Thanksgiving 2024 was one of the most dreary holidays we’ve had for many a year. It may have even been worse than the 2016 holiday, when half the country was in a state of stunned disbelief that Donald Trump had won the presidency. This time, though, we knew what we were in for — and that made it even worse.
Trump had been impeached twice, inspired an insurrection, convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual abuse of journalist E. Jean Carroll and guilty of massive fraud. He was indicted for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, and then he was indicted again for stealing classified documents. And yet Americans voted him back into the presidency? The turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie all tasted like dust that no amount of wine or cider could wash away.
When Republicans lose an election nowadays, they just say it was rigged and pretend they won anyway. Somehow, they apparently find that soothing. Democrats, on the other hand, don hair shirts and self-flagellate for months, ensuring that voters of all political stripes see they loathe themselves even more than the GOP does.
The good news is that after three seasons of remorse and penance, over the past month or so Democrats have broken out of their funk and are coming to grips with the reality of another three years of Trump.
Like the president himself, the Trump train, which looked like high-speed rail during the first few months of his second term, is slowing down. And it’s a much more rickety machine than it first appeared.
Over the past few weeks the Republicans have lost the argument — if not the process — on the government shutdown. Despite the best efforts of Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., Congress voted almost unanimously for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Trump failed to persuade the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and his “health care plan” has been rejected by the House’s MAGA caucus. Now, a contingent of congressional Republicans are rebelling against his proposed sell-out to Russia and his staunch ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., defied him and then announced her resignation, prompting whispers that she’s just the first of many House Republicans who are considering leaving Congress before the 2026 midterms — and possibly even prompting a shift in the majority.
Despite his extravagant campaign promises, Trump’s economy is still in the doldrums, largely because he choked off the crisp recovery that was underway when he took office with his tariff agenda. His anti-immigrant policies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and warmongering in the Caribbean are cruel; his corruption is flagrant and his obsession with renovating and decorating the White House is downright bizarre. His personal vengeance project is an embarrassment to all involved.
For months, the media was mesmerized by Trump’s theatricality. Democrats in Washington, obsessed as they were with their compulsive navel gazing, were paralyzed. But that seems to be over now — and it’s largely due to ordinary Americans seeing the threats posed by Trump more clearly than the party’s leadership and successfully pushing back.
The latest polling breaks down along typical lines, with Republicans mostly backing Trump and Democrats pretty much unanimously rejecting him. But instead of the similar breakdown you usually find among Independents, who generally lean 50-50, a substantial majority of them are now siding with the Democrats. A recent CBS/YouGov poll found that a whopping 76% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 24% approve.
Those numbers reflect a very serious erosion in support for Trump and Republicans, and it’s doubtless contributed to his approval rating sinking below 40%. This decline has occurred despite a massive propaganda effort by the White House to present the president’s first year as successful on every front — including this week’s ludicrous claim that he has the highest poll numbers of his career. He is actually at the weakest point in his presidency.
Americans are rejecting Trump’s policies across the board. He’s drastically underwater on the economy, immigration, inflation and trade, all supposedly his strong suits, and people are blaming him — and not former President Joe Biden — for all of it. While most Republicans love the cruel ICE raids in Democratic-led cities, large majorities of Democrats and Independents disapprove, and it’s personal to many of them. Most people, too, are well aware that Trump is using law enforcement to target his political enemies.
But we don’t have to read the polls to know that Democrats and Independents see what’s happening. In June, the “No Kings” protests brought out five million people nationwide, and the subsequent marches and rallies on Oct. 18 saw 7 million turn out in the largest protest in U.S. history.
As anyone who perused the many clever protest signs could see, there were many reasons why Americans turned out. But the common message was contained in the name of the protest itself: People don’t like the authoritarian methods Trump and the GOP are employing to get their way. The protests demonstrated that millions see the president as a clear and present threat to American democracy and our system of government.
These aren’t the only signs that the stakes are setting in for people. As historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter this week, there is a burgeoning consumer protest movement as well. In response to Trump’s appointment of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to take his famous chainsaw to the federal government, average folks organized “Tesla Takedowns” at the company’s showrooms to persuade people not to buy his cars. The results were major brand damage and sinking stock prices. ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, following pressure from Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr and Trump himself, proved that consumers have the kind of clout that can move a giant corporation — Disney in this case — to defy the administration’s attempts to crackdown on free speech. The loss of subscribers and again, brand damage, was substantial.
Richardson recounted the history of successful consumer movements, particularly those run by women in the years before they were allowed to vote. Her conclusion? These movements have teeth — and they work. Richardson mentioned the upcoming “We Ain’t Buyin’ It!” campaign scheduled for Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Its organizers are urging people to pause their shopping at Target, Amazon and Home Depot from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 in an effort to protest what they call “corporations enabling the Trump Administration’s abuses of power.”
Finally, there were the overwhelming victories of Democrats in the recent elections. In a normal political environment, off-year elections have limited value in predicting the following year’s midterms. But this year, in this abnormal time, something interesting happened. Young people and Latinos who had voted for Trump in 2024 swung back to Democrats in droves, from the big marquee races to local school boards.
This comes as a huge relief. The most disorienting and disheartening aspect of the Trump restoration has been the idea that so many of our allies would support Donald Trump after all we knew about him. Today, I think we can see that many of them realize they made a mistake and are prepared to help save America from the creeping authoritarianism we are witnessing.
Just as it should be in a democracy, the people are inspiring the Democratic establishment to follow them. And that’s something to be thankful for.
Salon___
