China, Canada, and others, 75 million-plus Americans still pulled the lever for Trump.
And voters feel optimistic (I know I certainly do) and 59% of Americans approved of Trump's transition back into the White House. Trump is also enjoying his highest approval ratings ever.
Trump's starting job approval rating in the RCP Average is 53.0%. His all-time high during his first four-year term was 47.3% in March of 2020.https://t.co/EemcM1i8n6 pic.twitter.com/5tLKUBovkw
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) January 23, 2025
So Democrats can follow Stancil's advice. They can choose to accept his mission and spend the next four years continuing to gaslight Americans about how everything is actually really bad and voters are just being deceived by Trump.
But I believe things will get better. That the economy will improve. Americans will see this, and they'll resent the Democrats for trying -- once again -- to lie to us to further their political agenda. It seems Americans agree with me.
So good luck, Democrats.
